I’d post recipes on this blog if I ever actually followed a recipe the same way each time…

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Photo #408: Farmer's MarketLocation Taken: Ithaca Farmer’s Market, Ithaca, New York
Time Taken: August 2008

I had a bit of an odd encounter today while shopping at the grocery store.

I was standing there debating the merits of the five different varieties of canned green beans when a rather confused-looking woman approached me.

She wanted chickpeas to put in her salad and wasn’t sure if it was the Garbanzo Bean or the Pinto Bean can she should grab. So I straightened her out, with extra data about both bean types to make sure she was getting the type she really wanted. I’ve bought both beans before, though I prefer black beans in general.

And then she profusely thanked me, with multiple comments along the lines of “I really asked the right person!”

And I bumped into her again a few aisles later and she thanked me again with a few comments about how knowledgeable I was.

It made me feel both competent and highly self-conscious. I mean, is it really that unusual to know the different uses of the various canned beans they sell at the grocery stores? All you need is a bit of love of cooking.

Which, well, I suppose is pretty rare.

These days, there’s enough prepared foods available for people to buy that if you don’t want to learn how to cook, you don’t have to. All you need to know is how to operate a microwave and you’re set for life.

A life of boring, preservative-laden food, but still, set for life.

Maybe that’s why I picked up cooking as a hobby. I can taste the preservatives in food, so the pre-made meals tend to taste more than a little off to me. Plus my sense of taste is pretty far off of normal (I have no sense of smell, so it’s all taste buds for me), and most pre-made foods are under-seasoned for me.

So I cook. And I like cooking. And one of my, how to put it, sub-hobbies is trying new things in my cooking. Every so often I’ll just buy some baby artichokes or taro root or starfruit and just give it a whirl. Look up cooking instructions on the internet and play with it until I understand the merits and disadvantages of the item.

I really do recommend doing that, if you like cooking. Or even if you just like food. Try something new every so often, you might just like it enough to add it to your diet.

I just bought a new container of baby artichokes today, after all. I use them all the time right now.

  

The Sandhills, a.k.a. the not-flat portion of Nebraska

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Photo #405: Sand HillsLocation Taken: Northern Nebraska along Route 20
Time Taken: November 2012

What do you think of when you hear “Nebraska”?

Corn?

Flat fields along a braided river?

The large cities of Lincoln and Omaha?

Fly-over country, just endless plains far below the window of the plane?

How about a vast area of sand dunes, the remnants of an ancient desert, barely held in place by a layer of hardy grass?

The Sandhills of Nebraska make up a significant portion of the state, about one quarter of the land mass. It’s soil that can’t support crops or really anything except grass and cattle. It does do the cattle pretty well, and there’s a large aquifer underneath, so water for the cattle’s not really a problem. But the human population there is quite low, with only tiny towns dotting the one road going through the region.

Because of that, the land’s actually largely untouched by humans, which is quite rare in that part of the world. Admittedly, the desert was only stabilized by the plants back in the Medieval period, just 500 years ago, and it really wouldn’t take much abuse for it to convert back. The only reason it survived the early 1900’s belief that “if you farm an area, the rain will follow” is because even those clueless farmers didn’t think the sandhills were worth anything. So while a lot of the other parts of the state blew away in the dust bowl, the sandhills just sat there, growing grass.

It’s not all bad being thought of as worthless.

  

I want to live in a town that has a true downtown some day…

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Photo #404: Tourist UtopiaLocation Taken: Banff, Alberta
Time Taken: June 2012

Tourist towns are an odd little phenomena, coming in a few varieties.

There’s the tourist traps, full of places selling overpriced junk, the largest x in y stands, and billboards. Tourist traps love billboards for some reason.

There’s also the “doesn’t really care” place, where there’s a bunch of touristy stuff but the locals just keep on living their lives as normal, just with a few more hotels and the like around.

And then there’s the tourist utopias. That’s where the place embraces its status as the place to visit. Frequently there’s a theme all the shops follow, such as the mountain resort theme this town of Banff has going on. There’s lots of parking and wide sidewalks for walking on, and my goodness are the restaurants good. Expensive, yes, but good.

And – ok, my train of thought got derailed entirely. No idea what I was going to say next. Be right back, conquering the land of cupcakes for some reason.

*Beep. Beep.* Brain not found. Try again later. *Beep. Beep.*

Ok, back, remembered I don’t like cupcakes. I unconquered the land of cupcakes shortly after conquering it. It’s tough to properly unconquer something, you know, so it took a little.

Right, tourist towns.

Both the tourist traps and tourist utopias are great places to go window shopping. In the traps, you see the magnificent range of useless knick knacks people make these days, including three with your name on them. Your name, not mine, mind you. I’ve never found one with “Sharayah” on it. So tragic. The best part of tourist traps, though, is the snack food. Those places always have some place selling locally made candy or fudge or beef jerky or ice cream or what have you, and it’s always really tasty.

The tourist utopias, on the other hand, are great for window shopping because you can’t afford to go real shopping there. The items are magnificent, and many of them are more than just decorative. But they’re priced according to their quality, and the quality is through the roof. I think I actually end up spending more money at the tourist traps just because the large price tags at the tourist utopias make me go into full miser mode. So tragic.