Greetings to all.
It's Thursday evening. Thursday I go to school from 9 until 3. I check out the library from 3 until 4, get shrunk from 4 to 5, engage in some shopping from 5 till 6 (that one's not on the schedule but I just seem to do that. In the old days my shopping jones used to be taken care of by the library...a big backpack full of loaner things would scratch that itch. The library isn't doing it anymore, isn't doing the jones I mean. About $30, that does the jones.)
Thursday feels like I'm entitled to a treat at the end of it. It's new, this sort of Thursday, I've only been doing them for 4 weeks now and it seems like there ought to be a cookie in the offing.
The planned cookie was tonight's screening of the special THE OFFICE on BBC America. Sadly, it's not bad but I have no problem wandering into the kitchen for extended spells to mash potatoes and I keep getting distracted by the GOURMET cookbook I picked up at the library. Cookbooks are good tv-watching things. I like to keep one open while the tube is on and I flip through it, as though I'm just on the verge of roasting some parsnips in a wasabi-oil glaze. Sometimes I keep a stack of index cards next to me, there on the coffee table and I make lists, lists like "Wasabi powder. Parsnips." that suggest that I'm going to actually prepare the goddamn recipe.
But no, probably not.
Anyway, sitting and eating in front of the tube, glancing at recipes and making notes just isn't doing it for me tonight so I turn to the blogosphere.
First of all, my beloved Alex found a great story about rodents online. I should add a link and make it a proper blog but I'm tired (all that school! all that therapy! all that shopping! all those mashed potatoes) so you are just going to have to take my word for it.
The story was about the custom of eating guinea pigs in Peru...they do indeed eat them and, having been encouraged to develop crops other than, you know, coccaine, Peruvians have spent the past 34 years (the article is weirdly specific about that number) developing a jucier, meatier guinea pig for export to the U.S.
So on one hand I like the incredible optimism of this 34-year-long quest. "The reason others don't eat lots of yummy guinea pig is that the animal is not sufficiently juicy and meaty! Get to work!" Lots of juicy females being bred with meaty males, in hope for that elusive delectable guinea pig.
I should point out that, according to other online explorations (which again are going unlinked due to the aforementioned reasons) I learned that guinea pigs eat their own turds. So I'm guessing their meat is really delightful.
Finally, the story Alex sent me mentions that the Spanish imperialists who conquered spain gave reproductions of classic paintings to artists in Ecuador, encouraging them to reproduce them. They did but in their version of The Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples are sitting down to a feast of guinea pig.
What's not to love about that?
