Friday the not-13

Not Friday the 13th, but Friday the 31st.

Yesterday arrived by FedEx from the baker in New York, my rhubarb pie. Pure rhubarb, no strawberries. My first: delicious, tart, fruity. Did not need my scoop of vanilla ice cream, which I put on Linda's plate. 

I had two more bites at bedTime last evening, and a sliver for breakfast just now, after my large portion of fresh salmon. So far, my pie has been one slice room temperature, then two bites and a sliver slice refrigerator temperature. Before it's gone I'll have a warm slice - - maybe with cheddar cheese? It's interesting, not a staple of your average Northwest Floridian's diet, and I'm an average Northwest Floridian.

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Sam's Club offers several varieties of excellent salmon. This was a huge, full filet of Atlantic pink salmon, skin on. I cut two large, thick portions and oven-baked them at 400°F for ten minutes, then let Linda's portion cook two more minutes. It's so moist and tender. For our next purchase I'll get their red salmon, Alaskan sockeye and bake it the same way. 

Living on the Florida Gulf Coast where fresh seafood is plentiful, it may seem odd to eat imported fish, but at Sam's it's fresh, inexpensive and excellent. I just wish they'd put the imported oysters back out, Pacific oysters, and Chesapeake Bay oysters a few Times.

A few weeks ago I received a gift box that included exquisitely delicious chopped chicken liver and pickled herring with onion from Russ & Daughters in New York City. Finishing the herring stirred a hunger that's always there, for more pickled herring, so I ordered a sampling of four additional kinds of R&Ds herring: curried, with mustard and dill, rollmops, and schmaltz herring. 

Except for the rollmops, each of which is a whole herring fillet wrapped round onion, these herring products are cut up bits of herring fillet. Eating, I limit myself to three, maybe four, bits of herring a day. Because they need to be eaten soon after opening a carton, Wednesday evening I finally got round to opening the schmaltz herring and had one bit. It's different, packed in olive oil, not vinegar brine, and extremely salty. So salty that future bites I'm putting on a triscuit, over sour cream or a smear of cream cheese. 

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Plus Time is still and always not a food blog, though. The picture above, for example, is a NASA scientist's image of Earth's real shape. I'm not surprised, it's not surprising; considering ha-adama, us Earthlings, nothing would have surprised me; in fact, as my seminary theology professor said it, "How can God stand us?" There was a line in one of our hymns at church last Sunday, "Cure thy children's warring madness," so, Amen to that, but never happen, because we're not yet that far evolved beyond the crocodilian. Give us another couple hundred thousand years, if we don't bring the next mass extinction event down upon ourselves first, and maybe we'll have worked our ungodliness out of our system and be closer to the God's likeness, the image of God in which we were created to be. 

All of which wandering brings me strolling past the theodicy booth: if God is all loving and all powerful, why is there suffering? 

Your move.

RSF&PTL

T90