packages

[redbird]

Today's mail brought me a box of half a dozen things from Penzey's spices (including a free 2-ounce bottle of vanilla extract and a random sample packet of "pasta sprinkle") and a birthday gift from minoanmiss. She sent me a magnet with a picture of a cardinal: it's good to be reminded that my friends know what I like.

I just ordered four more free covid tests from the federal government, via covidtests.gov, which seems to be hosted at the US Postal Service website. (If you live in the US and your household didn't order any earlier this fall, you can get eight tests now.) You need a mailing address in the United States, but citizenship is irrelevant. Also, that's four/eight per household, not per person.

Comments

[otter]

Our free tests arrived yesterday.

Are cardinals your favorite bird? Mine are goldfinch and chickadeedeedee

[redbird]

One of my favorites, I think: it's weird trying to pick a single favorite from a large group of things I like. Chickdeex are great.

[rafiwinters]

Oh hey, wishing you a (belated?) happy birthday.

And anything from Penzey's is wonderful. I'm sad we now live rather far from their store (it smells so good), but I've ordered from their website before. Might do so again once we're settled in and can do some real cooking.

[redbird]

I started shopping at Penzey's after Adrian and I became partners and I was visiting her in Arlington regularly. I like going there in person, as does cattitude, but our current apartment is just far enough from there as the T crawls that I haven't been bothering unless I have some other reason to be near the store.

Thank you for the belated birthday wishes.

[ithiliana]

Cardinals! I love cardinals (they were one of the things I loved, unreservedly, about Texas -- we had numerous cardinals nesting out near where we lived in the county).

I do not have a cardinal icon!

Other birds I love: road runners (also in Texas -- I got a photo of one sitting on my pickup one day), robins (of course! I am named after them!), chickadees (so elegant!), meadowlarks (native to where I lived as a child in Idaho, heartbreakingly beautiful songs). One summer in Texas, we had an owl visiting our place regularly (she'd come sit on the barbed wire fence under our security light--I think the hunting was good there), and when we'd go out with the dogs, she would watch us a while before flying away. We called her "Nightwing."

I also liked the mockingbirds (though they are rather aggressive!) -- Entwife was not fond of them (they used to divebomb one of our dogs, and Entwife is afraid of birds getting too close).

[redbird]

I have more than one cardinal icon; help yourself to this one if you like. (The cardinal tattoo is a picture of my arm, please don't grab that.)

[minoanmiss]

beams at you from when I found that cardinal I knew I had to send it to you in some form and I'm glad I finally got a chance to do so.

FWIW, I quite liked Penzey's Pasta Sprinkle as a pasta sauce ingredient. It's a little too dried to just put on pasta -- it needs rehydration -- but it turns tomatoes and olive oil into sauce quite nicely and would probably work in other kinds of sauce as well.