vital functions
Dec. 26th, 2021 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. The other night, in the throes of insomnia, I was poking fitfully at the library ebook app, and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow (Natasha Pulley) fell into my hands. I have all my usual reservations about Pulley's politics (see, for example, a discussion over at skygiants', lo these several years ago), but her prose is both easy and pleasant to read, and so I am, more or less, enjoying myself.
Watching. BBC Life - Amphibians & Reptiles. As ever, we greatly enjoyed ourselves; I think my favourite this episode was the pebble toad (CN spider), and it is only after the fact that I quite registered the extent to which their Commitment To No Humans made it very difficult to understand the scale on which this toad in particular is operating, even though they told us that it's only about an inch long.
Sound Effects Humans were having a brilliant time and I particularly appreciated their contribution to the canon; I also spent some time this morning, while we were contemplating getting up, doing dramatic readings of bits of the wikipedia entry on Komodo dragons to A.
Cooking. Many things! A token quantity of mince pies; a rather less token quantity of cheese straws; Teebäckerei (I... really most post the recipe here one of these days) and Vanillekipferl; and, as I mentioned, I have been playing about with some Ottolenghi dishes.
First: I think I have now got the confit tandoori chickpeas "right" -- give or take needing to actually shell out for the fresh tomatoes to double-check, and also buy another ready-meal pack from one of the restaurants to do a comparison. (Inconsiderately, the various recipes he's published in a variety of newspaper columns misses out several of the things listed in the ingredients of the ready-meal pack, including curry leaves and lemon, so there has been Tinkering.)
Second: one of the other things we had when we last had A Big Ottolenghi Order (A gets money from his employer for "meals for two"; at the moment, that means big boxes of Assemble At Home fancy food) was "celeriac shawarma" -- celeriac roasted with a Very Tasty spice mix, served with bkeila (a Tunisian Jewish confit spinach dish) and pickled celeriac strips and a fermented tomato & chilli sauce and a yoghurty thing and pitta and crispy fried onion. And a small pot of More Spice Mix to sprinkle over everything, which we did not eat all of at the time, and which I subsequently used -- in conjunction with the list of ingredients that came with the takeaway -- in this attempt at recreation. Give or take the part where I blithely used all the Scotch bonnets from an allotment-neighbour's gift to make a relatively small quantity of sauce, I think it was a success -- and once I have actually made the spice mix myself and have a rough idea of the proportions, I will also post the recipe. (I did not make our own pita this time. Maybe next time. Maybe.)
So, yes, I roasted half a celeriac slathered in spice paste; I made bkeila by smushing together two recipes plus the ingredients list; I pickled some celeriac strips in apple cider vinegar bought in a supermarket in France in the before times, which is getting down the dregs of the bottle; I prepped the tomato and chilli sauce the day before to give it a bit of a chance to ferment; and in place of the yoghurt-thing I went "you know what? we have half a butternut squash as needs using and while I was poking around my various recipe books I found a recipe for butternut squash-tahini-yoghurt spread that looks like it will go well", and it did. A successful experiment all round, I think, and one I will definitely repeat once I can bring myself to fiddle with spices...
And then a Big Roast, feat. veg haggis (pre-made), Yorkshire puddings, beetroot roasted with honey & thyme & shallots-from-the-allotment, cheesy leeks, braised red cabbage, roast potatoes & parsnip & celeriac & onion, and carrots and cauliflower. (The light returns.)
Growing. More progress at the allotment! Exuberant strawberry runners into the ground and covered in straw; three beds mostly-mulched; and I've started tearing down the horrible (falling to pieces) plywood edging surrounding the last big raised bed with carpet under it, in preparation for starting to move soil hopefully-next-week.
There is a risk that the small bed beyond it also has carpet underneath, but I'm going to cross that bridge when I come to it -- not least because having resigned myself to the saffron I stuck it in vanishing without a trace... it's all (or at least a lot of it) now come up! So in addition to the at-home saffron I have some at-the-allotment saffron, which also isn't flowering, but which it would be annoying to have to move.
It is feeling really good to be getting back to this.
skygiants', lo these several years ago), but her prose is both easy and pleasant to read, and so I am, more or less, enjoying myself.Watching. BBC Life - Amphibians & Reptiles. As ever, we greatly enjoyed ourselves; I think my favourite this episode was the pebble toad (CN spider), and it is only after the fact that I quite registered the extent to which their Commitment To No Humans made it very difficult to understand the scale on which this toad in particular is operating, even though they told us that it's only about an inch long.
Sound Effects Humans were having a brilliant time and I particularly appreciated their contribution to the canon; I also spent some time this morning, while we were contemplating getting up, doing dramatic readings of bits of the wikipedia entry on Komodo dragons to A.
THE ISLAND OF KOMODO IN INDONESIA gosh I wonder what this could be about
- oh no WHAT a good lateral-wobbly walk! WHAT good tongs! what horrifying drool threads!!! NINE FEET LONG
- Only One Thing Can Challenge A Dragon's Dominance: Another Dragon
- breeding season --> males Do A Conflict
- "For the rest of the world's amphibians and reptiles, sruvival is a much tougher struggle"
South America -- Venezuela/Brazil border
- "Few places on Earth are wetter." Very Peculiar Amphibians.
- THE WATERFALL TOAD IS JUST AN INCH LONG
-- Oh No A Danger Noodle -- tiny toad does not have a good at jomp
-- ... VERY BIG GRIPPY HANDS so it lives in the treetop but just... FREE FALLS OUT OF TREE when a Danger Noodle shows up, and then GRABS ON HARD with it hands
- "However, another toad on this same mountain has elaborated this strategy."
-- what a good atmospheric plateau
-- PEBBLE TOAD. ALSO ONLY AN INCH LONG.
-- .... predated by GIANT FUCKOFF SPIDER??? "A toad-eating tarantula."
-- the sound effects human is having a LOT of fun with Dramatic Ballet Music for jumping etc
-- pebble toad also can't hop... but has different defence: ROLLS ITSELF UP INTO A BALL AND TURNS INTO A BOUNCY BALL
--- just NOPES THE FUCK ON OUTTA THERE When a spider appears: it so little that it can just bounce back on down the slope
Lots of very atmospheric lights reflecting on water -- "Brazil's Pantanal" -- in dry season reduced to 2 small pools, containing greatest concentration of crocodiles on Earth (caimans)
- ... they would be fine without food provided they didn't fucking SQUABBLE
-- ... my word that's some impressive vibrating
-- ... and then rivers return and the crocodiles just... sit there. with their mouths open. Comfy For Feesh
oh yay lots of close-ups of things sunbathing to become Wom and Active
- b a s k i n g
- exposing self to sun unavoidably makes you easy to see
- ... the basilisk ("Jesus Christ lizard") just. NOPES OFF by RUNNING ACROSS WATER thus justifying its choice of exposed branches right above a river where Birds might decide that Narm
Big Ol' Waterfall being presented as Inhospitable
- smaller than some insects!!! mushm parasol!!!
-- BRAZILIAN PYGMY GECKO is TINIEST
-- SMOL and FAST and RUNs AWAY FROM BEETLES
-- OH NO IT HAS PROBLEMS WITH RAIN
--- ... hi sound effect human
-- oh no it go PLOMP when raindrops -- it could drown in a drop of rain so --- it's extremely hydrophobic! to the point that it. WATER TENSIONS. ON PUDDLES. BEACUSE IT'S SO LIGHT AND SO WATER-REPELLANT THAT IT JUT. STANDS. ON THE WATER SURFACE TENSION.
--- VERY good purple translucent tong
"One of the most bizarre of all reptiles hunts insects here in Madagascar"
- praying mantis has 360deg vision but...-- SOUND. EFFECT. HUMAN. MAKES NOISES. WITH TONGS.
-- panther! chameleon! grasping pincer toes; independently rotating eyes in All Directions; skin changes colour (camouflage & communication); HORRIFYING TONG with TUBE AT END also what the fuck is that pointy little nose
The Namib desert: contrast to Madagascar in terms of chameleon habitat
- Namaqua chameleon is LOOKIN TO GET DOWN
- CHANGES SKIN COLOUR -- side facing sun goes dark to absorb sun's heat while other side remains light to minimise heat escape, in order to get moving early in the morning!!!
- so finds a little vegetation & waits for shade-seeking beetles to come to her while she is Too Slow to Catch Herself
- She Found A Boy - "but he may not treat her as she might wish"
- ... these chameleons are VERY AGGRESSIVE about sex because they encounter each other so rarely
Okay now we're doing 6-month freezes down as low as -40degC... HI CANADIAN REPTILES
- male red-sided garter snake
-- hibernated underground where T never dropped below 0!
-- sun persuades more males to emerge: "They are cold and can't move fast, yet are in an urgent race."
-- PILE OF NOODLES
-- OH NO THEY DRINK MELTWATER OFF THE SIDE OF A ROCK WHAT GOOD NOODLES
-- "At least, a female has emerged. The warmest males will inevitably bt ehf rist to react to her smell."
-- BIG TANGLE O' NOODLE
- male who woke up late... has lots of warm males come to Warm Him Up because... reasons??? BEACUSE HE GIVES OFF SMELL OF LADYYYY to steal heat from rivals so as to catch up with ability to do a Big Hecking Fight
- "mating frenzy" is greatest gathering of reptiles in world in terms of numbers! (that we know about)
Aha now we have talked about Getting A Sex, so now -- back to Madagascar, collared iguana
- will only lay one batch of eggs; needs somewhere safe to hide them
- Tasty Egg Monchables
- lots of good pretty yellow butterflies!
- buries eggs in sand... but here comes a hognose snake, because they have learned to keep watch on nesting sites and Learn Where Eggs Are Buried
Sonoran Desert in Arizona
- "a similar drama ha a very different outcome"
- horned lizard guards buried eggs, to SPIKE anyone who try to eat GOSH she spike
- along! comes! a western patchnosed snake!
- and she harrasses it on Out Of There to leave her eggs ALONE
- whereupon a coachwhip snake shows up, and these ones eat lizards not eggs
- she! can tell! the difference!
- snake too fast to outrun, so she PUFFS UP to be INFLATED and LARGE AND SPIKY
- ........... and then she flops over onto her back???? belly all up???
-- snake is deeply confused and nopes????
- OH NOT HTE SMOLS ARE VERY SMOL
Sea-reptiles have Even More Difficulty looking after eggs
Pacific island of Niue - one particular type of sea krait - underwater snek... EXCEPT when sex o'clock
- ... this is more snake porn wow
- but okay so the eggs need to have access to air but??? she & they are Vulnerable on land???
- ... she dives beneath island "to find the entrance to a long underwater tunnel"
-- cave with air pocket
-- ...... The Egg Cave???
-- wait she has a FLAT TAIL??? for swims????
-- hatching! baby! snek! VERMICELLI. TINY SLIMY NOODLE.
.................. WHOMST is EMERGING from the soil when it rains
- OMINOUS music
- EYES SOUND EFFECTS
- ... male giant bullfrog: South African species that care for young???
- GIANT YELLOW THROATS
- THEY GO DONK
- oh my GOODNESS Sound effect human is having fun with gongs
- one male! stays behind! to watch over EVERYBODY'S BABIES
- TADPOLES. SO MANY.
- eggs get laid in margins but as sun intensifies pools evaporate etc
-IS MOUTH COMFY FOR BAB???
- ... no okay he dig a channel to the main pool so they can all do a Heckin wiggle
-- ... that is EXTREMELY undignified
One Reptile That Is Still An Undisputed Top Land Predator
- ah now we are back to the Komodo Dragon, which hunt deer usually... but will actually go for water buffalo, which are 10 times their size (!!!)
- first filming of a Dragon Hunt!
- dragons lurk around the margins of a watering hole that has a water buffalo sleeping in it
- ah yes so they just have to bite a buffalo once and then Follow It Everywhere even though they stop attacking BECAuSE. THEY'RE VENEMOUS.
-- AHA this was a recent discovery at the time of filming
- "bite will eventually prove fatal but it will take several weeks" -- still alive 3 weeks later. not HAPPY about it, but.
- "Thousands of years ago, dwarf elephants lived here. The dragons probably hunted them in exactly the same way."
- oh no now buffalo is Not Well at the dragon is plapping its nose with the tong. :(
- 10x dragons strip buffalo to the bone in 4 hours
- biggest venemous animal on the planet, yep
Life On Location - "Chasing the Dragon"
- "No-one has ever before followed the whole process of a komodo dragon hunting a buffalo": didn't know what to expect - "thought it would be a physical challenge but hadn't bargained for emotional turmoil as well"
- yep they are indeed finding shadowing the buffalo Hard
Cooking. Many things! A token quantity of mince pies; a rather less token quantity of cheese straws; Teebäckerei (I... really most post the recipe here one of these days) and Vanillekipferl; and, as I mentioned, I have been playing about with some Ottolenghi dishes.
First: I think I have now got the confit tandoori chickpeas "right" -- give or take needing to actually shell out for the fresh tomatoes to double-check, and also buy another ready-meal pack from one of the restaurants to do a comparison. (Inconsiderately, the various recipes he's published in a variety of newspaper columns misses out several of the things listed in the ingredients of the ready-meal pack, including curry leaves and lemon, so there has been Tinkering.)
Second: one of the other things we had when we last had A Big Ottolenghi Order (A gets money from his employer for "meals for two"; at the moment, that means big boxes of Assemble At Home fancy food) was "celeriac shawarma" -- celeriac roasted with a Very Tasty spice mix, served with bkeila (a Tunisian Jewish confit spinach dish) and pickled celeriac strips and a fermented tomato & chilli sauce and a yoghurty thing and pitta and crispy fried onion. And a small pot of More Spice Mix to sprinkle over everything, which we did not eat all of at the time, and which I subsequently used -- in conjunction with the list of ingredients that came with the takeaway -- in this attempt at recreation. Give or take the part where I blithely used all the Scotch bonnets from an allotment-neighbour's gift to make a relatively small quantity of sauce, I think it was a success -- and once I have actually made the spice mix myself and have a rough idea of the proportions, I will also post the recipe. (I did not make our own pita this time. Maybe next time. Maybe.)
So, yes, I roasted half a celeriac slathered in spice paste; I made bkeila by smushing together two recipes plus the ingredients list; I pickled some celeriac strips in apple cider vinegar bought in a supermarket in France in the before times, which is getting down the dregs of the bottle; I prepped the tomato and chilli sauce the day before to give it a bit of a chance to ferment; and in place of the yoghurt-thing I went "you know what? we have half a butternut squash as needs using and while I was poking around my various recipe books I found a recipe for butternut squash-tahini-yoghurt spread that looks like it will go well", and it did. A successful experiment all round, I think, and one I will definitely repeat once I can bring myself to fiddle with spices...
And then a Big Roast, feat. veg haggis (pre-made), Yorkshire puddings, beetroot roasted with honey & thyme & shallots-from-the-allotment, cheesy leeks, braised red cabbage, roast potatoes & parsnip & celeriac & onion, and carrots and cauliflower. (The light returns.)
Growing. More progress at the allotment! Exuberant strawberry runners into the ground and covered in straw; three beds mostly-mulched; and I've started tearing down the horrible (falling to pieces) plywood edging surrounding the last big raised bed with carpet under it, in preparation for starting to move soil hopefully-next-week.
There is a risk that the small bed beyond it also has carpet underneath, but I'm going to cross that bridge when I come to it -- not least because having resigned myself to the saffron I stuck it in vanishing without a trace... it's all (or at least a lot of it) now come up! So in addition to the at-home saffron I have some at-the-allotment saffron, which also isn't flowering, but which it would be annoying to have to move.
It is feeling really good to be getting back to this.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-27 01:43 am (UTC)I have been very curious about Natasha Pulley's work, but have somehow never got to it, and really can't decide if I want to. Hum.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-30 06:15 pm (UTC)This third one, The Lost Future of Mrs Pepperharrow, I think is liable to annoy you in terms of (bit of a spoiler, coming up in the next comment so you can ignore it more easily...!)
SPOILER for The Lost Future of Mrs Pepperharrow
Date: 2021-12-30 06:16 pm (UTC)Re: SPOILER for The Lost Future of Mrs Pepperharrow
Date: 2021-12-30 06:17 pm (UTC)Oh WELL that might indeed be a dealbreaker.
Mind you, I sometimes enjoy the part where I wave my arms around crossly, so, um, heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-27 11:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-28 11:19 pm (UTC)Ha! I am in the process of rehabilitating them still, having been EXTREMELY underwhelmed, for a very long time, with the awful cold pickled ones that tasted mostly of Angry Mud...
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-29 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-30 06:18 pm (UTC)(For work: the way to tell the difference between mudstone and siltstone in the field, i.e. without a handy Serious Business Microscope, is to bite some of it of and chew it delicately. If you can feel the grains between your teeth it's silt, and if you can't it's mud.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-31 11:32 am (UTC)Oh that is very cool.
In geology class during an identification test, I will totally cop to surreptiously licking the halite to be sure. LOL
(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-12 05:25 am (UTC)