Daily Happiness

Tue, Jul. 8th, 2025 09:18 pm
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a dentist appointment this morning and got that new cavity taken care of. Thankfully it was a small one and didn't take them long to fix. (Also because it was just a small one, with my insurance it was only $29! The cleaning was way more than that!)

2. Look at that blep!

(no subject)

Tue, Jul. 8th, 2025 08:26 pm
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
In the category of continuing COVID side effects, add the inability to taste strawberries properly.

I realize the berries available locally or in the non-chain market where we shop aren't going to be the ones I used to eat up north, but the ones this year were so acidic and unsweet that I couldn't eat an entire bowl. They were making my stomach turn over. They weren't that way last year, so I can only assume it's another COVID side effect.

I used to eat a quart a day when I grew my own, up north.

This is just disappointing.

[embodiment] some post-surgical notes

Tue, Jul. 8th, 2025 10:44 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Apparently I'm not writing up a detailed version of this, so in brief...

Bodily functions feature heavily. )

sovay: (Rotwang)
[personal profile] sovay
Probably because it has been weeks since I slept more than a couple of hours a night and months since I had what would be medically termed a good night's sleep, I spent at least ten hours last night unconscious enough to dream and it was amazing. Under ideal circumstances I would devote my afternoon to reading on the front steps until the thunderstorms arrive. Under the resentful circumstances of realism I have already devoted considerable of my afternoon to phone calls with doctors and will need to enact capitalism while I have the concentration for it. I may still try to take a walk. I have a sort of pressure headache of movies I managed to watch before I ran completely out of time and would like to talk about even in shallow and unsatisfactory ways. I heard Kaleo's "Way Down We Go" (2015) on WERS and am delighted that the video was shot in the dormant volcano Þríhnúkagígur. I will associate it with earthquake-bound Loki. My brain thought it should dream about nonexistent Alan Garner and what I very much doubt will be the second season of Murderbot (2025–).

[edit] Taking a walk informed me that the sidewalk of the street at the bottom of our street has been spray-painted with a swastika, visible efforts to scrub it out notwithstanding. The sentiment is far from shocking, but the placement is rather literally close to home.

Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger

Tue, Jul. 8th, 2025 10:05 am
rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija


Ellie is a Lipan Apache teenager in a world where magic, vampires, ghosts, and so forth are known to be real. She’s inherited the family gift for raising ghosts, though she only raises animals; human ghosts always come back wrong, and she’s happy with the companionship of her beloved ghost dog Kirby, not to mention her pet ghost trilobite. But when her cousin, who supposedly died in a car crash, returns in a dream to tell her he was murdered, she finds that knowing who killed him isn’t as helpful as one might imagine…

Ellie’s cousin Trevor told her the name of his killer, Abe Allerton from Willowbee, but he didn’t know why or how he was killed. Ellie enlists her best friend, Jay, a cheerleader with just enough fairy blood to give him pointy ears and the ability to make small lights. More importantly, he’s good at research. They learn that Willowbee is in Texas, near the town where Trevor lived with his wife, Lenore, and their baby. Jay brings in help: his older sister’s fiancé, Al, who’s a vampire.
All of them, plus Ellie’s parents and a ghost mammoth belonging to her grandmother, play a part in the effort to solve the mystery of Trevor’s death and bring his murderer to justice. And so, in a sense, will a major character who’s long dead (and not a ghost) but who’s a big presence in Ellie’s life: Six-Grand, her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the last person to have a gift as powerful as Ellie’s… and who vanished forever into the underworld.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mean, come on. GHOST TRILOBITE. GHOST MAMMOTH. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s heartfelt, it has lovely chapter heading illustrations, and it’s got some gorgeous imagery - I particularly loved a scene where the world transforms into an oceanic underworld, and Ellie sees a pod of whales swimming in the sky of a suburban neighborhood.

It's marketed as young adult and Ellie is seventeen, but the book feels younger (and so does Ellie.) I'd have no qualms handing it to an advanced nine-year-old reader, but it also appeals to adult me who misses the time when "urban fantasy" meant "our world, but with ghosts, elves, and so forth."
oursin: Fotherington-Tomas from the Molesworth books saying Hello clouds hello aky (Hello clouds hello sky)
[personal profile] oursin

The following are all in the area of environmental history: enjoy!

Rebecca Beausaert. Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870-1914.

Beausaert’s discussion of the growing popularity of outdoor recreation in the early twentieth century, as opposed to earlier forms of indoor leisure such as book clubs and church gatherings, also highlights the role of women in the rise of environmental activism in towns like Elora. In these communities, grassroots efforts to maintain the local environment and cater to the influx of ecotourism travelers flourished, further illustrating the agency of women in shaping both their social and environmental landscapes.

***

Robert Aquinas McNally. Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples, and the American Wilderness:

McNally’s emphasis on the role of race in Muir’s thinking, and, therefore, on his vision of wilderness preservation, helps readers more clearly see Muir not as wilderness prophet but as a man of his time coming to terms with the consequences of American expansion.

***

B. J. Barickman. From Sea-Bathing to Beach-Going: A Social History of the Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Edited by Kendrik Kraay and Bryan McCann:

The book begins with Rio in the nineteenth century and shows that Cariocas regularly went to bathe in the ocean. The work incorporates an assortment of sources to give a vivid picture of this process. For instance, it was customary for bathers to go before dawn—as early as 3 a.m.—since many in Rio went to bed early in the evening, but also due to colorism within Brazilian society. The dominant white society enjoyed swimming in the ocean but also prized fairer complexions and thus aimed to avoid the sun. Yet, few amenities existed for sea-bathers. The city dumped its sewage and trash into the ocean and provided few lifeguards, which resulted in frequent drownings.
In chapter 2, a personal favorite, Barickman discusses the evolution of sea bathing from a therapeutic practice (thalassotherapy) in the nineteenth century to a leisure activity that provided a space for socialization across gender lines by the 1920s. Locals went to the beach to escape the heat of the summer, rowing emerged as the most popular sport in the region, and, as in other parts of the world such as the United States and the Southern Cone, beach-going became a popular way to make or meet friends. In short, the beach became a public space at all hours of the day, not just before dawn. Moreover, the beach captured the “moral ambiguities” of nineteenth-century norms (51-63). Men and women of all races and classes could be present in public spaces partially nude, to observe others and to be observed, in ways that society did not permit beyond the beach, but this continually frustrated moral reformers.
Chapter 3 centers on the work of Rio’s civic leaders to “civilize” the city in hopes of altering public perception of the city as a “tropical pesthole” (p. 69).

***

David Matless. England’s Green: Nature and Culture Since the 1960s:

The range of sources and topics is impressive, but at times the evidence is noted so briefly and the prose proceeds so quickly that breadth is privileged over depth. For example, the deeper connections between England and global ideas of green (as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund), the influence of colonial experience on conservation events of the 1970s, and the tensions between the various governmental nature management organizations would all have benefited from a little more attention. Yet, even if the reader sometimes wishes for a slower pace to get their thoughts in order, Matless offers enough analysis to build the examples up into a clear and insightful picture. The reader is left with a general appreciation of the central environmental debates of the period and good understanding of how they evolved over time. For scholars, it is a multidimensional study that adds something new and long awaited to British environmental and cultural history. For others, it is a fascinating book filled with interesting stories, cultural context, and many moments of nostalgia.

***

Michael Lobel. Van Gogh and the End of Nature.:

Lobel makes a systematic case for a new way of seeing Van Gogh’s paintings. Carefully introducing readers to a host of environmental conditions that shaped Van Gogh’s lived experience and appear repeatedly in his paintings—factories, railways, mining operations, gaslight, polluted waterways, arsenic, among others—Lobel compellingly invites us to see Van Gogh as an artist consistently grappling with the changing ecological world around him. Color and composition, as two of Van Gogh’s most heralded painterly qualities, appear now through an entirely different perception influenced by a clear environmental consciousness.

***

Ursula Kluwick. Haunting Ecologies: Victorian Conceptions of Water:

The author sets out to consider how Victorians understood water, seen through nineteenth-century fictional and nonfictional writings about the River Thames. In chapter 2 she points out the existence of writing that emphasizes how polluted the Thames was as well as writing that never mentions the pollution, and wonders at their coexistence. The conclusion that the writings don’t relate to any real state of the river is not particularly surprising but points to the author’s overall intent, summarized in the book’s title.

***

Alan Rauch. Sloth:

Rauch views these caricatural depictions—including portrayals of sloths as docile and naive creatures, as seen in the animated film Ice Age (2002)—as potentially detrimental to the species’ well-being. Through his analysis, the author critiques how sloths have been appropriated to fulfill human (emotional, cultural, and economic) needs and how this process misrepresents sloths, leading to harmful stereotypes that diminish their intrinsic value and undermine their agency.

rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
Especially while it's at 75% off in the sale, making it 62p:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/406150/Refunct/

For anyone who might want to sample some easy platforming with a very very low entry threshold.

Chill and rather lovely environment (okay, probably depends on you liking brutalist architecture, but still -- there's a day-night cycle! there's sunshine! the water is gorgeous! the music is gentle!) with no time pressure and no penalties for failing a jump hundreds of times (except that, at worst, you fall in the water and have to swim about and haul yourself out again).

N.B. Most reviews describe this as a half-hour game, and there are achievements for speedrunning it in under 8 minutes or under 4 minutes.

It took me over five hours of playtime to beat it, which should be indicative of the co-ordination and skill levels I'm working with here. And yet it did not at any point feel stressful or humiliating for me. It felt like a pleasant, relaxing environment in which to fail repeatedly and experiment.

It started at a level low enough that I could manage it, and then had a really satisfying difficulty curve. If I was stalling on the next objective, I could still run and parkour round the environment purely for fun (and sometimes ended up working out how to pick off the optional achievements in the process).

Towards the very end, I started to think that the last jumps might just flat-out exceed the limits of what I am currently capable of, and it felt like if that did happen, I would still be able to walk away pretty happily having already got way more than 62p's worth of enjoyment out of it.

Will absolutely be playing it again.
Tags:

R.F. Kuang: Yellowface (Book Review)

Tue, Jul. 8th, 2025 04:08 pm
selenak: (Damages by Agsmith01)
[personal profile] selenak
Very entertaining satiric novel set in and about the publishing industry. Our first person narrator, June (white), is a writer with a debut novel which didn't make a splash and won't even, so her agent tells her, get a paperback edition, in stark contrast to her college friend Athena Liu's (American Chinese) work: Athena has three novels already published, just secured a Netflix deal and celebrates that and finishing the first draft of her newest work with June when she dies an accidental death by pancake. June doesn't just dial 911. She also makes off with Athena's manuscript, about which only she knows, edits, rewrites and publishes it. Presto, success, at last! ! But wait! There's no lack of sharp-eyed foes waiting, social media is truly a jungle, and June might be her own worst enemy....
Very vague spoilers ensue )

The novel has the right kind of length for this story - which is to say, less than 400 pages - so the various buildings up of suspense - will June get away with it being the big, but not the only one - are not drawn out too long, and there's not a gigantic cast of characters. Said characters reminded me of comedy of manners types - very stylized, often types for certain ways of behaviour - fittng the satire format. The only other thing of R. F. Kuang's I'd read before was Poppy War, a fantasy novel of a very different type, so I'm impressed by her range. Otoh, if Poppy War was so grim that I emerged emotionally exhausted and sure I would go through the experience again (while being glad I had done so in the first place), Yellowface felt like a slick writty automaton which you observe once and marvel at its cleverness but don't feel the need to do it again. But I will certainly continue to keep out an eye for this author.

Daily Happiness

Mon, Jul. 7th, 2025 08:24 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I did indeed have a WFH day today and it was pretty chill. Got everything on my to-do list done and had two good web interviews.

2. I'm really enjoying Mario Kart World. And just ten more days until the new Donkey Kong game, which looks like it will be amazing!

3. Molly is demonstrating the proper way to help at the computer.

Cider and some kind of smelling salts

Mon, Jul. 7th, 2025 04:03 pm
sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey)
[personal profile] sovay
In the appendices of Alzina Stone Dale's 1984 edition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne's Busman's Honeymoon (1936), reproduced for the first time from a handwritten sheet by Sayers with an additional scribble from Byrne, I have found perhaps the greatest production note I have read in a playscript in my life:

Warning

The murder contrivance in Act III Scene 2 will not work properly unless it is sufficiently weighted. It is therefore GENUINELY DEADLY.

Producers are earnestly requested to see that the beam, chain & attachments & the clearance above the head of the actor playing CRUTCHLEY are thoroughly tested at every performance
immediately before the beginning of the Scene, in order to avoid a POSSIBLY FATAL ACCIDENT.

How is it that in this our era of infinite meta when See How They Run (2022) was a real film that came out in theaters and not someone's especially clever Yuletide treat no Sayers fan has ever worked this note into a fictional production of Busman's Honeymoon where the blasphemed aspidistra exacted a worse revenge than corroded soot? I don't want to write it, I'm just amazed no one's taken advantage of it. I wouldn't mind knowing either if the 1988 revival with Edward Petherbridge and Emily Richards found a way of reproducing the effect without risking their Crutchley, since Byrne's "Note to Producers" describes the stage trick in technical detail down to the supplier of the globes for the lamp and she still agreed with Sayers—she wanted the warning inserted before the relevant scene in the acting edition—that it could wreck an actor if not set up with belt-and-braces care. Otherwise I am most entertained so far that according to Dale, while the collaboration between the two women was much more mutual than an author and her beta-reader, Byrne characteristically put in the stage business and directions which it seems Sayers was less inclined to write than dialogue. This same edition includes Sayers' solo-penned and previously unpublished Love All (1941) and testifies to the further treasury of the Malden Public Library, whose poetry section when we were directed to it turned out to be a miscellany of anthologies, plays, and biographies shading into what used to be shelved as world literature. I have three more Christies for my mother, another unfamiliar Elizabeth Goudge, another unfamiliar Elleston Trevor, some nonfiction on an angle of women's war work and the Battle of the Atlantic that I actually know nothing about, and the summer play of Christopher Fry's seasonal quartet. I am running on about a fifth of a neuron at this point, but [personal profile] rushthatspeaks bought me ice cream.

July 4 Flood Relief

Mon, Jul. 7th, 2025 11:42 am
marthawells: Atlantis in fog (Atlantis)
[personal profile] marthawells
Kerr County Flood Relief Fund

The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund supports relief and rebuilding efforts after the flood of July 4, 2025. Your generosity helps our neighbors recover.

The Community Foundation - a 501(c)(3) public charity serving the Texas Hill Country - will direct funds to vetted organizations providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance. The Fund will support the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort. All donations are tax-deductible, and you will receive a receipt for your gift.

https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201


And Kerrville Pets Alive! is taking donations for rescue and fostering lost pets.

https://kerrvillepetsalive.com/?link_id=3&can_id=588b5a597b5d30fd7e36b213e5ba6987&source=email-freedom-is-fought-for-not-given&email_referrer=email_2803907&email_subject=how-you-can-help-texas-flood-victims&&
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Reading this, I'm very much reminded of certain sff stories I read - late 60s/early 70s - that were either directly influenced by this research or via the population panic works that riffed off it: review of Lee Alan Dugatkin. Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity. Does this ping reminiscence in anyone else? (I was reading a lot of v misc anthologies etc in early 70s before I found my real niche tastes).

***

What Is a 'Lavender Marriage,' Exactly? Feel that there is a longer and (guess what) Moar Complicated history around using conventional marriage to protect less conventional unions, but maybe it's a start towards interrogating the complexities of 'conventional marriages'.

***

Sardonic larffter at this: 'I'm being paid to fix issues caused by AI'

***

Not quite what one anticipates from a clergyman's wife? The undercover vagrant who exposed workhouse life - a bit beyond vicarage/manse teaparties, Mothers' Meetings or running the Sunday School!

***

Changes in wedding practice: The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure: Wedding Days:

After the Reformation, Anglican canon law required that marriages took place in the morning, during divine service, in the parish of either the bride or groom – three features which typically elude modern weddings, which usually take place in the afternoon, in a special ceremony, and are far less likely (even if a religious wedding) to take place within a couple’s home parish. The centrality of divine service is the starkest difference, as it ensured that, unlike in modern weddings, marriages were public events at which the whole congregation ought to be present. They might even have occurred alongside other weddings or church ceremonies such as baptisms. A study of London weddings in the late 1570s found that, unsurprisingly given the canonical requirements, Sunday was the most popular days for weddings, accounting for c.44 percent of marriages taking place in Southwark and Bishopsgate. (By contrast, Sunday accounted for just 5.9 percent of marriages in 2022).

***

Dorothy Allison Authored a New Kind of Queer Lit (or brought new perspectives into the literature of class?) I should dig out my copies of her works.

sovay: (Silver: against blue)
[personal profile] sovay
From an apparent radiant in Arcturus, which made it either a straggler of the Boötids or just passing through, just as [personal profile] spatch and I were getting up from our summer-hazed star-watching under the three-quarter moon, we saw a slow fireball of a meteor streak south and westward. All we had seen until then were the familiar blinks of planes and what we less happily took for satellites crawling steadily across the body of Ursa Major. We lay on the granite blocks that were installed six or seven years ago in commemoration of the eighteenth-century farm that became first a field of victory gardens and then the public park where I would spend my childhood sledding in winter and setting off model rockets in summer. The jeweled string of the Boston skyline has built itself considerably up since then. I used to dream of finding a meteorite in a field. It seemed statistically not impossible.

Daily Happiness

Sun, Jul. 6th, 2025 08:20 pm
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We walked down to our favorite deli this morning to pick up sandwiches for lunch. The UV index was pretty high today so even though we tried to stick to the shade as much as possible, it was still exhausting being out in that level of sun, but the temperature was nice and there was a good breeze every now and then and it was a very nice walk overall.

2. Back to work tomorrow. :( Thinking of maybe making it a WFH day, though. So far the only meeting-like things I have are two web interviews, so that can be done from home, and I've got a lot of desk work and email to catch up on from the three-day weekend. So if no one comes up with anything urgent that needs me in person I think I'll stay home.

3. Tuxie is so handsome!

coffeeandink: (utena (fairytale ending))
[personal profile] coffeeandink

Ghost Quartet is a band: Dave Malloy on keyboard, Brent Arnold on cello, Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford on various instruments, and everyone providing vocals. Ghost Quartet is a song cycle, a concert album performed semi-staged, a mash-up of "Snow White, Rose Red," The One Thousand and One Nights, the Noh play Matsukaze, "Cruel Sister", "The Fall of the House of Usher", the front page photo of a fatal train accident, and a grab bag of Twilight Zone episodes. The ghost of Thelonious Monk is sometimes invoked, but does not appear; whisky is often invoked, and, if you see the show live, will most certainly appear. "I'm confused/And more than a little frightened," says (one incarnation of) the (more-or-less) protagonist. "It's okay, my dear," her sister/lover/mother/daughter/deuteragonist reassures her, "this is a circular story."

Once upon a time two sisters fell in love with an astronomer who lived in a tree. He seduced Rose, the younger, then stole her work ("for a prestigious astronomy journal"), and then abandoned her for her sister, Pearl. Rose asked a bear to maul the astronomer in revenge, but the bear first demanded a pot of honey, a piece of stardust, a secret baptism, and a photograph of a ghost. (The music is a direct quote of the list of spell ingredients from Into the Woods.) Rose searches for all these ingredients through multiple lifetimes; and that's the plot.

Except it is much less comprehensible than that. The songs are nested in each other like Scheherazade's stories; you can follow from one song to the next, but retracing the connections in memory is impossible; this is less a narrative than a maze. Surreal timelines crash together in atonal cacophany; one moment Dave Malloy, or a nameless astronomer played by Dave Malloy, or Dave Malloy playing Dave Malloy is trying to solve epistemology and another moment the entire house of Usher, or all the actors, are telling you about their favorite whiskies. The climax is a subway accident we have glimpsed before, in aftermath, in full, circling around it, a trauma and a terror that cannot be faced directly; the crash is the fall of a house is the failure to act is the failure to look is the failure to look away.

There are two recordings available. Ghost Quartet, recorded in a studio, has cleaner audio, but Live at the McKitterick includes more of the interstitial scenes and feels more like the performance.

In Greenwood Cemetery, there were three slightly raised stages separated by batches of folding chairs, one for Dave Malloy, one for Brent Arnold, and one for Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford, with a flat patch of grass in the center across which they sang to each other, and into which they sometimes moved; you could sit in the chairs, or on cushions in front of the first row, or with cheaper tickets you could sit in the grass on the very low hills above the staging area, among the monuments and gravestones, and, presumably, among more ghosts. The show started a little before sunset; I saw a hawk fly over, and I could hear birds singing along when the humans sang a capella. It was in the middle of Brooklyn, so even after dark I couldn't see stars; but fireflies sparked everywhere.

vital functions

Sun, Jul. 6th, 2025 10:20 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Burch + Penman, McMillan-Webster, Wells, Davies + Jones, Hwang Carrant, Keynes + Aidley )

... all of which adds up to more pain-related reading than I felt like I'd managed this week, huh, I thought I had tripped and fallen entirely into Murderbot and EatYourBooks indexing but apparently not!

Writing. A response to the EHRC consultation, which was... several thousand words. A very, very brief response to the Pathways to Work green paper consultation ("I am too disabled to manage doing this properly. These charities are speaking for me. Please fucking listen to them.")

Watching. The first half of Fantasia, with the toddler, with my hand held through all the scary bits to reassure me, apart from the bit that was SO scary that we had to get up and distract ourselves until it was over. Which had absolutely not been flagged as one of the scary bits, and which was the deep-sea-origins-of-life section.

(I had not watched the film since primary school, I don't think? And between then and now I have played a bunch of orchestral music, for most of that time on the violin but latterly as a French horn. It turns out that when I'm not distracted by playing a completely different part, I have incredibly intense sense-memories of several of the pizzicato sections early on...)

Another Murderbot episode. (I continue Indignant.)

Another Farscape episode, this one Taking the Stone (S02E03), which I think was firmly back to early season one levels of incoherence.

Tragically we have not managed The Old Guard 2, because I have had too much migraine and there have been SO many things Happening, but... maybe this week???

Cooking. Several new things! Four from East, leaving me at 41/120 recipes still to make (two of which are "probably won't happen" for reasons of "grapefruit" and "matcha"); of those this week's meal plan includes two (aubergine larb with sticky rice; Vietnamese coconut pancakes). I appreciated the reminder that fried new potatoes are tasty, and A is notably into the chargrilled summer vegetable salad, though I was not a fan of the faff and think I prefer smitten kitchen's charred corn succotash.

Approximately zero faff was salt lassi, and A is now aware that this Special Treat is available; low faff was a cherry clafoutis with fruit from the plot, which I overcooked a bit but, hey, I do in fact like caramelised crunchy bits.

Eating. FIRST BATCH OF DESSERT GOOSEBERRIES ARE RIPE. A tiny handful of Sugar Magnolia sugarsnap peas. Misc jostaberries. RASPBERRIES. And also supermarket strawberries, because we have hit the stage of the summer where they're down to £5 per kilo :)

Growing. I have been doing small bits of harvest and failing to get support structures in for the beans and tomatoes. The outdoor tomatoes have tomatoes on. The squash are coming along; I put more squash seeds in, on the grounds that they're super late but might still do anything; I have not managed to kill all of the chillis; the pepper has flowers.

Harvested lots of dried peas for sowing next year. Am attempting to develop Plans that might actually let me have a full bed of broad beans and a full bed of peas in the interests of getting Reasonable Quantities of them. If the council doesn't tell me I'm not allowed the abandoned plot next door--

I could get so much done if I could coax myself out there for even an hour a day but the agoraphobia is saying No, annoyingly. Gonna try to get A to chase me out more this week.

Culinary

Sun, Jul. 6th, 2025 07:32 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

No bread made for reasons.

Friday night supper: I was intending having penne with bottled sliced artichoke hearts, except did not appear to have these in store cupboard: did a sauce of blender-whizzed Peppadew Roasted Red Peppers in brine instead.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 50:50% strong white/white spelt flour, turned out nicely.

Today's lunch: diced leg of lamb casseroled in white wine with thyme with sweet potato topping, served with buttered spinach and what really were quite tiddly juvenile baby leeks vinaigrette in a dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar, and wholegrain mustard.

umadoshi: (berries in bowls (roxicons))
[personal profile] umadoshi
[personal profile] scruloose and I did make it to the little farmers' market down the road for its opening day of the season, and even managed to get there earlier than later! (I think it's open from 8 to 1, and we probably were there...a bit after 10?)

We made it home with two quarts of strawberries and one of cherries, new potatoes, a dozen eggs, and boneless chicken thighs, plus a bee balm for the garden, which we quickly tucked into a fairly open space in our little garden bed yesterday evening. (What was there before? UNKNOWN. Will I manage to reconstruct it from old posts or something? Also unknown. But hey, a plant!)

Reading: I finished Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi), which was fantastic. On the fiction front, I followed it up with Tamsyn Muir's novella Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (not really my thing--I continue to rarely bond with novellas, I guess--but interestingly done), Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country (marvelous), and Sofia Samatar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (again, didn't really bond emotionally, but it executed what it was doing beautifully).

Non-fiction: David Chang and Priya Krishna's Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes (And Love My Microwave), which is, like...primarily actually a David Chang book that Priya Krishna did a ton of heavy-lifting assisting on (which may be very normal for co-written cookbooks, but in this case she was interjecting and clarifying in her own voice as well as doing a fair bit of the actual writing in his voice, and it was all very transparent that it was being done that way, but also a little odd to read). I think I bought this as a sale ebook before hearing that Chang (the Momofuku guy) is something of an asshole, but then when I was reading it, it felt really promising as a book that might be genuinely useful for me (and even by cookbook standards, its ebook is terribly formatted), so I was pleasantly surprised to readily find a used half-price hard copy available on line, which is winging its way to me now. I've also made sure that Krishna's own Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family is now on the wishlist where I keep an eye out for ebook sales.

And now I'm reading An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler, which is a cookbook mostly in the form of essays on cooking as a thoughtful/mindful practice.

Watching: One more Murderbot episode to go in this season, and oh, I hope we get a second one. I'm going to miss this little show.

We finished watching the second season of Kingdom (the historical zombies k-drama), which I found very satisfying. The ending very much sets up a subsequent season, and there's a movie out that fills in the backstory of the person/people we glimpse at the end of season 2 who would presumably be extremely central in any further season, but I don't think we feel inspired to watch said backstory movie unless a third season of the show is ever announced and it becomes relevant in that way.

Profile

oyceter: teruterubouzu default icon (Default)
Oyceter

March 2021

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910 111213
1415 1617181920
21222324252627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags