The other week I baked a few more sweet potatoes and ate them.
Only, these were sweet potatoes that I had bought at the store -- not at the farmer's market -- and I only ate two of them -- not five.
And, afterwards, I didn't shit a mat.
I think they were much less fibrous than the homegrown ones?
That seemed to be a key difference, beyond the difference in sheer amount of sweet potatoes consumed.
Perhaps they were a different varietal, as they say.
An autumn menu!
Like...:
1) Crab rangoons, only you make them with turkey and have a cranberry dipping sauce;
2) Cranberry fried rice, like the pineapple fried rice with cashews, only you do cranberries and walnuts and maybe bits of turkey fried in; and
3) Turkey satay (that's kind of a joke).
I was telling the (wife) owner with the tired face about this, and she said we'd need something with sweet potato, and we both immediately agreed that the thing to do would be sweet potato tempura slices, which is something that the (Japanese) actually do.
I really do think that if they hyped this "limited time" menu for a few weeks and then ran it from mid-Oct. to mid-Nov., that people would really get into it.
My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that a classic (Thai) comfort food is pieces of soft pumpkin put into a small omelette, and you serve it with a side of rice, and that her mom made her that a lot back when she was a kid.
"See!", I was like.
The one owner was also saying that for dessert, there's a variation of sticky rice with custard where you make the custard with pumpkin, and that's actually a thing in (Thailand) that you could do for that menu, too, though often they put it into the little scooped-out gourds, which is a lot of work.
I really do think that people would go for this stuff beyond what we already do, which is advertise more heavily our pumpkin curry, which you can always get anyways during any time of the year.
I ran the ideas by a few tables of (white) customers who I was chit-chatting with, and all of them were like, "I would eat that," when I mentioned stuff like my idea for turkey rangoons with cranberry dipping sauce.
"Yeah," I was like, "It's like the dishes where people are already combining turkey with cream cheese."
1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says I shouldn't drink water with ice because of my sinus infection, because water with ice makes people sick.
"Asians think that," she was like, and then she said that's why (Indian) customers don't want ice in their water.
"No, it's because they think that ice costs more, and they don't want to pay," I am like.
And, she laughs.
2) When I tell my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I'm staying away from this one table with a (white) (tight-bodied) (yuppie) couple and their 2 small kids because the husband was very unhappy with me once, she was like, "Really?".
"Yes," I was like, and I laid out for her the whole situation, where you can tell that he's very unhappy in the marriage and with kids and the wife probably forced him into it, but she's blank-faced and a little naive and can't see that she did that and that he resents that, and she can't see his unhappiness, and that he'll probably divorce or cheat on her, if he's not already cheating on her.
"Really?", she was like.
"Oh yeah," I was like, and I said that you could see it in their faces, and that also once he gave me attitude over a soup substitution because I said I had to go check in the kitchen about that -- "We come here every week," he was like, even though we do have rotation of kitchen staff and that means nothing! -- and that once beyond that when the restaurant was strangely packed, the only open table was one where the high chair was in a high traffic area, and so I asked them if they could move tables in five to ten minutes when one out of the way opened up, and the guy was very, very unhappy that they would either have to wait or to pick up and move after five or ten minutes.
"Who does that?", I was like, "This was about his child's safety, and he turns it into a chance to have attitude?".
And, when I was laying this all out for her, I realized that I'd seen this couple only 2 or maybe 3 times and I had had only the very briefest of interactions with them, but I had keyed into what seemed like their story and I could talk about them just an exceptionally disproportionate amount.
And, to think that just a few weeks prior to that, I had mentioned when texting a friend that I doubted my people sense, and wish it was better. I immediately thought of that right after I just gushed out and told her all of this stuff that I was thinking, and that she hadn't seen or hadn't occurred to her.
3) One day between lunch and dinner shift when two (Guatemalans) come out to have their shift meal at tables in the back of the restaurant, it's the one guy named Angel, and the other guy who I make the diablo joke about.
So, of course I pointed to one and then the other, and was like, "Angel," and then, "Diablo."
4) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that the (wife) owner with the tired face showed her a picture on her phone that she had just taken of a car in the backlot that had gotten its window broken in, where the police were showing up to take a report.
"It is the homeless, they are always hanging out there," she was like.
5) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker tells me that she wants to focus more on her hobby, which is writing.
"Like fan-fic?", I was like, and she nodded.
And, she tells me that there's this one app that's popular in (Thailand), where people read fan fic and maybe vote on it and if a lot of people like yours, you get some money, and she's made money off of it.
"How much have you made?", I was like.
And, she made calculations in her head, and was like, "Fifty or sixty dollar," and then she added, "It's not much, here."
1) When the one (skinny) (silver-toothed up front) (Guatemalan) kitchen guy comes out to do something and quizzes me on reciting numbers in his native language -- a few of them have been teaching me for a few weeks -- I am tired because of my sinus infection, and I say something like "One, two... Four."
And, he just stares at me, gives a quick shake of his head, and flings his finger out to point to the front door, like, "Get out of here!".
2) Around the Thanksgiving holiday, a(n early middle-aged) (white) (lesbian) couple is in with their (stringy) (blond) (white) daughter, and they mention that she's home from her freshman year of college, and of all the places in town to go eat, she decided to come here.
"So have you taught them that new beer pong game that I hear the kids are doing?", I was like, to her.
"That is so funny," muttered the one (very thick eyebrowed) (lesbian) mom, to herself.
3) The one (Guatemalan) kitchen worker who I started the diablo joke with got a very short haircut, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker tells me that he looks like a Buddhist monk.
4) When I leave work one night, a car going towards the intersection rolls down its window and I hear the word "Diablo!" come out, and I can see in silhouette three of the (Guatemalan) kitchen workers sitting in the car.
Like every time that I do a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, I sort out the edge pieces first, and then when I first do that and go to assemble them, I look at them and they don't seem to be very many, and I always find myself thinking stuff like, "Is that all of them?" and "Did I miss gathering some?" and "Are some missing?", although invariably when I go to assemble them, it really is all of them, or at most maybe like 1 or 2 weren't picked out from the non-edge pieces.
It's like some optical illusion, where the human mind is bad at estimating how many small pieces are necessary to line up in order to hem in and enclose some large space.
All my life I've been prone to allergies and sinus infections, though I haven't had a sinus infection in like 3 years, because I've been wearing masks so much for COVID.
But, I came down with a sinus infection towards the end of last month -- the air in my apartment dried out, and before I realized what was happening and I went to humidify to compensate, it harmed my sinuses and weakened them -- and, even though it was a medium-to-lower-strength sinus infection, though, with no associated constant sharp headache or anything like that, it lasted a heck of a long time.
Like, usually with that level of infection I'd rest up and major symptoms would subside quickly and the entire infection would completely go away within five days or maybe a week, but this one lasted for like six or seven days with major symptoms, and hung on in my nose for days beyond that.
So, I think it's either a factor of aging, or COVID weakened my immune system, likely the latter.
For the first time in my life, too, I actually had my voice break from post-nasal drip, when I tried to talk in my normal register.
And for like three or four days, I'd cough so much at night that it actually interfered with me getting to sleep or woke me up in the middle of the night, and once I coughed so hard that I actually pulled one of my lower right abs, from the way I was lying in bed right then.
Right when I was coming down with this, too, I was emptying the scum out of my soapdish in my bathroom from this new circle-shaped bar soap that I'd gotten on sale at the local grocery market co-op, and for some reason the soap scum wasn't normal, but these huge, huge slimy strings that would just hang there heavily, and would stretch out between the dish and my hand, and just wouldn't break at all.
I almost feel like that was foreshadowing.
I walk so much at work, that the soles of my sneakers are starting to wear through a bit.
And, when the (Guatemalans) pour soapy water all over the floor in preparation for a thorough mop at the end of a night shift, water can come up through my soles and soak my shoe-pads and socks, if I have to go in back to bag a takeout or something!
I really need to get off my ass, head to the local mall, and get myself some new shoes.
