Taking thick sticky sour cream (not the liquid squeezable sort sold in plastic bags in Estonia) out of a carton is a lot better done scraping with the back of the spoon, not the normally used side. This way the cream mass does not just stay as a clump hiding in the concave bit while you're desperately trying to mix it into something, because you can just wipe it off into the food. Also, the sides of the container can be scraped down as you go. But how after years of living and cooking together D had never picked this "trick" up is beyond me. Oh well, good to know there are still things to learn both ways.
Farm has turned down the tomato flood, gone through a couple of weeks of peppermania and is currently producing endless chillies and Japanese pumpkins. Count of the latter so far is 7 in two weeks, and yes, we are throwing them at unsuspecting neighbours. Today got some rosemary from a lady on the way to farm, went back later to give her a kabocha as a return present, ended up getting some potatoes too, because "those are tasty when cooked with rosemary". The real reason we asked for that particular rosemary bit (to root some cuttings and get a blue-flowered dark green variant to grow beside our white-flowered grey leaved variant if the mole living underneath it doesn't end up murdering it) was a bit too complicated to explain, so potato-dinner it is. This area really is sort of amazing to live in. Even if in the past 3 years they have approached building in a manner such that our "garden" with its single square meter of actual soil, is the greenest space around.
Cheers,
Hedi
