Getting the weekend started
Last night we bundled Elijah up and headed downtown for the Holiday Stroll. This is an event where shops are open later than usual and food booths dot street corners and musicians of all kinds fill nooks and plazas. Lots of strollers and men with babies wriggling in front packs and lovers and friends of all ages on up through retirement.
Highlights:
Roasted chestnuts! We waited in line at the only booth we could find while costumed vendors checked and rechecked and shuffled piles of them roasting on portable barbeques. Every once in a while an older lady with a couple of teeth missing I think, and who was also costumed, and tending to a young child that might have belonged to the checkers and shufflers, burst into chorus, singing, loudly, the first lines of a carol before bending over the child again and forgetting to finish. Occasionally her bursts were something about “CHESTNUTS, HERE!” and those of us in the queue looked at her and each other, and laughed good-naturedly. The chestnuts didn’t taste very good, but I can now say I’ve had some, and actually know what all those songs of them are talking about. It’s the idea, right?
Our friends seeing us from their car, slowing, and shouting repeatedly from their windows, “WHAT A BEAUTIFUL FAMILY!”, to our initial confusion (we didn’t at first recognize them) and a very near collision with the car in front of them.
Lowlight:
A sample from a booth, offered by a gentleman with a thick French accent and an urgency to get us to buy something from him, which tasted like a very smooth, very potent form of creamed liver. On toast. Could be our tastes aren’t refined enough to appreciate this delicacy, but it was so terribly strong, and really so awful, that once we smiled and nodded our way away from him, N asked if I felt like I needed to throw up too. “Tastes like I already have,” I said back. We wandered on, looking for a mouthwash booth, or turpentine or something—anything to cut the liver.
How are you getting into the season?