Posts about planning, travelling, remembering places
With barely a week to go till I embark upon my picnic, I am not even halfway through the picnic-game alphabet. H is for ham sandwiches, and that seems to be about it. Ham sandwiches in my family have a very stringent pedigree. Since time immemorial, they were made on …
First things first: Gin has medicinal properties. Ask any British officer posted to Dehli in the 1890s. Or the gent from the East India Tea Company likewise. I’m convinced it was not quinine in the tonic water alone that beat back malaria, but the astringent, near-medicinal properties of juniper and …
Somebody (possibly the Astronomer Royal) decreed the egg a perfect food. Who am I to disagree? Many people think of them with the same fondness as Izaak Walton did strawberries. He quotes a certain Dr Boteler this way, concerning this berry’s relationship to perfection: Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, ‘Doubtless …
There’s nothing like being in a foreign land to inspire one to cook some of the fine produce of the country. As I consider ‘D’, the next letter in the Picnic Game alphabet, I can’t help but laugh when I think of one of my closest calls with culinary disaster. …
I have decided to while away some hours between now and that wonderful moment when the aircraft doors are ‘prepared for take-off’ by assembling my shopping list. The first several letters of the alphabet are enough to sustain life for 10 days without any problem. Consider these possibilities in just …
I so love Sunset Magazine’s articles about road trips. The photographs draw you in, making for compulsive page-turning. A teardrop camper poised on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. A family picnicking in a grove of redwoods. A birder or a photographer, binoculars or camera in hand, dwarfed by sand-sculpted …
As vaccines ripple across the nation, leaving happily tearful Americans bobbing in their wake, all the talk is of After Days. People ask, “What do you want to do most (when you can)?” Sometimes, they frame question as “Where do you want to go first?” For many, the answers go …
Weather will soon be changing here in Washington. For the moment, however, a high pressure system has lodged somewhere beneficial, bringing some late August scorchers. The pavement retains the heat until well after sunset; the roses in my garden responded by dropping most of their petals. I’m determined to walk …
Last night, I found myself on my first after-dinner walk in a decade, likely more. I’d skipped lunch entirely — a slice of Gouda and two water crackers don’t count — and wanted to eat a meal that often-times gives me indigestion no matter how much I enjoy it. What …
Well, I suppose the one example of Russia’s most famous musical export here at the SunHouse would indeed sing… if I knew the first thing about tuning one, or playing one once tuned. The balalaika in question is one of the last items from Timothy’s music closet to find a …
