forestofglory

For the last several years it's been my tradition to rec a thing every day of December and to encourage other people join me in reccing things using the the hashtag #DecRecs

Here are the first 5 things I've recced this year:

1) I want to start of this years #DecRecs with a recipe. Here in the US it was just Thanksgiving. For the last couple of year's I've been making these Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts with Plum Sauce as part of my Thanksgiving and they've been a hit every year

https://omnivorescookbook.com/roasted-brussels-sprouts-with-plum-sauce

2)For #DecRecs day two I bring you Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. A lovely middle grade Chinese inspired fantasy book. Featuring dragons, stories within stories, and colorful illustrations drawn by the author. There's two squeals that are also great!

3) I've been jokingly saying that the Taiping Guangji (太平廣記), a collection of minor stories and unofficial histories, is my main fandom for a bit now.

So today for #DecRecs I'm reccing Tales from Tang Dynasty China: Selections from the Taiping Guangji ed Alexei Ditter, Jessey Choo, and Sarah Allen as good introduction to the Taiping Guangji! It's short, its got a good variety of translated stories, and lots of helpful context

4)I'm having a frustrating day today so for #DecRecs today I want to rec something cute and charming:

"Fandom for Robots" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/fandom-for-robots/

I adore this story about a robot making friends through fandom!

5) Today for #DecRecs I want to talk about one of my favorite programs Zotero!( Read more... )

I'm looking for some recipes that I can make without a lot of chopping and stirring, so as to be less hard on my wrist. Anyone have an favorites to recommend? No pork please.

I may be slow to reply to comments due to the wrist issue

I've come to the the conclusion that I don't epecailly like cooking, but I really like feeding people. So this I was very happy that this Thanksgiving it was safe enough to invite local family to celebrate. When I moved back to the Bay Area after grad school I took over Thanksgiving. This was not a discussion, I just told my mom that I was in charge. This year we had nine people totally.

I cooked all day, with plenty of breaks. Kitchen help and child care provided by R and my brother. The kid also "helped out" with some of the cooking. She helped cut up bread for the stuffing and peeled potatoes! I was a little bit sick, but so so happy to get to have big family dinner.

And soon it will be Hanukkah and I will fry things in oil and feed them to more people!

Observations is what I call my bi-montly posts about the natural and built environments, and Bits and Bobs is what I call my “many things make post” post. So here I'm combining the two.

*It’s October and definitely fire season. It’s been a bad fire year for the state but so far this year we’ve been lucky in terms of air quality and haven’t had any really bad smoke days. The kind where you have to wear a mask to filter the air you breathe. Of course there’s still a while until the rains start and we relax a bit about fires. One of the worse smoke events was right before Thanksgiving after all.

*R and I have been eating out a bit more, now that numbers are low locally and more things are open. Recently we started sampling lunch specials. This is a thing a lot of local Asian restaurants seem to do. You get soup, rice and one person sized serving of a main dish, some places will give you a salad and/or a small appetizer like an egg roll too. I find these very appealing, something about getting a small amount of several things just makes me happy. It’s been fun trying a bunch of them!

*The kid has been doing swimming lessons at a local outdoor pool. The last one was last week. She really enjoyed them though. Since the lessons are pretty short I would take her to the pool then sit and watch/play with my phone while she swam. I haven’t been swimming much lately, but I swam a lot as a kid so it's a bit nostalgic for me.

*My local fabric store had been online only since March 2020, but they recently opened up to limited in-person shopping a few days a week, and I got to browse fabric! They are only letting ten people in at once so there was a wait to get into the store, but it was worth it. I picked out thread for my next project, and bought several things to make quilts and more shirts for the kid.

What adventures have you been having outside your home lately?

I love food! Not just cooking and eating, but also feeding people and thinking about how the food we eat is grown, processed, transported ect., and thinking about what food means to people. Of course, I love fiction that focuses on food and explores these topics. This is a list of media that does interesting and clever things with food: food used to tell us about the character or the world. I hope you find something to enjoy!

Guardian — This supernatural investigation Chinese drama does an amazing job of using food to show character and relationships! What the characters eat and how that says so much about them. The way various characters use food to show that they care about each other is just so great! In Chinese culture it's a gesture of respect and love to place food on someone else’s plate. There are several places where this is used very meaningfully. There’s also a key character whose love language is feeding people and some excellent found family group meals. ( Spoilery content notes )

On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard — This novella about two women on a space station trying to deal with a distant war has excellent food details. There's a wonderful banquet scene and plot relevant vats of fish sauce!

Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliot — Kate Elliot uses food to show the reader more about the world she has created. For example, maize is mentioned early in these books and that gives us a hint of what the Americas are like in this world even though the characters don’t travel there for a long time. The food also tells us a lot about class and other social divides, plus I love the way the main character saviors things!

"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon — This such a great little story about magic swords, potatoes, and the importance of feeding people!

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
by Anya von Bremzen — This memoir mixes family history, Soviet history, and recipes. I love the way it mixes intensely personal things with large scale history, and gives each recipe both personal and political context.

Sliver Spoon by Hiromu Arakawa — I love this manga about a city kid who goes to an agricultural high school. It features some very relatable moments for those of us who haven't thought very hard about where food comes from. But I love the way the characters are able to think deepy about the animals they are raising and the ethics of eating them. (Content note: industrial agriculture, animal death)

Imperial Radch Series by Ann Leckie — These books do a lovely job of using food as a cultural signifier. There are a lot of different cultures in this world that have complex relationships with each other and Leckie uses food to highlight that. I also really like the tea in these books! Tea is not only culturally important but the production of tea is economically and politically important to the plot as well!

What media do you think explores food well?

I this morning I made cupcakes with N. We've been doing a lot of baking to keep busy. We made cake, and cookies and quick bread. I love baking with her, it so fun, but I don't generally do it. All the adults in the house are diabetic or at risk of diabetes so we try not to keep too many sweets around.

I enjoying cooking. It's nice to make physical things. When I was learning to cook and for a long time after I would always use a recipe. But now when I make dinner I rarely use a recipe -- or a use one I know by heart. Its nice just make things. I find a lot of cooking is knowing when things look, or taste or smell right. It makes it hard to explain things to other people, especially when they aren't there. But take say cooking an onion -- I know how to cut an onion from doing it so many times. I know what it should smell like cooking, and I know it always takes longer than recipes say it does, and know what it looks like when the onions are cooked. So things I can cook because I know them well are soothing but new recipes often stress me out.

But my favorite thing about cooking is feeding other people! I want to nourish people and give them yummy food. Sometimes this is a bit tricky -- right now everyone in my household is a bit picky and we all have different things we don't eat so finding meals for everyone is a bit less fun. I often struggle with meal planing, and sometimes when its my turn to make dinner I just don't feel very excited by what ever I'm cooking that evening. And I don't often have energy for really complicated stuff.

So I'm really enjoying this lock down baking. I don't have to plan it in advance, I can do it early in the day when I have energy, the kid enjoys doing it with me, its all pretty great.

Bits an bobs is my many short unrelated things make a post category. Feel free to comment any of the points without commenting on all of them

*Friday we decide to go on an expedition to the beach with the kid who has been really wanting to go. We ended up at small beach on bay (not the ocean) which was great for small kids. There weren't really any waves, the water was pretty warm and there was sand to play with. We also went to the Bay Model which was super cool! It is scale model of the San Fransisco Bay and Delta that the Army Corps of Engineers built in the 50s to understand the Bay. The use computer modeling now but and the model is open to the public. I knew this existed but I didn't realize you could just go there without an appointment or anything. I should have gone while I was writing my thesis.

*I have been sewing again. I'm working on baby quilt for friends kid (She's like 18 months now). I'm at the quilting stage now. There are some picture on on Inaragram

*I haven't been going to farmers markets that much recently, so I haven't been eating as seasonally as I really like. I've been missing out on summer produce. But this last week I did go to the good produce store and get peaches, corn, and tomatoes. I also got some fresh basil and made pesto pasta for dinner.

*I've been in not quite a reading slump? and reading lull lately. I've been reading a lot of fic and sequential art and not many novels. I guess this is mostly ok? I've been enjoying what I've been reading anyways. Except right now I don't really have anything around that I really want to read and that's making me grumpy.

*On a related note I wish the library would get ILL working again. They took it down months ago before they switched to the new online catalog, but the new catalog has been here for almost a month and they are having technical difficulties interfacing with ILL system. Its a minor problem, but I want to have access to all the books!

*The other day on my commute I listened to the Antimatter Pod episode on Motherhood in Star Trek. Its great! Now that I've caught up with Discovery I can check out their back catalog!

*Other the weekend I bashed my right knee into the bathroom counter and it really hurts! Its still brusied today, but I took I walk anyways because after a very gloomy May we are have a mini heat wave and I wanted to be outside. I ice the knee afterwards so hopefully that will be ok.

*Today I baked a milk chocolate cheesecake for R's up coming birthday. I've been using this recipe for his birthday cake for a few years now and its really good.

*Also this afternoon my niece, who is about 11 came over. She spent most of her time playing Mario. I never really got to play video games as kid -- one the perils of being a girl I guess. Now I'm very bad at the hand-eye stuff needed to play a lot of games, so I'm happy to give my niece a place to try out those kind of skills. The rest of my family doesn't really approve.

I just go back form a trip with my family to Santa Cruz.

We left a bit before 1 on Wednesday, picked up the kid from preschool and drove down to Santa Cruz we made good time and got there around 3:30. It wasn't quite time to check into our AirBnB so we stopped downtown and got ice cream. Then we checked in and R took the kid to the boardwalk for a little bit while unpacked and had a bit of downtime. Next when did some grocery shopping and got take out pizza for dinner. We came back the house and ate and put the kid to bed. They had some trouble falling asleep in a new place so it was long process. Then we hung out on the sofa for a little bit before going to bed ourselves.

The next morning I got up before everyone else and enjoyed slow morning for a bit. It was raining pretty hard -- which is not what one expects in May in this part of the world. Once everyone was up we headed for the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. It's such a great aquarium. We arrived in time to see them feeding the Deep Ocean tank. The tuna go so fast! The kid was less excited by the actual fish but enjoyed running between all the interactive bits and pushing all the buttons. We had packed a picnic lunch but couldn't eat outside by the great tidepool due to the rain. So we suck our outside food into the cafe.

We got back to Santa Cruz in the mid afternoon with time for more boardwalk time and for me and the kid to play at the beach and get in the water a bit. For dinner we had a bunch of pre-made stuff, two kinds of ravioli and a bagged salad. Bedtime was easier the 2nd night but still difficult.

On Friday morning we drove out to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which has some lovely old growth redwoods. We took the short self guided nature loop -- the kid got pretty into finding the numbers. We saw several banana slugs, and spend a little bit of time in the nature center there.

We headed back to town and had lunch at a dinner before going to the MAH. I really enjoyed one of the exhibits Guided by Ghosts which featured three interconnected timelines -- the artist personal history, the history of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans in Santa Cruz and international events.

After the Museum, R and the kid had some more time at the boardwalk and I took a walk. Then R had some time by himself in the arcade while I played with the kid at the beach. They where very enthusiastic about playing in the waves and we got pretty wet. Right at the end though the they tripped and got their face wet and that scared them so we had to have lots of cuddles. We went home and took a shower together then had some time playing with electronics. R made french toast for dinner which was delicious. The kid went to bed without much trouble and we where able to watch some TV.

Saturday started out clear but was predicted to rain latter. R and the kid went back for more rides at the board walk and I took a walk down on the wharf -- there where a lot of sea lions out there! As I was heading back it started to rain and by the time I got to the car it was coming down pretty hard. We had picnic lunch in sheltered bit of the boardwalk then went into town and got ice cream. I tried rolled ice cream for the 1st time. I got salted caramel with chocolate whipped cream and mochi bites. It was really good -- but I felt bad about how much work it was to make -- mixing it up seemed like so much labor. Then we headed home -- it was kind of a long drive with heavy rain.

It was good trip, but I'm tried now. I've maybe planed a bit too much travel for this month. Since I'm now home for four days (including today) two of which are work days before I head to WisCon.

So I spent a long time obsessing over food in Guardian. I think the show really does an excellent job of using food to highlight its characters and their relationships. Here are a few points I want to highlight in a bit more detail about food in the drama.

( mild spoilers through episode 15 )