beyond the wide world's end

I remember when I used to have actual content. Them was good times, man.

( ranting beneath this cut )

In less ire-raising news: Miley Cyrus is filming a movie on my campus (I KNOW), and the front half of the academic quad is all decked out for Greek Week in the movie, so it looks ridiculous. They've attached fake cherry blossoms to some of the trees, and they've covered the names of four buildings that I saw on the signs (as well as the part that, you know, says "Tulane University") so that the architecture building is now the Fine Arts Building of Southern Louisiana University and the Richardson Building (not that that narrows it down, we actually have three Richardsons on campus) is now the Law School and contains the Investigative Studies Program. There are posters everywhere that say things like "Go SLU Crawdaddies!" and so on and so forth. I have not seen The Actual Miley Cyrus, but one of my friends has, apparently. And yes, I could have auditioned to be an extra, but I have my dignity, people. I have my dignity.

At least it's now warmer in New Orleans.

I also did not make it down to the French Quarter today. (I meant to go with Texas and Alaska, but Texas didn't wake up until well after noon and Alaska vanished. Also I was making my rustic soup.) I may just bite the bullet and go down tomorrow by myself, thus knocking off one of my new term's resolutions.

I picked up a mandoline slicer the other day at T.J. Maxx -- not a full-on fancy mandoline, but a little $10 hand-held one, and experimented with slicing up potatoes today to make homemade baked potato chips (as I usually pay through the nose for Kettle Baked potato chips, which are my favorite). YUM. Still experimenting to find a good way to make salt-and-vinegar chips, though.

My mother also has a new rolling pin, courtesy of moi -- she sent her old rolling pin to me in New Orleans, so I got her a sturdy wooden French rolling pin, which is amazing, I want to roll everything. Perhaps I shall make these gingerbread cookies...except we are out of baking soda. *pouts* I'll do more sweet potato biscuits later, as soon as we get more butter. And maple oatmeal scones! (My mother wants breakfast treats.)

The Cinnamon Wrath of My Ancestors (does anyone want a recipe?) turned out Extremely Tasty. Probably could have used a bit more butter, though, but still: extremely tasty.

Meanwhile, herds of deer wander daily across my lawn. I'm not talking about two or three here and there -- I think there's seven down there right now, that I can see out my window. -- holy shit, there's more than a dozen deer on my lawn right now!

I am resisting the urge to ignore the rest of Dust and just write the Archenland stuff -- I am stupidly excited about finally being able to build up to one of the climactic battles/scenes I've had in mind from the very beginning, and actually, I think this might be the first of them. (Cair Paravel, the climax of the last section, was not planned out the way this one is. That one is New Orleans. This one is basically the Thermopylae of Narnia -- look, I was studying the Persian Wars when I started writing Dust, all right? Sometimes it shows.)

Huh, this discarded beginning of Dust 21 is still relevant. Maybe that can be moved up to Dust 23. I was going to start with a punch in the face, but this is also workable. HMM. (Life of a writer. Not as interesting as one might think.)

Or: the time that I threw a bunch of things in the soup pot and hoped for the best. Which is to say:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 inch of ginger, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, smashed (I would probably up this to three or even four)
1 carrot, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped (I had no onions, so I left this out)
1 handful of fresh parsley leaves, curly
1 32-oz package chicken stock
1 bay leaf
a dash of dried thyme
a dash of ground turmeric
~1 cup cooked turkey, shredded
~3/4 cup noodles, broken up into 1-inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a medium stockpot over medium heat, then swirl in olive oil and butter. Briefly saute ginger and garlic, then add carrot, celery, onion, and parsley and saute for two or three minutes. Add chicken stock and bay leaf and bring to a simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add the turkey, noodles, thyme, turmeric, and salt and pepper and increase the heat. Simmer until noodles are cooked through. Make sure to stir occasionally so that your noodles don't stick together. Serve hot.

Agh, roommates. *headdesk*

It is the little things. The really little tiny things! Like, I've been putting baking sheets in the oven to dry after I've washed them, because there's not usually room in the rack, only Maryland gets pissed off because then she can't find them and she turns on the oven to preheat and doesn't check if there's anything inside it. Which I guess is my fault? Since I'm the ones who puts the sheets in the oven in the first place, it's just that there's nowhere else to put them to dry. And I'm used to (a) putting them in the oven at home and (b) checking the oven before I preheat it, because we have a broiler pan we keep in the oven at home. (I just do not see how it is not easier to check that there isn't anything in the oven before turning it on! Two seconds! Because seriously, there isn't room in the kitchen to put things after they have been washed, especially when they're as large as various baking sheets. It's the same thing for why I put pots on the stove to dry rather than putting them in the rack: there isn't room.) Anyway, I have been informed to stop doing that, at least with her pans, which, well, all but two of them are hers.

Also, she is one of those people who bangs around in the kitchen, which -- the sound carries really well, since my room backs the kitchen. I don't know, maybe the rest of us bang around too, but I don't think so? And she likes to cook (or clean up, maybe, or both) late at night. Guys. I am asleep late at night. (Okay, by late at night here, I mean, around midnight. So maybe I'm the bizarre one here.)

Also, I am starting to develop a serious amount of hate for people who leave their cooking implements out on the counter and the stove while they're eating. Yay, you made dinner! Now get things out of the way so that someone else can use the counter. (We have a very small amount of counter space.) You don't have to clean it right then, just get it out of the way.

I mean, on the bright side, at least we aren't arguing about someone having sex on the couch or in the apartment period or drunkenness, that sort of thing? AND YET.

An important note to myself: when the majority of sugars one consumes are fruit-based, remember to eat the damn fruit. Oh, god, I should have gotten a large smoothie instead of a regular; I want more and it's ALL GONE and it's not open on the weekend!

Also should have bought more fruit, but I'll probably go back tomorrow; the price of apples went down! And I might pick up strawberries and/or raspberries, I'm not sure. We don't really have room in the fridge, but -- hmm. Did get tomatoes, ginger root, potatoes, and zucchini, though, as well as frozen edamame and wontons/gyoza. Also chicken thighs (I didn't know whether to get breasts or thighs, and the thighs were slightly cheaper) and pork chops, so I think I may be good for the week, especially if I make chicken noodle soup sometime this weekend, and spread out the pork to use in fried rice and (maybe?) curry instead of using it all up in panfried pork chops. Though those are delicious!

Also my apartment smells like roach spray.

I wish there was a New Orleans equivalent to Uwajimaya. *sighs* There's supposed to be a major Asian market somewhere in the GNO area, isn't there?

I find myself a little more inclined to cook Asian food here than I might be at home -- it's not that I ate all Japanese food growing up, not at all, although people always assumed I did because my mother is Japanese and works at a Japanese restaurant. But I did eat more of it than I really think of. Curry and rice, katsudon, soba, rice and miso at most meals. Satsumas (and I can't think of them as anything other than mekans, even though that just looks wrong written out phonetically, and using hiragana for it is almost as alien; there are so many words I grew up hearing but never seeing) whenever they were in season. But it wasn't a kind of food I learned to make growing up; I made my first pot of rice about a month ago, in my dorm in New Orleans. (Yes. I am an Asian girl who has never made rice before.)

I don't know, maybe it's that lure of trying to stand out from everyone else. "Oh, yes, not only do I cook, but I make sushi for a casual snack, and I brought my own chopsticks. My cupboard is full of rice, soy sauce, Golden Curry, and Japanese tea hand-carried from Japan!" *shrugs* I don't know. It's interesting. It's kind of fun, and it's not like it's a bad thing.

(Also, the always fun conversation: "What's that?" "It's nori." "What's nori?" "It's dried toasted seaweed." "Why don't you just call it seaweed?" "Because it's nori." "But it's seaweed." "It's nori." "But it's seaweed." *stabs with chopsticks*)

1. Should I make pork chops with apples and onions again or chop up the pork chops and use them for fried rice? I only have two pork chops left and they are seriously tiny, I probably could have cooked all five of them last night and been fine, but I didn't.

2. How...um, how does one eat a peach? I got two peaches from this farmer's market that sets up at Tulane every Friday (new this year!), and I...have never eaten a peach before, so I'm not really sure what to do with them. Does one eat the fuzzy skin? Should I peel them and chop them up and make a mini cobbler or something out of them? Should I just eat them?

3. This one is not a question. Man, I feel like I am cooking more Asian food than ever before, probably because I am -- I have so much rice! Because we always have rice at home, and it's so nice, to just make rice once a week and refrigerate it and pull it out throughout the week to make sushi or add as a side dish or fried rice or something. And soy sauce! And nori! (Which really freaks people out, for some reason; I'm all, "It's just toasted seaweed!" and they go, "But why can't you just say toasted seaweed?") And I picked up curry mix, so now I can make curry! Although I still have to buy potatoes and some kind of meat and also salt&vinegar potato chips, but yay curry! (Japanese curry: totally my comfort food.) So I am not having as much Asian angst as I usually do.

4. I have two cucumbers, for reasons that we shall not discuss; what should I do with them? One will probably be used for sushi, what should I do with the other one?

5. Does anyone have a good cream pasta recipe? There are a couple of restaurants around campus that do very good pesto cream pasta with chicken recipes, and I want to do it on my own! But for some reason it's surprisingly hard to find recipes.

6. I really need to pick up a small casserole dish, so I can make macaroni and cheese. Man, I should have bought cheddar cheese at Walmart today.

I was out hiking around Vantage and Frenchman Coulee yesterday with my geology class, which was made of win; I haven't been out that way for a couple of years and I can't actually remember if I've ever been to Frenchman Coulee, which means I probably haven't. It's fairly well-known for rock climbing -- googling gets me some pretty cool pictures here, but the view is just fantastic. Washington's absolutely gorgeous sometimes, especially eastern Washington -- we're very geologically active, and have been in the past, too, and a lot of the land east of the Cascades has been shaped by the Great Missoula Floods. It's very stark and very impressive. It is also, not particularly coincidentally, my mental setting for the High Reaches in Narnia.

( Narnia, the Pacific Northwest, Cair Paravel, New Orleans, and the Doylist perspective* )

*Watsonian vs. Doylist, for those that haven't heard the phrase before.

*

I have also been thinking about domestic fantasy, which is sort of a rare subgenre in the fantasy world, and may not actually be an "official" subgenre the way high fantasy, urban fantasy, or swords and sorcery are, since I'm not entirely certain I've actually heard about it outside of my own head. Which -- doesn't seem unlikely, actually, because my mental picture of domestic fantasy is something that's very heavily based in the world, in the home, in small, discreet magics rather than grand, flashy ones, and -- need I say it? -- very female-oriented. The only published fantasy that I can think of that meets that description is in some of Robin McKinley's books -- my beloved Spindle's End being one of them, Chalice another. I would probably even count Sunshine in, because the main character is so heavily involved in baking. (Actually, I think the only RM books that don't fit this description are The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, though I haven't read The Outlaws of Sherwood, so I can't speak towards that.) All of RM's books tend to have grand magics at the end, but they're still fired by those small, domestic magics, and largely occur almost as an afterthought. I can't think of another author who does something similar. (Maybe some of Diana Wynne Jones's books? But those are less concerned with the home, generally.)

I've been thinking of writing an original short story for a while now that is domestic-y; the main character is a baker, and her magic is tied up in baking. (Also there is world-building where yeast is very important; an unmarried woman who works with yeast is something of a social outcaste, since yeast is traditionally associated with fertility and pregnancy. In this world, the majority of bakers are either married women with children underfoot or women who have passed the age of menopause and cannot have children. The main character is an unmarried woman without children, and doesn't work with yeast. See what reading a lot of cookbooks for fun gets you?)

Thinking of this because a lot of my pleasure reading lately has been cookbooks and food history, and I knit a lot, so I think of that, and I just picked up a couple of books on country traditions from the university library.

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Kitten cuddling kittens! Puppies cuddling puppies! Kittens and puppies cuddling! Lots of animals cuddling!

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Work proceeds on Traveling Woman; I am halfway through the last chart.

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My Latin prof thinks I am a fast translator! *preens* I think, at least in this early stage, that this is one of the few cases where being really really good at English is actually helping, because I'm used to taking words and phrases that are jumbled together and then rearranging them in a coherent, meaningful order, which with the Latin-to-English translations in the first few chapters of Wheelock, is basically what we've been doing. Later this will doubtless no longer be as true, but at least the fact that word order doesn't matter isn't confusing me as much as it is some people in the class.

*

My cousin is having a baby! The (traditional Japanese) family is somewhat alarmed about this, because she is unmarried and her boyfriend is black, and therefore the first inkling we got of this is when my uncle (my mother's brother) e-mailed my father and told him how ashamed he was for the family and also to find out what kind of man had fathered a child on his daughter. My parents' reaction to this was somewhat hysterical laughter, as we have actually met my cousin's boyfriend on several occasions, and he's a very nice guy. (He's in the Army, as well, and has been shipped out to Iraq and Afghanistan twice since he and Maya have been dating? And keeps getting told he's shipping out again, and then they don't actually ship out.) So instead of hiring a private investigator, we called my cousin to confirm that she actually is pregnant (she is), and then assured her that we were on her side and we supported her. I don't think we actually care if she gets married or not, but he's asked her before, and now they're thinking about a courthouse wedding, with a big ceremony later. (Also, as I have mentioned, her boyfriend is Army, which means military benefits if they get married.) It was not planned, and she was on birth control, so -- an accident, but she sounds pretty happy about it.

(It also means I can start knitting baby clothes! What is the best yarn for baby clothes, o knitters?)

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Huh, I should probably look up when the narniaexchange deadline is. (I have -- thoughts. And have to do research.)

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I want to bake pie. Well, crostatas. I require blackberries, although blueberries are what I am more likely to get. (Blackberry pie is my favorite! But blackberries are expensive out here, because it's too dry for them to grow. On the West Side, they are an infestation.)

I shall probably attempt to do muffins, bars, and cookies this weekend, as well, since I am baking considerably less than I usually do because of classes, so I have to make it up during the week, as we have nearly burned through the stash in the freezer.

( Cut for talk about weight )

A few favorite recipes I just wanted to link to, in no particular order except what showed up first on my Google Docs recipe index:

Snickerdoodle Cake, from My Baking Addiction. This is a great bundt cake with a cinnamon-sugar crust and filling; sometimes the filling ends up falling to the bottom (or what will eventually be the top) during the baking process, but that doesn't really affect the taste. I've made this cake, I think, three times? One of the times was in New Orleans, where I was working with slightly limited resources -- because that was what was available, I ended up substituting some kind of fake butter substitute for the butter, which made it a little greasier but didn't do anything terrible to the texture or the taste, and using brown sugar along with white for the crust. Still tasted amazing. It tastes good out of the oven and good a couple of days later, and freezes well. The time I made it in New Orleans, I ate a chunk of it on my way to my last final. Good, filling, sweet but not too sweet. If you like snickerdoodle cookies (and if anyone has a good recipe, throw it my way), you'll like this cake.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Joy the Baker. My ability to make regular chocolate chip cookies aside, I've never had a problem with this recipe. I don't tend to like chocolate chip cookies because I find them boring, but the whole wheat flour makes this pleasantly nutty and filling. I always use regular whole wheat flour rather than white whole wheat flour.

Oatmeal Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies from Joy the Baker and Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip, and Pecan Cookies"> from Smitten Kitchen. Two very similar but not quite identical cookies; the main difference between the two is that the Smitten Kitchen one uses a touch of orange zest as well, which tastes amazing. Both recipes are good -- again, I tend to find both chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies boring, but the combination is both tasty and filling, and the pecans add a nice sweet, crunchy touch. Don't skimp on the spices!

Maple Oatmeal Scones from My Baking Addiction. I love these. The oatmeal is barely present in the finish product, just enough for a little taste and texture. Make sure you make the glaze -- it's absolutely necessary, since the scone itself isn't sweet at all and in fact only uses two tablespoons of sugar. Besides, glazing the scones is fun! The glaze itself isn't overly sweet; it just adds a lovely, sweet, maple syrup touch to the scones. (Much better than a maple bar, I want to point out.) I generally halve the recipe, since I feel bad about going through an entire pound of butter, and then quarter the glaze recipe, which gives just enough glaze for the scones. (I think a halved recipe turns out about a dozen?)

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins from Smitten Kitchen. Hands-down favorite muffin recipe ever. They sound stupidly healthy and not at all tasty, which is a foul, foul lie. They're wonderful and filling and cinnamon-y -- in fact, the first time I baked them, over winter break this past year, I actually felt guilty because they just smelled so much like fall that it seemed like a crime baking them in summer. And do make sure to read the recipe carefully, because only a quarter cup of the brown sugar actually goes into the muffins; the other quarter cup goes on top! I've never noticed a major difference in the kind of apple used -- I've used Fujis, Pacific Rose, Jazz, and even a leftover Pink Lady once. The only adjustment I'd make is to only use one apple, especially if it's large -- if it's a really large apple, I'd say only use half to 3/4 of it. But seriously. MAKE THESE MUFFINS. (In fact, I baked another batch a couple of days ago, froze them, and ate one this morning for breakfast. I tend to bake these every few weeks or so; aside from the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day master loaf and peasant bread, this is probably my most-baked recipe.)

Brownie Roll-out Cookies from Smitten Kitchen. The only chocolate cookies you will ever need, seriously. They're a little bit of work because they're roll-out cookies rather than drop cookies, but they make up for it in taste. Although the recipe calls for lightly salted butter (or one stick unsalted and one stick salted), I just use all unsalted and add a little bit more salt. I have a salt tooth rather than a sweet tooth, so I like a little bit of salt in my cookies. Makes approximately ten billion cookies; I use little heart-shaped cookie cutters for a one or two-bite cookie. Warning: the recipe calls for you to preheat your oven immediately, but that's unnecessary since the dough is going in the fridge for an hour; just go ahead and preheat when you pull the dough out of the fridge.

So, as anyone who might have been on Twitter yesterday saw, I had an appalling recipe failure yesterday. From Alton Brown, no less, if you can believe that. Alton Brown! I am shocked. It was the chocolate chip cookie #10 from I'm Just Here for More Food, and marks the second supposedly really easy cookie that I can just not make come out. (I can do fancy or complex baking fine (tiramisu, I have not made you in so long! And now I am too much of a snob to use cake mix, so I will do you completely from scratch!); I just lack the ability to make regular oatmeal cookies or, apparently, plain chocolate chip. Since I don't actually like plain chocolate chip cookies -- I prefer chocolate chip cookies made with all whole wheat flour -- this wouldn't normally be a problem, but I am making them for New York.)

Alton Brown's recipe has pretty standard ingredients -- all purpose unbleached flour, butter, brown and white sugar, salt, baking soda, eggs, chocolate chips, vanilla extract, the usual. The most unusual thing was that he asked for melted and slightly cooled butter rather than room temperature butter. My feelings on melted butter are fairly strong, so I probably should have taken that as a sign, but I dutifully melted a stick of unsalted butter on the oven and set it aside to cool. (The only change I made to the recipe was to halve it, as for one we were running out of flour and for another, it was going elsewhere.) He also calls for egg yolks rather than whole eggs, so I separated an egg (recipe called for two, and I think I probably should have just used two, that, or not separated it), and beat the yolk, then added all the wet ingredients together, which, on the bright side, was one of the easier times I've ever had adding wet ingredients to melted butter. Another unusual point was that while most recipes that call for the sugar to be added to the dry ingredients when dealing with melted butter (when creaming butter it gets added to the wet), Alton Brown asked for it to be added to the wet. When mixed in with the dry, it all came together beautifully, but then I tried to add the chocolate chips.

The dough would not take the chocolate chips. Yeah, that's right, you heard me, the cookie dough would not accept the chocolate chips. I started out trying to shove them in with a spoon after moving them to the cookie sheet, then finally gave up on my usual method and switched to rolling them into balls with my hands, which was the only way I was able to shove the chocolate chips into them. I angrily shoved them into the oven, pre-heated to 375, and dutifully set the timer to the fifteen minute mark.

Does fifteen minutes seem long to you? Well, it definitely was; the first batch came out burned. And Alton Brown had recommended 15-17 minutes! (I am googling now to see what other people have said, and everything that's turned up recommends 11-12, so I can only assume that I have an earlier edition of the book or something.) The second batch when only went in for 11 minutes or so, and while less burned, the result was the same: cookies that were too hard to eat, not all soft and chewy. From what I could tell, they actually tasted pretty good, but they're impossible to eat. My mother suggests breaking them up and sticking them in vanilla ice cream, which seems like the only good option.

Did I mention that I couldn't get all the chocolate chips I added -- maybe 3/4 cup -- to fold into the dough, even with my pushing and shoving? Well, the remaining quarter-cup or so had to be washed clean of dough and set aside to dry, to be reused in today's attempt to master the chocolate chip cookie. (Although I think I'm going to fall back on something fancy and make Dorie Greenspan's world peace cookies, which have chocolate chips in them and thus count for New York's cookie package.)

Have I mentioned I'm annoyed? And I didn't even make a whole batch of whole wheat chocolate chip, so I can't eat those and sulk. That half-batch has been set aside for shipment to New York.