FSVO "quick"

The "quick" final pass on one of those manuscripts took an hour, a combination of further editing and lots of URL checking. The latter led to several queries of the form "This is 404, please give me a valid URL," including one "I think this is a 404, the message was in Chinese but it looks like the Microsoft standard 'file not found' display". The other, fortunately, took about 10 minutes, including emailing the edited file to the author for an okay--that has only one minor query.

Now, lunch and an afternoon with Mom.

FSVO "quick"

The "quick" final pass on one of those manuscripts took an hour, a combination of further editing and lots of URL checking. The latter led to several queries of the form "This is 404, please give me a valid URL," including one "I think this is a 404, the message was in Chinese but it looks like the Microsoft standard 'file not found' display". The other, fortunately, took about 10 minutes, including emailing the edited file to the author for an okay--that has only one minor query.

Now, lunch and an afternoon with Mom.

Mom: photos and an outing to Chikalicious for dessert

I went down to my aunt's to visit with my mother this afternoon. She showed me some photos that I could have if I wanted; I took a few of them, and if/when I get access to a scanner, I may post some of them.

We also went to Chikalicious, the dessert restaurant that adrian_turtle told me about after seeing coffee_and_ink's writeup of it. Adrian, my mother asked me to thank you. Yes, it's that good. I had watermelon sorbet and honeydew mousse in a canteloupe "soup". The watermelon sorbet was good, intensely watermelon-flavored. The honeydew mousse was even better than that: watermelon sorbet or ice, done right, is delightful, but it doesn't seem incredibly difficult. I'd never even heard of honeydew mousse before. The canteloupe soup seemed less impressive at first, and by the end I was practically licking the bowl. Mom had blueberry sorbet and buttermilk ice cream, with some toasted almond wafer and a lemon-myrtle foam. Her sorbet was also excellent; I was less impressed by her ice cream, but I'm not a big buttermilk fan. I didn't get the full effect of the foam, I suspect, because I ate a nibble of it separately rather than with either the ice cream or sorbet.

The "amuse bouche" that they started us off with was yogurt ice cream (which worked quite well) on top of a slice of ripe kiwi in a lavender soup. [Yes, really ripe: less-than-ripe kiwi makes my tongue itch, and I almost never risk fresh kiwi anymore, but I decided to bet that they wouldn't be serving it if it wasn't ripe. I was right.] I also ordered tea: when I asked what kinds of tea they had, the waiter (who I think was the "owner/dishwasher" listed on the restaurant's business cards) said "today we have" and listed Earl Grey, some herbal teas, and Darjeeling. I ordered a pot of Darjeeling and was brought exactly that: a pot containing good, hot, Darjeeling tea, already brewed, no leaves for me to deal with. papersky, you can add this to your short list of restaurants in North America that serve tea properly.

We finished with "petit fours", which today were (one per person) tiny cherry-pistachio cookies; coconut marshmallows (I gave Mom half of mine, not being a coconut fan, and she generously gave me half her cookie in return); and tiny mint chocolate truffles.

All very tasty, a pleasant outing. When Mom had mentioned to my brother our plans, he thought we were going to Veniero's, which does desserts in a very different idiom, and without such a good understanding of tea; we walked past it on the way back, and I pointed it out.

Mom: photos and an outing to Chikalicious for dessert

I went down to my aunt's to visit with my mother this afternoon. She showed me some photos that I could have if I wanted; I took a few of them, and if/when I get access to a scanner, I may post some of them.

We also went to Chikalicious, the dessert restaurant that adrian_turtle told me about after seeing coffee_and_ink's writeup of it. Adrian, my mother asked me to thank you. Yes, it's that good. I had watermelon sorbet and honeydew mousse in a canteloupe "soup". The watermelon sorbet was good, intensely watermelon-flavored. The honeydew mousse was even better than that: watermelon sorbet or ice, done right, is delightful, but it doesn't seem incredibly difficult. I'd never even heard of honeydew mousse before. The canteloupe soup seemed less impressive at first, and by the end I was practically licking the bowl. Mom had blueberry sorbet and buttermilk ice cream, with some toasted almond wafer and a lemon-myrtle foam. Her sorbet was also excellent; I was less impressed by her ice cream, but I'm not a big buttermilk fan. I didn't get the full effect of the foam, I suspect, because I ate a nibble of it separately rather than with either the ice cream or sorbet.

The "amuse bouche" that they started us off with was yogurt ice cream (which worked quite well) on top of a slice of ripe kiwi in a lavender soup. [Yes, really ripe: less-than-ripe kiwi makes my tongue itch, and I almost never risk fresh kiwi anymore, but I decided to bet that they wouldn't be serving it if it wasn't ripe. I was right.] I also ordered tea: when I asked what kinds of tea they had, the waiter (who I think was the "owner/dishwasher" listed on the restaurant's business cards) said "today we have" and listed Earl Grey, some herbal teas, and Darjeeling. I ordered a pot of Darjeeling and was brought exactly that: a pot containing good, hot, Darjeeling tea, already brewed, no leaves for me to deal with. papersky, you can add this to your short list of restaurants in North America that serve tea properly.

We finished with "petit fours", which today were (one per person) tiny cherry-pistachio cookies; coconut marshmallows (I gave Mom half of mine, not being a coconut fan, and she generously gave me half her cookie in return); and tiny mint chocolate truffles.

All very tasty, a pleasant outing. When Mom had mentioned to my brother our plans, he thought we were going to Veniero's, which does desserts in a very different idiom, and without such a good understanding of tea; we walked past it on the way back, and I pointed it out.