renaissance poisson

after putting together the power rack, i've taken a week off. i've just been tired and sore. i suspect i am not getting enough protein for the amount of working out i have done, so i am upping that. kinda got lazy with the cooking too. mostly in hibernation mode, as usual this time a year.

walked (long mailbox) with the paramour, 32 min. that's not as bad as i thought it might be. i'm gonna start the interval walks again as long as the weather doesn't turn icy.

as the new year looms, i am planning to live vegetarian for a month, just to see whether i can do it. i'll probably not manage vegan because i like my milk products and eggs too much, but doing without meat will not be difficult. it'll be a challenge to myself to learn new recipes and be more mindful of what i am shoveling into my maw.

to that purpose, i am hopeful to make many new friends in the legume family. i'm thinking it might be useful to isolate them the first time, to get a better feeling for innate flavours. i've also got myself a pressure cooker (actually an "instant pot IPLUX-60" several-methods-in-one cooker; it can saute, steam, pressure-cook, slow-cook, make rice with just a button press).

the new year isn't there yet, but we're past the solstice, which is what really matters, so here we go. the paramour suggested i call it "logume", *sigh*.

2012-12-25: small white bean, noname package, presumably navy bean.

cooked 1 cup dry beans in 4 cups water for 30 min, pressure @ 11.6). came out as thin soup, slightly mushy; some beans completely disintegrated, others still intact. threw in just a bit of fleur de sel afterwards. quite tasty, actually. paramour says this is the "baked beans" bean, which wikipedia confirms. i've always hated baked beans, but i like this. delicate; a bit mealy, but not dry.

i've been doing rather well with cooking lately. now, i hope nobody mistakes me for a cooking wiz; i learned how to cook for a family of 5-10 people, but i don't really like the food of my childhood. consequently i don't have a big repertoire of real meals, and i don't cook much for others because i have peculiar tastes. and while i like the recipes i make up, i wouldn't normally offer the food to others. i make a mean herring salad, for example, but the paramour hates pickled things and dill, and that pretty much nixes this recipe for him because it has pickled herring, pickled onions, pickled gherkins, and much, MUCH dill. i'll make a huge pot of it, and then i'll eat it for several days straight, with new potatoes. OMG, so good.

i've been playing with the chili recipe i posted once, and it is now more flavourful than it was at the start; i should edit it, because this is eminently shareable (of course it is mostly somebody else's recipe, which accounts for that ;).

i concocted a split pea and ham soup with lovage, which i find really smooth and enjoyrable, i think i'll post that recipe so others can try it and let me know whether this actually passes as food for people-not-me. if any of you grow lovage, that is. of course now it's a little late for that in the northern hemisphere. but lovage is fun to grow (it gets HUGE in its 2nd year), and it tastes much like celery, only milder and more interesting, IMO.

i also made a carrot cake with ras-el-hanout (an arabic spice mixture which has become a fixture for me because it manages to taste different in everything i've thrown it into). the cake was so much on the moist side that it was a little unbaked in the centre, so this recipe needs more fiddling. it was very tasty though. this is how a lot of my ad hoc recipes come out; not quite ready for prime time.

the paramour has had a crappy few weeks; lots of frustration at work. so i did a little research and pulled together two different recipes, one for shortbread, and one for lemon curd, and made lemon squares. wow. these are a hit. a perfect marriage of sweet and tart (with all the fat and sugar you could possibly want, and then some *sigh*). the only drawback is that some of the squares have lot of lemon topping, and others not so much -- our stove is not level, and the mix starts out very liquid, so it settles on one side of the baking pan. next time i'll have to fashion little aluminum foil feet for the pan, *grin*.

i'm feeling accomplished, because cooking is something that doesn't come particularly easy to me, and i am not really patient and organized enough for it, but i enjoy coming up with something the paramour and/or the *poing* also like.

1. those of you who have tried both cilantro and epazote, how similar do they taste? if cilantro tastes like soap to you, does epazote do as well?

2. in the subgenre "cowboys are gettin' it on" of my smut reading, the characters in texas and new mexico often have or make "queso". i used to think queso was just spanish for cheese (which it is), but they're very clearly not making cheese. google isn't very helpful. enlighten me?

thanks for all the good wishes; much appreciated.

no more fever. still weak, but managed to actually walk the dog for 15 min instead of a quick in-out. poor dog. they picked a bad weekend to be gone. also, it's monday evening and they're not back; is today a holiday? i keep telling myself that if they were here, the dog would probably not actually get walked any more. but at least she wouldn't be this much alone; i can't take her in here because it would result in all the cats fleeing, and damn, but they're all so comfortable, and it's enough of an effort to get them to all get along. the dog has a swelling the size of an egg on her right foreleg. i will have to guilt them into taking her to the vet again. fuck. sometimes i really hate these people.

since no fever anymore, can actually mostly string together whole sentences and read other people's LJ entries. and maybe even a book, if i can find one that wants reading. darwinia i think, everything else seems just too hard.

also, food now stays down. i was going to participate in the incendiary food thing, but didn't think a log of "2 large mugs of warm ginger drink" was going to be helpful to anyone. today's food intake is a bit better (2 mugs of ginger drink, 3 hardboiled eggs, chunk of gouda), but far from normal, so i'm gonna continue to wait with that. also, thought about how making lists of food is diet behaviour, and the way some people list theirs is making me uncomfortable (is it really empowering to read about somebody's 15ml of yogurt?).

there is lots of snow up in the mountains one can see from the landlord's doorstep.

i should not be looking at food porn just before going to bed.

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books in progress:

ralph mcinerny, the book of kills -- ha ha ha. pun in the title, how original for a mystery! :)

mandy aftel, essence and alchemy: a natural history of perfume -- i was right about the woowoo.

finished:

david m. pierce, angels in heaven -- ok, so this wasn't bad. a bit dated (late 80's; the narrator, a private eye, is proudly using an apple II and gets all excited about his first dot-matrix printer), but i don't generally mind. a wee bit heavy on the hard-boiled smartass commentary, but i liked the oddball characters and the banter between them. and -- the paramour should take note -- there's no killing in this mystery, though there's a wee bit of IMO gratuitous shooting, but hey, this is LA. the central case isn't a murder, but the narrator's childhood friend being imprisoned in a mexican jail for running contraband, and the inspired attempt to rescue him. also, that case, while central and providing for much of the plot, isn't consuming every worthwhile minute of the detecting; there's other stuff going on. the ending to the central case is almost ant-climactic which disconcerted me a bit at the time -- but that, and the assorted bits and pieces of the narrator's life also make the book feel real to me despite mucho oddball aspects. i think i might try and find other books by mr pierce.