I just spent like $140 on food, but that's good, as I hadn't been grocery shopping in ages and now I'm caught up. Wegman's, Spar's, and Jim's mean that now I have Everything.

So by the way, I'm this food columnist, right? Right. Ostensibly. I gotta harass the editor to, you know, set up my next review so I have something to write about, and I've been trying to set this up for almost two weeks now, so, I'm getting a little tired of that, but someday it will fall into place. Right? Pff. Anyhow.

I want to do more than restaurant reviews. I want to write about all the great food Buffalo has. I was discussing this with the Spar's girl (whose name I am sorry to say I don't know)-- I said, there should be a Sausage Festival or something, and y'all should go head to head to demonstrate whose are best. She agreed, and rattled off without pausing about six places that always said they had the best Italian sausages.

She then admitted that she sometimes does covert ops-- they'll send her down the street to Wegman's to look at what prices they have on various items, and she always has to put her ponytail over the Spar's logo on her shirt, and make sure she doesn't look suspicious, because apparently Wegman's is on the lookout for that sort of thing. So she can't write anything down. She also admitted that the "guys" had gone to check out Budwey's-- "They have a pretty good selection," she said, and then went on to caution me about the chicken sausages there. "Chicken sausages have to be precooked," she said, "or they go off right away." Budwey's has raw chicken sausages, which can be dangerous. Spar's offers two chicken sausages (hot and mild), pre-cooked, and they'll be bringing out a third (spinach and cheese) in response to demand. "These, you don't have to eat or freeze right away," she said. I asked why chicken was suddenly so popular, and she had an answer I hadn't expected: "Moslems," she said. "One of our employees is one, a Bosnian refugee." Apparently the Black Rock neighborhood they service is home to a large number of displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia, many of whom are Moslem. "They come here for our beef, and turkey," and she pointed out their cold cuts selection. The store's logo is a cheerful pig, and many of their sausages are the traditional pork, but they also carry a wide range of European grocery items, and she said that the Yugoslavians like those as well, "to make them feel like home."

I bought my usuals-- their spicy pepperettes [dried sausages, good for snacking], their landjager / jagerwurst "hunter sausages" [smoked, non-refrigerated, excellent for taking on trips], a dozen slices of their incredibly-good bacon, three of their German bratwurst with beer, and three of their chorizos. I admitted that I'd had a Budwey's chorizo last night. "It was okay," I said, "but yours are better. In fact, the best in Buffalo!"
She grinned, and pointed at the plaque. "I can't wait to show this to all our regulars," she said. Thursday and Friday are Spar's busiest days-- in the winter, those are the days to buy food there. I hadn't expected to get more than the dried sausages today, but she said during the "grillin' season" they tend to stock the store more often, because business volume goes up.

Spar's European Sausages, voted the Best in Buffalo, is located on Amherst St. right near the intersection with Grant " >(MAP TO: ). It's right down the street from the Amherst St. Wegman's, and we've been going there for longer than we've lived in Buffalo. They also offer, on a limited basis, some really good German potato salad, and other rotating specialties. Nothing beats their sausages on the grill. And if you can't get there often, stock up-- their sausages freeze well, and you can just pull them out and throw them on the grill while it warms up to defrost them. The ultimate convenience dinner-- i don't get why people buy fast food.



In other news entirely, it looks like (e:zobar) and I will be at the Century again tonight to watch the Sabres game, because we don't have a TV and want to see the game. So if anybody is interested... the Century's right down on Pearl St., just off Chippewa. " >(MAP TO: )

Two things in this post.

1) A question. Z and I have not had a day off together in many moons. We have not left Buffalo in as many moons. So this week, to celebrate (not happily) the end of my part-time schedule, I got (e:zobar) to take Friday off, so we can go somewhere Thurs. night and stay over and do something cool all day and then get me home in time for work Saturday morning (at 11 am).

So where should we go? Toronto? Stratford Festival? The Finger Lakes? Southern Ontario? Ohio? Pennsylvania? I'm looking for suggestions. It can't be anything that would require a lot of planning and reservations, because we're going there THIS Friday.


2) The Best of Buffalo party. How cool was that? It was free food, brought to you by the best restaurants in Buffalo.
It was free music, brought to you by the best jazz band and the best choir in Buffalo.
It was free etertainment, brought to you by one of the best djs in Buffalo (actually I'm not sure who he was; someone one of the video guys knew). I felt very chic because I owned at least two of the CDs he had in heavy rotation (Portishead's Dummy, which my new journal music is from, and Sublime's self-titled album), and he was scratching like a mofo-- he had a really neat rig but I won't go into the details here.
And they had the game on in the background, of course! Z and the video guys were in the back room, and they had the projector set up with a switcher-thing so that they could easily transfer among three different feeds at varying levels of transparency. The slide show displaying the results of the voting (in case you missed the announcements) had squares chroma-keyed into the background so that they could put live video feeds into those corners-- for a while they had the game going on in those corners, with the slides made slightly transparent over the top so that you could follow the action all the way across the screen.
But throughout the game they had the thing set up so that when it went to commercials, they'd put the slideshow or a live video feed on instead of the commercials.

Babik was playing during much of the game, and they get super-extra-awesome bonus points for being such good sports about it. They didn't care that everyone was watching the game-- they were watching it too! And after one of the goals they stopped, and the violinist played the "charge!" thing. How awesome is that?

The fact that the Sabres won only made it that much more awesome.

(e:zobar) has a pair of these travel coffee mugs that he got at his first job. They've got the company logo emblazoned on them, and are the oldskool sort of travel mugs you don't see nowadays: wide base, narrow top, all ceramic. The brand name, on the bottom, is "Hotjo", with a long-mark over the "o" which I don't know how to write in code.
I brewed a whole pot of coffee just now, and it all fit into the Hotjo, so I'm drinking the whole thing. Undoubtedly, merriment will ensue.

Our coffee pot is another funny story, for another time. Meanwhile, I am preoccupied.

1) Best of Buffalo party is tonight. Everyone should come. Babik will be performing, as will the Buffalo Gay Men's Chorus. There will be free food. There will be all kinds of wacky video shit going on, if all goes well. And you know, Artvoice is cool, and stuff.
If you have not picked up an issue of Best of Buffalo you should, and you should turn to page 14, and you should read my review, and you should write to editorial@artvoice.com and say "dang that's a great food review", and you should go to Tru-Teas and have a cup of tea and say "that review in Artvoice was so good".
Not that I'm, like, shamelessly self-promoting or anything. But for serious, the mooncake is to die for.

2) Tax refunds just arrived. I am using mine to pay off one of my student loans. I just think that would be a good idea. Z has no concrete plans for his. Now, I've never been the mercenary-bitch type (would I have supported him last year while he was finishing his degree and looking for a job if I were?) but I think he really ought to buy me something, something shiny maybe, just because, you know, boys should buy their girlfriends shiny things from time to time, and also in the coming-up-on-four-years we've been together, he's never bought me flowers or jewelry. So it's just a thought. He remains unconvinced.
So this is a poll of sorts.
Buying your girlfriend shiny things:
1) Worth your trouble?
2) Not worth your trouble?

All I'm saying is, it's usually worth your trouble, I'd say. One way or another.

Last year he used his tax refund to buy himself a scooter, and I used mine to, well, pay bills. (I'm not very good at buying myself presents either.)


3) I think I'll change my journal music again. *ponders* Now that I know how it's fun! But I sort of have a lot of music and am not sure what "goes" best. I think... hmm... For the moment, I'll leave it at this one. This is "The Beauty Spot / The Maid Behind The Barrel", a medley of reels by the incomparable Danu, a traditional Irish band that played Rockwell Hall last month.

(*grumble* the U in Danu is supposed to have an acute mark over it and apparently that sort of markup isn't allowed in this text field. Pardon my innaccuracies.)

I did something whlie at work and now my left ankle is killing me. This is a problem because I have two very trying eight-hour shifts ahead of me, and we're perpetually understaffed and overworked at weekends, and I'm tired.
This is pre-emptive karma, you realize. I'd been planning on calling in sick on Monday, because I want to go to the Best of Buffalo party that night (you all should be there! Free food, performances, and neat video-stuff by (e:zobar)'s cool coworkers.) I would have asked for the day off, but by the time I realized what day it was, it was too late to request the day. And if we request a day and don't get it, then we're subject to stiff penalties if we call in that day. Which just serves to make matters stupider and less-sensible between management and workers, because of course if management fails to get us off a day we requested off they get no penalties at all... etcetera, etcetera.

So now my ankle is killing me but I can't call off three days in a row. My best hope is to gimp around as best I can for two days so that on the third day they'll not be surprised or mad if I just call in already.

But I didn't come here to post just so I could whine about my leg. I also came here to whine about the weather.
I'm psyched that it's finally raining. I planted all kinds of stuff and it needs rain and it just ain't right that there's been so little rain this year. But now?
There's supposed to be a frost tonight!
Grrr. My tomatoes will die if I don't cover them up. And of course, tonight is the one night in months that I have plans to go out until late, so I won't be home and in any state to think of coming up with ways to protect plants from frost. Great.

In the past I've just chucked blankets over the garden beds. I guess I'll do that, except the tomatoes are fragile and I should probably surround them with plant stakes to keep the blankets' weight from breaking them. Hm... yes, I should plan this out now so when I come home (with any luck) drunk and cheerful tonight, I can just do it and go right to bed.

Guh! I was feeling clever for having updated my journal music, but I just managed to accidentally post a blank blog, so, eh, I guess I'm not all that smart.

Music is called "Love Farewell"; it's a track off an out-of-print LP entitled "Songs and Music of the Redcoats" (Argo records, 1971) that my dad often listened to when I was a child. My parents are history fiends, and met via the flurry of historical re-enactments around the Bicentennial of the American Revolution, so... This song I haven't been able to date precisely, but most of the tracks on that album are from either the late 18th or late 19th centuries (a lot of them are Napoleonic era). It's short, so even if you don't like it...

Anyhow. On to the purpose of the journal.

Waiting for the promised thunderstorm. We're supposed to finally get rain today, so I have been busy all morning.
I got up at 8 and finished preparing the soil, did one last-minute garden bed expansion, and planted the tomatoes, beans, some more peas, and one of the pepper plants before I decided to wait on planting the rest of them. I'd scheduled them for two weeks from now anyway! But an early start can't hurt, if there's no frost... The tomatoes are a bit of a gamble.

I'm excited about the garden, officially now.

I'm so far behind on the flowerbeds, though. There's so much work to do on them, and I just can't... summon... the energy...
I'm proud of myself for managing what I did, given how much my back hurt yesterday at work. I filled out an accident report, which seems to have done the usual voodoo trick: If I say it's nothing and don't fill out the form, then there are always complications and I'm in pain later. (Witness: my hand, which I bruised in January and which now hurts me every time it rains or I type too much.) If I do fill out the form, then it's always better the next day. (Witness: the three times I've slipped and fallen and bruised my knees, which never hurt later.) My back hurts now, but I rather think that's because of the heavy digging...

On that note, I am fiercely hungry. Later!