Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I have now tried persimmons (or a persimmon). It was nice but not astonishing; on the other hand, it may not have been entirely ripe. (adrian_turtle tried and like one a few days ago, so bought two at one of the Armenian groceries in Watertown.)

I may get a few, ripen them, and see what I think. (*The Joy of Cooking* confirms that persimmons are always picked unripe.) They're not hard to find, in season. I had been avoiding them out of a vague sense of resentment, I think: Persimmon season is just before clementine season, and from across the street a pile of persimmons on a sidewalk fruit stand looks like clementines, at least to someone who is eager for the latter.

This afternoon I sorted out how we'll handle snow removal here. I had hoped that we could continue whatever arrangement the previous tenants here had with the upstairs neighbor. Valerie came outside this afternoon while I was out there exercising, and I asked her about it. She's entirely happy to keep doing what we have been, and agreed to buy a bag of road salt the next time she's at Home Depot and they have it in stock, since she has a car and we don't.

The plans are for her, or possibly me, to shovel if the snow is very light (she has a snow shovel), for heavier snow to hire a high school student through the town, and if it's very heavy also pay someone with a plow to clear the driveway. The cost of hiring the plow truck is shared with the house next door, because we share a driveway. (I volunteered that cattitude and I would pay a share of that, even though we don't have a car.)

(Our lease says that we and the other apartment are jointly responsible for snow removal; the town of Belmont requires the sidewalks to be cleared, a rule I strongly approve of.

I have done my two days and been sent home without being picked for a jury. Given that I spent most of the time worrying that I would be on a jury for a case that was supposed to go well into July, this is definitely a good thing.

( long, includes food and wandering )

Neither cattitude nor I was up for cooking tonight, so we sent for Chinese food, specifically "Empire ginger chicken." This is something we get fairly often: chunks of chicken and green beans, in a brown sauce with threads of fresh ginger.

Tonight, it had slices of ginger instead of threads.

Slices of pickled ginger, the sort usually served next to sushi.

It wasn't bad, but cooked pickled ginger is less intense than fresh ginger cooked the same way, and not as tasty (in my and Cattitude's opinions, at least). I'm guessing that this was an emergency save after they ran out of fresh ginger for some reason. I hope that's it, and not that they've changed their recipe for some odd reason. I expect we'll find out, and now we've had a new preparation, if not an actual new food.