(no subject)

Today apparently was my day to have ideas. Most of them were even good ideas.

Idea #1: Find out how to get to Watertown in less than an hour and a half.

This morning I woke up at 7:45 when the odd-jobs guy came thundering down the back stairs and set the dog off. When that dog goes off, there's no going back to sleep, so I grumbled and got up and fed cats and decided I was going out for breakfast. I decided to find out how long it takes to get to breakfast in Watertown by taking the 57 bus to the 71 bus, and in the process of getting to the 57 I met my neighbor around the corner. He has a Garden, from which he offered me a couple of heads of lettuce (except I couldn't take any because I was going out) and all the tomatoes I want when they start coming in. He's got 363 tomato plants planted, and corn and beans and radishes and strawberries and a fig tree and some other things I forgot. If I hadn't decided to take the 57 bus, I would've gone the opposite way and never met my neighbor.

Idea #2: Call up whuffle from Watertown.

After breakfast I decided to take the traditional Saturday-after-breakfast run through the Armenian grocery stores, and called whuffle to find out if she still needed ice cream ingredients. (We had tried to do the Armenian grocery run on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago, but the stores were closed.) As it turned out, no ice cream ingredients were necessary, but I got invited to hang around and make ice cream in Quincy. So after I did my grocery shopping, I walked back to Harvard Square (all the buses were crammed full of Bruins parade commuters) and stuck my head in Cardullo's and bought experimental chocolate, and got on the T. So I had something to do with my day.

Idea #3: Get picked up from Quincy Center.

I could have taken a bus from Quincy Center, but as it turned out, whuffle and I got in a conversation in the car on the way back to her house that led to me saying "well, both of the people in this car know that song" and eventually led to us recording it. Which was a lot of fun, because we sang things I hadn't sung harmony to in years by way of warming up.

Idea #4: Put pepper in the sorbet.

whuffle wanted to make honeydew, cucumber and mint sorbet. Sometime before the mint got blended into the cucumber and honeydew, I said "That would be good with black pepper, too", and so we split the cucumber/honeydew juice and put pepper in half of it, and decided to freeze that one and find out if it worked. It most certainly did. If the mint one works that well, we win.

Idea #5: Curried apricot ice cream.

As it happens, there was some apricot nectar hanging around, and I'd always thought that curried apricot ice cream sounded like a good idea. So we boiled down the apricot nectar and threw curry powder (and components, because there wasn't quite enough curry powder) and milk and half & half at it, and froze that. Good heavens, does that ever work.

The only bad idea was #6: Change trains at Park Street. I forgot about the Red Sox game because I was busy being smug about missing the brunt of the Bruins parade. That'll learn me. But I survived, and here I am at home and it's not even dark out yet. So there.

Book #52: Peony In Love