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missing the flavor of potatoes
Thursday, July 20 2023
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
On our way (though not really on our way) out of the Hudson Valley to the Adirondack cabin, Gretchen and I drove out to the PetSmart on 9W (near Walmart) so Ramona and Neville could have their nails clipped (since neither really allow Gretchen to do it any more). They have a grinder they use to get down close to the quick, which will hopefully make the quicks in their nails retreat so their claws won't have a propensity to grow as long (part of the reason, Gretchen suspects, that they aren't as enthusiastic for going on walks as they used to be). Normally Gretchen wouldn't want to use the services of a national chain, but our Hurley vet charges much more for such work and demands separate appointments for each dog.
As we approached Albany, Gretchen was hungry. So we decided to go into Albany to get burgers at Herbie's Burgers, a somewhat less than perfectly sanitary one-off fast food restaurant that has a pretty good (and completely homemade) veggie burger patty. Parking wasn't easy and Gretchen wanted me to park in a traffic lane directly in front of the Herbie's because there was shade there. But no way would I do such a thing. I ended up driving around the block and parking in the sun in another illegal (though non-traffic) spot with the air conditioning on, letting Gretchen go get the burgers while I googled how to get the Chevy Bolt's volume control working again (this required a hard-reset, something I hope I never have to do for the brake or acceleration computers). When Gretchen returned to our car with the burgers and fries, we sat there and ate them. I really should've let Gretchen drive from there, because she assumed I knew more about driving in downtown Albany than I do and gave me bad navigation that made me miss turns and led to more than the usual amount of bickering. Also, Gretchen decided she hates Herbie's fries, which were so greasy that all she said she could taste was grease. Where, she wanted to know, was the flavor or potatoes?
At the cabin, most of the queen anne's lace was in full bloom. There are now so many flowers in the vicinity of the cabin (in this, its second full summer of succession) that the buzzing of bees creates a constant din.
While Gretchen headed down to the lake, I extracted more fine sand and muck that had been laid down at the south end of the trench along the east foundation wall during the past week's torrential downpours. This came to about three heavy five gallon buckets of wet material, which I dumped in various places north and northwest of the cabin so it can augment the coarser sand that makes up much of the "soil" there.
Later I went down to the lake with a Yeti travel mug containing a boozy beverage and then drinking it while circling around in the water near the dock on the large drink-holder-equipped inner tube.
Back at the cabin, Gretchen fried up a big pan of Mexican-flavored soy curls, which we used as the filling for customized tacos using soft corn tortillas. It was tasty, and there were lots of soy curls leftover for me to graze on later when I woke up in the night and fixed myself a glass of scotch.
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