Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Musings on Mowing, Offal and Other Random Thoughts...

Today seemed like rather a long day. Work dragged by for no reason other than the fact that nothing too sensational happened and we all went out about our business of work. With no office olympics, work seems a little less interesting this week.

It also started out as a rainy day. By mid-morning, the rain had stopped and the heat had crept back out, the humidity constant and oppressing. I did manage to get my lawn mowed even though the garden still resembled a bit of a swamp. It was hard going; the grass was super long and very wet. Nevertheless, I got through it and the puppies can now play on the more manageable grass. It was so long that they kept losing their toys.

Naturally, as always seems to be the case, the Dog Whisperer decided to mow his garden not long after I mowed mine. I've noticed this seems to be a pattern; even if he mowed a few days prior, he always has to mow when I mow. I suppose he likes consistency between our adjoining lawns. It probably would be better for him if I hadn't accidentally put my mower on the shortest setting yesterday instead of the longest as I'd intended. I get a bit confused about which way is which. My lawn is much shorter than the Dog Whisperer's. He tends to like his to be that short but measured length that lawn-obsessed men like to cultivate.

The lawn mowing was part of my productive evening. I needed to get some cleaning done. I also manage to make fried stuffed zucchini blossoms for dinner. They were, as I'd heard, delicious. Stuffed with ricotta, basil and oregano, I put them in a light batter and fried until golden brown. They were ridiciously tasty. It may seem weird to eat a flower but don't knock it until you've tried it. Then again, eating flowers might not be natural to everyone. I always used to eat rose petals as a child so I suppose something carried forth into my adulthood.

Ironically, aside from the odd rose petal, I was a notoriously finicky eater as a child. I wouldn't eat any of my mum's 'gravy' dinners and preferred staples such as fishfingers and chips or frozen pizza or, best of all, things on toast like cheese or baked beans or spaghetti. I always preferred 'teas' to dinners. We ate our tea at the end of the day, having our dinner in the middle of it. Thus, our tea was what you typically eat for lunch only we ate it at dinnertime, if that isn't too confusing.

Nowadays, I'm proud to say, I'm a much more open-minded eater. I try anything, provided it doesn't make me feel nauseous to think of it. My brother just got back from a trip to Japan where he went out for Korean barbecue with a group of people. He brought back the menu and some of the items that you could order to barbecue did make me feel a little nauseaus. Things like nose, windpipe, stomach, womb....my brother accidentally ordered large intestine and, to his credit, he actually tried it. He said it was vile. I'm sure if you grew up eating things like that, it's probably normal. The most exotic thing we grew up eating in England was liver and I never liked that much. It wasn't even the taste- more the texture. My mum used to make a liver and bacon casserole. This qualified as a 'gravy' dinner. I didn't like it, naturally. Nowadays, I'd probably eat it but I wouldn't want it as a choice, if that makes sense.

I think I'm in a random mood. I started out talking about mowing the lawn and here I am discussing eating offal and liver. Is liver offal? I don't know but I could probably look it up.

Ok, I did. Yes, I believe liver counts as offal. So there you have it, I have tried offal. I also tried to eat tripe but I couldn't do that. I'll leave that to my Filipeno friends. We used to feed a form of tripe to our dogs. We had afghan hounds. They had a finicky diet. We used to have to defrost the frozen tripe and mash it with dog biscuits. To this day, I can remember the smell of the meat. It wasn't terribly pleasant. Of course, there are different types of tripe. You can probably wikipedia it if you want to know. I'll even give you a link. Just in case you're interested. I never have eaten tripe though.

I find it funny that I just used wikipedia as a verb. I blame Google. They started the trend of saying, "Google it". Now we say, "I'll Facebook you," or "Youtube it," or "Wikipedia it." The internet is taking over our lives.

Still, if it wasn't for the internet, I wouldn't have a blog and you wouldn't get to read the random thoughts that come spilling out of my brain when I have absolutely no idea what I plan to blog about. Of course, that's not necessarily a good thing but I'll let you decide. You are, after all, reading my blog.

And I thank you for that.

Happy Tuesday!

No comments:

StatCounter