What I Cook On My Day Off When The Flyboys Are Being Assholes

Or, Gosh, I'm Glad I Didn't Have A Souffle In The Oven

Fruit Salad: honeydew melon that actually smelled like melon, alors!, pineapple ditto, alors! strawberries that taste like strawberries, and a can of sour pie cherries. What is *up* with the Quickie-Mart's produce section this week? In addition to thumb-thick asparagus, they had real fruit.

The cherries are in there primarily because I had a can of cherries that I was about to eat all in one sitting and didn't feel like torturing myself.

Rice cakes, made out of jasmine rice squished into a 1/3 cup measure (greased) and quick-fried in ghee until the outsides are crunchy.

To be served with corn relish: fresh sweet corn off the cob, tiny black beans, garlic sauteed until it's golden and crunchy, a hit of soy, a hit of chili paste, and some sesame seeds, toasted. (Weird, I know.)

Thumb-thick asparagus will be roasted. Yum. I got two pounds. Does anybody realize how much TWO POUNDS of asparagus is?

I also made chicken salad with pecans and cucumbers and red bell peppers, all very finely chopped up, and some onion.

About midway through the ghee-making process came the first of three sonic booms. The flyboys from the local AFB were breaking the rules again, making the windows shake and things fall off the shelves and freaking out all the dogs in the neighborhood. They do this about twice a year; fly fast and high over town, so fast you can't see much more than a black speck, and you don't know what's going on until the booms hit. Very irritating.

At least it's better, though, than the yearly airshow. My apartment is under the takeoff path at the municipal airport. When the airshow comes to town, I get treated to the sight and sound of dozens of WWII and Korean War-era bombers and fighters laboring up into the air entirely too slowly. I'm always afraid that the last remaining model of whatever rare bomber is there this year won't make it and will crash into my roof.

The biplanes and triplanes aren't as bad. You get the feeling that one could run straight into you and it wouldn't hurt, much.

In other news, my birthday was Sunday. Chef Boy took me to brunch, where we ate entirely too much and I had three mimosas (gee, mimosas are good! Why didn't anybody tell me before?) made from mandarin orange juice. The restaurant is Argentinian, the food is pricey but plentiful, and I'll never want to eat scrambled eggs again.

Beloved Sis sent a copy of a book that's been out of print for years ("The Dog Days of Arthur Cane") and which I'm saving for dinner reading.

And that is all. I have no work stories, having been mercifully absent from The Land Of Brain for three days now.