vital functions
Sep. 22nd, 2019 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Luminous & heartbreaking & relentless. I had a particularly difficult time with the inexplicable betrayal of high ideals & shared humanity by one's fellow citizens, for some reason.
The Burning Page, Genevieve Cogman. Continues fun & somewhat frustrating, to my tastes.
Trans Mission: my quest to a beard, Alex Bertie. Picked up in hard copy from my local tube station's book exchange during Pride month, and has just made it to the top of the stack. I'm cringing a bit reading the blurb, because (1) child is a couplefew years younger than me, (2) oh dear child you too Picked Alex As A Name (3) chILD I wish to do you An Mentoring. Just getting started with it; so far I'm wincing a little at the oversimplifications, but I suspect this is largely just because I'm not the target audience (!). We shall see.
Watching. Mad Max: Fury Road, avec the cousins, and I am still picking up new details I hadn't previously spotted; also a whole bunch ofpurplefringe's vids & some misc music videos.
Listening. At A's request, I have (with great suspicion) worked out how to make the TV play music off my laptop, so we've spent a lot of today listening to ONSIND and Leonard Cohen. (A was thoroughly stuck humming Hallelujah, for some reason.)
Cooking. Such thing. There's a batch of apples that I finally, on Sunday, got jarred up. For the cousins: sourdough and soda bread; Mohnpotitz and Kardemummebullar; houmous and baba ganoush. I did not get as far as scones, but this is probably for the best.
I made An Error with the Mohnpotitz. I knew perfectly well that the recipe for Nusspotitz in The Canonical Book (per my ancestors various) needs the amount of dough doubled or the amount of filling halved in order to be at all reasonable, and I've carefully noted that for the given Nuss filling, but I had not similarly emphasised it for the Mohn (poppyseed) filling I wrote in by hand (from my grandmother's recipe).
Reader, I halved the amount of poppyseeds. I... forgot... to halve the quantities of sugar. And honey. And the nationalism rum. The Potitz is extremely alcoholic.
(Potitze is an enriched yeast dough wrapped roly-poly around a filling Of Some Ilk. We got it from the Slovenes, probably.)
Exploring. Chihuly Nights at Kew! I will grudgingly grant that the Temperate House Persians (2018) look much better illuminated (you actually get to see the red lip wrapping in a way that just doesn't show up in daylight!); Summer Sun (2010) is stunning reflected in the lake. A thing I failed to note after last visit is that Niijima Floats (2019) keeps getting the gravel reraked around it in different patterns; on the middle visit it was in a slightly odd chequerboard pattern that I felt really didn't work, but it was back to swirls and ripples for the night viewing, which I felt was Better; it was Interesting to note how the glass responds to different qualities of light (e.g. the matte versus gloss finishes I'd so admired on Neodymium Reeds and Turquoise Marlins really didn't show up terribly well in the illumination-at-night). Also notable: the glass harmonica in the Temperate House.
Observing. There was a COAL TIT on the FIG on Saturday morning, and the birds have thoroughly rediscovered the feeders, and all is well.
The Burning Page, Genevieve Cogman. Continues fun & somewhat frustrating, to my tastes.
Trans Mission: my quest to a beard, Alex Bertie. Picked up in hard copy from my local tube station's book exchange during Pride month, and has just made it to the top of the stack. I'm cringing a bit reading the blurb, because (1) child is a couplefew years younger than me, (2) oh dear child you too Picked Alex As A Name (3) chILD I wish to do you An Mentoring. Just getting started with it; so far I'm wincing a little at the oversimplifications, but I suspect this is largely just because I'm not the target audience (!). We shall see.
Watching. Mad Max: Fury Road, avec the cousins, and I am still picking up new details I hadn't previously spotted; also a whole bunch of
purplefringe's vids & some misc music videos.Listening. At A's request, I have (with great suspicion) worked out how to make the TV play music off my laptop, so we've spent a lot of today listening to ONSIND and Leonard Cohen. (A was thoroughly stuck humming Hallelujah, for some reason.)
Cooking. Such thing. There's a batch of apples that I finally, on Sunday, got jarred up. For the cousins: sourdough and soda bread; Mohnpotitz and Kardemummebullar; houmous and baba ganoush. I did not get as far as scones, but this is probably for the best.
I made An Error with the Mohnpotitz. I knew perfectly well that the recipe for Nusspotitz in The Canonical Book (per my ancestors various) needs the amount of dough doubled or the amount of filling halved in order to be at all reasonable, and I've carefully noted that for the given Nuss filling, but I had not similarly emphasised it for the Mohn (poppyseed) filling I wrote in by hand (from my grandmother's recipe).
Reader, I halved the amount of poppyseeds. I... forgot... to halve the quantities of sugar. And honey. And the nationalism rum. The Potitz is extremely alcoholic.
(Potitze is an enriched yeast dough wrapped roly-poly around a filling Of Some Ilk. We got it from the Slovenes, probably.)
Exploring. Chihuly Nights at Kew! I will grudgingly grant that the Temperate House Persians (2018) look much better illuminated (you actually get to see the red lip wrapping in a way that just doesn't show up in daylight!); Summer Sun (2010) is stunning reflected in the lake. A thing I failed to note after last visit is that Niijima Floats (2019) keeps getting the gravel reraked around it in different patterns; on the middle visit it was in a slightly odd chequerboard pattern that I felt really didn't work, but it was back to swirls and ripples for the night viewing, which I felt was Better; it was Interesting to note how the glass responds to different qualities of light (e.g. the matte versus gloss finishes I'd so admired on Neodymium Reeds and Turquoise Marlins really didn't show up terribly well in the illumination-at-night). Also notable: the glass harmonica in the Temperate House.
Observing. There was a COAL TIT on the FIG on Saturday morning, and the birds have thoroughly rediscovered the feeders, and all is well.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-22 10:04 pm (UTC)am also curious to see how this trans mission book pans out!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-24 10:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-23 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-23 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-23 04:38 pm (UTC)... ha, yes, I am Very Fond of teal but I can see how it might not work for other people.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-23 10:13 pm (UTC)(Lots of thin sort of maybe-almost-crepe-like (eggy?) layers smoogled haphazardly with poppyseed filling in between? It was in a baking pan; idk if it was supposed to be; I seem to recall her making some skeptical noises about the execution? Does that sound like a Maybe Plausible or a Nope Sounds Like Something Else?)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-24 10:04 am (UTC)