Sir! I have a plan!

I have quite a few small containers of raw ingredients, including five types of bean, two types of pasta, one type of rice, two types of flour, and a large amount of frozen walnut-mushroom spread that really needs to go. In addition, I'm moving on July 3rd (granted, I'm moving four blocks up the road, but still). Consequently, the plan is to purchase only produce that can be used up within a few days and completely eschew the purchase of beans, flour, eggs, cheese, or other staples. This may result in a blog hiatus when I'm forced to do things like eat lima beans with brown rice and frozen spinach three days in a row. In the meantime, though:

Seared watermelon, fried pignoli and white beans (was going to make a fritter but got lazy, and this is yet another step to proving the hypothesis that Anything Can Be Fried and Taste Better For It), Parmesan kale chips, and basil-white wine gelée. All that I purchased was kale and watermelon, I got to use up the rest of the white wine that had been stagnating in my fridge, and the Parmesan and pignoli and white beans need to be used up as well, so I'm well on my way! Bonus: I got to feel fancy. And eat the watermelon I didn't sear. That was pretty great.

Mmm, basil leaves floating in basil gel.

I'm of two minds about seared watermelon. On the one hand,
it's ridiculously good. On the other, I love plain watermelon
more than almost anything else I can put in my mouth, so the
idea of improving on it is utterly incomprehensible to me, and
it can arrive at my mouth more quickly than this as well!

Kale chips really can't be improved upon. No way, no how.

My various projects o' the day included fetching books at NYU's largest undergrad library (I'm already well into Point Counter Point). Obtained: Beauty Salon (Bellatin), Celestial Harmonies (Esterhazy), and The Man Died (Soyinka). I was going to pick up Ferdydurke, since it came up at quizbowl yesterday and I'm trying to decrease my frequency of Modern Jackass moments, but the only translation to be had was a second-hand job that passed through French before coming to English, so I declined. Funnily enough, when I got home and idly got on Facebook, one of the first items on my newsfeed involved this, which I think is a little hard on Unbearable Lightness of Being but which seems to back up my instincts about that translation. In any case, the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library has not one, but two copies of the modern translation with foreword by Susan Sontag. I'll be heading up there as soon as I've finished the three aforementioned library books.