Excuse the bad scan. I’ll explain in a moment. To those who’ve noticed the delays in pictures recently, I forgot my camera over at JZ’s last Sunday. We need to get out of town for a while. The county fair may still be on this weekend, if I feel like walking. I’d rather us get out to the boonies, a little further than usual. Our radius seems to be around a hundred miles, and we’ve seen most of everything once already. Hey, I just did a scan on the map and it is astonishingly fixed at a hundred miles. Neat.
The trouble is, to get JZ underway, you have to go get him. That adds another sixty-six miles to the trip. But once we get going every trip is an adventure. I point out that people from Florida don’t seem to travel on weekends. Wallace and I probably saw more of Florida in a few weeks than JZ and I do in a year. Looking down from the satellite at the trip Wallace and I made to Sanibel Island, what is this? A blemish on the map? A flyspeck, maybe an atmospheric artifact or lens aberration. I’m telling you, there is nothing in the middle of that swamp. Let me zoom in and 3D it.It looks like a dirt road and a village called Corkscrew. Tell you what. If I can find it on a real map, I’ll go there and take some pictures. Here it is. The legend says “unpaved road”. Wait, there is an approach from the north, a paved road called Route 850 jutting down northwest of Immokalee. In fact, it says there is a swamp and bird sanctuary also named Corkscrew. Okay, start packing.
Mysteries of the animal kingdom. Either Pudding-Tat, Empress of Hollywood, has tripled her consumption of water, or we have a visitor. Since she would not allow anything like that, maybe the rule of evaporation has changed? She’s fooled me before, I mean, how can a five pound cat fill up a litter box every day? It is a good thing the food and box are at opposite ends of the building or she’d get no exercise at all.
We are in the grip of a cold spell. The mercury is plunging to 75 overnight. The locals are bundling up and complaining. It makes for excellent bike riding. I’m averaging six miles per day. You know, just pedaling past all the “for sale” signs and empty condos along the waysides.
In case I didn’t mention it, who remembers the Jewish Thrift over on Hallandale is out of business. It seems the owner had a chain of stores but wasn’t paying his taxes. I always shopped there last because his prices were so high compared to others. I’m still looking for a Realistic tape deck. I cruised through Wal-Mart earlier this week and noted the brands and types of DVD burners on display. Wal-Mart constitutes my consumer trend research department. I see these burners are still not totally accepted yet.
Returning home, I find a big block party three doors down. All the Frenchies are having a big wind-up. Most are in their eighties and will never return, but a few have bought or rented in the immediate area. Ever since I helped that guy next to the laundry with his flat tire back in ’06, I have been very popular with the whole crowd. Robert was playing guitar, so I brought out my drum kit and we had them literally dancing in the streets. Later, after the women left, they were singing obviously dirty songs, of which the only word I could pick out was “Viagra”.
It was the neighbors turn to drive me crazy. I cannot eat sausage any more, doctor’s orders. But the aroma of frying sausage, particularly Ukrainian garlic sausage, is near irresistible. Get a bike, you’ll rediscover the smells of America. And learn why back alleys are rarely a good shortcut. Since I’m allowed all the skinless chicken I want, I tried an experiment. Is there really any difference between freshly ground pepper and pepper in the jar? The answer is “Yes, but.”
Fresh ground pepper has a marginally better tang, but so little that it is not worth insisting upon. Pepper is still “the best spice ever invented”. My conclusion is that freshly ground makes no difference unless the pepper itself is fresh. There may be some volatile oils in the peppercorn not present in the crumbs. Otherwise, any pepper is better than no pepper. Beware of cheese in a shaker, however. Who recalls the Italian brand that was discovered to be ground up umbrella handles? The seller was never charged—the law only applied to food products, not lumber. I’ve got some gourmet sawdust we could fry up, add a little garlic.
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