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As Georg mentioned we had a lovely weekend full of relaxing and good food. We went to the farmer's market and bought chorizo sausage and cubed lamb. Both of which were fantastic. The lamb was a bit more expensive than from Whole Foods, and worth every penny. Beautiful color, nice clean cuts, not a lot of fat to trim off. (Now that I think about it, with a piece of lamb shoulder from WF, you sometimes need to trim so much away that the cost might even out, or at least come closer.) Really fine lamb. The package says it was slaughtered in Siler City and certified halal. We did a sort of improvised korma in the crock pot with lamb, yogurt gravy, crushed cashews, lots of curry spices, diced onion and potatoes. Yum.

The chorizo was really good too. Georg grilled it and we had it with sauteed vegetables and tortillas. Not as spicy as the chorizo from Whole Foods, just a little zing. The farmer's market chorizo was very crumbly, I think it would be good crumbled into a dish like the chorizo-chayote casserole in our Rick Bayless cookbook. Mmm, maybe we should make that next weekend.

There are also people selling beef and goat at the farmer's market. We thought about getting some goat but decided we wanted to find a recipe before buying it. All the meats were advertised as locally grown, pasture raised, etc etc. (I'm kind of surprised the lamb people didn't advertise the halal certification but maybe they figure the people who care about that will ask.) Without knowing what "pasture raised" actually means (for instance I was dismayed to learn that "free range" chicken means the birds have enough room to turn around in their pen) I can't make any assumptions about happy cows and lambs frolicking in fields. I can say that the resulting meat is excellent.

After the farmer's market we had a very nice lunch at Piedmont. They had just reopened after their summer break. Everything there was wonderful except the annoying people sitting next to us. There should be a rule that when you eat someplace terrific, you are not allowed to complain about your diet. Really, if you want to talk incessantly and loudly about dieting, and how every bite going into your mouth is bad, bad, and you are a bad person for eating it, and you should feel sick from eating because you ate so much, because you're bad, and the fact that you don't feel sick just shows how much is wrong with you, and at home you time your meals, and you are not going to eat another thing for the rest of the day, you mean it, and waitress, another mimosa please? If that is your idea of appropriate conversation at a place like Piedmont, then please do us all a favor and SHUT UP. Really. I would feel sorry for a person whose relationship with food is so deeply damaged that she's incapable of enjoying a meal like that, if she hadn't been doing her best to try and keep me from enjoying mine too. (She failed, thankfully.)

I did work this weekend too, sort of: while lounging on the couch & watching movies on TV I made tons of progress on the massive indexing project. I'm up to Sinatra. I think I could have finished if I'd spent all day today working on it. But this morning when I got up, I felt that familiar dread at the sight of the CDs. That's a good indicator that it's time to put them away and do something else. Like read a hilarious web comic all morning and then go to a movie.

And buy a bed! I keep forgetting that before the movie we went to the Original Mattress Factory and bought a mattress set. I've felt like we needed a new one for a long time. Their lifespan is supposed to be about 10 years, and this one is 11 years old, and was cheap to begin with. In fact, I bought it from some guy selling out of a Stor-All for $300. (Sounds gross but it appeared to be new, wrapped in plastic and all. He was selling a bunch of them, and I've wondered ever since why the odd selling arrangement. Did the mattresses fall off the back of a truck or something?) It was a good deal when I couldn't afford anything better, and now it's long past time to replace it.

I had read in Consumer Reports that you should lie on a mattress for 15 minutes, that's a pretty good indicator of how you will like it after sleeping on it all night. I felt kind of silly walking into the store and lying down, but the salesman seemed to expect it and was good about leaving us alone, not coming over until we got up. I bet they work on commission and so I really appreciated that he wasn't pushy. They're going to deliver it next Saturday.