this and that

- The visit to the parents was fun and included a nice day in Frederick in belated celebration of my mother's birthday.  Mom and I had pedicures and then headed to lunch, stumbling upon the luck that is Restaurant Week.  $10.11 for a lovely 2-course lunch at Acacia - which sources local producers for their food (like the bakery down the street for the bread basket).  My mother and I both had the same thing - a lovely tomato soup for starter and then the harvest plate with cauliflower gratin, asparagus (one spear), carrots, beets, swiss chard, broccolini, and a pureed squash with red quinoa.  Delish.  We then stopped next door to Zoe's for a decadent piece of candy.  Whoever thought of sprinkling sea salt on top of dark chocolate should be given an award.  I always love that combo of sweet & salty.

- I had to return one of the many cookbooks (500 Vegan Recipes) that I've been paging through to the library last night after receiving my first polite hey-you-need-to-return-this-now! e-mail.  Guess someone else has been wanting this one.  For a while.  So on to the next cookbook, which doesn't have as many good recipes, so will be returned post haste.  Oh, and in related vegan news - at My Organic Market in Frederick I finally found a bottle of liquid smoke.  Seems I'm always seeing recipes with this in it and could never find it around town.  So one more addition to my growing vegan pantry.

- This springing forward with time has thrown me for a loop.  I've been setting my alarm extra-early so I can get some exercise in before work now that the weather is nicer.  But instead I've just been snoozing the alarm until my normal time.  Very, very bad.

- My newest Netflix streaming addiction has been Hotel Babylon.  British.  Soap opera.  Delightful.  Although I spend much of my viewing time wondering how the women wear such bright red lipstick without getting any on their teeth.

- The mailman sent me a thank you note for the bags of chex mix I left him over the holidays.  It was cute because he and I bond a little over gardening (he is a major tropical gardener - palms and the like) and his card said that the real holiday was coming soon - Spring.  He is so right.