the_rck | (no subject)

The downtown library was supposed to reopen yesterday, but the library website doesn't yet say that it has. The website also still says that all downtown holds are at Traverwood until further notice. This means I'm not sure where we need to go to retrieve our holds this week. If the downtown library really did reopen yesterday, the holds all ought to be there. It might just be that whoever updates the website doesn't work weekends. I don't know.

Scott grilled crab legs last night. They were pretty good but kind of messy in terms of dripping on the table. We have one more package of crab legs in the freezer (there were sales two weeks in a row, so Scott bought more), but I suspect Scott will grill chicken tonight so that he doesn't have to grill tomorrow night.

We've heard recently that the Olga's chain of restaurants is going under. I don't know if the one near us is still open or, if they are, when they'll close. We'll miss them a lot. I really love their bread and their spinach pies. They were one of the few places on our side of town where we could reliably get a dinner that would please all three of us. This pretty much leaves us with Applebee's or, if we're desperate, Big Boy.

Scott went for a walk last night and tried to persuade Cordelia to go with him. She refused but, five to ten minutes after he left, she set out on a walk of her own. Apparently, she liked the idea of a walk and just didn't want to do it with her father.

Now that season 2 of Agents of SHIELD is on Netflix, Cordelia's watching it. She didn't watch it with us because she didn't finish season 1 until midway through season 2 when we could no longer get the first part of season 2 for her without spending extra money. At least, she'll be with us for season 3.

I'm puzzled-- I have dry mouth issues from one of my medications, and I'd swear that drinking water just makes my mouth feel drier. I'm drinking it anyway, lots of it. It's just that doing that doesn't feel useful. The strange part is that drinking coffee seems to help the dry mouth for a while. It makes no sense to me that that should be true, but it is. It's going to be really, really tempting to drink a lot more coffee.

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Exotic Bakeries' spinach pies are very, very different from Olga's spinach pies. The Exotic Bakeries ones use regular bread type stuff for the exterior and don't have much (if any) cheese in them. The Olga's pies are filo dough with layers of cheese and spinach.

We do like Exotic Bakeries food, but we don't get it very often because it's not entirely easy to avoid the stuff that I can't handle in terms of peppers and tomatoes and walnuts. (Also, we mainly are looking for that type of food for Sunday lunches, and they're closed on Sundays.)

Cordelia doesn't actually like Middle Eastern food much, unfortunately. Scott and I do, but we don't get out without Cordelia very often. There are other restaurants on our side of town that we'd like to try but can't because Cordelia refuses to eat there. For example, there's an Indian place called Cardamom in the little mall where the Wendy's is (and where Cafe Marie used to be). Every time we go up there, it smells absolutely wonderful, but Cordelia is adamant that she won't go in there, not even once.

Maddening!!! (And I can *so* relate!)

I have eaten at Cardamom twice. Everybody else seems to love the place. But I had a really bad experience the first time I ate there. The second time was okay, but still left me wishing that I was at Earthen Jar instead. I really adore Earthen Jar -- the food there is better than anything I've had at Cardamom, I know the family that runs Earthen Jar, and everything on the buffet at Earthen Jar is gluten-free. Which makes it a great choice for me, for reasons that aren't on your list of restaurant criteria, so it's not necessarily a good match for you. But I really like Earthen Jar. But Cardamom, not so much. But everybody other than me is happy with Cardamom, so I think it's just me.

Come to think of it: I did really like the soup at Cardamom.

With my problems with peppers and tomatoes, Earthen Jar is a very poor match for me. I went in there once, just to see what it was like, and there wasn't a single thing available that I could eat, so I haven't gone back.

I don't know if Scott and I will ever get to try Cardamom. I just know that it smells great.

Another interesting thing about Cardamom is that the restaurant's owners have a child with life-threatening food allergies, so they (in theory!) have a good grasp of how important food allergy issues are. However, they have a legalese disclaimer on their menu saying that they can't guarantee that any of their food is ever free from any allergen. So I can't figure out if this means that they are actually any safer than any other restaurant for people with food allergies. I suppose probably not.