Home of the Snarkmaiden

So dinner was particularly nice today, and I was especially pleased with my experimental variant on the Asian-style dressed salad:

1/2 Small white cabbage chopped small
1/4 of a sweet onion, ditto
1/3 bunch cilantro, ditto

Tossed together thoroughly, and dressed with a mixture of sesame oil (both regular and toasted), rice vinegar, minced garlic (jar kind will do, but lots of it), soy sauce, and tiny bit of sugar, all whisked together. Poured over the greens and tossed again with a goodly blessing of sesame seeds on top and allowed to marinate together while I made the schnitzels.

I was also pleased to discover that for pounding out the pork, a rolling pin works just fine in lieu of a meat tenderizer, which I don't have and don't want to waste precious drawer space storing anyway.

The cool tang and crunchy complexity of the salad made a really nice counterpoint to the fresh, crisp-coated meatiness of schnitzels. Panko breadcrumbs work a treat for the second dredge. Must do this again some time.

While this morning I realized that physics still works. I came to my desk to find my teacup from the day before standing in a pool of tea. Yes, I had left most of a cup of tea sitting overnight, but the cup is newish, and not cracked, so why the puddle? Well, the cup also still had the tea bag in it (this is what happens when I fetch myself a fresh cup at 4:30 in the afternoon, when the tea barely has time to cool to drinking temperatures before it's time to leave work), and perhaps most significantly, the paper tag was off the end of the tea bag string. Overnight, wicking had done its mysterious magic, pulling tea up out of the cup and over the rim to where it could then freely drip down the side. Presumably this doesn't normally happen because I don't leave nearly so much tea sitting untouched overnight.

And also this morning, on the way to the train, I spotted the first clutch of baby ducks of the season down on the creek. For a while now all the visible ducks have been a group of bachelor drakes, so I figured the paired ducks were off doing what mated pairs do, and now we have confirmation. They're just ordinary mallards, though the duck of the parent pair was some sort of hybrid, since she had a very dark head and a white blaze in the middle of her breast. And of course the babies are, inevitably, charming. I do really love my little walk through the neighborhood down to the train. Now that it's light again especially, there's always something interesting to see.

After a week on the train I drove to work today -- errands to run this evening if I'm even remotely up to it -- and took the Secret Freeway (599 in this case, though 509 is also good) to Seattle to avoid the traffic on I-5. Somewhere in the vicinity of Boeing field I spotted a truly massive bird taking wing among the crows wheeling there. I've seen a big raptor there before, and this time when it landed on a telephone pole, I could make out the tell-tale white feathers of its tail. Yes, Haliaeetus leucocephalus -- a bald eagle -- presumably fishing in the broad waters of the Duwamish river that roll sluggishly by just there. I hate to think what kind of toxin cocktail the eagle ingests out of any fish pulled out of the Duwamish, but so far, it looks like a healthy bird. I do love the Northwest.