It all started from rhubarb...

I was out with a friend in a grocery store. We were chatting casually, bits this, bits that, when I saw  the label "ru..." I didn't give it a second look and picked up the round yellowish root with purple stains. In my mind I was thinking of rhubarb, and the delicious rhubarb muffins I was going to bake, though I didn't really know what rhubarb looked like.

Naturally I was wrong. It was a rutabaga I bought, a turnip type of root. Once it was boiled, mashed and buttered with black pepper, it made a wonderful side dish for a teriyaki rib dinner.

But I already bought lots of butter, buttermilk, baking powder, etc. lots of baking ingredients. Since the rhubarb muffins were not going to happen, and I could not find any trace of rhubarb in the market, I'd better make good use of the things I had. This resulted in a whole week baking spree to get rid of the buttermilk.

I tried biscuits, biscuits and more biscuits, because they were so easy to make. It only takes half a hour to prepare them. Chef John's buttermilk biscuits are the best so far. They are soft, mild and simply melt in your mouth. They go very well with a cup of coffee or tea.

I woke up today to a raining chilly morning. The air smells like wet wheat field. A cold day make you long for something spicy and hot. So we went to have lunch at the little Sizhuan House for hot and spicy fish. Our last time there was two years ago. The dish was loaded with peppers and spices, hot and spicy as usual, but the fish was quite different. It was soft in a strange way, lacking fish meat texture. I suspect that it was made of flour.

We didn't go to the grocery store afterwards. We went straight home.

I took a long nap in the afternoon, dreaming a lot, dreaming I was in a different place and house, all black and white...

I woke up, checked more receipts on line and tomorrow I will bake more...