Dreadful Minutiae

So, this is the part that people hate about social media: updates about stupid thing. Today, the stupid minutiae will be "what I had for breakfast".

As I've indicated before, we're big into the fresh/slow/organic food thing. Well, Donna is, I'm just sorta along for the ride.

This morning's breakfast was an average kind of breakfast: scrambled eggs with peanutbutter and jelly toast.

The eggs: We don't have chickens of our own - though Donna periodically lobbies to change that - so the eggs are externally-sourced. This morning's eggs were from one of the local farmers that sells at one of the markets we regular hit. They were just your basic, brown "organic" eggs. However, I spiced them up a bit: I chopped in some chili-peppers grown in the front bed (that I'd picked the other day) and some onions picked last month (Donna grows onions and garlic between our rose bushes - apparently helps keep the weeds at bay). I mixed in some sea salt and mixed, fresh-ground pepper and some mustard bought at the local German market. I also like to mix milk in with the eggs, as it makes them a bit fluffier when scrambled. The milk was from a local bottler and bought at the Whole Foods on Duke Street (in the Old Town section of Alexandria). I then topped them with some of the ketchup Donna had made in the annual tomato-processing run. So, was pretty zesty and the homemade ketchup gave it a nice, bright, tomatoey taste.

The toast: This was a bit more of a cheat. I still haven't fully weaned myself from the Jiff "extra crunchy" variety peanutbutter. That said, the jelly was a nice homemade jelly and the bread, itself, was some of Donna's homemade bread. 

So, yeah, "mundane," but still mostly good for me.

Curries from Home

So, you take some spices (mango powder, ground pomegranate seeds, ground coriander and cumin seeds, cayenne pepper, sweet paprika, kosher salt and punjabi garam masala [fresh-mixed and toasted])...

Then, you mix it in with new potatoes, chilis, onions and tomatoes - all fresh from the garden - and ladle it over rice. Bake up some papadams and grill up some lamb sausages. You get a nice, spicy, filling meal...

Unfortunately, NCIS was on and I loves Abby. So, ate on the couch rather than at the table. Thus, the pillow and laptop in the background. =)

Thanks for the Scraps

When you've got a garden that has fruit-type plants (e.g., tomatoes) and you have squirrels, you have the same situation you do at an office that has donut days. That is, invariably, you'll find a half-eaten object of food just left sitting.

I get that some people only want to eat half a donut. Whatever. If that's how you control calorie-intake, then "fine". What I don't get is why they think that any other random person in the office is going to want to leave the half a fucking donut they left behind. I don't get why they think that the prospect of a overly-handled, half-eaten donut - no matter how neatly cut - is at all an appetizing prospect. I'm not George Costanza going for the eclair on the top of the trash-pile and I'm not some street person who likes to dig in a dumpster for food. You handling the food and leaving half of it sit is just about as appetizing a prospect as cherry-picking scraps from the return trays at the cafeteria on on the busboy's pile.

Still, it could be worse. At least the idiots that leave the half donut (generally) think they're being nice. The fucking squirrels, on the other hand, are just bastards. I genuinely don't have a problem with critters taking stuff. I don't live or die by its being there. What I do have a problem with is when those fuckers yoink a nice, just-ripe tomato off the vine, eat the heart of of it, then set it on top of the fence or on a railing, leaving it like some kind of giant "fuck you: I'm stealing your stuff" totem. It really makes me want to go out and buy a pellet-gun. I want to catch just one of the fuckers, cut its head off and post it as a warning to all the other varmints that want to think about leaving half-eaten foods sitting about.

Dear Birds:

Do please fuck off with the damned pecking at the tomatoes.