Corndogs + Avocados

Darin and I took the ferry over to the Bloedel Reserve, on Bainbridge Island, Saturday morning on probably the first truly warm(-ish), sunny day in Seattle. Yahoo! Our favorite plant at the reserve was the skunk cabbage.

When I phoned to make a reservation (only 200 folks are allowed through each day) the lady asked where I had heard about the reserve. “Well, I read about it on my friend’s (Cindy) blog.” She was very excited that they had been blogged.

This is the “flower” of the skunk cabbage. And, yes, it is a rather stinky plant.

Here’s the boardwalk with skunk cabbage lurking about.

Swans are not always as elegant as one would think. We hee-hawed out loud for 15 minutes watching these two trumpeter swans flip upside down and paddle madly at the air.

This is the visitor’s center. I would like to live here. If you walk straight through the front door and look out the back window you’d being looking out over the Sound at Seattle.

Anybody know what this is? I mean, it looked like it came out of a fern. But it also looked like it was suddenly going to turn its “head” and snicker at us.

Correcting papers makes me want to vomit. Maybe I could hire someone else to do that. I LOVE the teaching part, but man…

So instead of correcting anything else I think I’ll post a couple more pictures from El Salvador. Yippee!

Here we are standing in the back of a pick-up truck on our way down the hill from a rural community called Plan del Amate. The fine fellow in uniform was one of two armed gentlemen who comprised our police escort. He stood on the bumper and simply hung on. We made jokes about the breaks going out all the way down. Ha ha heh heh heh, oh dear.

This is a cashew still attached to the fruit it grows on. The fruit grows on a branch of a tree and the cashew nut hangs upside-down from the dangling fruit. They call it “mara?on,” and the fruit is yuuuuummy. You’ll find juice and ice cream made from mara?on. Now, I say “yummy,” but many gringos have said “wierd.” The flavor is tropical and tasty, but after chewing for a few seconds it feels like you’ve just eaten some deodorant. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s just a wierd dry sensation in the mouth.

These kids are roasting some mara?ones over an open fire. Just the nuts. Their mom had me try one. Oh there’s nothing like a cashew right off the tree and cooked.

My fabulous brother is the general manager of the Old Spaghetti Factory in Minneapolis, and sent me a free dinner for two for my birthday way back in January.

Darin and I finally got to go last night. Delicious! I always get the pasta with browned butter and mizithra cheese, and then spumoni for dessert. Yuuuuuummy spumoni. It’s cherry, pistachio and chocolate ice cream, right Paul?

Pictured at right is the Seattle restaurant.

Yay! Darin’s home!

Darin got home Monday from an around the world tour his expedition company put together (Starquest Expeditions). Darin was an assistant tour leader. Although he and the other staff were crazy-busy and only averaged around 4 hours of sleep a night because of all the logistics the team had to take care of each day, he still got to see several of the sites.

More to follow.

This is St. Francis’s Superior Rice. I bought it in El Salvador hoping that the propaganda at the bottom of the package might indeed hold true. It says roughly, “A blessing when it’s time to cook.”
Now if they could find a saint to sponsor a rice who could manage to get the rice to cook itself, and maybe some tasty chicken and vegetables to go with it, I’d probably keep them in business single-handedly.