pameladean: (Default)
pameladean ([personal profile] pameladean) wrote 2016-01-04 06:10 pm (UTC)

I know just what you mean about being tired of all the things you cook and eat. I'm happy to provide inspiration.

With regard to turnips et al., I think there's a touch, in many of these root vegetables, of what a friend of mine once said about rutabagas: "Rutabagas taste like you already ate them." If you can taste that, it may be no good no matter how the vegetable is prepared. I just feel they are a bit sharp and a bit earthy, and, as you say, the roasting makes them so amazingly sweet but not bland.

I too took quite a long time to realize that it was chickadees making that call. Raphael and I once went to a county park in early March, on a (then) day of aberrant warmth, with temperatures in the seventies. The call was everywhere, and yet all we could see was chickadees. Finally one landed in a bush just before us and whistled its heart out. It was amazing that such a tiny creature could make such a piercing sound.

Years later, I had a character refer to that call as "phoebe," and one of the people in my writing group, a birder and the son of a famous birder, argued with me until I just gave up and changed the book. The call is actually called the "cheeseburger" call, because it does have a very short third note.

P.

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