Shopping with glasses.

And I’m not talking about taking along a couple shot glasses so you can have a little snort half way through your outing,  although that would be entirely possible due the amount of wine and spirits sold in the grocery stores here.
I’m resisting the temptation here to go off on a rant about how we seem to be the “chosen ones” in nine out of ten provinces in Canada to be blessed with the privilege of having to go some place special to pick up our booze. It’s no more absurd than having a “dry county” I suppose,  which is one of those silly little things one encounters in the States.  What is it with us and our booze rules??
Anyway,  I have no intention of doing the booze rant.   What I’m talking about is something a little more pragmatic. 

Now,  I see folks wandering around with their reading glasses either hanging off the tips of their noses,  or GOD FORBID hanging off one of those “idiot straps”  from around their neck.   There’s something about the whole “librarian look” that doesn’t quite work for me.  The thing too is,  these people look old.   Turns out they’re all probably my age,  but still.  They just look old.  
Sometimes you just have to resist.

I have no problems with the practise of clipping my hat to my collar when out racing sail boats,  but for now at least,  that’s as far as I’m willing to go when it comes to attaching things to my person.
OK fine,  I do have this thing about clipping my house keys onto a belt loop,  but that falls under the same paranoia as losing a hat off the back of a boat.  Even then,  the hat is replaceable,  whereas without those keys,  I’m really screwed.
Turns out,  I just may need to do more than simply carry a pair of glasses around in a pocket,  at the ready in case I think I might try to wade through some instructions in nine different languages,  none of which are ever English,  or maybe puzzle over a chicken thigh or a brisket.
See,  the other day I thought I’d try my hand at making bean salad,  and was delighted to see that I had finally found yellow beans!  Wow!  Happy Shopper! 
Well,  maybe “Happy”  is a stretch. 
More like,  “slightly less miserable”.

But this is what I saw yesterday when I popped open the tin.



What the hell are those things??
I thought I was buying yellow beans??

Better put on my glasses.  
Turns out, I don’t even know what this is in ENGLISH!  These pale things are something called “Salsify” in English.   “Also known as Goat’s Beard”,  according to Wikipedia.  What??
So then the next question is,  “should I try it??”   Not in the bean salad mind you,  ‘cause we know for sure now,  them ain’t beans.
But then I go on to read a little more about this plant,  and come to find out when cooked,  it tastes like oysters? 
Again, what?? 
I don’t even like oysters,  since they taste like oysters.  Why would I shove some stringy plant in my mouth that then is going to taste like oysters? 
 Bleah!
 So that was that.  Drained off the liquid and dumped those suckers.
I had enough tins of beans left to make a decent bean salad which apparently was,  “Good,  but missing something.”  Not sure how that works,  since the taster was the one who gave me the instructions,  including the use of this rather unique vinegar that we bought in Slovenia.
Certainly not unique to the Slovenians,  but I’ve never seen it around here, or maybe I have but I don’t know what the heck I’m looking at.



I guess it’s just wine vinegar?  Not sure. 
This is probably one of those occasions where we buy something unique,  and we’ll come to miss it later on when we finally move away.
I’m sure we’ll get over it.

 I mean, I miss being able to touch my toes without bending my knees,  but I got over that a long time ago.

 Now,  I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression or anything,  so just to demonstrate that there are times when I can be “less than miserable”,  here is a picture of a fluffy cloud.

There you go.



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