Something is crawling on me. Don't know what it is, some sorta unpecified insect, invisible, but not too threatening. Standard brushoff techniques didn't work at first, but that "something is crawling on me" sensation has vanished after three iterations.
I suppose it's gone. Bad day watching football at the 'dillo in Carrboro: UNC lost a game they shoulda lost in the first place but coulda won against the elephant engineers, Kentucky held tough vs. Florida but lost and, worst, Duke won - meaning Carolina fans had to endure the ultimate humiliation, Blue Devil scorn. My Beloved Buckeyes won, but I am three states and 500 miles away from sharing that with anyone.
So sharing boudin in puff pastry with Sharlena, her sister, and two friends was good community. Sharlena's sister had made succulent meatballs, no egg - bound with milk-soaked croutons, tenderly simmered in seasoned tomato sauce. I tasted one and experienced some ecstasy with a lower-case "e". We watched female goldfinches scurry about her window feeder, wondering why the bright yellow males seem to prefer my "hang by your toes" feeder (just a meatball toss away) better. I'd brought over eight boudin "turnovers" and they vanished so quickly that I beat a path home pronto and brought back 12 more. The natural casing and parking lot thing is probably too Louisiana macho; the women prefer puff pastry over flushed hog intestines in the presentation. Maybe they've never driven a red pickup and felt that sense of power that completely overwhelms squeamishness?
Channeling Martha Stewart now (in the safety zone that truck creates when you rest your right heel on the back bumper)...and making Granny Smith apple pectin. Cored-and-quartered, the apples simmered into soggy applesauce after 30 minutes, a texture way beyond "soft". Two strainings, the second through cheesecloth moistened and wrung. Four clip clothespins held the cheesecloth around the upper edge of a strainer to keep it from collapsing. Success with that. Then, from God's mouth to the ear that used to be Martha's before she sinned, came the inspiration on how to get the cheesecloth dry again - those clothespins holding it, washed-and-re-wrung, on a coat hanger! Before anyone says this is a weak defense on the Devil's home field, let me say I was multitasking on boudin and tuning up a computer when the errant pass from Yahweh just jumped into my hands or ear or whatever. The pectin extract is in the fridge settling out for some wine jelly when I get the wine. John Hartford, bless his soul, is on the radio singing Big Rock Candy Mountain, so it was meant to be. See?
8:47:58 PM 
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