Meme? What’s this Meme?

Elle, at Feeding My Enthusiasms has tagged me for a meme. I don’t know from memes, except the Oxford English Dictionary does say it rhymes with ‘seems’ so we can pronounce it, at least. And now the ‘rules’ say I’m meant to take the letters of my blogging name and give you all a food-related factoid about me for each letter…? And then tag someone else for each letter of my name. Hm. Okay. I see I’m going to need a little help with this – I, uh, have a class or something…

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Dough – I’ve learned to become a competent baker, sifting, blending, measuring. I find it relaxing to go from cause to effect, from chaos to end product. Once I get a bread recipe down, though, that’s when the fun begins. Because I love to make my own…

Alterations – why not add black pepper instead of cinnamon? A little balsamic instead of white wine? I love the idea of trying anything once. Can’t be a ‘daring’ baker without taking a few dares, can I?

Vegetarian – I was raised one, and while for a time I flirted with being an omnivore, but I’m back to who I am now. Can’t speak for anyone else, but this works better for me.

Icing – Once upon a time, I volunteered to teach a cake decorating class for junior high aged kids. There’s nothing like seeing a thirteen year old girl sucking green buttercream frosting straight out of the tube… nothing. Put me off frosting for at least a week…

Masala – it’s the Hindi word for ‘spice,’ and I really love this blend in tea: cloves, coriander, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, and peppercorn. If you can make it yourself, why buy it?

Alton – Alton Brown, that is. I don’t care much about celebrity chefs, but I like Alton’s quirky style and solid science. And, anyone who falls off a motorcycle and breaks his shoulder on his show, and doesn’t edit that part out? Has guts.

Capers – a distinctive, tasty seasoning, these are one of my favorite things to put in pasta, with cream cheese, or just to eat. Everyone else in this household (ahem!) thinks they’re foul. More for me.

KitchenAid – now living with my friend Kazumi, I knew better than to try and ship that heavy machine to the UK where it wouldn’t work. Now I’m getting back to basics — no dough hook, my own kneading. Who knows, I may decide I don’t need one after all.

WHEW. This — was hard. I’m pretty sure everyone I’d have tagged has probably already been tagged, too, it’s taken me so long. Well, I look forward to reading your probably-shorter-than-mine factoids. Meanwhile, it’s another cool autumn evening here – it’s time to make soup.

Oh – not to forget, I’m tagging 8 ‘food’ people:

Let the Slog Begin!

Well, folks, just a brief note to share with you D’s upcoming school schedule:

Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri
11:00 – 12:00 Epistemology Epistemology
12:00 – 1:00 Phil. of Language Phil. of Language
1:00 – 2:00 Phil. Lang. Tutorial
2:00 – 3:00 Epistemology Tutorial
3:00 – 4:00 Research. Methodologies
4:00 – 5:00 Seminar Seminar Seminar
5:00 – 6:00 Seminar Seminar Choral Practice Seminar
6:00 – 7:00 Choral Practice

This is just the preliminary – D hasn’t been given the opportunity to schedule in tutorials yet (for those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, let’s just say that tutorials correspond to what Americans are probably familiar with as “class,” while Lectures are the bits which he’s been able to schedule, and are going to apparently consist of someone standing up and talking for an hour or so). He’s to schedule our tutorials in sometime during the next week or so, and he hopes to be able to schedule them into the colossal gaps on Tuesday & Wednesday, in order to minimize the number of walks to & from campus.

{EDIT: Tutorials are scheduled in there, now, which means that Tuesdays are going to be the hard day, and Wednesdays will have a huge gap. We tried to schedule it a bit better … but that was as good as it could get. At least he has a nice 4 hours between classes on Wednesday, so he can come home for a while.}

Our bicycles should show up this weekend, along with the rest of our possessions, so we’re hoping that D. can trim some of his walking time down; it takes him 30 minutes each way, walking to class, but he could do that on the cycle in possibly 10 – we’ll see. Either way, it’s a chilly bit of a trip, as Autumn has rolled in, here in Glasgow, despite the sunny days. D. is wishing he’d remembered his gloves, instead of shipping them!

Within the next couple of weeks we should be settled into our little unrecommended neighborhood (the Student Guide, which we didn’t receive until registration, states clearly that, “there are no supermarkets or tube stations nearby.” Hah! Found that one out the hard way, certainly).

– D & T

Promises & Compromises

This morning I sat in a puddle of watery sunshine, eating a piece of watermelon.


Every time I think about my garden at home, I’m a little heartsick. We knew we were missing out on the high point of the season, knew that we should be slowing down to taste the best summer produce had to offer, but — well, there just wasn’t time. We think with regret of the tomatoes and the Japanese pumpkins and the quinoa and the celtuce; the disastrous aphids we were fighting on the long beans, the beets we were nurturing, the red and purple carrots… We had to put everything aside to pack up and do house repair and concentrate on leaving…

So, back to my watery melon. It was an indulgence, a £2 piece of fruit, but an internal clutch of “Oh! Watermelon!” just grabbed us we saw it in the display. It was small, and I looked at it for days before I cut it open. Things purchased from a green grocer ought to be eaten immediately, but even past peak, the watermelon was tasty, and held an echo of sticky summer evenings spent reading and spooning up crisp, succulent sweetness. And then I saw pictures from our brilliant friend Pille‘s Flickr cache… of the tennis-ball sized watermelon she grew on her windowsill.

(Aside: I really admire Pille, [Say “Peel-ah”]and loved having coffee with her (even though I was just a little too shell-shocked, on our third day in Glasgow, to communicate coherently). She’s a sociologist, which I think is an amazing profession, she’s small and self-possessed and well spoken (in three or four languages, even). But after looking at her blog, I’m also beginning to suspect she’s not really… all human. She’s magical, I just know it. A melon on her windowsill!? Now I have to visit Estonia. I’m pretty sure if I watch her long enough, I’ll find out Pille can fly.)

Pille’s melon – and other gorgeous foodstuffs she’s grown and eaten – have made me homesick for my own little piece of gardening. This flat is very pristine… and sterile. One lonely mint plant struggles for life, and that’s because I can’t find potting soil to re-pot it . A simple thing: dirt. But I have no idea where to find it (outside of digging it up somewhere – and no spade yet), and haven’t had time to poke around. I’m not even sure where to post mail from our flat — we go outside and find a box at present — so soil is a bit beyond us!! But, in time, we’ll have a few things growing, to provide a balm for the garden we left behind us. When we came here to our flat — on the fourth floor — we promised ourselves that we’d find a way to still have our own little growing space, still have fresh herbs and do our own experimental cooking and baking. And we will… with grow-lights and pots, we’ll have our garden. In a little while, this place will seem a tiny bit more like home.

(PS – And any of you who know where we gardened – go, pick the tomatoes! Enjoy the kabochas! Use the quinoa, make fabulously colorful soups with the carrots. Enjoy. Please…)


Speaking of experimental foods, the other day our grocery run yielded …tamarind. We found a piquant looking picture at Tastes Like Home — of tamarind balls. We have two kinds of tamarind – “wet” and dried (they both look dried to me, but what do I know?), and we’ll let you know how this goes.

We are off to the museum today, to find beauty and art and music and reflection in the quieter corners of the sprawling city. More soon.

– D & T

Potatoland


I’ve gotten downright spooked about the amount of potatoes we’ve been eating, but being much more active and eating fewer proteins (we’re finding our tofu, bean and nut supplies, but the going has been slow!), we’re finding that our bodies must be starving for fuel.

One of the nicest treats of an earlier cool season and multiple potato varieties is the chance to indulge in our love for sweet potatoes. Served as ‘chips,’ glazed with citrus juices or just eaten plain baked, sweet potatoes are good for boosting energy, promoting a healthy heart and skin and helping to lower blood pressure. They are good slow release carbohydrates that are rich in antioxidants. They contain more vitamin E than any other low fat food and are a good source of potassium and iron. I found this great little recipe that is close to what I do with pumpkins — minus the curry. I’m going to continue to fiddle with the seasonings (it just might need some garlic!); enjoy your own inventive efforts!

Creamy Sweet Potato Soup, Base Recipe

2 cups (1/4-inch) cubed peeled sweet potato

1 1/2 cups thinly sliced leek (about 1 medium)

1 1/4 cups fat-free vegetable broth, divided

2/3 cup evaporated skim milk

1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

Dash of freshly ground pepper

1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

Chopped leek

Combine sweet potato, sliced leek, and 1/4 cup broth in a 1 1/2-quart casserole; stir well. Cover, and microwave at HIGH 10 minutes, stirring after 5 minutes. Place sweet potato mixture in a blender or food processor; process until smooth. Add remaining ingredients except chopped leek; process 30 seconds or until blended. Garnish with chopped leek. Serve warm. 4 servings (serving size: 3/4 cup)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 136(3% from fat); FAT 0.5g (sat 0.1g,mono 0.1g,poly 0.2g); PROTEIN 5g; CHOLESTEROL 2mg; CALCIUM 162mg; SODIUM 416mg; FIBER 2.5g; IRON 1.3mg; CARBOHYDRATE 27.2g (base recipe from Cooking Light, NOVEMBER 1996)

There’s a farm market somewhere in town this weekend, and I can only assume that it’s going to be under some kind of roof, as it’s been raining off and on for the last few days. The flashes of brightness, when they come, are blinding, and we open up the windows to let the suddenly warm breezes into the room. The weather in Scotland “changes on your backswing,” a knowledgeable golfer once said. It’s true — we sit at the windows and watch the weather roll in and away. The rain isn’t the bummer it could be — it’s the helpful friend of the most tender and tasty crop of green beans I’ve ever eaten. We just discovered that a local greengrocer has weekly organic boxes, and we look forward to checking that out. Good soups to you!

Walkabout

There will be an end to the confusion.


Eventually, here, we’ll be getting our heads above water long enough to look around and say, “Hey! We’re here!” and start to celebrate it. We’ll look back at these bewildering days of feeling stumbly and silly and find tolerant smiles. Helping us look forward to settling in (God haste the day) has been the little list of Outings we’ve been accumulating. If you know of other exciting places we should visit, do tell!


Glasgow University: It’s gorgeous, just the tiny sliver of it that we’ve seen. There is an art museum and a few other places of note, plus just looking at the architecture is a treat. We’ll definitely be hanging out there quite a bit!

Just a few blocks away from the ‘Uni’ is the huge and gorgeous Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. People, it is massive – as you can see from the photograph above,
looks like a cathedral, is stuffed full of artistic goodness, and it. Is. FREE. I expect to live there. Kelvingrove Park is around it — full of sudden turns where you discover statuary and clumps of bright flowers. It’s so big we haven’t been through all of it yet — but just give us a couple of dry days, and we’ll be there! (*Photographs © 2006-07 by Stara Blazkova*)

Caithness Glass: Back in the JC days, D. was a bit of a dabbler in arts of all kinds. One of his favorite forms was glassblowing… so we’ve GOT to see this world-famous place, and maybe do a bit glassworking ourselves. Yes. I know what you’re thinking: when you leave, how much glassware do you want to wrap up to send home? I’ll be sure to make something heavy and crack proof… and very, very small…Also under this try-it-yourself-art heading will come a trip to Go Potty, a neat looking pottery studio. Unlike American places where you just tamely paint what ceramic someone else has poured, here you — throw pots. On a wheel. Yourself. Yes, of course D. shines at this. I think if he hadn’t decided to be a knitting-chef-Tech Boy type, he would have been an artist somewhere living in the woods, weaving things out of squirrel pelts. Well. There’s still time…

Matthew’s Foods: Yeah… it’s a store. But anyone who knows us well knows that we’re …weird. About food. (Hey. It’s not like we’re going to Ikea or anything here! Ahem, Van!) It’s kind of entertaining to us. We loved the Filipino market in Vallejo, with the tanks full of various edibles, the aisles piled with noodles, the durian paste… it’s like visiting the store in another country. At Matthew’s, we’ll be able to see myriad Asian countries. We also look forward to vising Roots & Fruits, a local green grocer who has gorgeous displays outside. We haven’t yet had time to stop, but we will…

I have to give credit to blog buddy Sara for this one — we have got to go to Kelburn Castle~! Why anyone is painting ‘graffiti’ on a castle might baffle you as it did me, but it’s only going to be there for two years. The plastering over the original brickwork is damaging them, so it is slated to be removed anyway, so the people involved decided to do something artistic with it before they tore it all down. It’s definitely …interesting, and will be a bright spot in the countryside.

We are disappointed not to be able to visit the National Museum of Rural Heritage right now, with the foot-and-mouth thing going on (something people probably have only heard a sentence about in the U.S., but it’s a big deal here, with all the farms around the city), but hopefully the quarantine will be finished in the spring. We hear the lambs are a hoot to watch – just as much fun as when we saw them at the sheepdog trials in Sonoma County.

There is so, so, so much more to see… as soon as we pull ourselves together a bit more, we’ll be ranging ’round, and take you with us. Oh! We are, apparently, going to Edinburgh in November, as D. has a conference to attend. THAT should be interesting. With my luck, there will be snow…

– D & T

Microscopic Kitchen



In the US we’d just finished remodeling our kitchen, so as to give ourselves some space. If only we’d realized how little space we’d be getting ourselves into when we moved to the UK! Yes – the cutting board is currently occupying roughly half of the available prep-space on the counter. That cutting board is an industrial strength model, too, which just adds to the fun, when you’d like to move it aside to use the space for something else!

We’ve managed to bake a little bit, though, despite the small space and despite the strange flours and even stranger yeast, and we’ve also had to call the repairman for the oven. The oven, you see, is a convection oven … and has possibly been used by us more than it was used by the previous tenant (the owner’s daughter, while she was in college). So, although it appears to be a brand new oven, the fan seizes up when the oven comes up to temperature, after sounding like a small airplane for around 15 minutes. It then goes through the airplane noise again as the oven cools down – something which takes considerably longer than heating it up.

As soon as we figure out where to have our film developed (I know, promises promises) we’ll have some better pictures – including at least one of T’s cake made from the leftover “chocolate breakfast drink mix” left to us by the previous tenant. It was a strangely chocalatey concoction, but was also quite vegan and quite good!

We’ve also managed to find a store which stocks peppers with a bit of actual heat to them! We are quite pleased at this discovery. To those who are unfamiliar with the UK, shopping is either done at a super-mega-monster grocery, or it’s done in these bizarre little shops, each of which may stock a few hundred items at most. The shops which stock fresh items may stock 30 items, in a space probably as large as the average small kitchen. Thus, locating peppers has involved poking our noses into roughly half a dozen little shops along our regular walking routes. In the search process we’ve found plenty of bizarre sports drinks and worthless knick-knacks, of course, as the ubiquitous 7-11 analogues abound.

Cognitive Dissonance



Some of the things which cause the most difficulty for us are those things which use the same name, but are actually quite different. Biscuits? Those would be cookies to us. Bowling? That would be something done on a wooden floor, but here is something done outside, on a lawn (a.k.a. “Garden”), with a series of wooden balls. The rules, as far as we can discern from a cursory look, resemble something like snooker or billiards (we don’t know which one, because we don’t know enough about either to know which one it resembles, really).

Another thing which causes some dissonance are the presence / absence of various accents. For example, in the U.S. we’re accustomed to people of Southeast Asian descent speaking with either an “American” accent or to them speaking with something close to a British accent. Thus, to hear the librarian at the Hillhead Library speak with a thick Glaswegian accent causes us a bit of pause. The same thing is true, actually, with Caucasians, as the various regional accents are present in such quantity, and we don’t know the regions! In any conversation, the interpretive skills called upon vary radically, and this causes quite a strain.

We’re getting there, though, and are growing accustomed to the varieties of accent. Soon we’ll be able to understand anyone, we imagine. We are not acquiring Glaswegian accents, however much we alter our vocabulary so as to be understood.

– D & T

Resisting the Modern Age

We’re still waiting for our equipment (router, DSL modem) to arrive … and it’s been, oh, more than a week since we placed our order with British Telecom. In the process of placing our order, BT has misspelled our name, given us a telephone number other than the one they told us they would assign, and has had us on hold for a grand total of about 14 hours. Our equipment was supposed to show up Tuesday, but looks like it won’t be arriving until sometime Thursday, as BT neglected to list our flat number when they addressed the parcel … so the package is sitting in East Kilbride, in a shipping depot.

We believe that events like this are merely part of an overall larger picture – one which can be summed up in the following quotes: “the internet isn’t worth a damn,” says the cab driver; “just come in if you have a problem, because we only check email on Tuesdays,” says the rental agency; “The Scots are actively resisting the electronic age,” says D’s Graduate Adviser; “Scotland is a third world country, really – it’ll take you three weeks to get broadband through SkyTV,” says the SkyTV salesman. This picture also shows up when examining our hunt for a flat, in that we sent out over 100 email / web inquiries, and received a total of maybe a dozen replies – with all but maybe two of those replies consisting of something like, “so sorry, we already rented that property last week.”



For someone coming from the heart of the tech field, accustomed to doing all business online and being connected 24/7/365, this has been quite a shock. Add to that the fact that registration is done in person – with a list of courses provided by the department at the time of registration, rather than published in a catalogue or on the web – and you’ve got one unhappy / confused student. It’s not that walking the .75 miles to the University is a problem (you can see it from our entryway window – it’s the tallest spire in the picture), but that it’s simply not the way D’s accustomed to doing business.

On the other hand, these differences must be part of what we came here to experience, right? Perhaps. We wonder at the underlying reasons for this resistance to technology … and also at its market saturation in certain other ways, such as text messaging. We also wonder at the seemingly optional nature of spelling and punctuation in the written word here.

The initial conclusion? The pattern we’re seeing adds up to the fact that the Scots are an extremely verbal culture, but that does not extend into the written word. We also surmise that the Scots dialects are possibly dependant upon body language and inflection to a greater degree than other dialects of English, simply because of the wide variation in pronunciation.

These are theses to be considered by a linguist, perhaps, or a sociologist … and maybe we’ll have to track one or both of those down sometime.

We have managed to weasel a web-page or two from the Philosophy department, however, and can point interested parties to descriptions of the two courses D will probably be taking this semester: Epistemology and Language. In addition to these two he’ll be taking a course in Research Methodology, for which there is no material available online, despite it being a required course for all students in this particular program. He’ll know for certain whether these are his courses after he registers in person next Tuesday.

– D & T

Pronunciation…

One last thing: there is a town here called Milngavie. Now, you or I would pronounce that as Miln-Gavie, right? Or at least, theorizing that the ‘n’ could be silent, Mil-gav-e. And we’d be wrong. It’s pronounced ‘Mull-Guy.’

I’m serious.

Mull-Guy. And we stand in the train station, and hear it, and chant it under our breath and – whoosh, the moment we see the words again, it’s gone.

Milngavie. Just another little bit of Scotland for ya.

– D & T

We Have Met the Ugly Americans…

…and they are… Us.

Fear not: we have not gone off the deep end and started screeching at cash machines and kicking taxi tires. No. But we’ve at least discovered the font from which the Ugly American ideology floweth. Deep down, ugly behavior comes from… frustration.

Truth: We ARE having an adventure. We are enjoying ourselves mainly because we’re together, and we generally have fun as long as we have the ability to glance over and roll/cross our eyes at each other and know that we’ll ‘Talk About It/Them/Him/Her Later.’ Just having the other person there guarantees that sort of amusement. But another truth is this: Some Things Have Not Been Fun. Some things have been downright… annoying. And the human psyche doesn’t do so well with ‘annoying.’

It’s like our inner children woke up from looking around in wonder and said, “WHAT!? You mean nothing works like it does at home?” And the reaction of a child — inner or outer — when faced with being confounded is…baffled rage. I think that’s the secret to why toddlers who are big enough to get around on their own spend so much time screaming. WHAT?! A gigantic hand is not going to swoop down at us and save us from falling on our faces?? What? WHAT!?

One of the little reality checks of living abroad has been that we ARE like toddlers here, like fish out of water, unable to just go with the flow. We feel like we ought to be able to get on more easily, and we Just. Can’t. And it’s enormously difficult not to scream sometimes. When you can’t just look at the coins in your hand and pay the cashier, but you have to read them, it’s frustrating. (Add to that a country whose Parliament changed hands, and they couldn’t decide on whether or not to change currency as well — and so they just said, “To heck with making sense; we’ll just use everyone’s currency. Yay!” — it doubles the confusion.) When you have lovely, friendly, helpful people give you directions somewhere and say, “It’s just a ten minute walk,” and you find yourself having walked for ten blocks and twenty minutes, and you’re hopelessly lost, it can be frustrating. (Add rain to that. Please.)

There’s a part of us that kicked and fought when changing our watches from Pacific Standard Time; there’s a bit of us that just hates the angle of the sun, since it constantly confuses us directionally, there’s part of us that resents having to say, “Sorry, what?” over and over and over again…

Mostly, though, there’s a part of us that finds everything — almost everything — funny. Terribly. We decided to have Indian food on Thursday, because walking home from the library we smelled some delightful fragrances on the breeze, so we thought we’d use the coupons the last renter left, and order in, and feel like real ‘urban’ people. But first — we had to find a ‘real Indian place.’ Yes. A real Indian place… that is, an Indian place where they only served Indian food. Um. Yeah. We’re still looking.

I think it’s a country-wide phenomenon — one place that fills umpteen needs. At myriad Indian food restaurants, along with your curry and naan, you can also have… um, pizza. Baked potatoes. And the ubiquitous chips. (French fries.) You can, alternatively, have chips and curry. (Euugh.) Or Tandoori Pizza, served with a yogurt dip. (Wait, why are you cringing?!) At Black & Lizars, you can get astroscopes (? – I’m assuming they’re telescopes?), cameras, digital cameras, binoculars, and… eyeglasses and contact lenses. Seriously. I’m guessing those people know from lenses, but to us, the jack-of-all-trades approach was a bizarre discovery.

Conversely, there are other places that fill one need, one tiny need, at that. Grocery stores. Grocery stores are not places to shop for groceries, and please don’t mistake the difference. You can buy food there, yes. But food… well, let’s say its nutrition is…relative? Grocers are the equivalent of a 7-11 in the States; you can buy pre-packaged convenience types of foods and lottery tickets, and such. Imagine a market attached to a gas station, and you’ve about got it. Meanwhile, the POST OFFICE, yes, the offices of the Royal Mail are in the back of these types of markets. You can get a bag of toffees… some post cards… some soda… oh, and can I send off this package as well? Because the Royal Mail is also a …bank. These postal people are NOT a group who worry about the mail or if any germs are being sent through. Not in the least.

In direct contrast to the American style of dealing with mail, the post office ONLY handles the post; you can’t buy cute stuffed animals and commemorative doo-dads from the Royal Mail. But it still gives me a chuckle to go into a convenience store, to the back where the clerks wait behind Plexiglas. It’s all so much more casual. But I must say this: the post arrives every morning at 8:30 sharp. Oh — and before I forget, we do have places to shop for real food. They’re called supermarkets, and they exist so people can buy fresh vegetables. But, I somehow doubt the cashiers there will offer you stamps like they do in the U.S….

The phone book carries its own brand of quirkiness. Walking down the street, we see ‘surgeries’ with doctor’s names on them. So from this (and reading lots of James Herriot) we understand that a ‘surgery’ is a doctor’s office… until you look in the phone book. Under ‘surgery’ is: See Clinics, Cosmetic Surgery, Doctors (Medical Practitioners), Eye Laser Surgery, Tattoo Removal. And no doctor’s names or numbers.

I’m telling you — I give up. It’s just not going to make sense, is it?

Probably the most disappointing thing this weekend was our trek to church … it was a trek. We called ahead (and no one answered — hmm) and followed directions; we took our map, asked train attendants, and still ended up — in Heroin land, as our friend Nicole describes some of the Eastern parts of Glasgow. Again, we had to laugh — it was like our tendency, every time we go to San Francisco to somehow get lost in the Mission/Tenderloin District. Every time!! So we kept our eyes open for odd people and retraced our steps and went home, deciding to find an evensong or something later. “Later” never materialized, and we were both a bit glum, but it was just a setback… next week we’ll jaunt off to someplace thoroughly new, and try again. (We fall down, we get up, as the song says…)

Meanwhile, the metal meets the road this week (or something); D. is off to registration and classes begin week after this. Nerves and expectation abound. Although we are equally sure all will be well.

We have christened the oven — made some applesauce cake instead of cookies — using random ingredients and no measuring implements. Quite tasty, and we could probably never recreate it again!! And a few exploratory onion rolls have been created — more to come, with pictures, soon. Cheers to those of you who have written such lovely notes, and blessings on you all,

– D & T