Drosophila melanogaster, cardamomy chicken

One of the few things I learned in high school  that I remember with vivid clarity is the scientific name for fruit flies: Drosophila melanogaster. I wish I remembered something more glamorous or useful but alas, the formal name for these pestilential, red-eyed, breed-like-rabbits bugs remains perhaps the most exact academic memory I have from A.M. Barbe High. The tragedy of that is another story, but for now, let's just say we're under siege from another outbreak of fly repro in our kitchen. They are such useless creatures, so irritating in every way. In Biology II, I did a study on them in which their food source was cow poop. Ah me; just think about a gallon-size pickled jar full of water and manure just stewing away in a second floor lab of a muggy high school building in southwest Louisiana. They ate as if at a feast, I refilled the poop chunks when their levels dipped precipitously and then I studied these buggers. What about them, I neither know nor can remember. And so we're back to the moral of the story: the moniker, Drosophila melanogaster, is possibly my truest intellectual take-away from four years of ugh.

That and typing.

Typing is infinitely more useful these days than knowing a Latin name for a dumb fly. In fact, maybe Ms. Ezell was on to something when she taught aerobics and typing: one will keep you young and the other will make your every day just a bit more efficient. Food for thought.

I also made a delightfully good and flavorful dinner for T and me tonight: cardamom caramelized onions, crispy rice and cardamom-yogurt marinated and pan-roasted chicken. Seriously satisfying and if there were leftovers they'd be great.