scores.

- Black beans, finally, from a pan-hispanic grocery in Anderlecht. (You are surely asking yourself at this point, "do they have all the good stuff there?" The answer is "pretty much.") Although in dried form rather than canned, they were very tasty when cooked up with some cumin and garlic and bay leaves. (Naturally I spotted them a couple days later at a much closer grocery store serving the immigrant community.)

- Jack's favorite green-scrubby things, from a kitchen supply store in the same neighborhood as the above. So what if I had to buy a gross of them? Individually they were very cheap, and we can give them as gifts to visitors.

- Candied chickpeas, apparently a Turkish treat, which look for all the world like tiny brains. If only they came in pinkish-grey. I can't decide if I like them or not, but nonetheless I can't stop eating them.

- A great pizza shop nearby, where they make the rectangular kind, cut your selected slice with scissors, and charge by the kilo. Fantastic array of toppings, and greasy but divine crust.

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Jack's off to the US for work, so I'll spend the next week trying to keep my one-sided conversations at a level that will go unreported. Then it's off to Italy to meet A. (and those people he brings with him wherever he goes, C. and M.), and then on to Naples, arriving in the middle of their pizza fest, and the Amalfi Coast for some hot sun to tide us over until next June.