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ursamajorGrateful for every update I see from Minnesota friends right now, affirming that they're ... okay isn't the right word; infuriated and joining with their neighbors and friends to stand up against evil in whatever ways they can is probably more accurate. Marching, recording, feeding people, sharing information. The rest of us, doing what we can from the outside, preparing for ourselves to be next. Sending love to you all.
And once that's done, I turn back to cooking.
Smitten Kitchen's just-published simple crispy pan pizza (tasty AF, but it stuck to the bottom of our skillet and fell apart coming out of the pan despite half an hour at 450F, so I suspect we need to reseason said pan); warm silken tofu with a chili crisp-peanut sauce (like a lazy hot riff on hiyayakko or liángbàn dòufu, or a less soupy soondubu jjigae); the simplest golden beet borscht, spiked with lemons off the tree; butter swim biscuits and pan-fried chicken thighs; braised bok choy blended into soup when I got bored of leftover bok choy for the third night in a row. I skipped last week's scheduled Pasta Friday recipe (Candele with All-Day Bolognese) because we still had plenty of leftovers, but I'll get back on track tonight with Pappardelle with Roasted Pork and Mushrooms. The pork part is a maybe; we do have chicken thighs on hand that can also be slow cooked? But I still have to go to the grocery store anyway, as we're out of eggs, so we'll see. (Update: pork shoulder at the grocery store was $11.49/lb and they were out of pork butt so using chicken thighs on hand it is!)
The one thing I haven't done: Meta reminded me that it'd been 11 years since the time I made a gateau de crepes for cookbook club, and it slid apart in transit from Alewife to the South End, alas. Dunno that I'm ready to repeat that cooking trauma and tedium!
Books, well, in the past week I've ripped through Courtney Milan's The Duke Who Didn't, Ali Hazelwood's Deep End (my introduction to her was my proper introduction to shifter stories in the first place, heh, thanks romance book club!), T. Kingfisher's A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking. I'm such a book Luddite, but I finally gave in and put Libby on my phone, and the nights I read from that instead of doomscrolling social media were nights I slept way better, blue light avoidance notwithstanding, so this habit may stick. Especially because I just now lucked into a "skip the line" copy of Virginia Evans' The Correspondent (I do love a good epistolary novel).
* By "proper introduction," I mean with an actual guide to vocabulary and tropes, instead of just fumbling my way through a fic going "Alpha? Omega? Wait, what's with this particular dynamic?"
That being said, I'm definitely reading way more romance these days than the dystopic scifi that used to be my bread and butter. The real world is Hunger Games enough. :P
Speaking of scifi, we dropped Paramount after the latest season of Strange New Worlds, partly because of CBS's actions, partly because too many subscriptions and we're trying to cut back, partly because Amazing Race was yet another season of known-quantity reality stars instead of reasonably-believable normies. But we did get to watch the first episode of Starfleet Academy because they made it available on YouTube. And yeah, while I agree the preview made it look like "Star Trek: Dawson's Creek," ashyounpark put it, I really needed to see a Starfleet captain stand up for justice; I needed to see people reaching across cultures from different backgrounds. I worry that the current environment is going to shift broadcastable storylines by next season; S1 was filmed mostly before Biden left office, while S2 is filming now, after CBS bent the knee. But I still found it promising enough to want to watch more; I just don't know how to watch it in a way that balances the scales for me.
And once that's done, I turn back to cooking.
Smitten Kitchen's just-published simple crispy pan pizza (tasty AF, but it stuck to the bottom of our skillet and fell apart coming out of the pan despite half an hour at 450F, so I suspect we need to reseason said pan); warm silken tofu with a chili crisp-peanut sauce (like a lazy hot riff on hiyayakko or liángbàn dòufu, or a less soupy soondubu jjigae); the simplest golden beet borscht, spiked with lemons off the tree; butter swim biscuits and pan-fried chicken thighs; braised bok choy blended into soup when I got bored of leftover bok choy for the third night in a row. I skipped last week's scheduled Pasta Friday recipe (Candele with All-Day Bolognese) because we still had plenty of leftovers, but I'll get back on track tonight with Pappardelle with Roasted Pork and Mushrooms. The pork part is a maybe; we do have chicken thighs on hand that can also be slow cooked? But I still have to go to the grocery store anyway, as we're out of eggs, so we'll see. (Update: pork shoulder at the grocery store was $11.49/lb and they were out of pork butt so using chicken thighs on hand it is!)
The one thing I haven't done: Meta reminded me that it'd been 11 years since the time I made a gateau de crepes for cookbook club, and it slid apart in transit from Alewife to the South End, alas. Dunno that I'm ready to repeat that cooking trauma and tedium!
Books, well, in the past week I've ripped through Courtney Milan's The Duke Who Didn't, Ali Hazelwood's Deep End (my introduction to her was my proper introduction to shifter stories in the first place, heh, thanks romance book club!), T. Kingfisher's A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking. I'm such a book Luddite, but I finally gave in and put Libby on my phone, and the nights I read from that instead of doomscrolling social media were nights I slept way better, blue light avoidance notwithstanding, so this habit may stick. Especially because I just now lucked into a "skip the line" copy of Virginia Evans' The Correspondent (I do love a good epistolary novel).
* By "proper introduction," I mean with an actual guide to vocabulary and tropes, instead of just fumbling my way through a fic going "Alpha? Omega? Wait, what's with this particular dynamic?"
That being said, I'm definitely reading way more romance these days than the dystopic scifi that used to be my bread and butter. The real world is Hunger Games enough. :P
Speaking of scifi, we dropped Paramount after the latest season of Strange New Worlds, partly because of CBS's actions, partly because too many subscriptions and we're trying to cut back, partly because Amazing Race was yet another season of known-quantity reality stars instead of reasonably-believable normies. But we did get to watch the first episode of Starfleet Academy because they made it available on YouTube. And yeah, while I agree the preview made it look like "Star Trek: Dawson's Creek," as
hyounpark put it, I really needed to see a Starfleet captain stand up for justice; I needed to see people reaching across cultures from different backgrounds. I worry that the current environment is going to shift broadcastable storylines by next season; S1 was filmed mostly before Biden left office, while S2 is filming now, after CBS bent the knee. But I still found it promising enough to want to watch more; I just don't know how to watch it in a way that balances the scales for me.
