Grocery shopping with my daughter at Trader Joe's when she visited a week and a half ago resulted in unfamiliar things in my cart. Jenna and I are both vegetarians (although I eat fish and she does not), but being a millennial, she is much more up on the trendiest of consumables. Organic Pomegranate Hibiscus Kombucha and organic tempeh were still in my refrigerator after she left, so what am I do do? Throw them out? No, wastefulness is not an attribute of mine. The kombucha is good until July, so no worries. But I thought that the highly-touted tempeh, a rich source of protein, might inspire a healthy meal for me. Google it I did. And I found a recipe for Pad Thai with Tempeh. Now, I really like Pad Thai, so this seemed a good choice. And I had (almost) all the ingredients! I got to work, chopping the veggies, baking the marinated tempeh, cooking the Pad Thai rice noodles, whisking the sauce, crushing the peanuts. I don't own a wok, but a big old frying pan will do, right? Man, this is a lot of work! But the finished product will be worth it, right?
Wrong. It really wasn't very good. Not garbage-worthy, but maybe I can salvage the veggies?
This past weekend, my guy and I were among the last people on the planet to go see Bohemian Rhapsody. We'd been hoping that it would be back in IMAX at the cineplex that we go to, but Shazam! seems to own that now. So we decided we should see Bohemian Rhapsody in standard format before it disappears. Now, I was never a big Queen fan, but this movie was wonderful! We were still high on it when we got back home, and then I remembered that I have the 4-disc DVD set of the 1985 Live Aid concert, the same concert that closed out the movie. So we watched the first two discs until we got to see Queen's performance. Wow! The movie held true to the reality of that set! Amazing! I am still enjoying the buzz from watching both the movie and the concert.
And speaking of buzzes:
One week from today, my guy and I will be off to South America for a couple of weeks. This is a bucket list trip: Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands. We booked it last spring, and here it is already! During the several months of waiting for it, we've been reading as much as we can about the places we will visit. Perhaps the most difficult but important book that we've read is The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. We now have an understanding of what Darwin "discovered" when he sailed on the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836, spending historic time in the Galapagos Islands. We are also aware of how much he didn't discover. But he inspired a multitude of scientists to pick up where he left off. In reading The Beak of the Finch, we could not help but be gobsmacked at the fact that there is still an anti-evolution contingent among us. Evolution is occurring before our very eyes!
"The Creation is never over. It had a beginning but it has no ending. Creation is always busy making new scenes, new things, and new Worlds." ~ Immanuel Kant
So how do I tie these three disparate topics together?
Here's a definition of tempeh: " . . . made by a natural culturing and controlled process that binds soybeans into a cake form."
Here's a possible definition of Freddie Mercury: " . . . made by a natural culturing and acceptance process that binds humans into whatever form nature intended for them."
And maybe a definition of the beak of the finch: " . . . made by a natural culturing and uncontrolled evolutionary process that alters creatures into survival form."
Or maybe they're just random happenings in my evolutionary world.
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