Ahhh, nothing like Despair.com to keep you from feeling too good about life, is there? Truly fabulous stuff … if you’re of a sarcastic bent. These come as full-sized demotivational posters. If you haven’t been exposed to these folk, I suggest you take a deep breath and plunge in.
Oh, dear.
You didn’t really come here to see gooey chocolate recipes and things done up in pink paper and ribbons, did you?
Sorry. Wrong blog. Death By Chocolate is over at Pille’s. We’re the practical sort over here. We have trouble remembering each other’s birthdays, not to mention a made-up holiday that is meant to express love via Hallmark.
But enough of our sour grapes! We had some really, REALLY good sourdough today! There’s nothing like a sourdough starter in a city full of distilleries to make you happy any day of the month. Sadie’s one happy bunch of bacteria/yeast.
Anyway, even if you do like candy hearts that aren’t black, we still like you.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Finally! After weeks of saying “Sure, we’re going,” but being daunted by the wind/rain/sleet/hail/dark of night, we finally had SUN, and thus made our way to Matthew’s Foods, which turns out to be only a little over a mile away from our flat, and it takes up four storefronts (yet NONE of the cab drivers or anyone we talked to knew where it was. Go figure). We didn’t know, or we’d have been there way before today! (It’s near some steam-spewing distilleries and the dire neighborhood of Possil Park, however, a neighborhood we’ve seen on TV shows about bad areas of Glasgow, so we’ll be going there in the MORNINGS, and moving through the area quickly!) It was SO NICE to go into an Asian Market and see familiar foods — limes, taro root, all manner of greens and Chinese pancakes for mu-shu. And the tofu — oh, the rows and rows of tofu of all firmness and silkiness, in blocks and tubes. (Yes, we got followed around the store by a grim looking Chinese man after we took pictures of it, but oh well! I’m sure they think we’re just some other weird foreigners…)
An exciting discovery in the tofu aisle made us stop dead: Glasgow has a tofu factory. The lovely, FRESH tofu was priced out to be £2.88 / kg instead of the £5.52 / kg we have found at Tesco or Asda (a curse be upon their name). So, we bought tofu … and can we say how wonderful it is? It’s not the hybridized “firm silken” stuff, found in the Blue Dragon cartons, nor is it the super “firm” we’ve gotten from Calderon Foods, it’s … well, the right tofu! Fresh, medium firm, non-GMO, made locally and far less expensive!? … Altogether it’s good stuff!
No field trip is complete without purchases of foods you don’t really need but want anyway. Not the “eggplants” (see why Americans call them that now? I know – here they’re aubergines, but there IS a reason for the name!), nor the pickled squid nor the massive taro roots nor the heads of wheat — or some sort of herb — or the slabs of rock sugar made it into our basket (we might have picked up the squid for a picture but it looked scary). We splurged instead on hunks of coconut dried in sugar, dried bean curd sheets, hot and spicy seaweed and delicious mae ploy sauce. Those are the flavors of many a quick stir-fry of the past. (And, no, we didn’t buy any Thai Betel nut … but we thought of some friends at home, who’ve lived in Thailand, so had to take the picture. We doubt you can buy Betel nut in the US, as it is a mild narcotic, and repeated use rots the teeth to black stubs. Lovely!)
It was funny to find bowls that match a Chinese bowl we have here that friends picked up in Japantown in San Francisco ages ago. Which just goes to tell you that you can find a little corner of Asia anywhere in the world. Thank GOODNESS. We hadn’t realized how much we’d missed it.
As you can see, we had a marvelous lunch!
Okay, here’s a quick thought for our UK readers: what’s a brand of jam that you know of that isn’t too sweet? We usually enjoy St. Dalfour, but tried to find a local product and purchased Mackay’s ginger and rhubarb jam — and wow is that stuff sweet! What do the rest of you buy when you don’t have the fresh berries and all to make your own jams?
So, somewhere, somehow, I happened across a pattern for Sweet Baby Cap … and it looked perfect for winter in Glasgow! So, by simply using a heavier weight yarn & using slightly larger needles (addi turbo 4mm, I think), I’m doing this up for one of us (well, OK, for me). Notice the handy yarn markers? They were a gift from Jackie over at One Thread Two Thread!
Each single marker is marking a double-decrease (sl1, k2-tog-tbl, psso) and each pair of markers (the ones at noon, 4:00, 8:00 in the picture) are marking a paired increase (yo, k1, yo). I’m finally figuring out how to use yarn markers, as well, which is very cool – every time I’ve used them before I’ve ended up placing them incorrectly, such that my increase, rather than staying put, has crept around the pattern. So … I’m being a bit more mindful of the things, and have actually managed to keep them in line with the numbers for a couple of repeats of the pattern.
After the monstrous scarf, this hat is a nice, short project! I may finish it up this evening!
We’ve finally broken down & gotten a sourdough starter going. I couldn’t resist it when a former coworker forwarded the following directions to me:
We actually got a full-blown, crazily active starter within about three days!
We’ve named her ‘Sadie,’ and this pizza is her first try at giving us some true bread. We could’ve done something more … well, bread-like. But we were in the mood for a savory, whole-wheat pizza dough, so this pizza, with its fresh mushrooms, sweet red bell peppers, onions, Quorn sausage and cheese it is (or was, rather, there’s only the tiniest bit left to go with our salads for dinner). The crust is lightly sour and chewy and very tasty. As soon as Sadie grows up a little more, we’ll try out a crisp-and-chewy sourdough boule. Stay tuned!
Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Cantonese: May prosperity be with you) & Xin Nian Kuai Le! (Mandarin: Happy New Year)
Glasgow’s Lunar New Year celebration was held safely indoors on Wednesday, but we can imagine the color and action in San Francisco this weekend with lion dances, processionals and fireworks snapping. Times like these we miss the many-flavored Bay Area with its varied communities (and love of celebration), but Glasgow has its own Asian immigrants, and last weekend we had the unique experience of Glaswegian Chinese food.
Back home we enjoyed watching the TV show Chinese Restaurant which was a documentary series discussing issues of the Chinese diaspora – migration, settlement, assimilation, identity, history, inter-racial marriages – in the context of Chinese restaurants in various countries and Chinese food. It was fascinating, and it should have prepared us for Glasgow’s version of Chinese food. It …did not.
We looked at our fried bean curd and vegetables in shock. The tofu was… round. ROUND. How do you get round tofu? You batter dip it and deep fry it.
Granted, we were in a neighborhood with chip shops and a strongly fried smell emitting from take-away restaurants up and down the block and should have guessed that this wasn’t Chinese food for the discerning palate necessarily, but it was still such a funny, funny shock. Round! When we know tofu goes from amorphous into …blocks. Always! Fortunately, the other tofu and vegetable dishes were something more familiar, and we …well, we can’t say enjoyed the food, but it was filling and we were able to ingest the rest of without too much incident. (Including the dessert we were urged to try, fruit fritters. Fritters by the way — are batter dipped and deep fried fruit with sugar syrup on them, according to the Maryhill Chinese restaurant…)
Last night we had the funny experience of hearing a father describe his daughter as “a cracking girl.” I love the adjectives used in so much of the spoken language here. If you’re “shattered” you’re beyond upset – you might also be “knackered,” which, for those of us who inhaled James Herriot as a child, obviously means the knacker man is coming to drag your dead carcass to the glue factory. A “ripping” good story is… well, one that… rips? Okay, I can’t really make too much fun, here, it all makes about as much sense as saying something “rocks.” Okay, enough with English major obsessions…!
As D. continues to lay plans for next year, the realization that student loans don’t cover much more than tuition has become clear! D. has been job hunting, and has sent his résumé winging to various areas, including to a biostatistics IT & data management job for the University. When T. found that position listing, there was a moment of stunned silence, as this job is right along the lines of D.’s PhD research project! Stay tuned…
– D & T
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
This soup can be made just as well with either cauliflower or with broccoli. We’ve been getting a large head of each every Friday for several weeks now, as we’re subscribed to a “box scheme” whereby we get fresh seasonal fruits & vegetables. Well, the UK being what it is, we’re getting lots of root veggies & lots of things like cauliflower & broccoli. Seeing as it’s also been cold, we decided to figure out a nice soup for these.
Essentially, what I’m giving you is an ingredient list, and you can adjust it to your own tastes. Along with that, though, will come a bit of general advice for making this soup, and that’s to use far less water than you think you need, and far more spices. Broccoli & cauliflower are bland, and can take it, particularly if you’re getting large heads! That said, here’s what you do:
1) Throw 5 or 6 large whole cloves of garlic in a cold pan with a spritz of olive oil.
2) Turn on the heat to medium-low.
3) Chop an onion, add it to the pan with the garlic, and cover.
4) Trim florets from the main stalk & set aside.
5) If using cauliflower, feel free to discard the main stalk or chop it.
6) If using broccoli, peel off the outer skin (I do this by just getting my fingers under it and pulling). Chop the remaining stalk, discarding the woody skin.
7) When your onions have softened somewhat, add your broccoli / cauliflower.
8) Add just enough water to cover about half of the contents and cover – too little water is better than too much!
9) Grind up some spices (saffron maybe, but definitely a pinch of sage, a dozen cumin seeds, some white pepper maybe, a teaspoon of yellow mustard seeds, rosemary if you have it) and throw them in.
10) When mixture has softened (about 20 minutes or so), remove it from the heat.
11) Blend with your immersion blender until smooth.
12) Strain (optional – primarily to remove any sage twigs)
13) Add a brick of silken tofu (soft, firm, whatever so long as it’s silken) and blend until smooth again.
14) If doing broccoli, we added a teaspoon of red balsamic vinegar & blended that, too, along with some bouillon & a pinch of salt. Obviously, skip the red vinegar with the cauliflower, as pink soup would be kinda odd.
15) Ladle into bowls & serve, maybe with cheese, maybe with cheese toast.
What we’ve found with this is that 1) you can’t have enough garlic, 2) you can easily have too much water, 3) you don’t want to put it back onto the heat after adding the tofu, as it will tend to separate somewhat. Other than that, this is dead easy to make, and wonderfully soothing on a cold day!
 |
 |
This post is going up particularly for the No Croutons Required event, and also because Lori asked me for the recipe.
This weekend we woke to a tiny crust of white. For almost six hours, the snow stuck! It falls almost daily, for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, in vivacious flurries which are very pretty — if you’re inside, if you’re not, they’re a bit slushy — and so we’ve gotten used to seeing it and smiling as it eddies upwards. But it was neat — if a bit chilly — to have it stick for a little while. Meanwhile, the produce from the farm now includes a few fresh chives. Spring is stretching toward the surface of the world.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a rant.
T. has the unfortunate type of temper that takes a few days to realize that it is offended, but once it catches hold of the idea, boy howdy is it hard to let it go. Friday, one of D.’s classmates, in support of his very poor presentation, sent out this little piece of YouTubeness – to the entire graduate Philosophy department at the University…
Granted, every educated person — not just ever American person, but every educated person who sees this winces. These are people caught in the crossbeam of the camera lens, not at their finest hour, answering, with maximum vapidity, questions posed by a stranger. There are likely multiple reasons why these people — wherever they are and whomever they are — could not properly answer these, but what perturbs T. the most is the commentator’s comment about “the very world their country runs,” which we all know is utter fallacy. Since when does America run the world?
All right, all right. This is a fake network, and is meant to be satire. Point taken. With the massive American population, as a polling sample, this is less than worthless, as mean, medium and average in a poll would legitimately of course take an accounting of the whole population, and this does not. These are specific people ignorant about the larger world when their own country is so huge that they fail to grasp details about America itself. But the fact that someone emailed this out to everyone in a department which only has two Americans other than D… was probably not in the best of taste.
The differences between the Glasgow University Philosophy Dept. and other of his educational experiences in the U.S. has been a point of contention between D. and his professors. The Philosophy Dept. has a specific formula which they expect to see regurgitated on all papers. Students are not to stray from the topics set forth, nor are they to use sources outside of those carefully vetted by their professors, nor are they to cite Continental philosophers, whose ideology is suspiciously French or German. (Yes. There goes Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, Voltaire, and a host of others.) Much of last semester was a serious wrangle, with D. doing his very best to show up and speak up, and discovering that tradition and “the way we’ve always done it” hold serious weight here.
We point this out merely to stress the fact that everyone has a provincial side. Everyone has things they do not know, do not care to know, which can be mercilessly exploited in the name of making them look stupid. The fact that just this weekend an acquaintance remarked with surprise when we mentioned the Bear on the California State flag (“All the States in America have flags? Really?”), and a professor of D’s was enlightened to discover the characteristics of a mammal (“Give birth to live young, do they?”) when D. used its characteristics as an example in class indicates that not even in the UK is knowledge complete — nor has anyone inferred that it is. Except for this one student in the philosophy department which T. would dearly like give a swift smack upside his head.
Q:What’s the name of a country that begins with ‘U?’
As the student’s philosophy presentation was meant to be a discussion of intelligence, we are still not certain if the student meant to be insulting (It is possible that not even the student knows what he meant by this), or fire off an easy, ready laugh amongst the student population, underscoring a fact that “everybody” knows, that Americans are rich, fat and happily, inexcusably stupid.
D., as is typical of his much sweeter temperament (!), has merely shrugged about this, feeling only mildly annoyed (Fortunately, his temper takes even longer to brew, and sometimes it outlasts his attention span). Today another Scottish student emailed the entire department in response, and pointed out something interesting: according to several major British newspapers, 58% of British persons polled believe that Winston Churchill is a fictional character.
This was based on a poll of just three hundred persons and was given by a TV station, but oh, how the news wires which have picked this up and spread the news from shore to shore. “Are we a nation of know-nothings?” headlines demand. “British history fades into fiction,” another laments.
Obviously this is ridiculous, and proves once again that truly: anything can be exploited to make people look stupid.
So, perhaps this is less of a rant and more of a sigh: sometimes it seems summer can’t come soon enough.
– D & T
I began this scarf on the Amtrak, coming from California to New York. I didn’t get much done at that time, but have been working on it several hours a week now since I started classes. I haven’t been working furiously, nor particularly steadily, as I sometimes stop to ask questions or to take notes, and I only knit during my seminars … so it’s taken me until now to finish the silly thing. Five months! Five months of knitting 20 stitches wide, back & forth, with an occasional variation thrown in!
The yarn is bamboo, and has a great feel to it. I knit it on bamboo circulars, as well, just to get the whole bamboo thing really going. The pattern is mostly
Sl1, K1, K16, K2
Sl1, K1, P16, K2
but also has an occasional interruption thrown in of
Sl1, K1, K2Tog * 8, K2
Sl1, K1, K F&B * 8, K2
to give it the rows of interest. All told, stretched out, it’s about 12 feet long – at least, doubled over, I can hold an end in each hand and spread my arms wide, and I’m over 6 feet tall, so 12 feet should be a pretty good guess.
I’ll be working next on this hat, though in an adult size (using size 5 needles instead of 2.5). I like the looks of it, and the fact that it’ll cover my ears. 🙂
With apologies for this leap off-topic from various home arts.
