Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Misc. comments 66: ( terminology, the river Thames, recipes and ingredients, family trees, classifying fruit, covid precautions, learning math, subscription prices, reasons for blogging )
( covid vaccination and masking )

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minoanmiss was talking about kids at the place she works trying to get out of math class. amaebi talked about her son's math classes, and I wrote:

Reading this comment, I think part of why I came out of high school still liking math may be the teachers, and another part may be the slightly odd curriculum they were using. It was the "experimental" math track per my high school, and "unified" according to the university that promoted it; we got a lot of the standard material, up to calculus, but also propositional logic (in eighth grade), Cartesian geometry (instead of Euclidean), and combinatorics. The school also had a "regular" math sequence, and students who found experimental too difficult (or, I would guess, whose parents thought it was too weird) could move into those classes, which also led to calculus).

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In response to brithistorian wondering about weird magazine prescription costs:

My guess, beyond late stage capitalism being weird, is that they're somehow still selling advertising to companies based on the number of people who are reading, or at least getting, the print edition.

If so, it benefits them to be sending out more paper copies, even to people who read the digital version and will throw the paper magazines away without opening them. It sounds like the prices of daily newspapers increased when they were selling fewer ads. What I paid at the newsstand in the morning was about enough to cover the paper and printing costs, and the reporters' and editors' salaries, the fees for syndicated comics and columnists, and any profits all were paid for by advertising.

It's not quite "if you aren't the customer, you're the product," but it's a little bit in that direction. At one point, my daily English-language newspaper options in New York included several that cost about 50 cents, plus two free papers given out at subway and railroad station entrances, and the Wall Street Journal and Women's Wear Daily.

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finch was talking about "why do I blog anyway?" and I said:

Part of why I post here is for my own later reference, which includes both things I hope will be interesting to others, and minutiae of stuff like starting on new meds. I made a bunch of posts early in the pandemic because I could feel time just slipping away, then.

My posts here are also about talking to people, which is sometimes conversation and sometimes "here is information I think you might find useful.".

There's a pinned post at the top of my Dreamwidth account page, which says this is [partly] an online substitute for a paper journal, and also invites new readers to introduce themselves.

I cooked the Smitten Kitchen tofu and squash with ginger for supper tonight.cattitude and I both liked it, and also noted things we could do differently--this is a thing he does with new recipes, especially when he did the cooking.

I liked this dish when adrian_turtle cooked it, but she did most of the work that time, so I wasn't sure of timing. Also, the squash we had was about half the size the recipe calls for, and I reduced the tofu accordingly. In retrospect, I should have used more tofu (say, 3/4 of the package instead of half) and/or made less of the marinade. Also, the recipe calls for a one-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated*; I think I grated about half an inch, and this wasn't enough.

I didn't toast the sesame seeds, because I didn't want things to feel rushed. I should probably either toast them, or leave them out altogether.

I'm thinking of buying a package of peeled and seeded butternut squash next time, if I'm sure I'll cook this within a few days.

*I didn't bother peeling it, just grabbed the bag of frozen ginger, cut off an end, and started grating.

Tonight's dinner was lamb patties, with rice and sauteed scallions and bell pepper. Earlier in the day, it occurred to me that I could skip the cooked vegetables and just have lamb, rice, and a half sour pickle. When it came time to cook, I decided it would be mentally easier to make something I've done dozens of times, even though it's more actual work, than to vary the menu. So, that was tasty, and we had different vegetables for lunch and for dinner, which feels like an accomplishment this time of year.

(Posting this more as "oh, that's how my brain works" than because the food was new or noteworthy.)

Tonight's dinner was a shrimp thing I made up, from what we had in the house and something vaguely in the shape of a shrimp curry recipe I used to make fairly often.

I started with a diced onion, some minced ginger root, and strips of red bell pepper. First, I started cooking rice.

Then, I sauteed the onion in canola oil, with a fairly low light, and sprinkled on a little cumin. After several minutes (sorry, this is more notes to myself than a recipe) I added the bell pepper and the ginger--and some more oil, because the pan seemed dry.

When the vegetables and rice seemed ready, I added some chicken broth, and raised the heat until the broth started to simmer. Then I added the peeled shrimp (medium size, 41-50 shrimps/pound) and some lemon juice. Cooked until the shrimps were properly pink, and served it over rice, doing my best to get all the bits of ginger and onion, but not all the liquid.

It needed salt, and more lemon juice.

I will probably do this again, and use more spices and maybe herbs. I thought about garam masala, and this time I decided to just use cumin, because it goes well with onion and I am fonder of cardamom than cattitude is. Maybe don't put any lemon juice in while it's still cooking, but at the very last minute or at the table.

Garlic (fresh or powdered) would be good, I think. [ETA: try this with scallions, as suggested in my comment below to readerjane. Also, maybe try carrots, sliced thin, green beans, or snow peas along with or instead of the pepper.]

cattitude, adrian_turtle, and I had our usual cozy Thanksgiving dinner: roast turkey, a big pan of roast vegetables, a rice-based stuffing, cranberry sauce, and then apple crisp for dessert.

Traditionally, we make a cranberry-orange relish. This year, I got out the cranberries and oranges on Wednesday afternoon, discovered that the food processor had died, and consulted Adrian. She had a food processor and cranberries, but no oranges, so I decided to try a cooked cranberry sauce. What I came up with was edible but boring; she added orange marmalade, orange juice, and more sugar, and it was good. I had yogurt with cranberry sauce for breakfast this morning.

Wegman's came through [via instacart] with a fresh twelve-pound turkey, a reasonable size for three people, but failed miserably in selling us a very dubious bag of apples. So the crisp was a mixture of fruit and all the random apples we hadn't eaten in the last couple of months, including a Roxbury russet from the farmers market.

The crisp was fine, but we are now completely out of apples, and after this Instacart failure I think I'll go over to WhatsGood and get another quarter-peck of Macouns, despite the delivery fee, and think about what else to get. Smoked fish for certain. This really doesn't seem like the time to go to the supermarket so we can select our own produce, given the recent Covid-19 numbers and likely effect of Thanksgiving.

We have plenty of leftover turkey and cranberry sauce, some roast vegetables, and about one serving each of crisp.

Rice with scallions: I cut up three scallions and melted a little butter in a small frying pan. I cooked the white bits of the scallions over a low heat, and set them aside.

I cooked white basmati rice as I usually do--put the rice and water into a pot, bringing it to a boil, lowering the heat and cooking until it's done. I stirred the buttery scallions into the rice after turning the light down, and waited a few minutes before starting to cook some chicken sausages in the pan I'd used for the scallions. Partway through the cooking, I added some of Penzey's "sunny Paris" seasoning, which includes purple shallots, thyme, and tarragon.

I cut up some of the green ends of the scallions, thinking I might use them as a garnish for the rice, but neither pf us wanted them.

The scallions are from the farmers market. We do have some snallots and onions, but cutting those up makes my eyes water: cattitude commented that it would also have been a lot of onion for that amount of rice. The frozen chopped onion works well in soup and such, but not for sauteeing, because there's too much water.

So far today, I have

• exchanged email with a professor who is going to be my next proofreading client


• sent my pilaf recipe to someone who asked for recipes for leftover chicken


• cleaned the stovetop (after putting the crumb trays and the iron frameworks that go over the burners when the stove is on)

In the process of sending out the pilaf recipe, I realized that I've been using significantly less butter/margarine than it calls for, and that this may be why it hasn't always been coming out right. I also rewrote the recipe to reflect changes I had made on purpose, and to list the ingredients in the order that they're used in.

This feels like enough for the morning, if not the whole day. And I haven't even showered yet, despite having been up for a couple of hours.

The rice and beans came out well tonight--I think I have the spicing right:

What felt like a lot of powdered ginger and roasted powdered garlic (Penzey's), maybe half a teaspoon of cumin, 1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika, a bit more oregano than usual. I put them in after cooking the onion and pepper, mixed and cooked for a minute, then added the beans, water, and vinegar, and some black pepper. I haven't been putting pepper in during the cooking, even though the spice mix Goya recommends is largely white and black pepper, if I recall correction.

[This is based on a recipe I found on the Goya can: theirs calls for twice as water as I'm using, and is cooked in olive oil. Tonight's was instead cooked in bacon fat: fry bacon, remove the bacon and let it drain into a paper towel, then use [part of] the bacon fat to cook the onion and pepper.

OK: ( I'm doing this from memory )

Here's another batch of comments I made on other journals etc.: ( 'five years ago,' some natter about how Cattitude and I cook, expectations about behavior and the ambiguity of 'should,' 'ultralight' packing, tea, artificial intelligence', feeding ducks and other birds )

Yes it's a cliche, but I made challah French toast for lunch during this snowstorm.

This was the second instance of "I don't want sandwiches" (last night's desire for a hot meal instead led me to cook ravioli). It helped that we had the dozen eggs, plenty of milk, and most of a loaf of challah: the nearest bakery, while not at all Jewish, sells different kinds of bread from Wednesday through Sunday, and on Friday they bake challah. (It's dairy, which seems weird to me and means I can't give it to adrian_turtle, but tastes good.)

I am a little out of practice on French toast, and this was the first time I'd made it in this kitchen, so I had the pan a little too cool for the first batch of French toast. That batch was okay, but the second batch was properly browned and significantly better than the first.

Other than that, I have done proofreading (paid) and some exercises, and been outdoors only briefly today.