Count fennel in amongst the thing you don't want to revisit in the middle of the night at the toilet bowl--you know, that list of things like tomato sauce and hot peppers that make an extremely unpleasant experience even more awful. Fennel is very, very bitter.

It has been ungodly hot here again this week so the other night I made a raw lemon and fennel soup from Veggie Times (the recipe is not online yet and don't bother anyway). The soup itself was extremely bland but didn't taste especially off or anything. Nonetheless, I felt green around the gills right after eating it and then woke up in the middle of the night already halfway down the hall to the bathroom. Not sure if one of the ingredients was bad or whether I was predestined to get sick. Next day I was mostly fine, just tired and not particularly hungry. There's a weird stomach bug going around that makes you queasy/barfy and headachy/feverish for a couple of days, so it may have just been that. I made broiled tofu with mango sauce and mustard greens last night (also Veggie Times), and was for the most part just fine. The recipe itself was ok, basically tofu cooked in your favorite chutney and served over bitter greens that seemed like an afterthought.

That's the second time I've cooked fennel and the second time I was less than impressed, so it's off the list.

I've jumped on the True Blood bandwagon this season and am so impressed by some of the cast who tend to make the rounds of good shows. As I mentioned in a post about Lost recently, the same names seem to pop up again and again. William Sanderson plays the Sheriff, and Chris Bauer, who played the tragic union boss on the second season of The Wire, is the doomed Detective Bellefleur. Michelle Forbes, who has Bellefleur wrapped around her talon, was recently on Battlestar Galactica (a show that every geek on the planet but me watched), and was also Ensign Ro on Star Trek TNG way back when.

In other news: Cathy's mom passed away nine weeks after her initial diagnosis and the memorial was last weekend. I did one of the readings (2 Cor 4:14-5:1) without falling on my face on my way to or from the lectern and without either giggling or sobbing uncontrollably in the middle. It helped that the baptismal font blocked my view of Cathy and Tim in the front pew. The service was beautiful, and all of those who bitched and moaned about having to put on a dress and sit in church for an hour can just go stuff it because that's what Shirley wanted and if you're not the one who died then you don't get a say. Tomorrow Cathy flies to Pittsburgh to do the whole thing all over again and bury her mom's ashes in the family plot. I'm tired of people dying.