When Everyone Else is in the Hamptons...

There's something nice about a quiet city weekend in the summer. Athough I'm not sure that Brooklyn counts. Bar Tabac was hopping when I walked past it on the way to GRDN...now that most of my lilies have finished I'm itching to Plant More Things. The gladiolus bulbs (OK, corms...) that I planted last Monday are already 5 inches high, but if they bloom it'll be in about 6 weeks. When I'm in South Africa, great. Anyway, here's a picture of their pretty little back garden, but I didn't actually find anything I wanted. What do I want? I don't know till I see it. That goes for most things.

The dishwasher made terrible, get-me-out-of-here noises in the night, so I went into its depths and took it apart. It seemed logical. The culprit, one cherry pit, see below in the middle. With the wrong tools (the spanner was too big) it was hard to screw everything up again and when I had finished, triumphant and panting, inevitably, there was one screw left.

Screw this. I know exacly where it goes, too. And unless the thing falls apart again I'm not undoing everything to put it where it belongs. So now my dishwasher has a screw missing. At last we're at a point where we see eye to eye.


On the way back from the garden shop I visited my Muslim butcher for my weekly meat-injection (actually I'm eating meat less and less and I don't miss it. Perhaps I should ask his name. The butcher's, I mean. But I always feel I should draw as little attention to myself as possible when I'm there. Never forgetting Bevan and Mustafa hastily throwing a silk shawl over my bare shoulders in Istanbul, yesterday I was there in a barely-there sundress, dripping steadily with sweat in the unairconditioned shop. Two men were buying a pile of kidneys, and half a lamb, cut into many pieces. I got 12 chops. Thin? he asked, Yes, thin, I affirmed. Again, this lamb is not hung, being freshly slaughtered (the sign with prices, has the word HALAAL in capital print, with stylized drips of black blood sliding from each letter). So the meat is tough unless cooked for hours and hours, and rare lamb chops are as chewy as bark. So you just cook them well done in old SA tradition and chew well. These I marinated in much lime juice and rosemary and they were delicious.

Chopped salad of small tomatoes, fine onion, arugula and feta, with some pomegranate MOH-lasses. Drink for the summer - cold white wine with Cassis and ice. At the moment I'm partial to Whyte Estate Sauv/Blanc, from Marlborough, NZ. Movie Freeway with the previously ignored (by me) Reese Witherspoon, who makes you take White Trash seriously, and Kiefer Sutherland. I've never been so pleased when someone got shot. Can't think of a better target. I like his dad.
Sunday bloody Sunday and it will be vichyssoise for dinner and Something, but I don't know what yet.