get it off me.

The heat. Get it off me. It's supposedly 93F right now at street level, but I"m pretty sure it's even hotter three floors up. Last night's roof terrace BBQ in the Rivierenbuurt was sweltering but tolerable, and the 20-minute bike ride home at 3am or whatever was the closest I"d been to a happy temperature all day.

Today, however, is much less tolerable. It's too hot to even sleep up here. We should go to The Movies and watch Meek's Cutoff to put everything in perspective, but it isn't showing again til 7:30 and by then we probably won't need to go anymore.

So I'm going to go, hmmmmm.....smoke a bowl and then clean the kitchen I guess. I'm already dressed like Lebowski, I might as well act like him.

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get it off me.

I'm pretty sure this is the kind of status update I don't need to give, but in the absence of any other status changes, it's like this: Still spending days in the always-entertaining rehearsals for the thing we call Hardly, which plays at Bellevue in November. We're simultaneously trying to remember how it works and then improve it without breaking  it, which is a delicate operation.

Beyond that? Nothing much, other than gaining weight. Looking forward to upcoming days at home and not eating like an idiot.

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expiration race.

My first question is, is there any way to make me stop posting? I think the problem is that I literally don't have anything else to do except wait for my passport. And obsess about things I might be forgetting. And about things in general.

But really: the apartment is ready for our houseguest. Our webstore is shut down. The fridges are cleanish. I'm packed for my flight. My tooth is stable (fingers crossed). Mentally, I left a couple of days ago. The only thing that is making me unclench are Cameo videos. And online Scrabble. This is no way to live.

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My second question is: when does sauerkraut really go bad? And what are the ramifications? Today I felt like chomping on something sort of healthy yet kind of manly, and as I was mentally searching the kitchen for Things That Needed Using, my mind lit upon an old bag of sauerkraut. Unfortunately, my mind didn't look at the expiration date before it and the rest of my body went to the store and bought some salmon to go along with the kraut. Not really a springtime dish, but...Things Needed Using.

I returned home with my fish. Looked at the kraut. It expired a month ago. Bah. I opened it, it stunk, as expected, but...that's what sauerkraut does, no? I rinsed it, no obvious out-of-place smells. I tasted it, tasted like sauerkraut, still firm, not, I don't know...gross and/or mushy? I don't know, what would the warning signs be? Etc etc etc. So I used it.

And! I'm pretty sure this was the best version of this I've ever put together, I was totally caught off-guard by its nonchalant delivery of complete satisfaction. And, know what else? I didn't use the Bayona recipe that started this whole thing.

I don't feel like writing a recipe right now though. So here are some hints to myself about what I did: of course always rinse your sauerkraut; slow cooking of onions and kraut; beer instead of wine; lots of black pepper, in fact, lots of caraway, thyme, and black pepper, and a little juniper; after onions and kraut done, saute salmon in not a little butter, salt, and black pepper; drizzle/smear two drops of high-quality liquid hickory smoke over each filet as a Bacon Emulator, place on top of kraut and onion mixture in the skillet, put in 200C oven for 10 minutes or however long is right. So much for not writing a recipe.

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bloodhounding.

I'm sure there's a more descriptive name for what I am than "obsessive", maybe someone can help remind/enlighten me as to what it is so that I don't spend another hour of my life stuck in a marginally-useful Googhole.

The symptoms: when "interested" in a subject, I tend to crave detail, beginning with the basics and quickly working towards the "most interesting" nooks and crannies I can sniff out. If the subject's entire realm of knowable detail is a tree, metaphorically speaking, then you will most definitely find me out on the tiniest dead-end branches, squinting metaphorically off into the distance in search of other branches to which I might metaphorically leap (someone witty should say something hilarious here about a brother's metaphorical weight and the likelihood of any metaphorical branch supporting his metaphorical leaping without his ending up in a tangle of detail-obsessed limbs on the floor of his Imaginary Knowledge Jungle, but...).

Which brings me to my current "interest" in the cooking of Sri Lanka. I'm not proud of it, it's just the way my mind works.

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(insert perfunctory and poorly-researched three-sentence history of Sri Lanka here)

I can see how it happened. Unbeknownst to y'all, I've been playing around with Indian food lately, a cuisine that I was once quite madly in love with but had to abandon in the interest of possible good health, or at least something we'll call "less bad health".

As a result of this previous "interest", there aren't too many regional styles of cooking over there with which I'm completely unfamiliar, but Sri Lankan is (was) one of them. And as you can imagine, I have a real problem leaving these last stones unturned.

And thus, we turn them. Tonight I'm making a Sri Lankan curry. Elements of distinction? Coconut, cinnamon, cardamom. Toasted, to boot.

Until then, here's this:

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au revoir, bretagne.

Well, I'm out. Off to do some last-minute shopping and maybe snag a photo or two. Shopping list includes salt and maybe butter. And a new G-I tract.

This bottom photo? Unenhanced. That's what it really looked like.