So, you may recall a recent farmers market adventure had by myself and Ms. Knit-Whit. We had a fun morning eyeing all the beautiful produce and gathering ingredients for pickling, of which I, unfortunately, did none.
Anyway, we have a large Southeast Asian population in the Twin Cities, and many of our local farmers are first generation Vietnamese or Hmong immigrants. As you can imagine, this makes for fabulous and varied ethnic produce shopping, as well as some thick accents.

As we were perusing the aisles, we kept coming upon baskets and bushels of these strange little round globe things on a vine, kind of a cross between grapes and grape tomatos, except bright green. They were just so beautiful and curious looking that I finally had to ask about them.

Me: "What are these anyway?"
Vendor: "they buttah bows."
Me: "what? buttah bows? what's that?"
Vendor: speaking slowly "Bud-dah....boughs"
Me: watching her lips move...."budah boughs?....hmmmwhat?"
Vendor: again patiently speaking slowly and emphatically mouthing the words as she speaks at me "bough-dah-boughs."

I'm sure I looked like a total idoit as I stared at her lips and mouthed the syllables along with her. By now I'm feeling really bad for bugging this dear woman and then not being able to understand her, and I'm starting to think maybe there isn't really any English translation and she's just being polite and humoring me.

Me: "Oh, well, ok then. "

KW and I shrug our shoulders at each other and move on to the next stand, only to discover more buddah bows. This vendor must have been privy to my stupid American moment next door, because she's watching me as I finally think to ask what these little things taste like.

Ding! ding! ding! ding!

I sense just the slightest bit of triumph in her attitude as she plucks off one of the balls and hands it to me to try.

I pop it in my mouth and chew.

First sense, the taste of cool and green and fresh with a slight 'pop' like you'd expect biting into a small tomato, only firmer. Chewing....chewing...hmmmm...tough skin that's not so good, plus now....as my taste buds shrivel and I adopt the yuck face and fight the urge to gack and spit..."it's BITTER".....

"OH!!!.....BITTER BALLS!!!!!"

By this time there are lots of petite brown people nodding and grinning at me, as if they're either happy for me for finally figuring it out, or celebrating the fact that I got what I deserved for being a pain in the ass.

Either way, I was gratefully enlightened. Even if my stomach did turn at the thought if it for two entire days.
Apparently these little monsters must be popular, as everyone seemed to be selling them, but I just can't imagine ANYTHING tasting good with those in it. Why you'd want an entire bushel basketfull is beyond me....

From that point on, anytime we asked about something we didn't recognize:
"What is that? Is it bitter?"
"...oh, OK, but is it bitter?"
"It's bitter, right?"

Suprisingly, the answer was yes more often than not. I never realized there was a cusine so obsesed with bitter as a taste component.

BTW, if anyone wants to offer up a recipe utilizing these buddah bombs or any other bitter Asian produce item that is most assuredly avaliable at my local farmers market, I'm game to cook it up and give it a try, if only to prove to myself that there must be something enjoyable about it.

Thanks to a fellow food blogger, I found Crocs
It took a while, but mine finally showed up today:


OK, so they're weirdly squishy, but in a superduper comfortable way, and they're light as a feather. I'm interested to see how durable they're going to be given the fact that they truly feel like I'm wearing circus peanuts on my feet. Without all the stickiness, of course...
Anyway, gotta love the colors, huh? I'm waiting for the Nile model to become avaliable and then I'm going for a yellow or a pink pair.

So it appears that the popularity of the whole RedBull+ alcohol thing (gack!) has prompted breweries to start taking an interest in caffeine. DUH! WTF took them so long?
Apparently this is old news for Canadians, as both Molson and Labatt have already released caffeinated beer, and now Amerian Anheuser-Busch just relased Tilt.
Personally, I'm thinking I'd prefer beer flavored beer to raspberry flavored, but I guess I'll have to try them all and find out now won't I?
It's about time, as many a venti black coffee has spent time nestled in my cupholder on the way to the bar.

Wow. I'm absolutely blown away. Melissa commented on yesterday's post with a link to "Tom Comet" aka, Disco Ken of Minnesota.


I love that he's wearing pink lame. Unfortunately, my Tom came nekked from a second-hand store and the least lame outfit I've been able to find him is the dorky gray shirt and tie.

I'm just amazed! Many, many thanks, Melissa. You rock.
Soooooooo
An Ebay search reveals the one and only outfit ever made for Tom (a tux, duh!), and pink haired, blue eyshadowed female companion, and another chick named Spacy (I think I knew her in highschool). These shall be mine!!!!
And I thought I was having a bad day...

Ms. Knit-Whit and I paid a visit to the farmers market this morning as she was on a gathering trip for some kitchen adventuring. I was just along for the ride, but we had some good laughs and I couldn't resist buying some uber-mini potatos. As it turns out, I enjoyed photographing them more than I did eating them, but it was worth the $1 either way:

Yes, really, that's a potato impaled on one of what I call my "Barbie forks".
As for Disco Ken, I really have no idea about him and that's just the nickname I've given him. I've googled and googled and have never been able to track down his real name or anything about him. Gotta love those rock hard silver abs, though.