Oscars and Brussels Sprouts

The day after the Oscars. Lots of fun with picking favourites last night and being with family to enjoy the show. 
 Reading: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. This was a comfortable love story centred around books. Something jumped out at me as I finished the book yesterday, a reference to a book by Raymond Carver called "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love".  That happens to be the book that is central to the plot of Birdman, the movie that won Best Picture for 2014 last night.  I love coincidences like that.
Food:  Almond croissants.  JM brought them for Oscar snacking and I discovered that SE likes them as much as I do!  The flavour and texture of almond filling is irresistible to me, soft and sweet.  Chocolate is nice too, but almond is the best.
Everyday things:  Snow.  I might as well say it now, staring fiercely into the last weeks of winter.  I do like snow--powdery, slushy, crunchy, delicate, feather-light sometimes, and heavy as mud at others. Animal tracks in the snow are a wonder, as is the gradual buildup of layers of falling snow on an evergreen branch.  When I was a kid I could never get enough snow down in the city, and now I do have enough, more than enough, but I still enjoy it!
Plant:  Parsley.  I like parsley as a food too, but it's one of my favourite growing things.  It's a biennial, which means it lasts two growing seasons.  In my garden, it rarely survives the winter frost, but I set up some plants under grow lights last fall and have been enjoying the harvest all winter.  I like the curly leaves and the way the stems jut out at an angle, and the way the new leaves come up from the centre of the plant.
Learned:  There might be a genetic reason for people not liking to eat brussels sprouts!  There's a gene for taste sensitivity called TAS2R38 that may be responsible for some people hating this vegetable.