Most adorable airline souvenir

So here's my nomination -- a tiny plastic airplane!  You turn the propeller to shake either salt or pepper.  What could be cuter?

Say what?

You discover all kinds of interesting things if you go to the grocery store without a list and just poke around.  I began my visit by picking up a wedge of parmesan cheese in the cooler by the deli counter.  Later I found myself in the back of the store with the low-rent cheese and what did I find but the apparently identical product.

Except they had different bar code numbers, and the one in the front of the store was $1.80 more expensive!

Guess which one I put back and which one I bought.

Great ideas in sommeliership

The waitress opened our bottle of wine, then cut the cap and flipped it over to hold the cork.  What a sharp presentation!

Gelato for old people?

Two weeks in Italy with teenagers meant a lot of gelato (for them; the grownups mainly watched). After lunch, after dinner, while walking around in the sun in the afternoon.

One night they each ordered gelato frozen into a hollowed-out lemon.  After the kids polished off the gelato, my sister and I each got a just-starting-to-thaw-out lemon peel to eat -- magnifico!

Even if you mainly watched, it was fun to see the different flavors and note how the cold stuff is piled into its containers in a different way than you would see ice cream on display at home.

The last night, Zoe pointed out a flavor that nobody, teens or grownups alike, wanted to even have a taste of.

Farm stand, British style

Cornwall, in the southeastern part of England, has a surprisingly balmy climate, washed by the Gulf Stream.  On our vacation this spring we visited two magnificent gardens, and found this tiny self-service market in the village nearby.  (I thought 1 pound -- $1.67 -- was a bit steep for a little bunch of green onions, considering the low overhead, but it's an expensive country.)

A passage to India

I'm not much on semi-prepared foods -- stuff like Ragu spaghetti sauce.  I have always figured if you're going to make good spaghetti you need to make your own sauce, and my record is clear: I've never used a jar of that stuff in my life.

But that's Italian, my adopted heritage cuisine.  When it comes to other, more exotic ethnicities I'm open to all the help I can get.  I've recently started buying Indian simmer sauces and find them an easy way to get dinner on the table with a minimum of work.  (Even though I think the name "simmer sauce" is way too marketing-adorable for ordinary people to utter.)

Take the skin off a pack of chicken thighs, brown them (optional, I guess), then pour the sauce over.  I had some fresh ginger, so I minced up a good chunk of it and added it for more pep.  It simmered for a half hour or so, then I added cauliflower, ubiquitous on Indian menus.  Made plain white rice in the rice cooker.

The best part was what happened to the cauliflower -- bright delicate orange on the flowers, paler gold on the stalks.  I don't know what a real Indian would think of this dish but we give it an A for fast, easy and good.

Duo desserts

At the fancy restaurant, I was struck by how many of the dessert options were really two desserts.

Wouldn't a slice of cherry pie be totally delicious?  (It was -- I got a taste -- actually I got two tastes because the two people who shared the dessert couldn't eat it all.)  Do you really need a bowl of ice cream too?  Of course, maybe then they couldn't charge $9.

My husband ordered the banana confection and gave me a taste.  I wished I could have tasted just the banana bread pudding, minus the chocolate sauce, or maybe just the pistachio short bread.  Too many ingredients for me.

 OK, so I'm just a sour cherry.  But if restaurants would offer small desserts with just one delicious flavor, I would probably order more of them.  As it is, I only watch.