Or at least, I think I have.

Apparently, some people get a nasty, bitter metallic taste in the back of their mouths after eating certain batches of pine nuts (pignolia).

The green bean appetizer at our new local pizzeria place has pine nuts. I had some on Sunday night and ate the leftovers two or three days later. And now I have this distinctive, gronky metallic taste back around my molars and tonsils. It's not like a sinus infection, which I have had before.

Here, have some links about this:

• Pine mouth puzzle: Why do these nuts leave you with a bitter taste? (U.K. Daily Mail, May 18, 2009)
• Foodborne Fear Factor & other random stuff (Minnesota Dept. of Health, June 10, 2009 - scroll to p. 3)
• A nutty problem: Experts try to sort out why certain types of pine nuts seem to afflict some eaters with a bitter aftertaste that can last for days (Baltimore Sun, October 7, 2009)

It can last for weeks, some say ... .

The Mr. purchased 3+ lbs of skinless, boneless chicken thighs last night. "Because the price was really good!" (Well, he's right - it was, and there weren't any smaller packages.)

There are only three of us.

We're gonna be eating leftover chicken for a while ... I'm just grilling/baking it all, because that's easiest.

Fried ham, fried ham, cheese and baloney,
And after the macaroni,
We'll have pickles, onions, and pretzels -
And then we'll have some more fried ham!
FRIED HAM FRIED HAM FRIED HA-AM !!!

    - traditional Scout camp ditty

So the Mr. celebrated Father's Day by going down to the farmer's market on his ownsome (I was glued to my work laptop, testing some systems that had to be successfully "failed over" to back-up in time for work tomorrow because of power system issues at the main data center) and coming back with fresh beefsteak tomatoes, basil, - and sugar-cured fresh ham. Which he proceeded to fry up and turn into panini-ish sandwiches of ham, cheese (cheddar for him, campo de montalban for me), tomatoe, and basil leaves. MMMMmM!

I'm making matzoh balls! Even though we have no soup to put them in! I just wanted some, dammit!

When I was growing up, I could never figure out why people made jokes about matzoh balls being like cannon balls, because Mom's weren't. The secret is that her batter is actually pretty loose and runny before it's chilled. Because it's less dense, the final product is lighter as well.

What type(s) of chocolate do you like?

How do you feel about added ingredients in your chocolate?

What types of flavor(s) do you like in your chocolate?

What types of added ingredient(s) do you like in your chocolate?

"What is/are your favorite chocolate(s)?"

Coming up the escalator to the main floor of Union Station (DC's main train station, which I cross through every day to get to my office), I was mugged by the delicious, warm smell of cinnamon. It was probably coming from the Corner Bakery, which was right there. But it gave me the same intense rush of pleasure that I get from the first sight of a lovely sunset, or the first notes of a favorite song.

So why is that? Is it just that I associate it with tasty treats? Or is there something deeper and more basic going on?

We went to Bray & Scarf! And ordered a new stove! Anna new dishwasher! They will show up on Wednesday!

> facepalm <

I am so easily amused.

We also went to Jaleo, and ate too much tapas and paella, and desserts that turned out to be gi-normous.

And then I went home and spent an hour messing about with digital photos. The effort to process the Scandanavia trip pix brought me face to face with the fact that I haven't uploaded anything to Flickr since Hanukkah except for the Katsucon pictures, even though I took pix at half a dozen family get-togethers. Given that the recording of family events was one of the main justifications for my spiffy big camera, this fill me with much guilt.

I don't believe in rice cookers. I know how to make rice, dammit. But I scorch it maybe 4 to 6 times per year, so the Mr. bought me a rice cooker to prevent this calamity. To put this statistic in perspective, you should note that I make rice an average of twice a week ... . He was tactful enough, at least, not to buy it as a Mother's Day or birthday gift - but enough of a guy to proudly point out that he hadn't bought it for that sort of occasion.

But I digress.

Anyway, tonight, because our stove is dead (it's a sordid tale involving mice, and a socket wrench, and old wiring ... don't ask), I was forced to use the rice cooker.

I managed to scorch the rice.

I think the problem was that I left it on "warm" too long - the manual didn't give any estimates for how long it would take the rice to cook, so I ended up having to let it sit while the meat finished cooking. But let me tell you, I felt a really bizarre sort of triumph in pointing out to the Mr. that rice cookers do not prevent scorched rice ... .

The sis-in-law (the one who's married to a minister) had a rotten week: her employer is transferring her, with almost no notice, to a different facility, and as she runs a senior center (basically, daycare for senior citizens), it means leaving behind not only staff, but also clients. So she decided at virtually the last minute to come down (with our nephew in tow) and see the Young Lady's play (our daughter is crewing her school's not-quite-spring musical, Beauty and the Beast) Friday night, because she thought it would cheer her up. This meant I had to clean up the guest room, which was wall-to-wall wrapping paper bits and rolls still, from the last installment of Xmas. But when I got home, there was an Amazon box waiting: I have Samurai Deeper Kyo 27, xxxHolic 11 [thanks, megan!!], and Takumi-Kun 2!

Saturday I was not feeling well - malaise about sums it up - and nothing much happened except meals out (lunch at Oriental East, which has great dim sum and forgettable service; dinner at Austin Grill, which is quite good for a chain) and the week's grocery shopping. The Young Lady was crewing again and had to eat leftovers for dinner. Oh well - it builds character!

Sis-in-law left early Sunday morning, and then sanada came to visit! We had brunch at Jackie's (retro American cuisine in a groovy-funky 1960s industrial setting) and talked manga nonstop. A good dose of fangirling makes one feel ever so much better. Then we went and saw the matinee of the play ourselves. Energy level good, one or two really good performances, scenery very uneven (the Beast's castle was very, very good, the village scenery was pretty lame), costumes pretty nice (althought the dinner plates were awful), and the special effects were much fun ... during the Beast's transformation at the end, petals fell from the catwalks onto our heads. They were meant to be rose petals, but all I could think of was (a) Sakura of Doom and (b) Nanao dumping baskets of petals over Shunsui. And the casting was the usual marvellous Blair High School racial mix: Oriental Belle, African American Gaston, Hispanic (I think) Beast, and so on. Dinner was what the Mr. calls "the meat place" - Brazilian BBQ.

This has put a serious crimp in my usual pot roast procedure!

:-(

It's funny. I rarely like the idea of cooking when I'm not doing it - the Mr. has a ragingly horrible daily commute, so I have to do the dinner cooking 90% of the time, and it's just another damn chore when I'm tired - but I get into it once I'm doing it, and when the weather is warm, I miss the type of cooking that heats up the kitchen too much in the summer.

The last couple of days I've been taking advantage of my convalescent-but-not-flat-out condition to do a bit of cooking - just one dish each day. Yesterday, I made my ever-popular pot roast with beer, and today it was a roast chicken, which came out especially well rather by accident: the Mr. complained about how the oven had been spattered by things I'd roasted in open pans, so I tented the chicken with aluminum foil. It came out really juicy yet with a nice crackly skin, and made lots of nice pan juices. Huh. Learned something!

So the Mr., the Young Lady, and I were all driving home Saturday night, and the Mr. pointed out that we were going to pass a grocery. "If there's anything we need ... " he added, suggestively. We actually did have a need for essentials like salad greens (for the bun-rabs) and TP, so off we went.

And as I puttered around looking at bags of greens and bundles of TP rolls, a box of Entenman's doughnuts ("Chocolate Lover's Assortment"), two 2-packs of Kozy Shack Flan, and a panful of the bakery shop's apple-topped bread pudding appeared in the cart.

> sigh <