Curiosities

She watched me as she chewed her gum with concentation, lips pursed.

Open Door, Iosi Havilio

As I was reading Open Door, by Iosi Havilio, from And Other Stories I tripped on the “lips pursed”. What does that really mean? A page of images shows a variety of lips even in the first six images. A dictionary is not much help, talking mostly about handbags. Though that might be because the word is not used in that way very often.

In this case, with the girl chewing, it well it gets you to thinking. That’s a great thing for a book to do.

They were all fed at the same time. The one that is blurted up actually is half of the one on the left (I think) but here we are. Sourdough magic. I’m using the center one for today’s bread.

Things you find when going through Wikipedia.

Barm is the foam or scum formed on the top of a fermenting liquid, such as beer, wine, or feedstock for spirits or industrial ethanol distillation. It was used to leaven bread…

Wikipedia, Barm

Is it worth it to brew beer in order to have some barm?

Confession time. I’ll go to an Indian restaurant and look at the menu. Aloo Mutter? Palak Peneer? Malai Kofti? Ask me to tell you in English what they are and you’ll get a guess. It doesn’t really matter if I know what I’m ordering, Indian food is by and large great stuff to eat. It helps that I’m an omnivore and like it all. And If I thought I was ordering potatoes and get spinach instead, well that’s OK.

But what if what you ordered isn’t what you expect when you get it? Like you order an Impossible Burger and they serve a beef pattie instead? Or you order a burger with blue cheese and it is nowhere to be found? OK, the simple answer is pointing this out to the server. But wait, had I ordered what I thought I had? It was loud. I pointed. Maybe they brought what they thought I’d ordered.

I’m perplexed. Did I get what I’d imagined or what I asked for?