Food, cookbooks, running and movies.

Into Barcelona today to go grocery shopping, got fish sauce, and umeboshi, and miso, and Japanese rice, and black Thai rice, and Thai sticky rice, and hot sauce, and curry powder, and tamarind paste, and millet, and brown rice, and peanut butter that is good and a reasonable price, and spring roll papers, and mung beans, and adzuki beans, and, and... and...... I figure I carted home at least 30 lbs of rice alone. Oh I feel so rich.

Does that sound silly? I like to have some staples on hand. Maybe it comes from being on the boat. A months worth of stuff to keep you alive, and I feel positively wealthy. So comfortable. I am trying to decide on tonight's menu...Japanese rice balls, followed by pasta in peanut sauce with salad and???? Hmmmm, what fun.

Oh, and my darling sister sent my kids Amazon gift certificates for their birthdays, and the one book my eldest really really wanted and had talked about on and off for years was available, so we put it in the shopping basket, but when we went to pay, we discovered that because it was a used book from an independent book seller, it wasn't covered by the gift certificate. One look at my daughters crushed and disappointed face, and I selflessly said that I would pay for her book with my card, and then I used the extra money for a cookbook for me. Aren't I a caring selfless person? Well, I couldn't let the gift certificate make her UN-happy could I?

For those of you who have read me whine about my absent cookbooks, I waffled around endlessly, and gleefully of course, and then in the end despite the heavy temptation of the newest book by Jeffery Archer and Naomi Duguid whose food and cooking I ADORE I went for a copy of a book I already have, but it is (we could say this as a chorus over here) on the boat! It is Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. It is the Joy for veggies. She is a fabulous cook, and it covers everything...lots of sauces and soups and appetizers, as well as more general information about making things, but what sold me, was not just that I love the book, and it covers SO MANY things, but because it is North American food. Well, one of the delightful things about North American food in my thinking anyway is the open-minded willingness to try most anything and then adopt it if it is good. So this book also includes some Asian recipes, as well as Mediterranean yadda yadda yadda...but really, over here, I feel compelled to serve Catalans food from where I come from rather than attempting, never successfully, Catalan food. So now I just have to wait for it to arrive.

The kids have a great morning at school and even looked forward to going off again after lunch. Will miracles never seize. I took the Chuckster up into the hills, and we went off-road. After a while I took his leash off in a fit of daring, but he seemed in the right space for it, and at first he followed slavishly at my heels, and then a little further away, maybe six or seven feet, and then we got where it was a little more level, and he realized that he could RUN *Man he is FAST!* and well, this was a seriously over-excited dog. Picture a two year old, without a nap, on a pound or two of chocolate...holy jeez. He had a ball. I'd let him run off, and call him, and he'd come pelting back, right past me and out the other side. He repeated this over and over. Occasionally he'd stop briefly for a pat. He had a lot of fun, but then he started running further away, and not coming back quite so quickly and I lost my nerve, caught him and put the leash back on. I think the excitement was getting to his little doggie pea-brain and he was loosing it, sort of like that two year old. He trotted happily home and crashed. He didn't whine or scream like the two year old would have though.

Movie night tonight, the Crocodile Dundee sequel, unless someone has it out...

It was so lovely in the hills, if I had been deaf, I may have even been able to convince myself I was really in the wilderness, an accomplishment in Europe.

Oh, and here's a stray photo from the carnival parade the kids were in, this is the eldest's surf board that she made.




Here is a deliberately blurred/fuzzed whatever photo of some of the rafters that my daughter's class did for the Carnival parade.






As a delightful end to the post, the kids have BOTH gone off to friend's houses this afternoon! I am so happy they are making friends here.