What is with the increase in spam? I never used to get spam on my yahoo address and now it’s barreling in. And why does YahooMail feel the need to make me click YES DAMMIT twice by asking me if I’m sure (are you sure? are you? huh? huh?) if I want to delete everything in my Spam folder?! If I didn’t want to delete it, I’d MOVE it, YahooMail…DUH. Argh.
Also, I cannot believe I lost a game of Scrabulous despite coming up with the word QUAHOG on a triple letter score. How depressing!
Mmmmm…melty Brie. While I was in the States, we made a trip to Sam’s Club to buy stuff for the wedding “reception” (for which, read informal barbeque buffet in the backyard) and while we were scoping out the shrimp cocktail options, my mom decided we really needed to have some cheese on the table. Did I mention that there was enough food already planned to feed half of St. Louis? Well, we ended up with enough to feed THE WHOLE CITY, but regardless, this man said to us, O! You must take a wheel of Brie and cut the top off. And then add brown sugar and cinnamon and sliced almonds and maybe throw some walnuts in there. Stick it in the oven, or zap it in the microwave for 30 seconds, (and do it again if it’s not quite the right melty consistency) and the white crusty rind will HOLD THE MELTY GOODNESS IN just like a bowl! and oh! You can just heat it up again later if it gets cold and it’s not all gone. And I said, whoa whoa whoa doggie, we don’t need all those nuts and sugar and cinnamon on there…we’ll destroy the integrity of the Brie. And I was right. And it was GOOOOOOOOOOOOD.
So I served it again yesterday to book group. I ate a salad for dinner, and then I made a feasty spread that included the following: melty Brie in its own built-in bowl with chive crackers, Carciofi & Capperi* with Ritz crackers, a little bowl of “candy” tomatos and a little bowl of radishes, a bowl of chopped up garlic beer sausage, a big bowl of cubed cantelope and nectarine with blueberries scattered all over it, a giant bowl of glisteningly plump seedless green grapes, chocolate brownie petits fours, cinnamon pastry creme wafer cookies and German hazelnut cream wafer cookies. You should have been there. And not just for the food. I love my book group. I should have taken photos a la bohemian girl but I was in a hurry what with the preparations and cleanup before everyone arrived, darn it.
Tomorrow we’re going to see the Halloween festivities as Tivoli. They started this last year, and from what I heard, did a superb job, so I’m really looking forward to it. I was in Copenhagen all day Wednesday for a big event at work, and after the conference part of the day was over, we were hanging out in a colleague’s hotel room for an hour, killing time until dinner, and the windows looked out over Tivoli. It was all lit up with orange lights and there was a HUGE blow-up pumpkin grinning down from the top of the highest tower ride. Despite the fact that Halloween is only a few weeks away, we have no costume ideas thought out, and I still haven’t done the trick-or-treating invitation letter for the neighborhood.
My eyes have been bad all day, and getting worse. and it hasn’t helped sitting at the computer for 8 hours at work, and then some more at home, plus reading. I can’t even see what I’m typing right now. Good thing I took that touch-typing class in 8th grade, eh? Just call me Squinty McBlurryson.
Both Martin and Karin had birthday parties this evening. Martin’s was a disco, and Karin’s was a pizza party. She felt that a bright purple/yellow/red tie-dyed tshirt, black arm sweatbands, and jeans tucked into skull socks (so! very! 80s!) was appropriate party attire and I ddin’t feel like arguing with her.
*I don’t know what to call this stuff. It’s not a dip and it’s not really a spread, as such. It’s chopped up artichokes, capers, red and yellow peppers in olive oil with herbs. It’s delicious.