Kate's Queen City Notes

Blundering through Cincinnati, laughing all the way


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Whiskey Gentry and Flirty McDrunkerson

I saw a great band yesterday. I had random encounters with strangers. I discovered I can go back to MOTR without perforating my eardrums. It’s all here.

I’ve been confused for someone else at least six times in the last eighteen months. I know who my doppelganger is. She bartends at The Lackman. Strangers approach me, and after a short awkward exchange, ask if I work at The Lackman. At my negative response, the stranger suddenly understands why I was looking at them blankly while he/she was greeting me as a friend. I do bear a slight resemblance to this woman. We have big blue eyes and sandy brown hair. That’s where the similarities end. I have a few inches on her; she has a few years on me. Our hair styles are considerably different. There is one other commonality, that I think is at the root of most people’s confusion. We are both obvious lesbians.

I ran into her yesterday having drink, and decided to have a chat with my not-so-much double. When I relayed my experiences, she laughed and said she experiences similar things. Lesbian confusion. I’m pretty sure it’s a thing, and it’s happening to me. At least my doppelganger is pleasant. A really great conversation ensued, clearly, since I was talking to myself.

After a stellar chicken sandwich at The Eagle, I headed to MOTR to see Whiskey Gentry. I haven’t been to MOTR in a few months. While I love that they book great music seven days a week, the volume in there is at a 12,345 of 10. The noise level is high enough that my ears feel raped with ear plugs in. There is zero possibility of speaking to any human unless you want to shout centimeters away from their ear, and even then you will need to repeat yourself several times. Since it already feels like years of your hearing are vanishing by the minute, I usually resort to texting the person I am standing next to.

Last night, I had a most welcome surprise. MOTR got a new sound system. They got new lights. AND PRAISE BE TO THE GODS OF THE CILIA OF MY INNER EAR, the volume was at a reasonable level. It was loud, but not intolerably so. I was thrilled to discover this as Whiskey Gentry did their sound check.

I wanted to see these guys at Midpoint this fall, but they cancelled the day of their show. See blog post about that here. I would call them folk or alt country. There’s a little 50’s country, bluegrass, and folk in there. And unlike pop country, their lyrics are about more than trucks, tractors and women. Plus, there’s pedal steel, the fiddle, and banjo in their recordings. I’m a sucker for some pleasant banjo. The lead vocalist has a warm buttery voice; weirdness aside, I want her to sing me lullabies. Check ’em out.

They were worth the wait. The vocalist sounded spectacular. I was disappointed that the banjo player wasn’t out with them. It gave their performance a little more of a rock edge. Apart from this tiny bummer, they sounded tight. The guitarist and fiddler were full of energy, while the vocalist had a cool reserve. It created an interesting dynamic. The cool collected woman at the center of a couple of guys nearly off the rails.

Between the pleasant sound level, the great performance, and the excellent people watching, I had a super night. My partner wasn’t feeling well, so she took a pass on seeing the show. I like going out by myself. I enjoy keeping to my thoughts in a crowd. However, I’ve noticed that strangers, especially drunk strangers, like to talk to me. This rarely happens when I am out with friends, but when I’m alone I am often approached. Last night was no exception.

I sat outside after the show to enjoy a rare smoke. A pretty young woman teetered out of the bar and headed my way. She had hipster glasses and skinny jeans, coupled with a spectacularly ugly 80’s hand bag. She tilted her head, slow smiled and asked, “are you lonely?” It was cute. But I am taken, and I was thinking of how to respond politely to Flirty McDrunkerson while still communicating my lack of interest. I settled on, “actually, no, but you are welcome to join me.” That seemed to do the trick. We chatted a bit, before I headed inside.

I ordered one more beer and closed out my tab. After scanning the bar, I found a seat open in the corner where I could relax, and watch the drunken mess that was forming. Quiet time lasted exactly three minutes. A woman approached, and I was relieved when I realized her friends were sitting just ahead of me. After a few seconds of chatting with them, she abruptly turned to me and talked as though we had just left off a few minutes before. I got over my annoyance quickly, because this woman knows her local music. We had a great talk about the Bunbury line-up. Turns out she knows the person responsible for booking, and we debated the merits of this years line-up vs past line-ups. Our thirty minute talk was nice, but it earned me a stink-eye from her boyfriend. It probably didn’t help that she failed to noticed he called her 3 times while we were yammering on and on about Kishi Bashi and X Ambassadors. Hopefully, that didn’t result in too much discord.

So that was my day. I saw great music. I had random conversations with strangers. I took some pictures. It was a wonderful 18 hours.

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Fifty-eight degrees felt amazing.

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Everyone was out. We’ve had weeks of abnormally brutal winter weather. I think everyone was stir crazy. I know I was.

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The snifter contains Sixpoint Hi-Res. The color and the reflection in the glass was beautiful.

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Yes.

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The sky. I love winter in Cincinnati because it’s the only time of year we have clear blue skies.

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The blue sky reflecting off these blue tinted windows looks surreal.

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One of the things that caught my eye while I was walking around downtown.


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The Holy Trinity of Soup and a Pressure Canner

The beast.

The beast.

As mentioned in a previous blog, it’s canning off season, and the polar vortext has left me, a skier and winter lover, stuck inside. What do I do with time on my hands? I cook stuff.

I’ve been considering making my own veggie stock. I use it in several recipes, and I’ve noticed that the most obvious flavor that most veggie stocks impart is salt. They are salty. I don’t taste much else there.

I’ve wondered how much my recipes would improve if I had some kick-ass veggie broth instead of mega-salty water. I hunted broth recipes. I’ve not made this before, so I didn’t know what I was looking for. I was armed with one bit of knowledge. The holy trinity of veggie soup flavor is garlic, celery and onion.

I found this. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vegetable-Broth-51212620

Garic? Check. Onion? Check. Celery? Check. Plus, thyme and coriander are wonderful additions. Bonus points for most of the ingredients already present in my fridge.

My first time making this I salted once the broth was finished. I added about 3 teaspoons. That was salty enought to accentuate the flavors, but not so much that it over powered the veggies. Otherwise I didn’t wander from the recipe. The broth didn’t have much flavor. But then, I don’t imagine broths are supposed to have much flavor. Isn’t that why you add stuff to them for soups and use them as a base for other stuff?

The real test of the broth would come the first time I used in a recipe. My first use cases were in a recipe for peanut thai noodles and then pineapple curry. Both were super, but the recipes only called for a half a cup of broth. Given this insignificant amount as compared to other ingredients, I didn’t notice an earth shattering difference. But when I used the broth in pumpkin curry soup, I noticed. It just made the soup have a little more depth. That soup is already spectacular; the homemade broth bumped it up.

My first run out with the broth was successful enough that I wanted more. On my second batch, I browned the veggies and got a nice fond on the bottom of my pot before deglazing with the 3 quarts of water. This minor step both brought a nice color to the broth and also imparted a great flavor. I will continue with this modification.

When I make my third batch of broth I will make another addition. Mushrooms. I think the earthy addition will round out the flavor and make this broth a go to for cream of mushroom soup. Yum. I can’t wait to try this.

Broth requires pressure canning. I didn’t pressure can my first batch of broth. I poured some of it into ice cube trays and the rest went into 1.5 pint jars. Broth ice cubes were a stroke of genius on my part. I have a number of recipes that call for a small amount of broth (less than a cup). My 1.5 pint jars carry too much liquid to thaw a whole jar and only use a half a cup.

We pressure canned the second batch. It was as much an experiement as it was a necessity. It simply isn’t that difficult to store 3 quarts of broth in the freezer, unless you are some sort of food hoarder. (I just thought of what it must smell like in the home of a food hoarder and grossed myself out.) The pressure canning went fine. I don’t know that I will find time to replenish my veggie stock once we hit canning season, but I am sure I will miss it when I return to using those little cubes of salt that pass for bullion.


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100 Books by 40: Persuasion

Before I get into Persuasion, I need to vent about the BBC’s 100 Best Books list. I’ve just discovered that number 59. Artemis Fowl is actually a series of eight books. EIGHT! Between this and the BBC slyly listing Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials as two books (actually six books), I want to start calling the list the BBC’s Best 111 Books. I realize that LOR was intended as one whole book, but conventionally it was released as three. I call shenanigans on the BBC. I will be reading Artemis Fowl for months. At least it is a young adult series; I shudder to think of a Kafka work spanning eight books.

I’m getting lulled into enjoying British Literature, but I would like to follow the BBC’s list with something a little less Brit Lit centered. I might have found that list a few days back. By the time I complete the BBC’s list I will have read about 30 of the books on this list. Blending of fiction with non-fiction feels haphazard. I find that appealing. Some intern just dreamed up this list, and I don’t care.

http://www.businessinsider.in/100-Books-Everyone-Should-Read-Before-They-Die/articleshow/29916032.cms

Now then, back to Brit Lit. I really enjoy Jane Austen. Going into Pride and Prejudice I was prepared to hate it. I don’t like romance. I hate romantic comedies. Reading Jane Austen and George Eliot has given me clarity on why. My romantic media consumption was limited to Hollywood’s interpretation. My partner just watched “Love Actually”, this Christmas season and was enraged by how absurd it was. There are movies that pull the curtain back on real relationships which are most often a balancing between good intentions, false assumptions, short tempers, and the grinding aspects of everyday life. “Blue Valentine” comes to my mind. Lets just say “Love Actually” was not one of them.

The point is I went into Jane Austen and George Eliot thinking “Pretty Woman”. I came away with appreciation for Austen’s wit. Both writers display artistry with language and acute abilities to tell the truth about relationships. There are beautiful moments along side frustration and disappointment. It’s a continuation of all that you struggle with plus the struggles of another. At its best relationships can drive us to  be our best. But growth hurts. It’s hard.

Persuasion is a great little read. It doesn’t feel as epic as Pride and Prejudice, but I think that’s due to its reduced length. If you want a bit of Austen without committing to Pride and Prejudice or Emma this is the read for you.


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Homemade Peanut Butter: How I Put on Ten Pounds

As mentioned in my last blog on cooking, I discovered a recipe for Thai peanut noodles that I love. I ran out of peanut butter while making the noodles. I had some unsalted roasted peanuts on hand.

Necessity is the mother of invention? In my case, necessity is the mother of googling peanut butter recipes. I found this.

http://www.inspiredtaste.net/21318/how-to-make-peanut-butter-three-ways/

I pulled out the food processor and threw in some peanuts with a pinch of salt and a dash of peanut oil. I was thinking that I would have a pleasant adventure and return to buying peanut butter at the grocery. That thought couldn’t have been more wrong.

I went back to prepping the noodles and let the food processor do its thing. After about 5 minutes, the butter started to have a consistency that I recognized. I tasted and added some local wild flower honey. I was shocked at how much flavor the peanut butter had, sans sweetener. A tablespoon of local honey kicked it up to AMAZING.

This discovery piqued my curiosity. Did you look at the link above? Did you see the chocolate peanut butter? Obviously, I had to make some. One idea will adequately express the results of my chocolate peanut butter experiment; I was inventing things to eat with this. I would put it on bananas, strawberries, in hot breakfast cereal, and in peanut butter cookies. You understand why this caused me to gain ten pounds now, yeah?

This is basically Nutella but with peanuts instead of hazelnuts. Speaking of Nutella, I discovered a minor modification for this recipe that makes it even more irresistible. I used hazelnut oil instead of peanut oil. The results are subtle, but it adds just a touch of aromatic hazelnuts that really deepens the flavor. That’s now my standard modification to this recipe.

I struggle to explain why homemade peanut butter is so good. It’s hard to express how much better peanut butter is when you can customize it for your personal tastes. Maybe it’s because there aren’t any perservatives. Maybe it’s because that local honey imparts so many subtle flavors. Maybe it’s because the quality of peanuts that I buy are higher than those that get milled into commercial peanut butter. Maybe it’s simply that I’ve taken 15 minutes to prepare it, and I consume it more mindfully. Maybe it’s the culmination of all of these things that make my own taste so much better. I don’t know. What I do know is that I won’t be buying peanut butter ever again.


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Food Unicorn: Tasty Tofu

Ohio doesn’t have much local produce this time of year, and the polar vortex has kept me from outdoor activities like skiing and biking. Holed up in my home for weeks, I’ve been enjoying the canning off-season by making some new recipes. Here’s a couple of my favorites.

My partner is a vegetarian. She’s a vegetarian that doesn’t like vegetables. She’s been working to expand her palate though, so I’m not complaining. I’m just setting the scene. While I am a omnivore, I don’t cook with meat at home. All of these things lead to us eating many meat substitutes. I like Gardein, Quorn, MorningStar Farms, tempeh, seitan, and others. Notice, tofu is not in that list.

Tofu, without modification, achieves something unthinkable. It tastes like nothing, while simultaneously being unpleasant. I don’t know how something that lacks taste can be gross, but tofu manages it. My tofu arithmetic: no flavor + no texture = bleck.

Then I found this. http://www.daringgourmet.com/2013/02/27/thai-peanut-tofu-noodles/ This recipe has all the things that I love: fresh ginger, peanut butter, noodles, noodles, garlic, carrots, chilis, and green onions. Whip all of this up and top with Sriracha, and I am in heaven. But that tofu.

The first time I try a recipe, I always make it exactly as instructed. I like to start with a baseline before I customize it to my taste. This recipe was no different, in spite of my troubled past with tofu.

Imagine my surprise at finding this method of tofu preparation quite good. Let’s be honest, when you salt the shit out of something it will taste pretty good. This tofu treatment is a testament to that. The sherry, sesame oil, and soy combo add some nice complexity to round out the salt in the soy. The sesame oil imparts a great nuttiness, and the soy brings much needed umami to the tofu.

Pairing this salty, nutty tofu with the peanut sauce in this recipe is heaven. I’ve made this compulsively since I discovered it. If it didn’t feel too self-indulgent, I would have a bowl of these noodles in my fridge at all times.

I liked this tofu so well that I added it to this recipe too. http://www.monsoonspice.com/2009/03/tofu-pineapple-thai-yellow-curry.html

I bake the tofu separately and top the curry with it. The coconut-based sauce is sweet. The baked tofu is salty. Top this with a bit of Sriracha or some Thai chilis, and you have a the sweet, salty, spicy trifecta that Thai food nails.

These recipes led me on a couple of other food adventures that I will save for a subsequent blog. Coming up… canning homemade veggie stock, homemade mustard, and making nut butters.


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100 Books by 40: David Copperfield

My copy of David Copperfield has an introduction by the author himself, and I found his words quite relevant to my own experience with the novel.

“Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD.”

If you’ve been following my blog you might know that I’ve already read Great Expectations, and I wasn’t terribly fond of it. Mrs. Havisham lords over that book and swallows any lightness that Pip provides. It’s a long, bleak read. In contrast, David Copperfield is alive with witty, endearing characters, despite the plot being flush with personal catastrophe. In particular, David’s aunt, Betsy Trotwood, was a peculiar, sassy old broad that I enjoyed in every way.

I often avoid talking about particular parts of the plot to refrain from spoiling the read for others who fail to heed my alerts. That just can’t be avoided here, because as I want to talk about how much I liked the resolution of one of the story arcs.

Here goes. *****************SPOILER ALERT*****************************

For readers whom have not read the book and don’t intend on it, let me set the scene for this story arc. David’s father dies before he is born. His mother is a less than sensible woman and remarries to a severe, cruel man. David’s mother is driven to an early grave by her new husband, and David is left with the wicked stepfather who at best neglects him and at worst abuses him.

Many other story arcs are introduced and resolved between the beginning and end of this arc, such that years pass with no update on the stepfather. After achieving success as an adult, David hears from a family friend that this man has found another kind woman to marry and mentally abuse. I was curious if Dickens would conjure up an emotionally satisfying final confrontation between David and his step father. He doesn’t. The story arc is left there with David knowing that his step father is bringing suffering to a new woman.

I loved this. I loved this lack of closure. It’s what real life is. I think each of us have experienced some deep pain at the hands of another. There’s rarely an epic moment were the perpetrator acknowledges the emotional carnage that they created. People are either too self-absorbed to consider how their actions effect others, or they are steeped in denial. Possibly both. David Copperfield has simply lived beyond his destructive stepfather. He didn’t wallow in that loss. Isn’t that what real healing usually looks like?

I loved this book. I loved these characters; they warrant the favorite child status. I am mildly relieved to find a Dickens book that I like. Does that make me less of a philistine? Maybe not. But it represents my slow-growing appreciation of British Literature, without question.

It’s been a while since I updated my progress through the 100 Best Books list, so here it is. I’m approaching my half way point. No joke, I am excited to read some of my old favorites once the list is through. Success is nearly certain. I should be able to finish before I’m 40. I don’t know what it means that I’ve committed hours to something that I wasn’t sure was attainable on the outset.

Reading now:
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

Finished reading:
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
53. The Stand, Stephen King
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens *I read this when I was too young to appreciate it; I would like to read it again as an adult. I will do so if I have time.
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding *I’ve read this twice. I will read it again if I have time.
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac *I’ve read this twice. I will read it again if I have time. I have the unabriged unedited version and will probably take on that if time allows.

Pending reading:
40. Emma, Jane Austen
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie


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100 Book by 40: Treasure Island and Anne of Green Gables

Who doesn’t like pirates? No one. Honestly, that could be the end of my thoughts on Treasure Island. The book was a fun little romp. The pirates were larger than life. The plot was fun. The book was tolerably short. You should read it.

I could draw a bunch of comparisons between The Pirates of the Caribbean and Treasury Island. But, really, is it any wonder that the plot of a book is better than the plot of a movie? The book was wonderful even lacking a hot Johnny Depp.

On to Anne of Green Gables, I was fully expecting to hate this book. I’ve not enjoyed most of the children’s books that I’ve read on this list, particularly those with female leads. But I got this as an audio book from the library. I loaded up my iPod, and listened as I drove all over Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio this holiday season. I suspect listening to the book made me enjoy this book more than I would have reading it. One of the things that I will pay a bit more attention to going forward is how my experience differs from listening vs reading.

Objectively, Anne was pretty obnoxious character. Because I could tune her out a bit while enjoying the scenery, I found her more tolerable. I am certain that I will never read this book. I am happy that I heard it, mostly for Morella’s character development. Margaret Atwood wrote the intro to my particular copy of the book and suggests that the book is primarily about Morella. I tend to agree with her position. The character that experiences the most transformation is Morella. While Anne transforms from a child to a woman, Morella embraces parts of her self that had lain dormant for years. Technically, I haven’t listened to the last few chapters of Anne of Green Gables, but, as I’ve seen the movie and the f0reshadowing is pretty clear, I will consider this one done in terms of blogging about it. I will listen to the last chapters on my run this week.


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100 Books by 40: DUNE

The last few weeks have felt overwhelming. While I enjoy the time off around the holidays, I don’t enjoy that I am traveling so much. There are many reasons for this. I hate driving. I’ve reached an age where my back appreciates no beds other than my own. My separation from the gym makes my anxiety pool with zero outlets. Eating off my typical diet leads to a 5 to 10 pound weight gain that will need to be addressed come January. Clothes get tighter. I returned from Chicago six days ago. Yesterday I returned from Northern Ohio. Discomfort. That’s a good word to describe my holidays.

As a solid introvert, I lose control of my alone time while traveling. I like people. I like being around people, but it exhausts me. I need little recharging moments throughout my day. I peppered reading sessions throughout my 4-day trip to Chicago. Every day, I would sneak off for a couple of hours and read Dune. I had other books to read, like Treasure Island and David Copperfield. But I always picked Dune. Since my other two reading selections where snug on my Kindle, those books would have been more sensible reading choices. Dune was borrowed from my library was decidedly more bulky and less convenient for taking busses and the train around Chicago.

I picked Dune because it captivated me from page one. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I don’t like science fiction as a general rule. I wasn’t fond of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve struggled to put my finger on why I often don’t like this genre. My least wordy explanation is that lazy writers use the non-realistic setting to enable sloppy plots, although admittedly this wasn’t the problem with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

There were thing things that I loved about Dune. First, there wasn’t excessive creative license around what the creatures and characters looked like. Herbert seemed to save all his creative energies for developing classes of characters that come with specific sets of skills and abilities, the Bene Gesserit are an excellent example of this. I get the sense that sci-fi writers get carried away with describing the strange visuals of their creatures and then fail at adequate character development.

Second, Herbert revealed details around both these classes of characters and context information at an appropriate pace. The novel starts out with little to no description and jumps right into plot. He would mete out details and bits of back-story as he described action. This is one of the best paced novels I have ever read.

Third the political, ecological, and religious themes  are excellent. First, this is one of the first fictional books that I’ve ever read that considers the ecological implications on plot development. The interplay between religion, power, and politics resonates as being in line with our own history books.

I will be reading the sequels to this book. This is one of the few books that I just couldn’t put down once I started. I highly suggest that you give it a read.


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Pie Crusts with Leaf Lard: Better than Rainbows and Unicorns

Peach Pie

Here’s me sealing off the upper crust of the peach pie.

Finished peach pie, before we devoured it.

Finished peach pie, before we devoured it.

Peach pie after we scarfed some pieces down.

Peach pie after we scarfed some pieces down.

I’ve been making pie crusts for more than a decade. They are tricky. I’ve heard my grandmothers say that pies haven’t been the same since cooking with lard fell out of fashion. Like the bratty young adults that most of us were in our early 20’s, I was dismissive of these statements. As a cook, I’ve come to notice that the things my grandmothers said about cooking were right on the mark. Given that they cooked for their enormous families for twenty plus years prior to the advent of boxed meals, they have accumulated lots of cooking and baking wisdom.

When my foodie friend said that she could get us leaf lard, I said, “YES YES YES YES.” I’ve got a recipe for pie crust with blend of butter and shortening that has given me the best balance of flaky and tender, but I’ve always been curious about pie crust with lard. The recipe that I’ve linked to is by far the best recipe for a butter/shortening crust. I’ve tried at least 10 or 15 recipes over the years. This one yields the most consistent, flaky, and tender crust.

The lard that we got was unprocessed. It looks like what it is, a giant hunk of fat. To render it we put it in a slow cooker overnight. Once rendered and cooled to room temperature, the lard looked very much like plain shortening. One of the reasons that leaf lard is prized for baking is because it’s the most neural fat on the pig. Back fat and other lard has a distinctly pork favor that doesn’t lend itself to sweet pastries. Leaf lard can be found around the kidneys of the pig. Leaf lard doesn’t really have much of a flavor aside from the rich mouth-feel that fat typically has. It’s also difficult to find. Small butcher shops are the best places to start your leaf lard search.

We decided to make one savory and one sweet pie. We settled on peach pie and chicken pot pie. We canned peaches this past summer, and we used some that we packed with cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom, and star anise. We used Alton Brown’s recipe for pie crust with lard. We considered just using all lard, but we were thinking that we actually wanted a bit of butter flavor in the crust. We tried a new technique with the butter. We took the butter from the freezer and grated it into the flour as opposed to cutting it in. This seemed to make the crust more consistent, and it was a little easier to work with. I liked this method so much that I will probably use it from this point forward. There’s one other thing to note about that Alton Brown recipe. The fat to flour ratio was really high, higher than most other crust recipes.

Throughout my years of cooking from scratch, I have repeatedly noticed that home cooked foods almost always crush their store-bought counter-parts. This has consistently been true for fruit pies, so it shouldn’t have shocked me that the chicken pot pie was spectacular. We didn’t do anything fancy with it. It had the standard peas, carrots, celery, and onions. We roasted the chicken. Once fully cooked, we removed the chicken an put the veggies directly in the pan with the chicken drippings. Once the veggies were softened but not completely cooked, we mixed in flour. Then we added a bit of water followed by half and half. Nothing out of the ordinary. This pie was anything but ordinary. I loved the Banquet pot pies in college. I was broke most of the time; for ninety-nine cents I could have a hot filling meal. Our pot pie blew that Banquet pot pie out of the water.

The peach pie was divine. Our spiced peaches were perfect with the salty, crisp pie crust. The fact that we used our canned peached allowed us to perfectly control how much moisture was in the pie.

I need a whole paragraph to describe the crust. This crust was like a cross between typical pie crust and a French butter pastry. It was at once crisp, chewy, tender, and flaky. I didn’t know a crust could manage to be all of these things at once. I’ve managed flaky and tender crusts, but they’ve never been chewy. I’ve managed very crisp crusts, but they are rarely tender. I think it’s quite possible that this lard pie crust has ruined me for anything but lard pie crusts from this point forward. Grandma was right… again. Now, I just need to figure out how to get more lard.


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A Quick Note about Subsidization

Regarding the Cincinnati streetcar debate, this women is saying super smart things.

ejmcewan's avatarthe walking green

Subsidization.

Depending on which side you’re on, the word elicits either hope or disgust.

I’m sympathetic to both sides.

I have worked in the nonprofit industry for the past 9 years and know firsthand how stark the difference is between private donations and corporate funds. In our world, the difference between small award money and large government grants can easily mean the decision of sticking to volunteer help vs hiring paid staff, seeking free tagline promotion vs paying for billboards, or repairing outdated computers vs upgrading to new office supplies. Subsidies make the impossible possible. And, when used strategically, they provide better services and improved efficiency which, in turn, actually paves the way toward independence and increased capacity.

Conversely, I understand that the goal of every entity is to be independent of government handouts and subsidies, free from corporate entanglements, and at liberty to make decisions without needing to answer to…

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