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Dragonlady7's Journal

dragonlady7
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10/29/2008 00:16 #46402

more special
So I got home from practice and was really stinky. Stinky stinky gross. And a bit sore-- I'm breaking in new skates and they gave me some blisters on my instep. And we did a lot of hitting so I have a lot of sore places that will probably not come up in bruises because my skin doesn't bruise easily so I always look like a slacker compared to my teammates. (I did have one really satisfying moment where I planted my shoulder in a girl a hundred pounds lighter than me, then threw her with my hip. But I digress.)

Anyway. I got home all stinky, and took a shower. And I got out of the shower, and sat in bed for a while, decompressing. I had a Reese's peanut butter cup when I got home, and a big thing of water, but I was still unsatisified.

I mentioned this to (e:zobar), who said, "I had a sandwich, a little while ago. There's enough left for half of another sandwich. Roast beef and some cheese."
"Oo!" I said. "That sounds really... no, I don't need it." I still sometimes fall into these I-don't-deserve-food things. Not seriously enough to get eating-disordered, but enough that I still get confused and can't tell if I'm actually hungry or just want to be "rewarded"-- which is fucked-up, if you consider it. It's like saying, "I'm going to breathe extra today, because I deserve it!" That doesn't help; you don't need to breathe extra. So you don't need to eat extra. It's dumb. But it's even more stupid, and dangerous, and ridiculous, to breathe less, to deny yourself air that your body needs to oxygenate your tissues, because you've arbitrarily decided you don't "deserve" it. How stupid is that? It's completely stupid.
Food's pretty much the same way, only we're more aware of the pleasure of ingesting tasty food than we are of breathing clean air. And "tasty" is not always as simply good as "clean" is. (Though when you think of chemical "air fresheners" that simply mask possibly-toxic scents with actually-toxic ones, perhaps the comparison is easier.)
Anyway.
I pondered the sandwich for a moment, trying to decide whether I was really hungry or just wanted a "treat", and then said, "Could you make it for me?"
"You know how to make a damn sandwich," Z said.
"But you make them better than me, and it would be more special if you made it." It's true-- he really does. He just takes more care over sandwiches. When I was a kid I hated sandwiches because they were always cheap pepperoni or peanut butter and jelly, and my Mom almost always bought weird bread, and I just always preferred other foods. But (e:zobar) does things like... spreads the mayo, then grinds a little black pepper on it... sometimes shakes a little oregano on the cheese... aligns the meat just so, so it's even all the way around... folds the cheese neatly...
It's just way more special when he makes them.

Also, I've done all the cooking and fed him twice, sometimes three times, a day for the last month or so, while he's been busy and I haven't been so much. I haven't minded, though I've let the dishes pile up a bit. (Whoops.) (I do mind doing all the grocery shopping, a bit. I asked him what kind of olives he likes and he gave me a half-hour treatise on their relative merits. I know I'll just blank out next time I'm at the shop, and just dump some of each in there like I always do. Oh well.)

So I had this perfect sandwich in my mind, made by this perfect sandwich master. Really. Seriously. He makes a good sandwich.

But he wouldn't make it for me, and wouldn't acknowledge that it is more special to have food prepared for you by someone special than to just make it your damn self.

But am I crazy? Am I just being the typical controlling-whiny-bitch female here, to think that it would have been way more special that way?

I made myself the sandwich because I decided that I don't care about my fat ass or my new stretchmarks, and I hadn't had much protein today (actually, I was vegetarian all day up to that point! Well, meat's expensive, lately, so we don't eat as much as we used to), so I was going to have the damn sandwich. Also there wasn't enough to have for lunch tomorrow or anything like that. (I don't know what I'll make. I was going to finish up the leftover curry but Z said he didn't want it a third day in a row, so I'll have to think of something else. Boo, I don't want to go shopping.)

And I ate it. And it was okay. And I did feel better once I ate it, and hadn't realized I didn't feel great, so obviously my body did want it after all.

But it would've been way more special if he'd made it. I swear I'm not being crazy.
Am I being crazy? Is food more special when someone else makes it?
dragonlady7 - 10/30/08 09:34
Aw, I miss my mum too. She is a good cook too. More frustratingly, I have all her recipes and make them regularly and they're just not as good when I make them, even if I am way more careful and particular about them than she is. I can't win.
tinypliny - 10/30/08 07:00
ABSOLUTELY!! I agree completely. Food is WAAAAAAYYY more satisfying made by someone who is a special-er cook!!

I miss mum so much somedays that I actually get heartache. She is the best cook in the universe!
hodown - 10/29/08 09:04
I'm a huge believer of cooking for someone and how that is a sign of caring/love. I think it's one of the most special things you can do. Corny- but true.
heidi - 10/29/08 00:31
Food is absolutely more special if someone else makes it for you!!! A makes me food and it's always wonderful but when I make the same things they're bland and ordinary and boring. So, whiny? maybe, but not crazy!

10/28/2008 18:03 #46392

temperature
How did I never notice that above every blog entry, the temperature it was when it was posted is listed?

I am (e:retarded).

Or should that be (e:tarded)?
tinypliny - 10/30/08 07:02
I am just wondering... what kind of analysis can you possibly do with this? Link up moods to temperature?
jenks - 10/29/08 15:34
AwwWWww!! Thanks. :)
dragonlady7 - 10/29/08 00:21
It is interesting!! Now I remember noticing before that you can sort the frequency of blog postings by temperature. I just didn't realize it was displayed by everyone's posts.

It's funny because everyone always talks about how awful Buffalo's weather is, so having the temperature there is pretty funny.

I dunno, I've seen it, and noticed it before, but it just somehow never really sank in until today.
paul - 10/29/08 00:00
I have been collecting that data for years. Someday it will make for some really interesting data mining.
dragonlady7 - 10/28/08 23:58
@(e:jenks)-- Ha! You're totally right.
Also welcome back and I'm totally psyched you got the 25,000th journal. That's so rad. It was perfect for it too, with all the right emotional bits-- the sad thwarted love story angst, the work stress, exciting birth story, and baby pictures!! It was like, the perfect blog entry. Like if they had a class on how to keep an awesome blog, that would be one of the examples.
jenks - 10/28/08 21:07
maybe re:tarded. ;)
metalpeter - 10/28/08 18:15
I'll admit I never page attention to temp thing on the journal, that being said if you click on the little thing that says stats one of then does have to do with posts at different temps so you might want to check that out.
dragonlady7 - 10/28/08 18:13
I think 38 degrees Fahrenheit (was it really that cold today??) hardly counts as a hot flash.
mrmike - 10/28/08 18:08
You were having a hot flash?

10/28/2008 14:22 #46386

cauliflower curry
I forgot, I was going to blog this last night. i didn't get a photo, though.
The link to the original recipe is here:


This is a great recipe to make when you're in the doldrums of a lingering autumn cold. Fresh veggies have vitamins, right? And the spice kicks you in the nose and breaks up some of the congestion. Even if you're not sick, this is wonderful comfort food.

Put on a pot of rice to cook. For extra nutrition points, use brown rice, or as we do, half-and-half brown and white. (Start the brown rice according to directions. Cook half the cooking time specified. Add white rice, and some extra water. Bring back up to boil and cook according to directions. Voila!)

Then, here are her directions:
Microwave a whole head of cauliflower, leaves and core discarded, in two cups of water for 5 minutes or until tender. Meanwhile, warm a large pan, preferably one with a cover, and add the following ingredients:
3 tbsps vegetable oil
4 minced cloves of garlic
1 tsp grated fresh ginger, or 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
2 tbsps curry powder
1 tbsp turmeric
2 tsps whole coriander seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 bay leaf
1 medium onion, minced
1 hot pepper, minced (optional)

Sweat until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the cauliflower, including the water it was cooked in, and:

2 cups chopped tomato (fresh or canned according to season)

Stir well, coating the cauliflower with the other ingredients. It will break up into smaller florets as it cooks. Reduce to a steady simmer and let it cook, covered, for 15 minutes.

(I would put that in the quote tag but it makes it huge, so that's not easy to read.)

About 4-5 minutes before the end, she recommends mashing a tablespoon of butter with a tablespoon of flour, and mixing that paste into the sauce of the cooking veggies.
Last night I did one better, and in a separate pan, I combined a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of flour, and about half a cup of heavy cream. (I have too much heavy cream in the house. don't ask why. Regular milk would have worked fine.) I then added several cups of the sauce to this mix, just to see if it would curdle. It didn't, so I brought it up to nearly a boil to thicken it a little, then dumped it into the cauliflower mixture.

Since I'd added a hot pepper, it was spicy-- I grew the peppers myself and they turned out to be Peppers Of Fiery Doom, for some reason, this year. I never know, when I grow hot peppers, how they'll turn out. So the cream sweetened it and cooled it down a little.

Serve the cauliflower stuff atop the rice, and it's a wonderful hot vegetarian (vegan, if you don't do the butter-cream thing), very filling, very warming dinner. (e:zobar) loves it, and so do I. I have leftovers! Mmmm.

It's kind of bright green from the turmeric. Mmmm. It stained two of my fingernails when I fished out a piece of cauliflower to taste-test.

It's even kind of good if you eat it cold. What? No, I'm not at all cheating on dinner by eating it cold straight out of the fridge.
Mmmmm.
dragonlady7 - 10/30/08 09:57
I am woefully ignorant about India and Indians. My roommate freshman year of college was from Madras, and I learned pretty much immediately that I knew nothing. She was one of only two people at our university who spoke her native tongue, which was Tamil, and insisted that it was totally different from Hindi, which she taught herself in like the first week, and then she picked up Urdu in like half an hour, because I guess it's not that different? There were all kinds of Indians who hung out in my room at all hours (claiming to be on Desi Standard Time), and I kept trying to figure them all out but it eluded me. (Also tricky were the fact that many of them were Pakistani, and a few from Bangladesh, but most of them had been raised in other places, like Kenya or Saudi Arabia, because of course, these are not average Indians, they are the wealthy sort who can be educated as undergraduates at a private university in upstate New York.)
So I learned just enough to know that I know absolutely nothing. The previous year I'd spent in the UK, where Indian food is like a combination of Chinese food and pizza-- ubiquitous, and cheap, and simply what you eat after hours when you're drunk. So I miss it, and have ever since been trying to find Indian recipes, only to realize how freaking useless a generalization that is. It's not some little nation, it's a whole subcontinent with like four thousand regional dialects and a whole ocean of "cuisine" studded with distinctive little regional islands that bear no resemblance to one another at all.

(e:zobar) is no help-- his cousin was married, for a while, to an Indian who was also a chef, and their wedding was this incredible buffet of super-authentic "Indian" (again, for those of us who don't know the differences, the details slip through the cracks and we're helpless to be more fine-grained in our taxonomy) cuisine. As he retells it, about 50% of the dishes (unlabeled, of course) were absolutely glorious, 35% were pretty tasty, and 15% made him want to scrape his tongue with sandpaper. He has no recollection of which is which, and so is terrified whenever we go to Indian restaurants-- it's like Russian roulette when you have no idea what anything's called. (I have convinced him that the scrub-your-tongue-with-sandpaper ones probably aren't offered in the fairly Americanized restaurants, and if they were, the staff would probably warn you that they were likely to be an acquired taste, but he remains gun-shy.)

I had meant to put peas in it, now that you mention it. I did add carrots. And the cream-- I know that normally one uses coconut cream, or at least I have before in other recipes, but I didn't have any, and I did have heavy cream.
And I didn't put the full amount of tomatoes in it. I only had Italian-spiced tomatoes and I didn't really want that.
tinypliny - 10/30/08 07:08
That sounds classic north Indian. :) If it were me cooking, I would totally be inclined to skimp on the oil. I never have had butter or cream at home so they don't come into the picture.

So the interesting part is - I wouldn't have used the tomato and made it liquidy. This dish would taste awesome with rice even without the tomatoes - like a cauliflower vegetable pilaf. I would add peas to it.

10/26/2008 12:31 #46344

cat photos
OK, I figured I should follow that up with some photos of said cats. So I can have an illustration. Since I seem to have managed to get the Upload button to work.


image

Remi, Fi's cat. Fi will be here Thursday, incidentally, with plenty of time to get her costume ready for the (e:strip) party and her Buffalo debut. Whee!



image

Remi really likes to fondle my boobs. Fi blames the victim and says I'm leading her on. Whatever.


Missing Image ;(


This photo may not work but I'm trying it anyway. (It uploaded, but the code didn't appear in the box, so I kind of hacked it. We'll see.) It's both cats, side by side, eating dinner, so you can see their relative sizes.
Nope, didn't work. Oh well.

image
Chita and I are watching Remi with great suspicion.
dragonlady7 - 10/30/08 09:32
Chita really was. I was just mugging around, like a jerk. She doesn't realize, or perhaps she realizes and doesn't care, when I make fun of her.
tinypliny - 10/30/08 07:09
hehehe, I love the "with great suspicion" picture! :)

10/26/2008 12:05 #46341

Cat Religion
This is my second re-post, which has been revised and updated for the (E:strip) market.

Cat Religion

Watching Chita today I have become convinced that I understand the religion of cats.
They worship the god of Sleep, and are his truest servants.
She sat on Z's flat belly (he sits slouched, his "lap" starting as a perfectly flat surface just below his ribs, over his pelvis, and down a very long way to his knees. There is a great deal of territory there for a cat to lounge upon) and washed herself, then moved from his belly to the couch beside him. She finished her bath, then settled down to nap.

This was not just any catnap. This was a nap of epic proportions. This was a creature thoroughly, blissfully dedicated to sleep, the way the dervishes abandon themselves to God in their dances, the way a choir's mingled voices swell toward heaven: that was the way Chita slept, with devout abandon.

I believe her nightly tantrums, Remi's morning rampages, the yowling and chasing and invasion of our bedroom, loud destruction of furniture and banging of food bowls: these are the sacrifices they make to placate their God. Interrupting the sleep of others is their sacred duty. It makes us prize sleep the higher, and increases the glory of their deity.

And then, their sleep is the devotion they perform. Toes curling, whiskers twitching, head flattened upside-down against the cushion, belly exposed, tail wrapped around: it is all a slow-motion, sometimes-purring, beautiful offering to the God of Sleep.

Chita is a champion sleeper. While Remi simply curls up, nose to tail, Chita alternately sprawls and curls. She stretches frequently, toes curling. She prefers, when curled, to use her back feet as a chin pillow. And her long tail, much longer and more mobile than Remi's, is often awake long after she is, twitching in obscure little rhythms as she talks in her sleep. (Cats, for the non-cat-owners among you, speak with their tails, most eloquently.)

Chita is like a priestess in the cult of sleep. Yesterday, she made her devotions for about six straight hours, from before lunch straight through dinnertime. She is truly touched with a special gift.

If only I could get some damn sleep in this house. But no.
tinypliny - 10/30/08 07:11
I am so jealous reading about all this sleep rituals! I cannot sleep! It's maddening! :/