I was standing in Home Depot this afternoon, browsing from item to item in
the faucet aerators section of aisle ten. Yeah, we rent, but the kitchen
faucet doesn’t have an aerator, and so it gushes out far more water than we need
or than is conservationally astute. I needed a fitting–a 15/16" double
threaded, male-male to cobble together the faucet and the swivel head aerator we
picked up the other day. But there were none. So I asked for help,
but instead of talking to someone prepared to answer customer questions, I got
an orange-frocked body in a trance: "We got nothing." No more discouraged,
I asked another clerk. He scanned the same aerator section–just like I’d
done twenty minutes before–and said, "We don’t have anything like that."
Damn. So I snapped open the flip-phone; dialed my big brother. He’d
have to know an alternative.

Only he didn’t answer. So I exchanged the swivel-head aerator for a
conventional one and stepped back into the cold.

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Chorus to the Leftover Sup March when we have a huge vat of boiled dinner in
this house, like we do now.  It’s a rare feast (loaded with cabbage, of
course).  Unpopular as it is, I figure I might as well stir up enough to
hold over for a few days, what with it being the greyed-together days of early
January and all.

Picked up this one during my days in Xalapa, Veracruzana in ’00. 

Cut two onions, three potatoes (onions and potatoes: fist-sized) and 10-14 large carrots into big chunks. 
Drop them in a pot with water just below the top of the vegetables.  The
onions will reduce into liquid while boiling, so the space they take up is
temporary.  Salt the water; I don’t know, a teaspoon or two.  Cover
and boil for thirty or forty minutes until everything is soft.  The smaller
you cut everything, the faster this part will go, but I don’t have any patience
for working the vegetables when I know they’re going to end up blended.

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I rarely write about recipes for a couple of reasons: (-1-) I’m not good at
keeping a record (measures, notes, images) of what I’m doing when I cook and
(-2-) I rarely follow recipes.  Instead, I work with what I’ve got on hand,
and as often as it turns out great, it turns out, well, just so-so. 
Berbere sauce, the Ethiopian treat E. taught me how to make, might be one of the
few exceptions in terms of consistency.  When I make it, I’m generally
satisfied with the results; it’s not easy to make it badly, in other words. 
And so, because I’m making berbere sauce for topping the injera we carried home
from Rochester Friday, I thought to break down the rough process I follow, blog
the making of this stuff (because I’m crazy about it, and I mention it here at
least once a month).

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It wasn’t exactly the two-day leave I’d hoped for just before the first hard
kick of fall semester activity; I was counting on a couple of nights in NYC,
Lake Placid or possibly Vermont, but (my) poor planning left D. and me with tame
options by comparison, and so a late-summer mini-vacation (while Ph.’s away with
friends for four days at the New Jersey shore) dwindled into an over and back
day-trip to Rochester.  Yeah, Rochester…my summer vacation dream. 
Although, as things turned out, it wasn’t such a bad turn of events after all,
especially when you consider that we followed up on the recommendation of the
cab driver
who, back in March, shuttled me from Rochester to Syracuse when my flight home
from San Francisco was so long delayed in Chicago.  On a scrap of paper he
scrawled the name and address of an Ethiopian Restaurant in Rochester:
Abyssinia, 80 University Ave.  That’s where we stopped for lunch today.
Doro W’et on fresh injera (bread).

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On the way to Green Lakes Tuesday we stopped off at a local Subway for lunch,
planned to take it to go–for picnicking in the sun at the state park.

D. and Ph. ordered before me, D. getting the usual turkey simple and Ph.
something adventurous-else (ham?).  He wanted to order the dressings I
usually get, but we didn’t figure that out until later on in the car.  I’ll
say in just a second what the preferred Subway sandwich dressings are, but first
I want to be clear about a gripe I have with the sandwich shop and so
many of its franchises.

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Dietarily speaking, quite a day!  No. of Italian restaurants I ate
at/from today: due.  Other than a bowl of Life cereal to kick start
things this morning (oh, and one caramel Frappuccino drink this afternoon–the
first caffeinated beverage I’ve enjoyed since May 29), all of my food
consumptions, Italian: first at the Olive Garden, then from a place with notable
local repute,
Pastabilities.  You should know that I didn’t have a whole lot of say
in either decision, which doesn’t really mean anything beyond the alimentary
coincidence of fettuccinic proportions.

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