by Sixer

A New Repetition

Every morning, for the past seven days, I’ve had the same word pop into my head unbidden.

 Wallpaper.

That’s right. I’ve never been a particular fan of wallpaper, but after this week I don’t think I’ll be able to meet it without smiling. All the same I feel a little strange about our relationship.

It’s complicated.

It started with G. K. Chesterton. I listen to him at work sometimes, when I feel like something edfying and snarky. You can’t really beat Chesterton for snark, to the extent that I sometimes feel his points are being sacrificed to cleverness. But it makes his work the perfect stimulation needed for data entry, and his witty one-liners make pausing the recording to answer the phone painless, whereas long-winded, comma-heavy works tend to leave me feeling lost after the third or forth consecutive call. At any rate, in one of his random short essays he goes on a tangent, much like this one, and throws out to the world the admission he has a abiding abhorrence to gaudy wallpaper. “The Bible must be referring to wallpaper,” he says, “when it says ‘use not vain repetitions.'”

Now, the verse about vain repetition actually isn’t aimed at wallpaper but at wordy prayers. A point which I have had drilled into me all this past week, as my Bible study has been looking at Matthew 6.

 “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words”

        Matthew 6:7

So every morning, for the past week, I have come downstairs and read this verse and thought “wallpaper.”

It has been a little distracting.

It works well as a picture though, in that if your words are indistinguishable from background noise you might want to rethink them. Still, I was trying to find another analogy for “vain repetition,” since wallpaper seemed a little too hard to explain in a group setting, especially one where outside sources are banned. I still haven’t found one easier to explain than wallpaper, but in the process of trying I remembered that quite a few anime include prayers. Not just short “I wish X ” ones either, but formal, semi-spell like petitions. Naturally, being anime, most of these prayers are heavily stylized chants, drawn originally from shinto or buddhist traditions. Since I am using language study as my main reason for watching anime, coming across one of these prayers is always a little vexing because the subbers refuse to translate them. Sometimes they will go so far as to put the romanji – the English representation of the Japanese sounds – on the bottom of the screen, but they won’t bother conveying the meaning. There are two possible reasons for this that I have come up with. One is that the translators have no idea what is being said because it’s some ancient form of Japanese that pre-dates King James. The other is that the prayers really are just mumble jumbo words, like “hocus-pocus,” and everybody is supposed to recognize them as a powerful spell or chant and leave it at that.

In either case, whether it is the fault of the subber or the intent of the writers, what the people are saying in their prayers becomes unimportant. Their words become merely tools. Hammers and nails which produce a quantifuable result. The meaning behind them fading each time the incantation is repeated. Obviously, for words spoken by made-up people in a made-up world, this is doubly so. But I can think of too many times recently when the words that I myself have said have merely been symbols. Tools meant to get from point A to point B.

“How are you today?”

“How can I help?”

“Sorry.”

 If I can remember them you know it must mean I’ve said it in the past week, because my memory doesn’t really extend much farther back then that.

Now, I don’t think every wall in a house has to have a great piece of art on it, nor does everything I say need to be of such importance that people wouldn’t be able to follow the plot of my life unless it were translated, but I do appreciate the reminder that  – whether it be a wall in your house, or your day-to-day interactions with God and people – you should be mindful of how you are using filler.

And if we must use wallpaper, please, let’s not pick something like this. 

by Sixer

Seven Hour Socks

No, I havn’t started a foot-focused knitting project. In fact, I haven’t really started any knitting project at all. This post is strictly about the sewing. Or possibly it’s about procrastination, and is only masquerading as a post about progress. Which takes us back to the title, I suppose, becasue really I do feel as if I’ve slipped on a pair of seven league boots, only instead of traversing many miles in a single stride, I’ve managed to walk briskly from August right into October. This feeling is supported by the fact that time spent working (read: sitting at a desk) goes. So. Slowly. But all the little in between bits pass by in a blur.  Sometimes it feels like I’ve merely stepped out of my car in one week and entered it again in another.

The feeling has been growing since the beginning of August, about the time I started this apron. It was going to be simple. Easy. A way to ease myself into the sewing world, since the half a dozen unfinshed garments I have stowed cleverly out of the way seem to be telling me that jumping in head first only works when there is water in the pool.  Things were looking good. And then I decided that I wanted these pockets. And that, of course, meant embroidery. So I got a stitch dictionary out from the library and amused myself with making a spoon and several teaspoons worth of sugar crystals.  This was done realtively fast for me, and I predcited the apron would be done before my birthday.

Or I did, right up until I realized I had to do something for the other pocket. I spent days and days agonizing over what it should say, and when I finally did decided September Happened. At least, I think it happened. It’s all a little hazy and I don’t really have anything to show for the time I spent there, which makes me think I spent the whole month trotting around in my seven hour socks. The long and short of it is that, at the beginning of October, the second pocket looked something like this:
IMG_3417

Well, Monday night I was at Bible study and, in an effort not to figet during the endlessing notes, I put my hand in my pocket and found, drum roll, the above, folded, with a needle stuck carefully through it. I unpicked my unfortunate attempt at stem stitch and made a simple ‘R’. Yesterday I picked it up and put in the N, E, Y, J, O and heart that completed the pocket. Just like that. Maybe two hours, tops, and suddenly the thing I had been putting off becasue I was sure it would be boring and difficult was done. I tripped happily up the stairs to sew the backs on both pockets.

The happily delusioned can stop reading here, x-out of their screens, and just float away in a cloud of ignorant contentment, confident that this story ends with me happily hand sewing the pockets to my apron front. Those already embittered with the world, or trying to find out how to get the magic out of their own dimension-defying-footware, have probably already guessed what happened next, for it is exactly the thing that would happen to someone who left their sewing machine out, untouched, for three months. Thirty minutes after tripping up the stairs, with the bobbin finally full and loaded, I put my foot to the pedal and heard “whirr, whirr, bliiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

“Bliiiit“

I think I’ll come back to this project later. Maybe after a short walk?

by Sixer

Kitchen X

Welcome to Kitchen X – the experimental chop-shop, the room of a thousand inaccurate measurements. Not for the faint of heart is this gruesome compilation of culinary mash-ups.

Mystery Muffin

I actually don’t feel like I’ve been cooking that much lately – I’m so used to making cookies all the time, I guess, and I haven’t made any (at home) for almost a month. Still, In September I managed to make pretzel challah rolls and kimchi jjigae pulled pork. They were supposed to be eaten together, but I think that rice is better suited to pulled pork than the soft and chewy challah. Next time I’ll try a crusty sourdough. I made the bread using this recipe. I loved all the little helpful comments, and I even used her tutorial for making little knots out of the dough. Though the knots were easy to make in concept, shaping was still the hardest part of the process. The dough did not want to be anything but a blob, and it kept shrinking back to its original form. Maybe I needed to let them sit longer? At any rate, once shaped and allowed to rise a bit more I gave them a bath. I ended up using my cast iron frying pan, which was just large enough to hold a small braid. Yup, that’s right, I jumped the gun like usual and doubled the recipe so I could make two small loaves for myself and take the rest to work. This turned out to be just the right amount. If I make it again I’ll double it but just make knots. I liked them better than the loaves – they tended to come unbraided once cut.

The kimchi pulled pork doesn’t have a recipe. Really, I just wanted to get rid of the last bit of kimchi before it grew legs and walked out of my fridge. I had eaten all the cabbage out of both containers so the only thing left was radish and juice, and I’m not really thrilled about radish. Picky, picky. Kimchi jjigae is the traditional use of the kimchi dregs, being kimchi soup. It’s supposed to be made with old kimchi, and I always figured it’s what I would make with the last bit of mine. I always think of kimchi as cold and crisp (ah! just thinking of it makes my mouth happy!), but I really love it hot. Kimchi and thick slabs of ham, toasted on a slab of crusty bread with some lovely melty cheese . . . . Hmm, now I’m hungry again. Anyway, for this concoction I rubbed the pork shoulder with a conglomeration of garlic, garam masala, korean crushed pepper (I still have a huge bag leftover from my kimchi making escapades), and brown sugar. I pureed everything in my little pint-sized food processor and then rubbed it on the meat. This mixture smelled so incredible that I almost didn’t have the heart to do anything else to it. However I was strong and seared the shoulder with the onions and garlic the next day, adding the kimchi and the juices (if you remember, I made both white and red kimchi and I added the juices of both) and sticking the whole pot in the oven until fork tender. Yum. It’s spicy enough to make my nose run, but it’s a spice you can’t really taste. And the leftovers are amazing with some rice and a bit of coconut milk. Instant Korean flavored curry. Being gauche, I asked one of my coworker’s to smell it and she assured me that there was nothing unappetizing in it’s odor, so I feel safe eating this around other people too. I’ve got some leftover in my freezer, which I’ll either eat on a rainy day or turn into meat pies.

And now that you’ve gotten this far, I guess I’ll explain the muffins. These are the savory carrot-onion muffins from Makiko of Just Hungry-Just Bento fame. I’ve made these before (in Japan, no less) and liked the idea of having both a savory bread and a bit of extra veggies on hand in my freezer. Yes. I am part squirrel. And yes,  I doubled the recipe (in my defense, Makiko writes small recipes. Like really, I’m going to dirty a bowl just for ten muffins?). I also frankensteined it up. First, my oil measuring was a little slapdash (I had extra in the pan so I poured it into the wet ingredients . . . . ). Then I realized it called for walnuts, which I’m all out of. I thought, “Hmm, miso would be a good substitute, right?” {{1}} [[1]] The pumpkin-miso muffins are on the same page as the carrot ones, so that’s probably where I got the idea[[1]] and plopped a generous spoonful of white miso into the batter. But that didn’t seem nutty enough, so I added a giant pinch of flax seed as well. Then I realized I had sunflower seeds. Seeds are just small nuts, right? So in went a handful of those. The result is really pleasant. The miso makes the faux-maple syrup really pop, but also adds extra umami – the same effect you would get by adding cheddar cheese to the batter{{2}}. [[2]] Which now I totally have to try[[2]] The random addition of flax seed really helped the texture of these too, since they’re eggless. When they first came out of the oven the insides were still a little gooey and they tasted like a really thick meat pie. So good! Once they cooled they lost that gravy like center, but they’re still amazingly delicious. The best part is they don’t muffin top, which means they fit in my toaster for convenient defrosting.

Not sure whatthat white haze is in the photo. This photo was taken the morning after they were made, so the muffins were cool at this point.

Better than gold ingots in the bank.

by Sixer

Words, Words, Words
Hello World!

My favorite month of the year has past as fast as a summer’s dawn and now we’re really in the thick of fall, which just happens to be my favorite season. I’m starting to eye the sweaters in my closet, hoping one will look thin enough for a walk out. I did break down and wear one this week, but it’s pretty light for a sweater so I’m not sure if it counts.

This post today is brought to you by my dad’s camera. I’ve borrowed it for the week and will be taking pictures and then slowly rationing them out over the next few posts. Today you get pictures of tomatoes. Here is the bush:

The cucumbers are next to this, but I was trying to avoid the ugly AirCon unit.

When I planted my veggies in the spring I had the idea of neat lines growing up and then stopping. The cucumbers and tomatoes did not get this message, and have not only grown up but out. What’s more, they have actually put roots down through the drainage holes in their containers and attached themselves to the ground proper. Their actions are eerily sentient  – if they start demanding blood sacrifices I’m pulling out the weed-o. Though tomatoes have been producing  a few fruits here and there since August, this was the first time I got such an impressive harvest at one time. And there are plenty more green ones left. What should I do with them all?

I call these plum tomatoes, but I've noticed most people refer to them as "teardrops."

 

 

My cucumber plant has been producing all summer too, but so far only one or two cucumbers at a time. I think I’ve harvested a total of six to date, not counting the weird orange one which I pulled but did not eat.

My dad has a new camera lens - can you tell I was out of my depth (of field)?

My dad has a new camera lens – can you tell I was out of my depth (of field)?

There are always lots of the flowers and gherkins on the vine (expect for when I was taking these pictures, naturally) so I think something must be knocking the babies off the plant before they have a chance to mature. Certainly, once they get big enough for me to notice them the bugs seem to leave them alone. The early cukes were a bit bitter, but the last two I had tasted just like your average grocery store cucumber. Yum. There are at least two more coming my way soon.

 

And finally, it’s too late to show you the blossoms, but here are the alien seed pods of the nigella, or love-in-the-mist. Pretty weird, huh? No wonder they call them ragged ladies.

I managed to focus on the tendrils and not the pod in every picture I took

The pretty blues and purples are the flowers from my sister’s wedding back in May. I was really surprised by how the bright blues kept their coloring even after being dried. For some reason the nigella pods outside are larger and more green-purple. I like these mini tan and pink ones better, but I think it’s wild that there’s such a marked difference between house breed and element exposed.

 

Now that fall is here I’m starting to think about gardens again and what I’ll do differently next year. If all goes well I’ll finally get my fig tree, lavender, and some mints. I’m going to try planting chamomile again too – maybe it will actually flower this time. I tried growing it on my window sill this sumer and got strange, rubbery foliage instead. It did smell good when brushed though, so I know it was at least the right seeds. I’ve also been eyeing more decorative plants, the ones I turned my nose up at this spring, like pussy willows and chinese lanterns. And gerber daisies. Someone brought a pot into the office with these big, impossibly colored flowers and my heart fell. Ah, so much for the witch’s herb garden idea, bring on the madcap faeries.

by Sixer

Final Products

The picture of quiche caught my eye and and held it, showing it off.  “Look at yourself,” it said, “I’m all the things you want.”

I was paging through the vasts collection of Cooks Illustrated that my father had given me, looking for the biscotti recipe that I had used only a few months ago. Keeping an eye out all the while for a recipe for custard or pudding or something that would use up all the eggs and milk I had on hand, something I could pour the whey into, that unwanted byproduct of a paneer experiment. And then, suddenly, there was the quicehe. Eight eggs and 3 cups of dairy. It was exactly what I wanted. Still, as I made my way into the kitchen, I worried. Two cups of onions. Why do I never have onions around? Bacon – had this house ever had bacon in it? I couldn’t remember ever eating it here. I glanced at my fridge, seeing its insides by memory. My mind, always anxious to clean out and make room for new opportunities, whispered into my ear. “The kmichi, the kimchi. It’s over four months old now. You’ve got to find a place to use it. You know you’ll never get around to making kimchi soup – not with a flatmate to be considerate of.” Kimchi had as much flavor as onion – as much as bacon too. Though I thought of it as cool and crunchy, my favorite application of it was actually on grilled cheese. Preferably with some kind of crusty bread, broiled in the oven. Maybe with thick slabs of ham. Next to that I did primarily eat it cold, for breakfast.

I rustled around in my freezer for some spinach and came across a ball of pie crust. Perfect. And so the quiche was begun. The pie crust was rolled out and stretched to fit the cake pan. It was much too small, but I stuck it too the edges here and there and put a plate on it to keep it from puffing up. Into the oven it went. I started to close the door and the edges collapsed onto the plate. Two seconds to decide what to do, three to lift the plate up with butter knives and then put it back down over the sides. The bottom was really all I needed for a crust. I mixed the eggs and the milk and the fatless whey together and wondered if this would work without the heavy cream. I added in the potato starch and the nutmeg and the crushed korean red pepper in lieu of cayenne. I chopped the kimchi. I pulled out the cake pan with it’s golden crust and dumped out the shredded cheese – packets from the freezer stowed to keep them from going bad. I shoveled in the kimchi and spinach, started pouring the egg mixture. It was not all going to fit. How much could I get in? I poured a little and stopped. A little more. A little more. Feeling recklessly nervous I lifted the pan into the oven. One small river of liquid teared over the edge onto the hot oven door. Instant scrambled eggs. I tried to scrub it up with cloth and sponge while the whole time the pan kept weeping in one solid streak. I put a cookie sheet under it, the one I didn’t like. The rimless one.

Idiot.

The egg pooled and diverged and spilled over onto the oven’s bottom. I snatched out that pan and replaced it with the one I used as a tray. Then I closed the door and turned on the vent fan. The smell and the noise drove me upstaris. Twenty minutes late I came down and switched out the pans. The pool of egg was temptingly yellow, with brown, ugly edges. I dug into it with a fork – custard perfection! So delicately flavored. So well balanced. Now I mourned the half cup of egg mixture I had poured down the drain, to keep myself from the temptation of adding just a wee bit more.  I finally sighed, knowing that whatever its past this quiche would be just fine.

Later – when I pulled it out and, impatient again, cut it whille still burning hot and marveled that it did not weep or fill the pan with liquid, and then sat and ate, in forty seconds flat, one peice and ran down the stairs to get myself another – that’s when I wondered how  I could be so silly as to think anything could ruin quiche. Not half frozen spinach, not kimchi, not the smell of burning eggs mixed with the smell of freshly baked chocolate cookies. Quiche was a wonderful metaphor for life, I decided, exhausted but justified. No matter what goes into it, life is a precious thing, and only sad when it ends too soon or, worse, passes by you with only a whiff of heaven and the sight of a buttery-gold crust.