1/2 & 1/2 veggie curry

Friday is pick-a-vegetable-dish day down at ye olde Café Zum Zum, so I munched on some saag aloo and split-garbanzo curry, with garlic naan and Mr. Pibb, of course. There was a greatly entertaining Punjabi reworking of "Drop It Like It's Hot" playing for what seemed like most of the half-hour I was eating, and I couldn't help but notice that the overplucked eyebrows of the cashier (one third of the tri-generational staff) were raised a bit higher than usual as she smiled and reminded me to have a nice weekend. It appears that even in the bowels of downtown's fast food service industry there exists a deep-felt gratitude for sunny Friday afternoons--especially ones on which I get paid by my employer and the IRS.

Oh, hey, thrilling development in the world of salt: During the span of 1912-1916, while working as a fur trader in Labrador, Clarence Birdseye was inspired by his frozen-as-fuck climate to develop a technique for quick-freezing fish, thereby forever relegating salted and pickled products to a subsistence as novelty ethnic foods. Damn you, Clarence!

-rrr