computer face- that's when your face gets all greasy from looking at a monitor all day. I've got one.



You know your life is on the decline when you have to eat a bag of stale cheese crunchies for dinner. As consolation, dessert is cheesecake with vanilla brandy. Last year was my year of making vanilla extract; C and I rowed all the way to Tahaa to pick out 100 beans from a vanilla plantation. The beans apparently receive a hand massage daily for months to induce the desired sweaty state. Back in my pantry, I soused the beans in 2 bottles of vodka, and some in brandy. This is the time I scratched my head and got very confused over VSOP and EVSOP. For months on end, I shook bottles in the morning, shook 'em extra vigorously before going to bed. I sniffed them every other week. It's nice having something waiting for you like that because life should be filled with just such private pleasures.



Tahitian vanilla is the fruitiest of all the vanillas- there is great debate over it's merit. The price is always jacked up due to low supply, many gourmands swear by it- others claim hype. Who ever has a whole pod of either Bourbon or Tahitian is lucky methinks. Just to have something so beautifully fragrant in your posession. I forced one too many vanilla pods on my friends so I fear some of them are languishing in pantries. One extravant use is to split a whole pod, put each on half a papaya, pour some coconut milk on the duo- then bake.



2003 is my year of the preserved lemon. I've come into ownership along with the house, an unwieldy and sickly lemon tree. C and I wrestled with it all Satruday- pruning it, propping it up, twisting it. All the while I thought of lemon drops and lemon seed cake and shivering teeth and Max the Dog and yellow martians and a way overdue book of Lorca poems from the library that had a painting of a big blue bowl of lemons in the front. I never got past the cover. The bowl of lemons was enough to think about.



C complained this entry is too boring. That's what happens when you cut up porn cards for a collage all day long.