THE BOLD SMELLS

Sometimes the supply lines for a favourite product are haphazard, and you have to range far afield to restock. That, I suspect, is why so many people have found an essay I wrote a while back about a brand of jarred spice: Koon Yick Wah Kee Curry Powder. I myself am not heavily vested in said product, though I use it often enough. Thai curry pastes are also very useful, and any dish with flavours like that can be modified by adding more coriander seed powder, or cumin, or turmeric. In addition to chili paste, lemon grass, ginger, garlic, and other items. They are shortcuts.

Key thing is that the result be tasty, and you remember what you did.

Cooking really is being able to make the same mistake twice.


Routine and repetition are good things.

No-name bent bulldog, with a taper stem

Mister Sieuw, taking a walk, asked me if I were going to get some exercise. Meaning, I suppose, was I planning to talk a walk myself with my pipe. Well, yes. And no. I had already done so earlier. It's been warmer lately, we had a cold summer, and the weather has improved to the extent that wildfires have increased, much like last year, and both sunrise and sunset are spectacular. What the entire world must have experienced after Krakatoa exploded in 1883.

Keen travelers all over the United States are saying "honey, let's visit San Francisco this year, the sunsets are so beautiful, so romantic".

The hotel industry would keenly welcome visitors.

And nearly everyone speaks English.


Earlier today, while out jaunting about and enjoying the strong smell of woodsmoke, plastics, and mobile home parks going up in flames, I puffed on the handsome briar pipe pictured above, replacing smoke in my somewhat irritated nostrils with ..... smoke.

Futility takes talent. One must exercise it often.

Yesterday the air was more peppery. We kept the doors closed at work, and the aircon on. At times the view was obscured by veils of smog, sometimes the reek of someone's favourite housing development would be noticeable (mmm, paint, precious possessions, and sheetrock), and by the end of the day I was more tired than I needed to be.

No appetite in the evening for the past two days. Might have something to do with the heat and smoke.



I'll get some more exercise after I've had breakfast-lunch-tea and fed the turkey vulture. Walkies, with another bowl of Red Virginia & Perique, contributing my own soot and particulate matter (microparticles) to the miasma outside. Owning it and taking control of it, as it were. It will be cooler, and the fogginess rolling in will make it more breathable.

[Breakfast-lunch-tea: Today that's andouille with bitter melon and tomato in a pan-gravy containing green curry paste and ripe red chilies. And a cup of tea.]

I've had the pipe pictured above for decades now. Good smoke, though small. It is to my mind jes' piss-elegant.

TOBACCO INDEX


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