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"And the riverbank talks"
Apr. 2nd, 2020 10:29 pmUnsurprisingly, March started extremely slow in terms of reading and cooking (post surgery fog meant there was a lot of mostly brainless phone games and reading of fanfiction, post surgery lifting restrictions meant there wasn't much of cooking). But, as the month progressed and I switched from stuck at home by recovery to stuck at home because everyone is, a lot more cooking and a lot more reading took place.
My notebook says I made thirteen separate dishes this month, which seems pretty low, but if I didn't write it down, that's basically the same thing as it didn't happen. A handful of old favorites, comfort eating, a couple dishes that don't feel like reasonable output for effort for three people, but seemed more reasonable for two, and then some adventures.
Favorites: Tibetan Burritos from a Moosewood cookbook. Shredded carrots and cabbage, seitan, garlic and ginger all in a burrito wrapper, covered in a lot of the Ginger People's sweet ginger sauce. (a condiment I am so devoted to that when Hands raised the alarm it might not be getting stocked at WF anymore I went online and bought us each a sixpack of the stuff).
Ricotta hotcakes. basically pillows of ricotta, topped with a sauce made out of freezer raspberries with a shot of maple syrup.
Shepherd's Pie with Cheese Crusted Leeks - a Delia Smith recipe made vegetarian, cooking the faux meat with a touch of cinnamon really does interesting things. Intensely good, fairly high effort.
Tawny Corn and Vegetable Pudding from Mollie Katzen's website. Apparently all my favorite things this month took fifteen pans apiece, but this was lovely and even more lovely when mixed with the leftover enchilada filling from the sweet potato black bean enchiladas (which I did not love, but definitely made me want to try different enchilada recipes).
Smitten Kitchen's Leek Fritters with Lemon and Garlic sour Cream. I think I might have just really, really liked the sour cream and would have eaten anything smothered in it, but this was also a fun dish, despite setting off the fire alarm. (fun story, we have nest fire alarms and Light has the controls on his phone. We keep talking about me getting the controls as well, because there's at least one alarm that I have zero hopes of getting to ever and then we immediately forget to do that once the horrible noise is past. I suspect this will come back to bite me(us?) in the ass at some point in the future)
The first six novellas of Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric series. These are all gentle and delightful and I do so love the world building and the matter of fact way the author treats trauma, not in a dismissive way, just in how it's a piece of someone's personality, like blue eyes are part of someone's appearance.
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion and The Barrow Will Send What It May by Margaret Killjoy. Postapocalyptic anarchic spec-fic, addressing many of the problems and joys of being people in the world where ideals can be hard to hold onto, oppression, anarchy, magic, love, jealousy, dealing with forces you don't understand. You know, the standards.
Vox by Christina Dachler. MIstakes were made about the timing on this one, I literally finished it the day Warren stepped out of the race. Terrifying near-future where women (and girls) are allotted a small number of words a day by a bracelet that administers a shock if they go over. About freedoms being chipped away, about a rhetoric of going back to simpler times, about how children can get co-opted into systems of oppression, about being silenced. Didn't love the romantic/cheating or the preggers angle, but the rest left me anxious and weepy and fired up.
The Fire Never Goes Out by Noelle Stevenson. Fuck, this made me cry. Stunning work, partially about being a young person with a lot of success and how that changed the way she interacted with the world, but also mental illness, and what that changed. I stared at the page with the line "Love your younger self and let them die" and cried, despite not entirely understanding why it hit me so fucking hard.
My notebook says I made thirteen separate dishes this month, which seems pretty low, but if I didn't write it down, that's basically the same thing as it didn't happen. A handful of old favorites, comfort eating, a couple dishes that don't feel like reasonable output for effort for three people, but seemed more reasonable for two, and then some adventures.
Favorites: Tibetan Burritos from a Moosewood cookbook. Shredded carrots and cabbage, seitan, garlic and ginger all in a burrito wrapper, covered in a lot of the Ginger People's sweet ginger sauce. (a condiment I am so devoted to that when Hands raised the alarm it might not be getting stocked at WF anymore I went online and bought us each a sixpack of the stuff).
Ricotta hotcakes. basically pillows of ricotta, topped with a sauce made out of freezer raspberries with a shot of maple syrup.
Shepherd's Pie with Cheese Crusted Leeks - a Delia Smith recipe made vegetarian, cooking the faux meat with a touch of cinnamon really does interesting things. Intensely good, fairly high effort.
Tawny Corn and Vegetable Pudding from Mollie Katzen's website. Apparently all my favorite things this month took fifteen pans apiece, but this was lovely and even more lovely when mixed with the leftover enchilada filling from the sweet potato black bean enchiladas (which I did not love, but definitely made me want to try different enchilada recipes).
Smitten Kitchen's Leek Fritters with Lemon and Garlic sour Cream. I think I might have just really, really liked the sour cream and would have eaten anything smothered in it, but this was also a fun dish, despite setting off the fire alarm. (fun story, we have nest fire alarms and Light has the controls on his phone. We keep talking about me getting the controls as well, because there's at least one alarm that I have zero hopes of getting to ever and then we immediately forget to do that once the horrible noise is past. I suspect this will come back to bite me(us?) in the ass at some point in the future)
Books. According to my records, I read 27 books in March. Some of these were novellas, which feel like they shouldn't count but I'm not sure what else to do with them. Top five(ish) are
The first six novellas of Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric series. These are all gentle and delightful and I do so love the world building and the matter of fact way the author treats trauma, not in a dismissive way, just in how it's a piece of someone's personality, like blue eyes are part of someone's appearance.
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion and The Barrow Will Send What It May by Margaret Killjoy. Postapocalyptic anarchic spec-fic, addressing many of the problems and joys of being people in the world where ideals can be hard to hold onto, oppression, anarchy, magic, love, jealousy, dealing with forces you don't understand. You know, the standards.
Vox by Christina Dachler. MIstakes were made about the timing on this one, I literally finished it the day Warren stepped out of the race. Terrifying near-future where women (and girls) are allotted a small number of words a day by a bracelet that administers a shock if they go over. About freedoms being chipped away, about a rhetoric of going back to simpler times, about how children can get co-opted into systems of oppression, about being silenced. Didn't love the romantic/cheating or the preggers angle, but the rest left me anxious and weepy and fired up.
The Fire Never Goes Out by Noelle Stevenson. Fuck, this made me cry. Stunning work, partially about being a young person with a lot of success and how that changed the way she interacted with the world, but also mental illness, and what that changed. I stared at the page with the line "Love your younger self and let them die" and cried, despite not entirely understanding why it hit me so fucking hard.
And best for last - The Mythic Dream, ed. by Dominick Parisen and Navah Wolf, a bunch of contemporary authors doing world myths. This was so fucking magical I don't even know how to use my words to talk about it.
Bonus: Pupas et ossa colligo The disturbing latin sentence Duolingo presented me with today is "I collect dolls and bones"
