vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Halfway Between Albany and West Point, John Chu. I am now contemplating, not terribly coherently, what makes the difference between stuff where I go I Don't Understand This And I Strongly Suspect It Of Being Total Bullshit vs stuff to which my response is I Think There Are Points Being Made Here That I'm Totally Failing To Get But I'm Enjoying Myself Anyway.

I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong: progress! Currently in a chapter on coral reefs and being Very Interested by the way it feels to read it knowing that An Immense World concludes in part with a pointer to work demonstrating that playing healthy reef sounds at bleached reefs might support ecosystem recovery.

A bunch of handwriting resources, at least in part.

Writing. I have been playing with flex nib handwriting quite a lot this week! Yesterday I hit a point of ALL SCRIPTS ARE UGLY AND UNREADABLE & VERY STUPID & I HATE EVERYBODY & EVERYTHING but I have just now written another two experimental B and I am less sad about everything now. (It is not that I can't read cursive but it definitely is that it is Significantly More Work for me, and on the one hand I suspect that practice would improve this and on the other I am trying to work out if my HATING EVERYBODY & EVERYTHING is in any way a substantiated sense that prettier-in-large-blocks-i.e.-more-Stylised is Actually Harder Work in, like, the general model of minims.)

Watching. Finished a rewatch of the second episode of Middleman while applying dye to A's hair!

Cooking. A recipe from the Vanilla Black cookbook, go me. My notes:

Baked beetroot and apple, celeriac mash and toasted hazelnut oil (16th October, 156): used balsamic in place of sherry vinegar, as suggested in the recipe; James Grieve rather than Braeburn, which perhaps predictably attempted to turn into mush; and a mix of colours of beetroot. Overall: this is fairly simple and straightforward but I became steadily more interested in this the more of it I ate. NB served with Puy lentil-chestnut-red onion-parsley-apple cider vinegar salad, for protein and texture, and this was A Good Call.

I also cheated with the toasted hazelnut oil i.e. instead of toasting hazelnuts and then infusing sunflower oil with them I... poured some oil off my current tub of roasted hazelnut paste aaand dumped some toasted hazelnuts in with it. Am contemplating whether I want to restock an Actual Bottle Of Hazelnut Oil.

Creating. Painted A! He is Colours Again! And also Soggy!

Growing. Moved the purple basil into a more sensible pot and location. Brought the pepper (still enthusiastically flowering) home from the greenhouse to see if we can't keep it going on the windowsill over the winter. First emergence of some saffron at home!

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[vass]

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