vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. I made a gentle start on mauve, by Simon Garfield, as part of my attempt to work my way through some of my charity shop books from years past in the interest of shuffling them gently back out of the house. I also skimmed a fair bit of New and Selected Poems, Mary Oliver, in search of a line I might want to use on the lid of my new seed storage box. (I actually ended up going for a kind of love called maintenance, taken from UA Fanthorpe's Atlas, which I have had in my memories for lo these many years now.)

Both were interrupted by getting to the front of yet more library hold queues.

The Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik. Remains extremely readable! Made me cry! Not entirely convinced by [spoilers] but glad to have spent some time burrowed in among its pages!

None of the Above, Travis Alabanza. So far I am most of the way through the prologue. More opinions next week, perhaps.

And yet more A Slob Comes Clean...

Cooking. Sweet potato & Tenderstem broccoli bibimbap, from Meera Sodha's East. This recipe does not appear to be published online, but ingredients are listed at Eat Your Books. I was slightly surprised by how much I liked this -- normally we do much more labour-intensive toppings, but the Meera Sodha recipe just has you fry some sweet potato and broccoli, gently steam the broccoli, and serve the whole lot over rice with avocado, appropriate sauce and also a handful of mixed sesame & pumpkin seeds. The thing that took longest, by some considerable margin, was cooking the rice, when I'm used to faffing about with vegetables for much longer than the rice takes! Two days of this did however persuade us that it Really Is Time to invest in a second dolsot -- we've been piling veg very high or serving it in small bowls on the side, both of which make the actual mixing step awkward and risky, and have come to the conclusion that it is time instead to have One Each.

Oh! and for this round of rice pudding I remembered that we have rose jam, so I dolloped some of that on in lieu of the rose syrup (rose water + honey) the recipe calls for.

And! I have tweaked our default pad thai recipe a bit. The actual impetus for this was that I got a stainless steel wok (CAN GO IN DISHWASHER) from Freecycle and I wanted to try it out; I am not totally in love with the shape but I am in love with the reduction in executive function required to clean up. I am experiencing Reluctance to get rid of my previous (also Freecycled) wok, which is my actual Platonic ideal shape-wise... but we really don't need three woks. So.

Exploring. I have been poking around some back streets I am not familiar with while Taking Constitutionals, and admiring gardens and commemorative benches. The fancy housing development just up the road, through which one must travel to get to the private hospital, which includes lots of lovely plantings.

Growing. Sowed tomatoes. Also aubergine and peppers. The tomatoes went in on Monday and are variously hatching (at least the ones in the warm box; the Marmande in the bathroom Do Not Want To Get Out Of Bed, Thanks); the aubergines weren't til Wednesday and unsurprisingly nothing doing yet; and the peppers various got introduced to compost this morning. Several of the seed packets were Fairly Venerable so I'm not holding my breath, but it'll be nice if they do manage to come up!

Also ewt handed me a bag of spare seedlings, and I have not killed any of them yet. :)

(I also divided and potted up my yacon tubers, which despite having got frosted before I dug them up were sprouting merrily away, which I was very pleased about! ... apparently DEFRA is not a fan. I am dithering indecisively.)

Observing. Spring is sproinging :)

Comments

[shanaqui]

Huh, interesting re: the yacon. Eek.

[ruric]

I did not know that about Yacon - thanks for the link - handy for both work and voluntary work at the allotment!

[hairyears]

Makes me worry about the yacon we planted in the back garden a few years ago...

[horselizard]

1) that is a lovely poem
2) actually went to find out what eatyourbooks is and ?!?! it sounds like actually perhaps a solution to my usual gripe about recipe books, which is that i want to start with what i have in and then find a recipe that uses those things, not vice versa...
3) rose jam...! :o

[lunabee34]

It has sproinged touch around here. The 80 degree weather can go back in the bag. Lol