vital functions

[kaberett]

Celebrating. A family birthday! I made cake and everything.

Reading. NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman. I am about a fifth of the way through it and am still wary? Noting with interest the choices he's making about how to present his argument.

Watching. Dead Boy Detectives S01E03. Gosh it is so much less disjointed than the first two. SO much.

Cooking. Important Familial Birthday Cake. More of the Ottolenghi chickpea and carrot nonsense, which I continue Extremely Pro. In company, a heavily modified braised squash with chickpeas and harissa that was honestly more like "roast veg with chickpeas and harissa (and halloumi)" that was nonetheless very tasty but which I might make a more faithful rendition of at Some Point.

Eating. SO MANY GOOD THINGS.

• finished my post-event Cake Stash
• (among other things) some very good pineapple pickle from a place in the arches at Vauxhall
• misc from I think Dulcedo Patisserie (?), Eddington branch: baguettes; white boule; apricot and custard breakfast pastry; fig and ricotta ditto
• many many foraged Bits, see below
• my mother's Schwarzbrot (variations thereupon)

Exploring. Small adventure with my mother! In the course of which we found, inter alia: a black mulberry tree overhanging a pavement with lots of ripe fruit; many many blackberries; some elderberries; tiny yellow plums overhanging the public footpath from my primary school's grounds; free pattypan squash.

And gardens various in the vicinity of Bonnington Square.

Observing. A Catalina; teenage robins; miscellaneous fruit trees; many many butterflies.

Comments

[gingicat]

Completely agreed about Dead Boy Detectives, those first two episodes both suffered from backstory preparation.

[lunabee34]

Good eats indeed.

[enigel]

I'm curious about the rest of your impression of NeuroTribes.

I had to skim read the second half or so, because someone else reserved it so couldn't renew my loan. But I also struggled with the presentation. I think I was expecting what I usually expect from non-fiction, and instead got walked around some narrative garden paths with dramatised interpretations. (Which can also be fine - when I'm expecting it.)

I do think I've learned a bunch of things I didn't know re: the history of the medicalisation of autism and the shifting societal understanding of it.

I might borrow it again when I finish the current batch...