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So, I just wanted to post some links to where you can make some donations.

For Minneapolis: The Minnisota Freedom Fund is a bail fund that's helping people arrested during the protests over George Floyd's murder.

On a related note, a young woman name Regis Korchinski-Paquet was recently murdered by police in Toronto. There's fund her family (funeral and legal costs, for a start) that you can donate to here.


I sent $20 USD to the Freedom Fund and $55 CDN to Justice For Regis.
I am now out of donation money until early/mid June when I get paid again, but if you can throw some cash to these funds, that would be great.

So, I've been thinking about how I season food, and what works for me.

Alum/Lily Family: Crow garlic, various kinds of chives, onions, garlic, ramps, leeks (apparently asparagus is part of this family? Which seems odd, but I'll go with it)

Mustard Family: both in the sense of wild & cultivated pot veggies (garlic mustard vs kale vs radish greens vs red cabbage - which are less about seasoning but are still part of the palate) and in the sense of hot mustard, honey mustard, grainy mustard, and (potentially) horseradish.

Booze: In my case, this means wine/cider (including my fermentation failures that work as something closer to vinegar). But it also includes beer, port, whiskey, and potentially sherry. Also also other ferments (which is technically everything from sour kraut - also part of the mustard flavour profile - to vinegar and kombucha which are acetic acid ferments to, technically, cheese... see below).

Animal Stuff, Part 1: Milk, cream, yoghurt, salted butter, various cheeses (ANY cheeses) but, in particular, chevre, parmesan, and cheap cheddar (and occasionally a brie or a blue). Sometimes there's also kefir or cream cheese involved.

Animal Stuff, Part 2: Bone stock, bacon grease, duck fat, schmaltz, poorly home-rendered lard, a couple of tablespoons of diced cured sausage.

Mint Family: This is a LOT of aromatic herbs - everything from actual peppermint/apple mint/spearmint to culinary sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, savoury, and basil, to nettles (which are more like a pot vegetable), to lavender, bergamot, and anise hyssop, to a whole BUNCH of other, more medicinal stuff (like mugwort and skullcap).

Fruit: Rhubarb, apples, and cranberries, for the most part. Sometimes red currants. Sometimes other berries (service berries, raspberries, rather less frequently rosehips and sumac), sometimes other fruits (pears, apricots, nectarines, plums/prunes and, sometimes, imported citrus). But mostly those are my top three. (NOTE: Almost all of these are members of the rose family. The citrus isn't, the sumac[1], rhubarb, and cranberries[2] aren't. But everything else is).


~*~

Other plants we eat (veggies now, rather than seasonings):

Celeriac, cilantro, lovage, dill, and carrots (and, to a lesser extent, parsnips, chamomile, parsley, and fennel) are all part of the umbel family. These - particularly the lovage, dill, and cilantro, play a bigger part in my summer cooking (unless you count the dill seed I chuck in with my pickles), but I still tend to think of this family more as a "pot-veggies" family than as a "herbs" family, especially since lovage can get huge and basically be a hardy perennial substitute for celery...

Spinach, swiss/rainbow/ruby chard, sorrel, rhubarb (see above), amaranth, beets, buckwheat, quinoa, and lambsquarters are all part of the spinach/amaranth (goosefoot/knotweed) family. Sorrel and rhubarb notwithstanding, this is a veggies (rather than seasonings) family, but one that plays a pretty big role in my cooking.

Squash Family: Various pumpkins, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, zucchini and other summer squash, baby hubbard, delicata, sweet dumpling, buttercup, and whatever else I can swing, plus cucumbers and occasionally melons. The zucchini and the pumpkins get sliced/diced, steamed/baked, and frozen. The cukes get eaten in salads or else pickled. The winter squashes get eaten in a triaged manner. They're definitely part of the flavour profile, but they're not what I'd call a seasoning.

Nightshades like various tomatoes, bell peppers, thai chilies, jalapeno peppers, eggplants, potatoes, and ground cherries... they're hella flavourful (okay, MOSTLY hella flavourful. Less-so the eggplants and potatoes), but they play less of a role in my day-to-day cooking/seasoning than they do in other households.

I mostly ignore the aster family. Other than the dandelions, I mean. Tarragon in lovely, but we don't get a lot of it and I don't tend to miss it the way I would horribly miss hot mustard or garlic or white wine in my cooking.

Grass Family: Wheat and barley, a little bit of rye flour when I'm making sourdough bread, oats (sometimes as whole groats, more often as rolled oats or oat flour) occasionally make an appearance, rice comes in and out. But mostly the grains we stick with are wheat (flour) and barley (pot and pearl).

Pea/Pulse Family: red lentils, green lentils (which I sprout), mung beans (which I sprout), chick peas, romano beans, great northern beans, various kidney beans, black beans... and also cranberry beans, edamame, snow peas, sugar peas, various green snap beans, scarlet runner beans, and lima beans. We eat them, but I rarely (successfully) grow them, and they're not exactly flavourful. Though red lentils are peppery as heck, who'd have thought. O.O


Anyway. This has been my thinky-thoughts for the evening.


TTFN,
Amazon.


[1] Part of the Cashew family - much to my surprise - right along side mangoes and pawpaws. O.O
 
[2] Part of the Heath family, just like blueberries and huckleberries.

So!
I have some new-to-me clothes and some straight-up NEW clothes. And I also have some fabric.

I have turquoise cotton fabric to make a shift/sheath dress (same style as my pink one that I made a few years ago), turquoise corduroy-esque fabric to make a skirt - maybe one like this - and we'll see if I have extra left over for anything else.
I've also got 2m of heavy black suiting fabric with a tone-on-tone geometric glittery print, which I used to lengthen my GGLA gown, and I'd like to make a suit-like ensemble with it. A bit like if you crossed this with this and/or this.
Basically, I want a knee-length, possibly-asymmetrical, mermaid skirt with a matching cropped jacket with full-length sleeves.
I can figure out the skirt. I might even have a pattern I can tweak to get it to do what I want.
And I can probably make the body of the jacket, even if I have to do it in a fairly wasteful way where I make a boxy jacket and then tailor it so that it has a bit more shaping. But the sleeves are scaring me to death. I've only done sleeves once, and they wound up puffier than I'd like (it was for the black-net bolero/shrug I made to go with my wedding gown in 2012, so that extra poof was fine... it's just it was also not quite what I was going for and I'm not sure how to avoid that when working with heavier material).

So that's what's on my mind. >.>

Sterilizing the pint jars.
I've thickened the pumpkin soup with some mashed carrots & a mashed potato and some more amaranth. I've also added a little bit of paprika and some coriander.
Ghost says it smells good.
All I can really smell is the mix of turkey stock and coconut milk and... it doesn't smell right to me. There should be onions in this. And some garlic. And the recipient can't eat either of those things (and I'm not buying hing when this is the only time I'm going to use it).
But I'm going to go with Ghost on this one.

Next up is the potato soup.
Wish me luck, kids.

Gahds. I said I'd go to a local studio's open-house/xmas-party and I'm SO reconsidering.
I was expecting to have the soup in the jars and be well on my way to being able to leave the house (to get to this party) by 5pm.
And that's not going to happen.

I don't know. We'll figure it out.

5-7-5
Nature reference
Juxtaposition of themes
Cutting Word (to shift from one theme to the next - a pivot point)
Mandatory nature reference in each poem (refers to seasonal setting: "New Moon in Libra" would do it, but so would "service berries rot // hornets swarming in the heat // m m m m m)

Typically 100 poems long, as a cycle.
50/50 referencing death and life.


"[...] The focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination."
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/haiku-poetic-form



"The core feature of haiku is an experience described in a concrete image designed to evoke the same experience in the reader. A good haiku is not simply a static description. Three valued attributes are:

embodiment of a transformation -- possibly with a surprising ending and/or a lingering poetic atmosphere. This may be catalyzed by describing an impression characteristic of one sensory organ through words normally descriptive of the impression through another. Images may be connected in a surprising way, possibly by changing perspectives calling for movement between them. Thinking is surprised and changes direction. Metaphors are however rarely used in haiku, because the image is expected to speak for itself and not be compared with something else in order to be accentuated or transformed in significance. However it is consequently recognized as a form that is wonderful for metaphorical descriptions. In contrast to this view, many of Matsuo Basho's haiku use metaphor and allegory to great effect [see poems].

capacity to hold several layers of meaning that may be discovered or explored -- possibly subsequently on reflection, or over a period of time. This may be achieved by using a proximate image like a fractal to imply the larger context of which it is a detail. Indirect insight is typical of haiku.

act as a container for deep meaning, as characterized by a sense of poignancy, being touched, existential tragedy, or inevitability beyond conventional frameworks. It offers a value-charged integrative perspective.

Stress is placed on the concreteness of the images. Purely abstract or intellectual concepts are not considered valid haiku -- irrespective of their conformity with the formal rules or the value of the experience they may engender. Meaningful insights overtly expressed are considered as an imposition, potentially alienating to the reader. This is an implicit aesthetic that is discovered by a receptive sensitivity rather than an invasive technique. A degree of detachment or distance is valued. Although the concrete images may be anchored in the immediate or distant past -- perhaps specifically associated with a season -- the effect sought is an experience in the present moment, the immediate here and now (cf Kate Hall, Mirroring the Moment, 2001)"
https://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/haiku.php#conv

Made a chocolate mousse cake today.
It was marvelously easy.
And delicious. (I printed the recipe off the internet):

10 egg whites
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
+
10 egg yolks
1/2 C granulated sugar
+
2C semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 C salted butter
+
Butter to grease the 9" spring-form pan
Cocoa to dust said pan


(1) In a pot on the stove, melt the butter and chocolate together over low heat (melt some of the butter first).
(2) Beat the hell out of the egg whites & cream of tartar - add the 2tbsp of sugar once it starts getting opaque and keep beating until you have some very stiff peaks going on.
(3) Blend the egg yolks and sugar until "lemony".
(4) Continue blending the egg yolks (on the LOWEST speed now) while adding the melted chocolate.
(5) Add the egg whites to the chocolate-yolk mixture (in batches). We used a spatula to fold them in, but you could just continue using the hand-mixer on LOW.
(6) Grease the pan and dust it with cocoa (I think both are probably important here, just because it'll give the mousse a tiny bit more structural integrity around the edges, and it will make it easier to shrink away from the sides of the pan when the cake is cooling).
(7) Put the pan on a cookie sheet, fill the pan with mousse.
(8) Bake at 350F for 40 minutes.
(9) Remove from oven. Allow to set for 10 minutes.
(10) Put the cake in the fridge for 10-15 minutes, just to let things get on with it a bit.
(11) Take the ring off the spring-form pan.
(12) Cut the cake and devour it.

You can theoretically top this with dulche de leche, whipped cream, a dusting of icing sugar, or some kind of fruit coulis, but it's also just lovely all by itself.

It's marvelously easy! :-D
And very tasty! :-D
And not overly sweet! :-D

Also, if you need something that's gluten free AND okay to bring to, like, Pass Over, this would (uh... I think?) work for that quite nicely.


I'm currently making dulche de leche in the slow-cooker (meaning that I've got an un-opened tin of condensed milk covered with water in my slow cooker, as it has been since about 4pm, and I should have delicious, fully-cramelized dulche de leche by the morning).

Reply to this post with "EWOKS!" and I will pick three of your icons for you to talk about in your own journal, and then keep the meme going by making this offer on your post.

[personal profile]muccamukk picked "tarot icon 1" (which I'm using for this post) as well as "blessed are the whores and witches" and "sexy librarian" (part 1). I don't know how to add media here, so I'll just post them one at a time and use the icons in question when I do.

This is a picture of the High Priestess card (herein called "Inner Voice") from the Osho Zen tarot deck.
It's the deck I've been reading with for a solid ten years now. It has its biases - as all decks do - but it's beautiful and colourful and not super hetero and has a lot of PoC in it, all of which is nice when you don't know who you'll be reading for. I also like that all of the cards have a name - "Inner Voice" is one, sure, but, for example, the four of fire is "participation", the knight of earth ("rainbows" in this deck, for some reason) is "Slowing Down" - which made it way easier for novice-me to get the hang of what the cards were about.

I made this picture into an icon because - for a very brief while, at the beginning of 2016 - I was doing a "daily (ish) card" thing where I pulled a card out of my deck and then blogged about what that card meant in my own understanding. I think I just happened to have a good picture of this card in my files already - took it for a reading I'd done at the end of 2015, I think - and went with it.

So I have the enviable problem of needing to use up last year's frozen fruits and veggies in order to make space for this year's frozen fruits and veggies.
Oh, darn.

Which means I'm finally (finally) getting around to making preserves out of 2 bags of wild-harvested choke cherries + a pint of farmers' market "please just take it away, so we don't have to bring it home" black currants that were definitely past their best, but not by much.

What this amounts to is:

1L jar of chokecherry purree with onions and whole cranberries and some left-over plum jelly. I need to add [1/2 C vinegar, 1/2 C granulated sugar, a diced apple, some dried fruit - like a couple of well-chopped prunes or something (more likely dried cherries, since that's what I have) - and maybe another diced onion] to this in order to turn it into 4-5 cups of choke cherry relish.
+
750mL mix of black currant purree (about 1C) and chokecherry purree (the rest of the jar) to be mixed with 6 eggs, 3C sugar, and... a quantity of butter that I should really double-check before I start this business... in order to get about 3C of vividly purple fruit curd (this stuff is delicious with both choke cherries AND black currants, as well as with cranberries, so... It'll be good!)
+
1L jar of choke-cherry purree, black currant PULP, raw frozen berries (grocery-store cranberries given me by a friend, a grocery-store mix of blueberries, blackberries & raspberries + neighbourhood seriveberries and neighbourhood (alley, not back-yard - not this year, anyway) raspberries)

That last one is currently on the stove with the addition of: a glug of (fake) vanilla, a somewhat larger glug of vodka, a dusting of ground cloves, a pinch of salt, 4C granulated sugar, and a splish of pomegranate-flavoured balsamic vinegar--> Making it this year's version of Goblin Fruit Jam.


I'm... I've got a couple of hours of work I need to do for a friend. If said friend is coming over to catch up tonight, I will be holding off on the fruit curd and the relish-type-thing for later this week BUT I need to get to it sooner, rather than later, because I don't want it to go bad now that it's thawed out. :-\


In other preserving news:
Diced, blanched, and froze a bunch of zucchini (About 3.5 whole zukes - enough to make 6C frozen diced veggies, at any rate). I've got five left in the fridge, and being able to put up another 3.5 of them this week would not be a terrible thing.
If the Herb and Spice still has butternut squash on super-reduced-to-sell discount, I may pick up a couple of those and do the same to them. We shall see.

Also: I keep the diced stems of chard, kale, mustard greens, and similar in a bag in the freezer and chuck them into stews and braises as needed. And I decided to ferment the entire bag today and see what kind of a Weird Veggie Pickle I could make in the fermentation crock my friend gave me.
Ingredients (more or less) are:
Diced leafy-greens stems
1 red onion, finely sliced into ribbons
A bunch of fresh sage, sliced into ribbons
Whole coriander (cilantro) seeds (some dry, some still green - all from the garden)
Whole mustard seeds
LOTS of pickling salt
Dusting of ground nutmeg
3 bay leaves (for tanins - may shuffle off and see if I can't add a wodge of grape leaves - also in ribbons - to this mixture for the same reason plus the handy addition of Moar Greens)
2 whole cloves of garlic, pierced a few times with a sharp knife
5 frozen bird chilies

I'm hoping it will be delicious and also slightly less watery than the spring Wild Greens ferment I did a few months back. We Shall See.

So I'm having some people over tomorrow afternoon. Funnily enough, the person I was originally doing the event for is off sick with strep throat, so probably won't be joining the rest of us. But fingers crossed.

My plan is to make some kind of sour-milk-based coffee cake (as I am wont to do), and also offer this bean dip with "toasts" - like, sliced of bread cut into strips or quarters, brushed with some oil, and broiled for a couple of minutes.
It'll do.

It's not hummus. If only because hummus at least needs to have chick peas in it. But it's one of those type things. :-)

~*~

BEAN DIP

1 onion, diced and fried in oil
Garlic a-go-go (see above)
1 tin red kidney beans, well-washed and drained
2 beets, peeled, diced, and boiled (or use a bunch of pickled beets, and skip the vinegar)
Red wine vinegar (see above)
Thyme
Coriander
Cloves

Combine everything in a food processor and blend until smooth. Serve with “miniature toasts” (brush with olive oil and put under the broiler for a bit).

~*~

I'm kind of hoping it'll be an amazing shade of magenta. :-)

Well.
No more cross-posting for me.