Home Comforts

We went on vacation – twice in two years, I know, we’re such slackers. We were in Germany for ten days. More on that in future posts.

We got home around midnight Sunday night (the 24th); our vacation extended into Monday since that was a bank holiday. We picked up a few things here and there as the week progressed, besieged with life, as happens. I finally did a proper shopping trip on Friday. As usual, it took far longer than I expected it to – I always wonder how that happens. Hey ho.

On Saturday, I sat down to my lunch: A Proper Sandwich. As I devoured the bread from the market, lettuce and tomato from the greengrocer, meat from the deli, cheese from the market, pickle from the import store, miracle whip from one supermarket, and ketchup from another supermarket, savoring the wonderful medley of flavors, it slowly started to dawn on me why my shopping takes as long as it does…

It’s worth it. I’ve repeated that Proper Sandwich for lunch on Sunday and Monday, and the cacophony of deliciousness is well worth whatever it takes to create it. Man, did I miss proper sandwiches while we were travelling. I’ll have another tomorrow, and then I’ll be a sad panda because I’ll be out of this lovely blacky ham. Then I’ll likely have to suffer the gorgeous cheese and onion pie in the freezer from Marmalady, my favorite jam and pie maker from the local farmers’ markets. Oh, the humanity! ;-P

Silly labeling

We received our supermarket delivery the other night (I love the fact that supermarkets here deliver; I generally get about one delivery a month to save lugging quite so much – toilet paper, etc is bulky). I don’t generally get produce [fruit & vegetables] in these deliveries, generally preferring my local greengrocer’s, but the watercress was on a particularly good sale, so I got some of that.

As we were checking through the order to make sure we’d gotten everything, Chris read the back of the watercress and burst out laughing – not a typical reaction, so I was curious. He then immediately turned to me and asked, “Who have you been talking to?” He then thrust the package at me so I could see for myself:

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Ah, we’re supposed to decant the watercress. *giggle* Decant is one of my favorite silly words, you see. It only means put it in another container, but it sounds so fancy! Posh, even. In this context, slightly pompous, actually, aided and abetted by the “Do not exceed the Use By Date.” Or else it will EXPLODE, clearly.

Not to worry – after removing it from this wrapper, we have, indeed, decanted the watercress. It’s not languishing about uncontained!