Produce and people

I just came from the farmer’s market, where I bought many yummy fruits and some vegetables I’ve never tried before: purslane, dandelion greens, arugula and shiso. Shiso, as it turns out, is what was under Jennifer’s sashimi when we went to dinner on Thursday night! The leaves are big and minty flavored, and are supposed to help keep sashimi fresh and… unbacterial? Anyway it’s good for raw fish, keeps it clean. We had been talking about it at dinner, because Karl said it might be mint but I said it was too big to be mint, then Jennifer said it was minty. But now we know it’s shiso. 🙂

I also bought a copy of Chez Panisse Fruit because Alice Waters was there today signing books. Actually Erik and I bought it together because I didn’t have enough money. But anyway. She looks like her pictures. She was nice, but I hope if I ever write a book that becomes famous enough for me to do signings, I will seem more approachable than she did. She was very very friendly to the woman in front of me, but that’s because she had brought her a bottle of wine that was apparently something quite special. That was fun to see. So now Erik and I have a signed copy of Chez Panisse Fruit. That’s the same book I bought for his brother when he got married in May, but I wasn’t able to get that copy signed…

On the bus on the way back I sat next to an insane woman. I knew who she was when I saw her–once Erik and I were on the bus back from Safeway, and there was a woman who kept turning around and saying things to us that we didn’t understand. Another language, or maybe she just made them up, I don’t know. She was chatting companionably with another woman on the bus that we assumed was her friend, but we couldn’t tell. Anyway she was really scary and we were both freaked out after that bus ride. So today when I got on the bus I saw her and became worried. But today she decided I was her friend and everyone else on the bus was weird. She went and sat next to a Hispanic-looking guy and started speaking Spanish to him. He gave her a ‘lady-what-are-you-doing’ kind of look and she decided he was boring, so she came and sat next to me and blathered away about how many weirdos there are in Berkeley (!) and how weird everyone else on the bus was. There was a nice man in back of me who kept smiling at me in a supportive way. He had a really sympathetic smile. It said, ‘yeah, I know, she’s totally crazy, but what can you do?’ It was nice to have that smile backing me up, if you know what I mean. At one stop a totally normal looking middle-aged woman got on the bus, and the crazy one said, ‘Just look at her and you know she’s a weird one. Fat pig! There are a lot of people here who are obese. Obesity, you know what that means?’ I put up with that crazy woman for five blocks, until I’d missed my stop thanks to her talk. Then I got off the bus. I hope she left the guy behind me alone. He warned me to be careful not to let the crazy woman touch me because she’d been wiping her nose with her hands, and after he said that she told me I’d better watch out for him because he’s crazy. That was no fun, but I feel better now because I know she’s just crazy. Last time she was muttering things at Erik and me we wondered if she had something against Asians, and we were afraid because she seemed really malicious and dangerous. But it’s sort of a relief to have been the object of her, well, camaraderie this time, because now I think she’s not dangerous, just crazy.

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]