She's Alive!

Ah, yes, Chase is still alive, and she has finally had a chance to explore Baltimore! Being in class 9-5 every day (with lots of homework each evening) has kept her trapped within a fraction of an acre of Baltimore. Why she is speaking in third person about it is anyone's guess, but be she speaking in first, second, or third person, she is happy to finally have the time to do it.

I'll assume the first person "I" to make it a simpler task to tell about my first full and solitary weekend in Baltimore, but I feel compelled to note that the inconsistency of the switch mid-passage would have embarrassed me in China as an English writing teacher. Now that my students do not have access to such blogs as Blogger, my conscience can be free from fear of grammatical sins.

Yesterday and today have been days of exploratory shopping. I do not live in an area where I can walk downstairs, cross the street, and grab dinner. In fact, if dinnertime is after dark, I doubt I would cross the street. But, the point is, even if I did, there would not be dinner waiting there for me. Hence, my carless self must take care by planning ahead. While Craig & Kate were helping me move in, I had vehicles that could take me 25 minutes north to my beloved Wegmans. Now, I take that amount of time going to the any given side of town. I have made fantabulous finds, though.
- For all my Central American culinary needs, I hit up the decrepit-looking Shurfine down near Fleet Street. It smells like rotten milk when you get in (probably just the homeless guy chilling by the door), but the cold stuff is quite cold, the dry stuff is quite dry, and purchase dates for many items often claimed some month in 2010. Examples of foods I would head down there for: dried tomatoes and peppers, cumin, adobo seasoning, cilantro goop (absolutely delicious cilantro goop that I can get for a dollar more at other stores, too), corn husks, pumpkin seeds (hulled and not),... And right around the corner is Whole Foods, just in case I need an organic pick-me-up.
- For my at-the-market flavor, I can go any weekday to the Northeast Market, home to many sandwich and soul food vendors, as well as a spice monger, fruit seller, and lots of meat people (offering cooked, smoked, raw, bone-in, boneless, succulent, and scary meats). It is just a block or two away from campus.
- On Sundays, I can ride half a mile downhill to the farmer's market with heirloom tomatoes, cantaloupe, and peppers out the wazoo this time of year. I will never find anything as cheap as in China (the farmers would chase me out of the market if I tried to get tomatoes any cheaper than $1.50 a pound (or 11.3 元/斤), and I don't blame them. My students (to whom I will email this entry despite my earlier claims about my grammatical conscience) will appreciate the difference in costs. A note to my former students: tomatoes typically cost 23 元/斤 at fresh markets and 15 元/斤 at supermarkets. Today, I also made friends with a saucier who shared with me his not-so-secret secrets for his delectable foods. After talking for a bit about our similar tastes and love of cooking over coals and flavorful wood chips, he offered to get me some excellent cherry wood as soon as I had a grill of my own. Considering that he gets his cherry from a local orchard, that is quite the spectacular offer =)
- Just beyond the farmers market is a store that, while typically expensive, has some excellent deals that I can take advantage of each week. There is almost always something I like half off. This week, it was orange marmalade and fruit yogurt. Yummmmmm.

It's almost dinnertime, so I am going to dig into some of today's finds and have dinner so that I can get back to studying ASAP. Tomorrow begins another long school week, and I need to be prepared to have my mind packed like a TV suitcase (upon which someone always has to sit before it can be clasped shut, and out of which at least one shirt sleeve always seems to hang).