Further kitchen experiments

I was feeling incredibly lazy and inactive yesterday while cleaning the rat cage, which basically meant that every step of the process was interrupted by about half an hour of petting the rats, scritching the rats, squishing the rats' tummies, and having staring contests with the rats (I usually win, as the rats get very easily bored by staring at my nose). Normally every step of the process is only interrupted by about ten minutes of above activities, as I can usually tear myself away from the cute fuzziness and get off the sofa through force of will.

Anyway, so I wasn't going to cook, but then I got to washing dishes and standing around in the kitchen, and for some reason, washing dishes seems to make me want to cook. I never want to do it at first, but just swishing the sponge around in hot water is actually quite relaxing.

I made some tiramisu, except with pound cake instead of ladyfingers, because I couldn't find any ladyfingers in Safeway. I don't know how it is yet; it's still refrigerating. Last time my sister made it with pound cake, it took longer to set. I think I may have also put too much coffee in, so I hope it's not too soggy.

Also, it was my first time beating egg whites into foam! So cool! I think I nearly overbeat them, though... they were getting a bit shiny by the time I stopped, and when I poured them into the mascarpone they seemed just a bit lumpy. Oh well. I also folded for the first time and didn't ruin anything! (I think)

Folding is fun. I think this means I should make souffle. Perhaps I am overambitious.

And then, since I was cooking already, I decided to go ahead and cook my dried black beans. Black beans are very cute and make a nice noise when I run my finger through them. I followed heres_luck's instructions, though I wasn't quite sure what a blemished bean looked like, so I mostly just tossed aside anything too wrinkled and anything split. Dumped them in the pot around ten and proceeded to make the entire apartment smell like beans, which is actually not as bad as it sounds.

Also, black beans turn the water purple! Hee!

Then they were actually done cooking much sooner than I anticipated! I'd been thinking that I'd just refrigerate them and make soup the next day, but since they were finished in about half an hour (I only cooked about a cup and a half because my pot wasn't big enough), I decided to venture forth and continue with the soup!

( Recipe and modifications )

Donoghue, Emma - Life Mask

Life Mask follows the lives of the Edward Stanley-Smith, twelfth Earl of Derby; Eliza Farren, Queen of Comedy of the London stage; and Anne Damer, a widowed sculptor, through 1787-1797. There are political upheavals and personal scandals, friendships are made and broken. At the start of the book, Derby is courting Eliza, who refuses to actually become his mistress, despite being an actress. He introduces Eliza to his old friend Anne, and then the book sort of goes from there.

It's hard to give a decent plot summary of this book. There doesn't seem to be a driving narrative force, but all the same, it's not a boring book. It's somewhat slow in parts, but only because Donoghue takes the time and effort to establish all the details of the world Eliza, Anne and Derby live in, and I loved having that level of detail, especially after reading so many romances set in a similar time period.

I very much like that while the personal is the central focus of the book, it also touches on the characters' political ideologies, with discussions of art and literature and all that. The characters feel real because of this; Donoghue's research ensures that I believe that these people have lives that extend before and after the book. I'm sure it also helped that almost everyone in the book is a historical personage, but all the same, I think the book is so good because Donoghue doesn't just capture aspects of the characters, but rather, their lives.

I also liked that while some of the major plot points involve rumors of lesbianism (or "Sapphism" in the book), the focus really is on female friendships. I like that they include exchanges of jewelry and much intimacy, I loved the letter exchanges. All of it rang true to the period, though it's rather useless of me to say that since I really don't know much about the period at all. But it did remind me a great deal of the close friendships between women during the Victorian era.

I also loved that there were snippets from the gossip rags and sundry, that there was the consistent backdrop of political events like the American Revolution and the French Revolution. I loved that while Anne and Derby are liberals, their political views are very much colored by their stations in life and their society; they don't read anything like a modern liberal would. I loved the notes on fashion, on raised waistlines and the new Grecian style becoming more popular.

(also, I had a lot of fun googling images of Eliza and Derby and actually being able to see images of the very same satirical cartoons that Donoghue writes about)

All in all, totally worth it, despite the slow start. I'd even argue that the slow start is necessary because one of the strengths of the book is how all the little details accrete to form a portrait of people and a specific world. I feel like I've been immersed in an entire world and now have to drag myself back to the twenty-first century. Must pick up Slammerkin now.

(no subject)

And because I am bored... a poll! Vote on what books I should bring to Taiwan!

Books have been selected because they are books that I will probably not end up reading for a while but still want to read. They also have to be books that I wouldn't necessarily mind leaving behind in Taiwan, and they have to be books that don't weigh two tons, just in case I don't finish them at home and have to lug back with me. And they have to be relatively entertaining so I can concentrate on them in the airplane.

Trip!book selection is indeed a weighty and serious matter.

[Poll #654630]