On Sunday, we drove over to our favorite Vietnamese place where we both ordered a bahn mi. My dear other half was first introduced to Vietnamese food by a colleague when he first moved to Virginia to start his new job in 1990 (navy career first, then this civilian job here and now retired from his last job for many years). Pho soup was the first dish. Our son and I arrived several months later. We delayed our arrival so that he could finish his school year. These little snippets of information are probably repeats, so apologies if you remember them from before. When we arrived, dear other half introduced us to Pho Soup soon after. Years later while commuting back and forth from Washington DC every day, he got super hungry half-way home. He saw this place and we have been going to it off and on ever since.
It is the best one we have ever had and even though we don't get it that often, as it's quite a trek to get there, we don't go anywhere else for this particular sandwich. Below you will see an old photo just to show you what it looks like. (We had a chuckle later on the same day of our latest trip. This same bahn mi photo popped up on his computer. It said 'here is where you were exactly one year ago', and just by coincidence, here we were again.)
It is a meatball sandwich made out of pork, nothing fancy to look at but take my word for it, it is a taste sensation. Nothing like the Italian meatball because of the seasonings. Those strips of veggies, carrots, cucumber, daikon radish and cilantro (maybe not the cilantro) are slightly pickled. There are also slices of hot pepper, sometimes mild, sometimes not so much. We also always enjoy our car picnic in the shop’s parking lot. It is our special treat. Moving on!
We have the loan of a truck for a little while thanks to family, and they told us we could use it as much as we liked. Very grateful as we are downsizing and have so many things to take to places where they might make good use of what we no longer use or need. Things that are beyond use, we will be taking to our local refuse center. (We started this process quite a while ago but are now able to gather momentum thanks to the truck.)
In the meantime, I thought I would introduce you to the ducky family. Not real duckies of course, just the ones on the dashboard. I didn't know this before and those of you who have jeeps probably do, but when you are out and about, you might come back and find a yellow rubber duck resting on the hood. The family has accumulated quite a collection, as you will see in these photos, and no doubt they have given their fair share.
Shells also but those are a separate collection.
So, for the next week plus, we have adopted 11 rubber duckies!
Welcome to our family duckies. We will take good care of you!
This is the day we went to the garden center so I will share more of those photos soon.
I have my eye on a Dogwood tree, but we are still trying to figure out what would thrive in the spot we want to put it in. It remains to be seen what type of tree will end up there.
That's all for today! Thanks for sticking with me to the end of my ramble. Happy First Day of May to you all, and have a wonderful month!
