Today is your basic car wreck day. I backed into a pole leaving one of my office sites, and since I was only two blocks from the car repair place, I stopped in. $750 for a new bumper. Ugh. That would have bought a lot of much more fun things. Oh well. Easy come (not), easy go. This was about five minutes after I got stopped by the police for making an illegal right turn. He was right, I was daydreaming and listening to Mozart. Who knew that my day was going to go south so fast? The nice patrolman gave me a warning and a "well, it's Christmas". I told him that I was very grateful since I had not gotten a ticket in 15 years. Whew.
I limped back to my office to rest up, when I decided to go out to lunch and shop for the garnishes for the party. I found some small tangerines with the leaves on them, very charming, at $1 a pound, and bought kiwi and holly and grapes. No kumquats. Wonder why you only see kumquats in the grocery store when you don't want them. I bought sushi to eat for lunch and it was delicous.
I also bought beans that were marked Anastazi, which are small red beans that I will cook to put into the Mexican casserole. These are not the nice, two-color, Anastazi bean that I used to find at Wild Oats, but those have misteriously disappeared and these have taken their place in the bin under the same name. I hope they come back. These little red beans are good, but they are imposters. The other ones look like pinto beans and are white and red. They are the most delicious beans I have ever eaten. To cook beans, I soak them for four hours, rinse, add as much cold fresh water as beans, add a small peeled onion, a carrot, 6 peppercorns, salt and one stalk of celery if I have it. Cook for 2 hours slowly. Strain out the veggies and peppercorns. These are purely vegetarian, no ham bones in these, and they are delicious this way, and very good to take for lunches. Really.
So, I'm going to be a very careful driver and lick my wounds and try to stay out of mischief.
Have a great evening.
