kaberett | vital functions (Reply)

Reading. The first paragraph of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I believe I have not read since before the PhD, ergo CACKLING.

I have pretty much finished indexing cookbook #2, which means I'm also counting that as read: revisiting Leiths How to cook pastry. Which is of course how I learned to make puff to my satisfaction last year, about which I was very pleased! There are definitely a number of things in there that I'm interested in cooking at least once; maybe I'll even get to them one of these months.

Approximately the first two paragraphs of The Two Cultures, CP Snow, having realised (thank you!) that I could skip the intro. Possibly I will get a bit further?

I think the thing I want to read next is pain reprocessing therapy dude's The Way Out, but my library only has it in eaudio and there are enough steps involved in requesting an ebook acquisition that I am... not getting to it immediately.

Writing. Couple of sentences re pain. Indexed a cookbook!

Watching. Mostly this year's Migraine World Summit. (Also kind of listening.) I... can't remember if we managed a Farscape and I haven't been managing to write things down.

Playing. We have started the Clementoni 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle Marbles (no link because their actual website 404s), and I am having great fun.

I Love Hue: The Alchemy/Transformation/13. I would need to dig out my previous phone to double-check, but I think I'm doing significantly better on the triangles this time around? Possibly it's just that I've stuck with them longer? But I seem to be doing better at having intuition about how patterns of saturation and brightness go.

Cooking. Two extremely underwhelming things (semolina and saffron dumplings with root veg stew; Meera Sodha's Sodha-family-masala-omelette, where the fault was probably at least in part execution but we... nonetheless did not want to finish it).

Two less underwhelming things, both also from East: new potato serundeng; carrot achar.

One actually broadly good thing: slow-cooked courgettes with pangrattato.

Oh! And there were more discount pistachio croissants, so we are happily working our way through another round of raspberry & pistachio strata.

Eating. Still v. excited about lambs' lettuce from the allotment! And Final (for now) Post-Hospital Ottolenghi: I wound up going for a charred pineapple margarita, which I was very pleased with, plus two salads I'd had before and one (butternut squash and butterbean dip) I hadn't, which was very good.

Cakes we took home and have eaten so far: blackberry and vanilla cupcakes (... more icing than I wanted, really, but tasty); banana teacake with dulce de leche (I think I prefer my pineapple upside-down banana bread, but I'm glad to have tried it). Hoarded for near-future consumption: a slice of the cooked pear frangipane tart, and "orange cheesecake with poppy seed brittle".

A has made a couple of batches of akuri. <3

Making & mending. Have stalled a bit on A's glove #1 because I need to work out how to fix it. I am a bit sad that this means it will not be done in time for First Weekend In A Field. (Maybe Second Weekend In A Field, though?)

Growing. Iiiiii have. Pricked out and also sown more tai sai pak choi. Sown some nonsense radish for the small quantity of radish I want for the purposes of Cooking (Almost) Everything In East. Pricked out a lot of basil and some more tomatoes. Transferred all of the tomatoes from Home to The Greenhouse. Done a bunch more weeding and mulching and general tidying. Got lots of peas outside and into the ground. Been VERY excited that some of my leeks actually germinated??? ALSO as of today EXTREMELY excited that at least one (1) aubergine is coming up, and removed the seed casing from a Trinidad Perfume without killing it, and made up some Potting Medium for the tarragon I'm trying to Encourage. (Two of them are looking cheerful; several others are not; We Shall See). I have failed to sow more Green Zebra (tomato). And it is very nearly time to make the squash go?

Observing. Foxes! Parakeets! The bat is being oddly recalcitrant. Hyacinths and snake's head fritillaries now firmly out, at least at the top of our particular hill. (I did not attempt to watch the partial eclipse.) I dragged A out on a walk up the road the other evening to make them look at All The Magnolias, which are currently exuberant, and a couple of which locally are especially well set off by their companion flowering Prunus misc. and a delightful pink-to-white gradation in the form of a double camellia.