Oh Well Friday Round-Up

My husband went to the Asian Market today. This is a food mecca for him. He buys great bunches of Thai basil and bean sprouts and, during normal times, jars of mysterious sauces which, once opened, stay in our refrigerator for decades.Today, as a surprise for me, he bought fish tofu. In little cubes. He said it was a mistake.

Most of the people going to the Asian Market wore masks. This is a tight little store on a corner in the middle of the city. Twenty pound bags of rice are stacked in the window. Hmong and Laotian women came around the corner with their masks around their necks, pulling them up over their faces when they walked in the front door. It was as casual and matter of fact as any mask-wearing I’ve observed. Sitting in the car, watching, I appreciated this, especially when my husband, in his yellow Alaska Railroad baseball cap and camo mask, stood in line at the checkout.

It would be okay with me if the world ran out of star anise. It’s just too much. You wave it over a pot of something and it’s too much, never mind actually putting the star anise into a dish. Worse than 10,000 cloves on a square inch of ham.

We are going to a sit-in tomorrow. The idea is to line the street with older adults sitting six feet apart to support Black Lives Matter and encourage people to vote. I am going to double-mask, wear my big sunglasses (which will quickly fog up), and pull a hat down over my eyebrows. Oh, and hold my sign in front of my face. My husband says he will go with me. In return, I have to ‘let him’ make goat for dinner. No fish tofu for me.

Fool that I am, I planted a garden. There isn’t enough sun. I don’t know what I’m doing. The slugs already attacked the beans and Swirl (who else?) leaned over the garden fence and extracted the jar top full of beer meant to kill the slugs. Still I inspect the crops every morning like a general inspecting the troops. Today, there was the wee-est ball of a tomato.