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excellent African ground nut stew
Thursday, May 8 2025
I had what felt like a productive phone meeting with a distant client while sitting at the desk of a colleague, and I felt for the first time that I'd found a problem I might be able to solve. So that had me feeling good for the rest of the day, even as I filled out a stack of non-disclosure agreements so I can look at the live data that likely contains the problem I need to fix.
As I drove home this afternoon, I drove through a series of downpours. These conditions had not interrupted a crew who have been working on repaving Hurley Mountain Road. I encountered them just as they were reaching the Esopus Creek bridge just shy of Hurley Mountain Road's southern terminus on Tongore Road. They'd recently laid down a thick slab of fresh asphalt in the southbound lane, which was steaming dramatically behind the guy with the portable stop sign. I snapped a photo while his colleague rolled around on road roller. Neither was protected from the downpour, and they'd apparently resigned themselves to getting soaked. As I drove further north, I occasionally encountered other workers doing things (usually just driving slowly in big trucks) that I had to drive around. There were no flag men up there, so I had to figure out for myself when to get into the oncoming lane to get around these guys. Ocassionally, though, they would provide a little help by waving me past.
Back home on Hurley Mountain, Gretchen was up in the bedroom, taking a break from socializing with the guests. So I socialized with them some until it was time for Gretchen to head off to pilates. At that point I went upstairs and took a much-needed bath. I had a feeling in my sinuses suggesting I might be coming down with something, so I was concerned, among other things, of our guests catching it and perhaps suffering from it on their long flight back across the Atlantic.
Later when Gretchen returned from pilates, she started making an African-style ground nut stew. It would be similar to that soup I'd made last week, but it was contain a lot of peanut butter. As she chopped vegetables, I helped out by chopping up an enormous amount of kale. As we worked, Gretchen told me about the things Kelly and Brian had never eaten, which included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Evidently in their world, peanut butter is considered a savory condiment, to the extent it exists at all. (I suppose it makes sense that peanuts would be scarce in Britain, since they are an American plant that only became a common staple here in the 20th Century.)
The stew ended up being so good that we all went back for hearty seconds and Gretchen even contemplated getting thirds. After watching two episodes of Jeopardy!, which Kelly characterized as "hard" (she also mentioned that Jeopardy! is typically used in productions to establish that a character is "smart"), we watched Romy & Michele's High School Reunion. By then it was pretty late, so I went to bed at around the time Romy & Michele did their crazy dance with Sandy Frink.
I should mention that I didn't drink any alcohol or take any drugs today. This is something I try to do one day every week, though it can be hard when we have guests for a whole week to avoid alcohol, particularly when the guests are British. I used the excuse of feeling like I was coming down with an illness to avoid the wine that Brian kept offering. Ultimately Gretchen poured herself a glass of red from a bottle Brian had bought and found it very good, so he didn't have to drink alone.
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