It doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Singing in the Rain” but we weren’t feeling sing-y as much as chatty today. We slept late. Well, sort of. It’s all relative. When you go to bed at 3 AM, sleeping til noon isn’t really sleeping late. It is, after all, a mere eight hours. We just…don’t live an 8-5 life. Never have. Don’t really ever want to.

So we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast food in the afternoon – because breakfast food always tastes better the later in the day that you eat it, so long as it’s cooked fresh at that moment. We then crawled along I-20 to PetSmart, dodging morons who apparently have no recollection of last month, because they were all driving as if rain was something new and unexpected. Okay, it was fairly heavy rain, but still.

After PetSmart, we went to Tom Thumb. Our neighborhood, Westchester, is a planned community where all the stores are twinned. So one side of the street has a grocery store, drug store, gas station, dry cleaner, and a couple chain restaurants, and the other has the same stuff, different brands. Fuzzy prefers Albertsons, because he knows their layout. I prefer Tom Thumb, owned by Safeway, because they have better meat and produce. Seriously better. So I have salmon fillets and an ahi tuna steak and ground turkey breast, and a massive amount of seedless grapes. Grapes and cherries are like candy to me these days. This week, I’m eating green grapes and red cherries.

Albertson’s has cheaper floral arrangements. With a club card, you get three bunches for $10. Tom Thumb has larger bunches, ranging from $5 – $8. I came home with a bunch of yellow daisies, a bunch of long-stem red carnations, and a bunch of red mini-stem carnations. I’ll mix all three, and fill three or four vases. They go in the living room, my office, my downstairs desk (where the MacBook is residing for a bit) and the kitchen table, in that order. I love fresh flowers. I would rather have fresh flowers in my house than designer coffee in a cup in my hand. Truly.

But I have both, actually, because we stopped at Starbucks for a sugar-free nonfat vanilla latte, and so I shall spend the evening watching Shark videos and readig the Sunday paper, and sipping coffee while a gentle rain falls outside.

Life is good.

There are certain items that you buy for a home almost immediately: beds, tables, chairs, and couches, for example. Wine Racks generally come a bit later, after you’ve settled into a style and know what you want. I don’t need a special wine vault with temperature control, for example, because we just don’t go through that much wine. Oh, every so often I’ll go to a local import store and stock up on some favorites (I’m partial to shiraz and beaujolais), but really, we don’t need anything huge.

Surfing websites recently, I came across The Vine Store, an e-tailer that specializes in wine racks. What I liked about them is that they sport a Better Business Bureau badge on their front page, and they also promise a 100% guarantee of satisfaction. They clearly explain their shipping methods as well.

I wasn’t expecting to find out that not only do they sell small table-type wine racks for home use (I really like this one) they also offer wine coolers (the furniture, not the drink) and even cooling units in case you do need a vault.

I can’t justify actually buying a wine rack just now, but I know that when I’m ready, I’ll be heading to TheVineStore.com

Apologies to Lewis Carroll for stealing, and then changing, the first two words of “Jabberwocky,” but I couldn’t help it. I’m excited, you see, because Fuzzy and I just bought a George Foreman grill.

I like to broil or grill meat, more than anything, but we didn’t bring our big gas grill with us when we moved here almost three years ago, and we’ve never managed to replace it. Partly, this is because we keep meaning to redesign the deck in our back yard, and I have fantasies about building a brick grill out there and attaching it to the gas line (we have an outdoor gas spigot – is spigot the right word)?

But it’s the height of summer, and I hate using the stove to broil meat, and I’m trying to eat healthier so I dragged Fuzzy to Target the other night, and I bought the George Foreman thing for a whopping $29.99. (I also bought a $10 pink digital watch since both my Fossil watches are too sparkly for every day, and one has a dead battery, but that isn’t really important right now.)

We tried it the night we bought it – I grilled salmon fillets – and I was most pleased.

Tonight, I’m making hamburgers, which, typically, I don’t do well when attempting using the frying pan. Grilling is easier.

I’ve been on a grape kick this week. We never had grapes around as a kid because my parents wouldn’t buy them. Plight of the migrant workers and all that. I suspect I shouldn’t be buying them either, but I love grapes – they’re like Nature’s candy – cool, sweet, bite sized.

This week my grape of choice has been red and seedless. Red grapes are fuller and sweeter than green, but dustier as well. You have to really rinse them well or they make your tongue feel sort of furry. I dislike that feeling. Usually I chill grapes, but this week I’ve been eating them at room temperature. They’re good either way.

My grandfather, when he was retired and pretending to be a country farmer despite living in the middle of a suburban tract in New Jersey, grew an experimental crop of green grapes one summer when I was very little. I remember this because my dog, a white Poodle blend named Taffy, ate them all.

She got sick from them, I’m certain, but I bet she enjoyed them before that.

(And yes, I know now that grapes are toxic to dogs.)

I like lima beans.
I always have. Yes, they’re really more a neutral flavor than anything else, and yes, they can be a little waxy sometimes, but, there’s something really comforting about them. Also, they come in a pretty, tranquil, spring green color that reminds me of warm sunlight and soft soil.

Having given up bread for Lent, which, by the way, is proving much more difficult than last year’s 40 days of no cheese, and it’s only been two days so far, I’ve been trying to find lunch options other than sandwiches. Unfortunately I didn’t plan well for the first week of Lent, and the grocery list included bread, tuna, and peanut butter when I sent Fuzzy to the store on Monday.

On Wednesday, craving something other than tuna or scrambled eggs, and more substantial than a cup of yogurt, I found a bag of brown rice in the cabinet, and a package of frozen lima beans in the freezer. We have a rice cooker with a steamer tray, so, after washing the rice, it went into the usual part of the cooker, and the beans went into the steamer. Lids were placed on top with care, the “cook” button was pressed, and I trotted off to take a shower. There’s nothing like a hot shower when you’re hungry. Okay, hot soup would be better, but showers are good too. Mine wasn’t hot, however, as my stylist has me trained to only wash my hair in tepid water (it makes color last longer).

I re-entered the kitchen barefoot and with damp hair, and smiled because the cooker had done its thing, and now I had brown rice and lima beans. I served some of each into a pretty stoneware bowl, splashed on some MSG-free soy sauce, grabbed a bottle of water and a fork, and sat down to eat.

Delicious.
Warm, comforting, just the flavor I’d been craving.

I even had leftovers for Thursday’s lunch.

As I nibbled, I re-visited a conversation held over dinner in California a couple weeks ago. One of my dinner-companions was less than thrilled at the inclusion of lima beans among the vegetables on her plate. (I was happy with their inclusion, but that’s not the point.) “Well,” I suggested. “It’s a Polynesian restaurant. Do you like Japanese food? Pretend they’re edamame.”

When we go shopping this weekend, I’ll have to get more lima beans.
I also need more rice.
And maybe some tofu.