Flames

Our stove is scary. It's a gas stove, and the flames are huuuuuuge. It makes sense, since typical wok cooking here requires massive amounts of heat, but it's still a very scary thing to have the flames rising halfway up the sides of a rather large (obviously CutCo, thanks mom!) pot. The pot in question contains a daikon, something that looks like a huge carrot and tastes like a weak radish. You can apparently do anything to a daikon that you can do to a potato, so we're mashing it with some garlic. They don't have minced garlic here; we've been getting actual cloves and chopping them up for use in stir fry. We've been making a lot of stir fry here, as the vegetables are pretty cheap and it's the easiest thing to do with what we know we have available to us.

In other news, Rochester had its first snowfall yesterday and today I walked home from work in the rain with no umbrella or coat. In fact, Lee's still been wearing shorts and I've only worn something over a t-shirt or work shirt a couple of times. The winters here are actually very mild; so mild in fact that they use water to clear the streets of snow. I'm assuming it's salt water from the ocean (about an hour's bike ride away) and the salt would then help too. It might not be though. Next month is when all the falll foliage is best; the trees have only just begun to change. We'll have to find a scenic place and take pictures then.