If I die tomorrow, blame it on my own stupidity

Today I drug the kid to the West Side Market for the first time. The market is packed full of fruit and vegetable vendors, butchers, fishmongers, dairies, bakeries, spice stores, pasta stores, yada yada yada. It's enough to leave even a seasoned foodie reeling - but Liza took it all in stride, munching an M&M studded sugar cookie as I wheeled her up and down the aisles, pointing out the giant steer head and the beautiful ceiling and all the other details that it's hard to see on your first visit. You've never seen a kid so excited as her in the vegetable section, naming every obscure thing she could find. I may have the only two year old who can name more than one type of mushroom and can identify artichokes on sight.

I have a love/hate relationship with the market. I love going there - it's soooo much fun to see what is available, especially the things you can't find at the regular grocery. Whole suckling pig? Gotcha covered. Skinned rabbits? Yup. Giant fava beans? Them too. And since many of the stalls sell similar things, a lot of them have samples available which they just about ram down your throat, so it's very difficult to leave there hungry. I thought the lady with the headscarf was going to hold Liza down and forcefeed her if she didn't try some mango ... now THERE's an event I'd pay to see.

But the problem is, I get sucked into the romance of the place, and I always come home with WAY too much food. I always spend a ton of money on fruit that is ripe NOW and food that is perishable, and a good portion of it usually perishes before it gets consumed. This time I was smart and brought a cooler, since I knew we weren't going to be headed home immediately after shopping. And I was doing great, only getting enough stuff to fit in the cooler ... until I came to the Amish quiche stall.

What do the Amish know from quiches? Heck if I know, but Swiss cheese and corn sounded pretty good to me, so I threw one of those in the back of the van. And then there was the florist stall, where they had LILACS. Lilacs - you know, those bushes that smell like a perfect early summer day distilled into clusters of purple loveliness? Yeah, I came back with one of those, too.

So the baba ganouj and the frozen ravioli and the applewood smoked peppered bacon went into the cooler with the cold block, but there was no way the quiche was going to fit in there, much less the armload of lilacs I got for $7. So I made the decision that, hey, quiche is served at room temperature sometimes, anyway, and I'm going to be baking the thing before I serve it, anyway, which should kill off any nasties that breed while it sits in my hot car. Right?

The quiche and the lilacs sat in the car while Liza and I went to the zoo for a few hours. It was sunny and 80F. I'll post photos later, after I have time to edit out all the extraneous fishbelly-white cleavage that was on display by pretty much everyone but me. Anyway, the lilacs were all wilty when we got to the car, but I've got them in a vat of water in the sink, and I'm hopeful that I can revive them for a day or two. If not, I'll just snip off the wilty flowers and roll around in them like a dog with a dead fish.

As for the quiche, well, I think we're having it for breakfast tomorrow. That means the food poisoning will probably hit while I'm at the shrink's office, so at least I'll be in good hands when I start projectile vomiting. Let's hope the traditional Amish quiche is worth the trouble!

(No, Liza won't be eating the quiche - she's anti-quiche to begin with, and in any case I'm not cavalier enough to chance her getting sick on something I suspect may be bad. Me and Jason, on the other hand ... well, we're old enough to know the risk and decide for ourselves. Who wants to bet I'm going to have the whole quiche to myself?)