Photos by the angelic Tracie P.

In Austin, Texas, one really needs no particularly apparent reason to throw a party, other than the patent excuse that the weather’s nice and it’s Saturday. Such was the case when a group of folks gathered in the home of Austinite food and wine personality (and all-around nice guy) John Bullington yesterday for a paella party, a series of paelladas, including some very traditional expressions and highly unconventional interpretations, like the one above, including orange slices, purple carrots, Brussels sprouts, and roast chicken, among other ingredients (and omitting saffron for at least one safranophobe). John cooked the paella over an open, pecan-wood fired pit, and at least one observer could not help but admire his collection of paelleras.

Upon noting praise for his paella prowess, John pointed out that paellapans.com is the perfect place to purchase such implements.

A philologist and lover of words at heart, I couldn’t help but note the pleonastic nature of the binomial paella pan, the pan pan, so to speak, a linguistic conundrum akin to that encountered in the La Brea Tar Pits, in other words, the the tar tar pits. Indeed, the lemma paella has become so deeply entrenched in our everyday parlance that it has lost its connection to the etymon patina (patena) and later patella, meaning [open] pan, from the Latin pateo, meaning to open (which also gives us Anglophones patent, meaning open, widespread, unobstructed, clear, evident, obvious).

Okay, so now you know what I sit around and think about on an early, lazy, sleepy Sunday morning as the genteel Tracie P slumbers angelically.

Monday morning promises to deliver some significantly less whimsical wine blogging (stay tuned)… In the meantime, let’s all hope that everyone’s favorite natural wine blogger Saignée can be delivered swiftly and safely back to his lovely better half… He’s stuck somewhere between a volcano and San Francisco. Let’s all wish him buon viaggio…

And buona domenica to the rest of ya’ll…