kaberett | vital functions (Reply)

Reading. SEVERAL.

Coast, Rachel Allen: a cookbook, borrowed from the library because I was baffled by the concept of Recipes from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way that prominently featured avocado. I stand by what I said last week; having subsequently gone and looked her up the prose makes much more sense now that I know (i) she's (mostly?) a TV chef, and (ii) this is The Book Accompanying The TV Series. You can get away with a bit more "one of Ireland's [superlative] [noun]" when it's accompanied by actual pictures, I think.

How to cook cakes, Leiths, in service of indexing it for EYB. I am reminded of several things that will get the I Want To Cook This bookmark added once the index is live. I continue to massively appreciate the way this mini-series explains the reason for things misc.

The Betrayals, Bridget Collins. As I groused earlier in the week, this has eaten my HEAD. I spent most of it going "I cannot see how she can possibly resolve this in a way I'm happy with in the space remaining--" and then she did. Really, really good job of humanising some thoroughly dislikeable characters by way of holding a mirror up to the reader, which incidentally is yet another layer of metatextual wossname on a general theme of reflections. Much chewier than I was expecting it to be, many emotions had, still trying to work out whether I want to go exploring fandom.

(... I just went and looked. There is one single solitary fic.)

... read it so I can shriek at you?

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke. I had more or less remembered the climactic closing scene of Jonathan interacting with Arabella! ... I had forgotten a lot of the other ways things wound up, and very much enjoyed the reread.

To follow up I've launched straight into The Ladies of Grace Adieu while I still remember JS&MN, at least enough for searching the novel text for relevant footnotes to be sufficient context for me to go "oh right" -- and this, too, I am greatly enjoying.

Next up is... probably skim-rereads of a couple of books on pain I've already read, making notes this time, and then onward to the stack I haven't actually read before. (One of these is Mindfulness for Health, which I expect to be middlingly annoyed by (the last time I tried it I put it down in frustration fairly early on, at the point at which it became clear that both authors were fundamentally healthy people who'd had An Accident; this time round actually assessing the impact of that perspective on the advice is kind of the point). Then there's Hurts So Good, and finally Touch, which I acquired from Oxfam on the basis that if nothing else its chapter on pain is actually titled "Pain and Emotion".

(I am not going to get through all of these next week, but I will make some progress. I also maybe slightly searched the library ebook catalogue for "pain" and thereby added yet more recent-ish things to my reading list; Abdul-Ghaaliq Laikhen's books are a fairly high priority.)

Writing. Quite a lot of PIP submission (for someone else, at least!). Not done yet. This remains the priority for the next week.

Watching. The new Old Guard 2 trailer!

Playing. I Love Hue: The Alchemy now COMPLETE, and... so is The Ascension/Earth.

Cooking. A was away. Consequently, two recipes from East that they expected to dislike: black rice congee, of which I am definitely a fan, and a kimchi fried rice I had no objection to but no particular plans to ever make again.

Also the caramelised onion and chilli ramen, about which we were both meh although!!! I did! get to use choi sum THAT I HAD GROWN, which is still novel enough to be exciting; a recipe for tinker's cakes from a tiny cookbook I bought for EYB indexing purposes -- Welsh cakes with grated apple, which I liked enough to probably make a note of; and a slightly underwhelming "saucy Japanese greens with sticky sesame rice" that did at least use up some of the spring greens in last week's veg box. (I then made something up the next day to use up the other half, and that worked much better for our tastes: ginger/garlic/mushroom stir-fry sauce/little bit of mirin.)

Eating. CHOI SUM FROM THE GREENHOUSE (I am extremely excited about this, in case you couldn't tell). I think my great excitement about my first British asparagus of the season was last week? And also first British strawberries of the season yesterday, as the greater part of my treat for Anti-Migraine Stabs.

I have also been very much enjoying apple and pear juice + angry water + ice + a little bit of fresh (garden/field) mint.

Making & mending. Actually dug some trenches and started moving the railway sleepers around??? I have a whole entire outline of a raised bed in a place I've meant to have one since I got the plot in the first place?????

(First layer needs screwing together and then I need to sort myself out corner posts to attach next-layers-up to, and also I need to decide whether I want to have it two deep or three deep, but feeling v positive about this.)

Growing. Choi sum!!!

Also: despite my earlier misgivings the redcurrant is actually doing astonishingly well compared to the last several years, so good job me on that particularly vicious pruning??? Gooseberry also looking extremely promising; jostas I am much less surprised about looking good.

The one tiny remaining oca that spent over a year in the fridge, and that I'd given up for dead after someone went digging in the bit of bed it had been in... is in fact still alive, about which I am extremely excited.

Broad bean visibly setting fruit; the two Aquadulce Longpod I managed to overwinter are notably earlier than the stuff I didn't stick in until, like, January, but really not very much earlier, and I was sufficiently sad about watching all the ones that didn't make it Failing To Make It that I probably don't want to bother with the attempt in future. In that same bed the peas are not being wholly devastated by The Gastropods: two very well-established Kelvedon Wonder, plus soup peas and sugar snaps continuing to get on with things. Happily some of the rocket I buried in A Very Great Deal Of Mulch has managed to surface, which I think means I now have self-sustaining populations of both lambs' lettuce and rocket!

In the allium-and-brassica bed, kohlrabi are starting to swell up; most of the beetroot are Thinking Hard about things; I have achieved two summer spinach plants (and should sow some more); garlic chives are aaaaalmost at the point of being sufficiently established that I'm going to stop worrying about them; good grief but the seed-sown shallots are miles behind the (donated) sets. I knew they would be? But I'm still startled by just how stark the difference is.

Executive dysfunction is causing Problems with potting up Things Various (tomatoes, the chillis could probably do with it also, etc). I am trying to work out whether I just want to stick the tomatoes outside in their ultimate location (which requires me to shift several more barrowloads of Growing Medium around). I also desperately need to Sort Out The Shed so I can move a bunch of stuff out of storage-in-the-greenhouse and actually use that space for the chillis. And the loofa. More barrowloads of Stuff need to happen for planting out the various squash, but that's okay, bed construction is now significantly in progress.

Gonna want to start some more squash; I think all of the Sibley have failed and I might want another couple of Queensland Blue, but them I might just sow direct. Meanwhile it is definitely also time for, among other things, Cucumbers, and getting quinoa started in trays (or at least discovering whether the seed's still even remotely viable...). So so many things to do, but gosh spending time outside is good for me.

Observing. A saw a slow worm at the plot today! Also the allotment fox; also, on my way home from the allotment the other evening, the previously mentioned Gawky Teenage Fox. At home, we've seen the bat! Also there is Yelling coming from a portion of the hedge that very notably has a pair of robins shuttling back and forth to it at fairly high frequency. I'd rather it weren't so dry, but the fact that it is means I've had the wood pigeons and the corvids balancing in deeply ungainly fashion on the water dish in order to drink, which has been fun to watch.

We are less happy about the local outdoor cats having decided that they too wish to take up birdwatching on our patio.