Yesterday was absolutely lovely. We slept in, had bagels and hung about being lazy together.

I gave Rob four wool Afghan pakol hats, which are his favorite headgear. See the one he’s wearing in this photo? It was his favorite and went missing while we were in Iceland so I picked up some replacements. He gave me a long natural wool knitted coat from Iceland. Clearly, we were both thinking about the same things.

In the afternoon we headed over to the farmer’s market to drop off our compost and pick up some vegetables. I know it might not seem like the most romantic thing, but it’s the sort of lazy day that we used to have while courting, so it feels really good.

In the evening we went to Lincoln Center to hear the Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre play music from Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. The performance was outstanding, but the acoustics of the space were as bad as I’d been led to believe. You could tell the sheer volume of sound that must be coming off the stage, just by looking at the size of the ensemble, but it never got loud. And both those pieces of music are sweeping in range. Even so, it was a wonderful evening.

I must say, that unplugging for the day was really nice. Even if you don’t have a special occasion to prompt it, I’d recommend just taking a day to slow down and turn off. That said, coming back online, it was awfully nice to hear from all of you. Thanks for that!

One of my favorite podcasts is Jon Armstrong’s If You’re Just Joining Us . This episode he interviews Deborah Duchon, a nutritional anthropologist and it is utterly fascinating stuff. I highly recommend this episode.

Deborah Duchon is a noted nutritional anthropologist, teacher, author and speaker, best known for her work on the hit TV show, Good Eats. She served as director of the Nutrition Education for New Americans Project at Georgia State University, in Atlanta. These days, she is studying the exotic origins of everyday foods, by investigating their un-domesticated beginnings and working forward to the present day.

Deborah and I talked about onions, Hmong refugees, black night-shade, potatoes, theater, and women in anthropology.