fusion frittata, unexpected orchards and tastes, and fall makes its first appearance in the canyon...

It's inevitable: around the beginning of every school-year, I come down with whatever the students are sick with--some kind of cold or flu...this year it waited until mid-September, so here I am, at home, malade, enfermo, krank...

So, time to post some recent minutiae after the last entry--the shameless vote-requests from two and a half weeks ago. Alas, S. and I are not going to be finalists in that travel-photo-contest this year. One less thing to worry about...But thanks for your support!

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So, our recent fusion-food experiment... 

My wife wasn't convinced this would work, at first...She was reluctant to try a Korean-Italian frittata.

I had some left-over "yahng-nyum kahn-jahng" sauce: 

...and I had seasoned some spinach with it, and I thought that the spicy spinach would be a good addition to a frittata...So I squeezed the excess liquid out of the spinach, and we added it to the potato-onion-mushroom mixture that we sautéed and then poured the eggs over.

Voilà.

S. ended up being convinced, and a good dinner was had by all. 

Not a radical concept--adding spinach to a frittata--but the Korean spice added a nice little kick. Just make sure that you squeeze out most of the soy-sauce liquid from the seasoned spinach.

(By the way, the link to the 'yahng-nyum kahn-jahng' recipe above--not my favorite, but it's a start...I've played with it and it's more like the 'kitchen sink' version on that website--minus the vinegar. And I usually use honey instead of sugar.)

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And now, for something surreal,

a streetscape that I see on my way to work everyday:

Doesn't this scene just cry out for a story? I mean, why is the giraffe behind bars? What is he saying? Why is the buffalo leaving? And why does he have a shell? Oh, he's a teenage mutant ninja buffalo...

(here's what one friend came up with:
     "Life should be lived in the playpen of the street of dreams." Hmm...or, 'nightmares?')

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Two weekends ago, after living here for six years, S. and I finally made it out to Apple Annie's, about a 1hr40 minute drive from Tucson:

(here's the write-up I did for afar.com)

Our refrigerator drawer is now full of newspaper-wrapped "shinko" 

(more commonly spelled "shingo") pears...

And it might seem morbid, 

but I found the apples on the ground 

to have their own textural 'beauty'--

after the summer, the wind, and the rain...

...an apple memento mori

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The other night, we met up with some friends for Korean food; ahh, check out that bubbling bowl of red:

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...and from one of my favorite local bakeries:

Gotta love the pun on the socks.

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And with eating, there's running.
Our car accident is far enough in the past now, so, with the chiropractor's o.k., I've been trying some gentle runs...

...so Saturday morning (before I came down with whatever flu this is), I went to Sabino Canyon. Parts of the lower canyon are covered with sacred datura blooms...and I caught this bee coming in for a landing:

I just never get tired of these desert flowers...

...and although the thermometer might not yet know it, the canyon is just beginning to look like fall--something about the angle of light and the certain shade of green that the cottonwoods take on...