Biblioteca

Today on my lunch break I scooted down to the OPL main branch (that’s Oakland Public Library, y’all) to check out a book on worm composting. Worm composting is a topic about which I’m sure I’ll have something exciting to say someday soon, but today I feel like expressing my love for going to the library.
It’s not the abstract idea of The Library that I’m all about, the storehouse of knowledge, the free information for the masses blah blah blah.  No.  I just plain get a kick out of going to the library and checking out a book or two.  Yeah.  Neheherrrrd.   I know.  I’m getting off on books and your tax dollars are funding it.

Today’s visit was library fun type A:  the Pleasures of Efficiency and Thrift.  I wanted some specific information in book (i.e. not internet) form, so I looked on Amazon.  And decided I was not prepared to invest 12 dollars plus shipping and 7-10 days of waiting for a book about worms.  OPL to the rescue!  According to the online catalog they had the very book I’d been eyeing, and it was not checked out as of 11:30am.  So, at noon, I barrelled down Harrison, locked up, and plunged with laser-guided precision into the non-fiction section.  There it was: 639.75.  Worms Eat My Garbage.  I was back at work with 10 minutes of quality lunchbreak time to spare.  Have I mentioned that I also love the Dewey Decimal system?  This should come as no suprise to anyone who knows me, and has observed my tendendcy to alphabetize CDs, rainbow-orderize my clothing, and even group my knick knacks based on subject matter (the owl trinkets don’t canoodle with the needlepointed flowers).  At this point it might be appropriate to disclose that I worked at the public library in high school, and at one point had a grasp on ol’ Dewey that bordered on the obscene.  Or on pathetic.  Either way I was a damn good shelver.

Library fun type B is more leisurely.  It’s the Pleasure of Solitary Browsing and Unplanned Selections.  Type B is what tends to happen at my neighborhood branch, which is so small that many people don’t realize it’s a library and not just an oddly situated cottage in the park.  If you go in with a book in mind, but without having checked the catalog to determine if the branch has it, you are pretty much guaranteed to be disappointed.  So why bother.  It’s so cozy inside you can literally browse through the whole fiction section until your eye lights upon that one book your friend read for that class in college that she said was really good or that author you hear Terry Gross interviewing while you were doing the dishes and you weren’t really paying attention enough to remember to write down the dude’s name, or you see Moby Dick and decided it’s high time you read it.  I did, in fact, almost check out Moby Dick on Monday, but in light of the amount of junk that’s looming on the horizon it seemed like a questionable selection.  Instead, I browsed on, moving backwards through the alphabet, and settled on Independence Day, by Richard Ford.  I can’t remember where I heard of him, or of the book, but it won a Pulitzer prize and the copy the library had has a nice sturdy hardcover binding but is still delicately proportioned enough to stick in a purse.

So far it’s really good.  And a quick enough read that I should get to go back to the library pretty soon.

Apocalypse a-comin’

I’ve spent a long time hating on bell pepper. No matter what the color (don’t try and fool me by claiming the orange ones taste different and better), no matter how small the particles (the smaller it’s chopped the more surface area it has from which to exude its vileness into unsuspecting stirfry or curry) I didn’t want it anywhere near me.
In college I had a powerful anti-bell-pepper allies. JB, my roommate throughout and beyond the Go Bears years, hates the B.P. even more than I ever have. When we moved into our crustacular co-op apartment, after enduring the pepper-heavy communal cuisine of our co-op house we declared it a Bell Pepper Free Zone. Our roommate N. was an occasional violator; we always forgave her, but never without a stern talking-too and threats of eviction.
My other comrade-at-arms was my ceramics professor/mentor. Every once and a while we would hit the salad bar at the Faculty Club, which, in addition to standard salad components, featured numerous pre-made cold dishes, most of which featured noxious chunks of you-know-what. While everybody else circled calmly with their trays, he would sputter and rant at the food, and while we ate, would question everybody else at the table as to how they could stand to let the vile fruit pass their lips.
In the past couple years I haven’t had much occasion to dwell on bell pepper since I’ve mostly been shopping/cooking for myself, and the Yankee Fan, well, he’s no bell pepper fan. But I was still conviced of my hate of all things in the bell pepper genre. When S. described the joys of rajas I screwed up my face in disgust. A poblano chile isn’t a bell pepper, but it ain’t that far away either.
And then…strange things started happening in Coot-land. First, I was at Cesar for a friend’s birthday. Stuffed piquillo peppers were ordered. As in mild, red, very bell-peppery peppers. And I ate one. And it was really, really good. I attributed it to the shrimp filing. A while later, I had a sudden longing for a very specific configuration of pasta salad. Pasta salad made with orzo pasta, black olives and…LITTLE PIECES OF RED BELL PEPPER. Creep-o-rama. I bought the smallest bell pepper available at the Farmers’ Market and went with my vision. And it was really, really good. I attributed it to the olives.
The final straw was last Friday. Propelled by my fondness for unnecessarily elaborate cooking experiments and perhaps the dregs of my Catholic childhood, I threw a Good FridayMexicanDinnerIndoorEggHunt event at which the Yankee Fan and I were the sole attendees. When I was buying ingredients for the nopal/fake chicken tacos and mushroom-epazote quesadillas at Berkeley Bowl, I felt compelled to put a big honkin’ poblano chile in my basket. I had no plan for it, but I NEEDED it. Back at home, not knowing what else to do, I cut it into strips and half-roasted, half-sauteed it. Some of it got mixed in the taco filling, but I ate the leftovers at work with nothing but a corn tortilla, some queso fresco and few pintos.
Yep. It was really, really good. And this time there was no stuffing or sauce to explain things away. I might just be on the road to pepper fandom.
I hear hoofbeats in the distance. Sounds like four horsemen to me…