contribution to pre-Thanksgiving potluck for twenty, Brooklyn

my friends came back from Barcelona and all I got was this lousy sausage

One glance above, and those of you who know me best will understand that I am in a state of torment. Lovely N&D came back from their holiday in Spain and brought me a glorious packet of Joselito chorizo Iberico. I mean, look at this vision: pimenton-dyed oil threading through those mylar wrinkles, the unctuous slivers of fat, the deep deep red of the meat… I don’t know whether to invite everyone over to share the love with a dry rosado, furtively scoff the lot myself, or hang it on the wall and just gaze at it all winter.

Yes, I’ve been back for a month… oh okay, six weeks if you’re being, y’know, exact and stuff… and finally I’ve unearthed all my photos. This delay probably means they now fall into the same category of chronological etiquette as the postcards I meant to send you but somehow overlooked, and then didn’t even mail from the airport and blame on the Royal Mail like everyone else does when I saw you before they arrived. I got a little snap-happy, especially in my gran’s vegetable garden, so I think I’ll post them in albums and then if you’re at all interested in what a raspberry patch looks like after a gale (gory), but less intrigued by the original cockle shop in Berwick, you can peruse at your own pace. Coming soon, therefore, in installments: What I Did Last Summer.

supper of left-overs for three, Brooklyn

dinner for eight, Manhattan

glorious wall of canned meat products courtesy of chotda

Dear lovely spambots who left me 387 comments while I was away in France,
I’m tickled pink to come back to such a mountain of feedback and you’re all just darlings to take the time to write. I’m going to mention a couple of things, though, just so you don’t get your feelings hurt if your little comment doesn’t quite make it through the approval process. Don’t be discouraged: it’s an overcrowded field, and these pointers are just to get you on track about the sort of thing that makes us more ‘particular’* types just sparkle with delight.

Things I am not:
• an acne sufferer
• a World of Warcraft player
• susceptible to generic “you go” exhortations
• an Apple geek or any other form of software engineer
• able to translate arabic, but thank you for thinking I might be
• the owner of an iPhone (™ and please note the capitalization - details matter, dears)
• an erectilely disfunct gun enthusiast yearning for bondage gear and dog clothes
• German
Just in case you think I’m being a bit beastly, here’s an anonymous gem that came oh-just-so-so-close to hitting the mark:
“In his fissure donnybrook, San Mateo County Chief Deputy Neighbourhood [sic] Attorney Steve Wagstaffe painted Alvarez as a deleterious felon who basic brutally worn out another teenaged man at the Villa Taqueria, shot at May minutes later to avoid wealthy aid to penal institution on a parole breaching and then stood over the fallen gendarme and executed him. Cheers.”
It’s quite enchanting really - as if Kerouac got extra drunk and churned out a dime novel. But sweetie, can we try and stay a little more on-topic? I’m having a hard time relating this to a post on the perfect frying pan. I’ll give you an E for Effort, with a side of Must Try Harder.

Keep at it, kids. You’ll get it!

(*This is a play on words. I can do this, you cannot, unless it’s very, very clever, which this example obviously isn’t. It’s my blog and I decide.)