ode to aldi

lately i've been telling anyone within earshot about aldi.

the cheap-as-sin german supermarket has an outlet in lovely glen burnie, and i recently made my first pilgrimage there. it's the kind of place that has a bag of 3 romaine hearts for $1.49, two huge boneless, seasoned pork chops for $3.21, chicken broth for 37 cents a can, and - be still my beating heart - ten different varieties of german chocolate. also, you have to bring and/or buy your own bags, bag your groceries, and put a 25 cent deposit down on a grocery cart. they know what they're doing over there.

my trip yielded such goodies as private label nutella (which we've been applying directly to homemade ice cream) and an ungodly number of frozen tilapia fillets for something like $3.

last night, flat out of recipe ideas, i defrosted a couple of fillets, then threw some panko breadcrumbs into a skillet with fresh basil from the garden, crushed red pepper, sea salt, black pepper and a healthy dose of olive oil, ladled the mixture over the fish, and broiled it for 7 minutes in the toaster oven. with a green salad and amstel light, it was the perfect low labor, low heat, low cost summer meal. rock on, aldi, rock on.

stained glass at last

Stained Glass 004
Originally uploaded by na_praha.

this is the final product of my eight-week stained glass class. (i know d will be glad to have me stop saying that mellifluous phrase "stained glass class" over and over again. what can i say? i love a cheap rhyme.)

you can't tell very well in this image, but the frame is mostly a cloudy blue opaque glass, mixed with the deep blue and variegated blue green of the fan shape.

ok. i'm proud.

meet maybelle. and roy.

maybelle is a sock monkey i made this week for my friend macy. she has a little friend named roy, who is really more of a sock calf than a sock monkey, seeing as how he was made out of a square-toed little baby sock, so he has a funny little square head. also, he doesn't have a tail. not that that makes him any more bovine. his tail was, let us say, "problematic" and leave it at that.









maybelle and roy are the best of friends, perhaps because they both have no lips. maybelle does, however, have a dress with monkeys on it (made from the fabric leftover from my bridesmaid's dress for brita's wedding). her dress accomodates her rather long tail. d insisted on this when he saw her in her initial, tale-confined state.
tomorrow, maybelle and roy will go to macy's to celebrate her first birthday.