Jiggles

I dig morning runs, but I can only manage to wake up in time once a week at best and I'm comfortable with that. But now, after being on vacation in a different time zone for the last few weeks, my body clock is sufficiently re-wound to allow - nay, force - me to run at a very early hour. So, being awake and soon out of bed, I get on with the chore of getting ready to run. While doing so, I can't stop thinking about the staggering amounts of cheese and beer, etc, I consumed in Europe, shudder, consider the resulting jiggles, grit teeth, and tie the running shoes a little tighter. All of this emotional and physical self-abuse to run in the rain. As this grey scenario illustrates, my mornings have been torturous.

Some items that jiggle naturally and beautifully are shiny tea jellies.

















The exact nature of these entities is a mystery to me, although I have grasped that they contain tea and possess a, uh, jelly-like consistency. Do jelly fish have a similar texture? I ask because I will never actually eat an animal that seems more like a thorny rose bush than a delicious sea morsel. (The vulnerability of the scallop is much more endearing, isn't it? They just lie on the plate, relieving you of any worry of retributive stinging.) Anyway, I was given these two jiggly lumps by my server at the Affinity veggie resto in Hamilton as the final course of my Texas-sized meal. My dinner mostly consisted of burdock root, which was new to me and as mysterious as I would later find the jiggling lumps. Breaded, deep-fried, swathed in a thick sauce and dotted with sesame seeds, the taste of the burdock root was overpowered, but who cares, that dish hit the spot.