Eval With an A

I’d say they came out pretty good.  I made tacos that with refried beans.  I’d added some mole paste and a bit of that chocolate I had gotten at Christmas, with small bars of chocolate from around the world.  Determined not to apply any criteria I pulled out something in a yellow wrapper that suggested it was from Papua New Guinea.  It smelled suitably earthy and I ground it up and stirred it in.  Some minced onions.  Crescents of avocado.  Some minced parsley.  For the vege, some faux meat and for everyone else slices of London broil. 

I’d said “no” the day before when I attempted to make something “Chinese.”  No, we won’t also be having the left over pizza, which I’d also had for lunch that day.  My wife had insisted tonight and, particularly given the limited number of taco tortillas we had available I didn’t mind and acquiesced to having the girls heat up slices to go with the meal.  And a testimony to my success, nobody ate much of the three-day-old pizza anyway.  The tacos and the salad and chips of course, with the salsa and banana wedge peppers was enough to get everyone feeling full. 

 

I managed to squeeze in a lesson as well, from the large Smithsonian history text we have been slowly, (glacially of late) been chipping away at.  My entire undergraduate course of study was relegated to two pages they had to profile “Medieval Europe.”  It’s good to review the things you “know” certainly.  I had it in my mind, and believe I have taught to unsuspecting students more than once that Pippin was Charlemagne’s son.  And indeed, he did have a son named Pippin, but the son that took over after him was actually Louis the Pious.  I must have been conflating things with Charlemagne’s dad, Pippin the Short, who was the son of Charles Martel. 

 

We took some time, more time that I thought would have been necessary to revisit the derivation of the term, ‘medieval.’  No.  It was not a medium-evil period where evil was present but not so wretched as what came before or after.  Eval, with an “a” my loves, is a period of time. And so if it was a period of time in between two other period’s of time what were they?  That’s how we spent dinner, good humoredly.  How boring it will be around here without these beautiful minds not long after this time next year. 

I took the garbage up late, before I went to bed.  WFMU is oddly wonderful at that hour.  You never know what you’ll find.  Someone had on a member of the classic heavy metal group “Iron Butterfly.” But they cautioned that it might not actually be the person, as it sounded disarmingly like someone else, whom I’d never heard of.  I listened to it all, nonetheless as I chucked bags and bottles into the cans, while the occasional car sped by on Route 208 beside me. 

 

 

 

Tuesday 05/04/21