Eating my peas with honey and other trivia

Who remembers that limerick from childhood? “I eat my peas with honey/I've done it all  my life/Makes them taste kinda’ funny/But it keeps them on the knife.” After a lifetime of thinking honey was mostly too sweet, I find myself addicted to it—could be anything from a change in taste to a change, due to aging, in body chemistry.

It started with tea. A couple of years ago I had a bad cold, the kind that turns your stomach, and coffee tasted awful. So I switched to green tea, but I sweetened it with a bit of honey. And I’ve had a cup of green tea every morning since.

Sopapillas were the only food I considered appropriate for honey. Not those elaborate big things slathered in whipped cream that we get here in Texas, but the true “tiny pillows” served in New Mexico. The ones where you bite off a corner and pour the honey in. Somehow recently that led me to biscuits and honey, and now I keep a stash of biscuits in the freezer (confession: I don’t make them from scratch—Pillsbury does the work for me).

This morning I had a biscuit with butter and honey—delicious. But when I’m alone, I eat at my desk, which I did this morning, and now I cannot get rid of the sticky. It’s everywhere! I have taken the dish rag to the desk top three times and about have it licked clean. But after two thorough washings, my hands still have sticky spots. The downside of honey. I do realize how fortunate I am if that’s the worst problem I encounter today.

My vote for the cleverest web site of the day is an advertisement for a book titled 100 Jewish Foods. Click on this link--https://100jewishfoods.tabletmag.com/?te=1&nl=cooking&emc=edit_ck_20190320 – and you’ll find a giant table laden with dishes. Spin the table and click on any dish you want to read about. I could have spent the day playing on that site. But I didn’t.

I spent the day editing my neighborhood newsletter and working on edits on the Alamo book. I thoroughly enjoy a work day like that and, I confess, it’s easier than a day when I’m writing a novel and have to dig in my mind for the next scene. But still, it was a relief to go to dinner with friends. We went to Lucille’s—nobody seemed to know where they wanted to go, and my motto was, “When in doubt, go to Lucille’s.” That’s sort of how I feel about it—it’s always reliable and good, not showy, not special, but familiar.

I am so enjoying these days with cool nights and mornings, warm days. In the afternoons I turn the heat off and open the French doors so Sophie can come and go; then at night, I leave the heat off and sleep in cool comfort but in the morning, I turn it on to take the chill off the cottage. Too soon, we will be into hot days and nights, so I’m making the most of this while I can. How about you?