I have some excellent advice for you. Go buy a mini watermelon, seedless. Chop it up into bits and puree that sucker. If you’re feeling fancy, you can strain the juice. (I wasn’t).

Put the watermelon puree in a glass with your favorite bourbon. You can add some lime, or mint, or maybe some Sprite. Crushed ice works well with this.

Drink, thank me later. An especially civilized way to contend with a mealy watermelon.

Making stuffed Pobalano chilis with mushrooms, shrimp, Cotija cheese and chopped spinach for dinner with homemade chili sauce (red pepper, Chipotle peppers + adobo, ancho chili powder, fire-roasted tomatoes). Will report back! I’m just a regular goddamn Bobby Flay today! Without the fame, gobs of cash, or biceps. Also not a dude.

I’m back in Cambodia in two weeks, and in Singapore for a couple days before that. Working out the details for Myanmar.

Here, have some photos of cactus at the National Botanical Garden. Cactus, as I rediscover again and again, are Weird.

“She turned a corner in the temple: she’d escaped the robot-jaguars! Could she be safe? She caught her breath.

Looking up, she saw long tendrils of—something—hanging in the air in the room she had found herself in. They were spiky, and green. They looked almost like cacti, the sort you might absently grow on your windowsill. But…could it be true? Were they moving?

‘WE HAVE BEEN EXPECTING YOU, ELAINE,’  a thousand reedy voices said, all at once.

Elaine drew her machete. Bring it on, you spiky bitches, she thought.”

Seriously, I can’t get enough of cactuses. It’s a thing.

 

 

There are some species names where you really sit and wonder “Who named this, and just how desperate to get laid was he?”

Or there’s some serious Mama issues involved there, which is creepy in and of itself.