I learned about Mimouna yesterday, a festival celebrated in Morocco, Israel, France, Canada, and wherever Maghrebi Jews live. It takes place at sundown on the last day of Passover and celebrates the return to eating the usual diet, as opposed to kosher-for-Passover foods. One of the customs is to eat mofletta, a thin crepe made from water, flour and oil. The dough is rolled out thinly and cooked in a greased frying pan until it is yellow-brown in color. It is usually eaten warm, spread with butter, honey, syrup, jam, walnut, pistachios or dried fruits.
OMG, Georgie! — look who’s here!! ANA! A day early! Readers, our favorite guest, ANA de Armas is in today’s puzzle at 53A (Actress de Armas) a day ahead of our 500th-post celebration. We have a special announcement to make about Ana, but let’s wait until tomorrow for that. Settle in upstairs, Babe — we won’t tell Phil you’re here so he won’t bother you. Chinese okay for dinner? George is picking up. Great — see you later!
Did you know that Black Japan varnish is a thing? As LMS used to say: I was today years old when I learned about it. It’s a dark varnish/stain. So at 1D, “Covers with a glossy black varnish” was JAPANS.
Aside from our ANA, we were also visited by KIRI Te Kanawa, SERENA Williams, HEIDI, and fantasy writer TAMORA Pierce. Hi Ladies! George — Frescas all around please!
Here’s Tamora today! Bet you never heard that one before, amirite?
And Kiri — looking pretty hot, KTK! No one has to know you just turned 80! Kinahora!
The puzzle was all about flowers today. Flowers entirely surrounded the edges of the grid, mostly clued non-florally. JASMINE was the Disney princess, and DAISY was out of The Great Gatsby. The cleverest clue was for VIOLET: “Rainbow’s end,” purple being the last color of the rainbow.
The only one that was new to me was FREESIA, “Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos.” Here’s what they look like:
And thus concludes Owl Chatter Post #499. Tomorrow we’ll be closed for a staff party for Post #500 — we’ll just be stopping in briefly to say hi and to share some nice news. Good night, everybody!
The Wellington Files 