desolation.

1) Actually this is just whining. I'm having a bad flight. Thank God I can't sleep on planes b/c if I could I'd want to strangle the woman next to me who has coughed 7,439 times already this evening and the flight's not even half over. The one bright spot is that sometimes she stops coughing and just snores with a sound like the wood chipper in Fargo. I'm sure this isn't fair of me, she's probaby someone's mother, daughter, etc. But Jesus.

2) Looking back on happier times, I had a great food experience today. After my first flight from Phoenix to Atlanta (3.5 hours), I had a layover in Atlanta (7 hours) before my flight to Amsterdam (8 hours). In order to not just spend 7 hours drinking beer and watching NFL highlights, I walked around the airport for an hour or so. During my travels I came upon a Paschal's, a supposedly hallowed name in Southern soul food cooking. I wasn't awesomely hungry, but really all I'd eaten so far today was peanuts and beer, and some collard greens sounded really good.

In the interest of research I had a fried chicken platter (dark meat), which came with two vegetable sides, in my case collard greens and what were called candied yams (but you and I now know that they were candied sweet potatoes).

The fried chicken was just OK, and frankly I only had about 3 bites of it, because I was captivated by my two vegetable sides. They were AWESOMELY GOOD. Thus I will be trying to recreate this when I get home.

I also want to try Kevin Gillespie's Smoked Kale.