1. I am on Goodreads here, and am happily procrastinating by importing reviews originally written here, and writing 2-3 line reviews of books I didn't review here. Also uploaded a more flattering (I hope) photo.

2. Yesterday I made home-made chicharrones (pork rinds) despite not having a deep fryer, and they came out perfect. I cut pork belly into small slices and chunks, salted and peppered it, then laid it on a tin foil-lined baking sheet and roasted it in the oven at 450 until it smelled delicious and the skin got bubbly. If you've never had the real thing, is it so much more delicious than the packaged stuff. If I hadn't been hitting the gym regularly, I might feel vaguely guilty or concerned about eating about a quarter pound of the least healthy food ever, but I have been, so I don't.

3. staranise has created Clinical Documentation, an A03 collection of fanfic in the form of psychological reports on fictional characters. If you have one, put it up!

I am right now preparing Crispy Pork Belly (Siu Yuk), to be eaten with rice and sauteed ha choi. While I'm doing the parboiling, I am watching Nyesha kick ass on Last Chance Kitchen.

Also, I have ( pretty Parisian shoes. )

Snow falls in utter silence. Today the sun is shining, and all the melting snow makes a sound like rain.

One of the guests brought Trader Joe's raw puff pastry sheets for a dessert she ended up not making, and I repurposed them. The resulting turnovers were so delicious that I and my parents fell upon them and devoured three each in a mad fit, and had more for breakfast today.

Peel and chop cooking apples. I used Granny Smiths and some from the apple trees on the property. Mix in a bowl with brown sugar, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and optionally cinnamon and/or vanilla.

I also made some with fresh blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and various mixtures of berries and apples. For the berries alone, I used less or no sugar, and no cinnamon.

Cut each sheet of puff pastry into fourths. Pile the fruit on the pastry squares, top with a small chunk of butter, and seal the pastry. Bake at 400 F until the bottoms (not just the tops) are browned. It took me over 30 minutes, but this is high altitude, so play it by ear. The package suggested 15.

Here, have a totally inappropriate icon.

This morning the cable guy arrived to turn on my internet (long story), saying, "This will take 20 minutes!"

It took him two and a half hours. Including crawling around in my basement AND my closet. Poor guy.

I now have to buy charoset ingredients. Anyone have a favorite recipe? (Ashkenazi tradition, probably - I don't like raisins, figs, or dates.)

While house-sitting, I attempted a brine recipe for pork chops from the Lucques cookbook. It calls for dissolving 1/2 cup kosher salt and 1/3 cup sugar in 2 cups hot water, then adding three quarts cold water and various spices, then soaking the chops overnight.

I just broiled a sample chop. It is nearly inedibly salty.

1. What happened? The only alteration I made, other than omitting some spices I didn't have, was to use powdered rather than granulated sugar as the house didn't have granulated.

2. How can I salvage the remaining chops soaking in the brine? I don't want to throw them out. Should I rinse, then soak them in cold water? Or rinse, then soak in water with just granulated sugar added to try to make up for the part that didn't work?

1. I am doing some teaching, which involves teaching some elements of grammar. I do have coursebooks and don't need that.

What I would like are sentences which are funny because they are ungrammatical, and cease to be funny when the modifiers are put in their proper places or whatever.

These sentences need to be comprehensible and funny to teenagers who may not have excellent vocabularies. Books like The Transitive Vampire don't work because the vocabulary is too hard and the humor is too adult.

Types of errors that I'm looking for (only one per sentence) include faulty modification, misplaced commas, illogical comparisons, tense errors, subject-verb errors, redundancy, singular and plural, and pronoun confusion. I am not looking for advanced or controversial stuff like split infinitives. For instance:

"Running leashless through the park, Jason finally caught his dog."

"This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

"The snow in Colorado is fluffier than California."

"Emily put the bowl of water on the floor for her dog Julie, and she slurped it up."

2. I dreamed last night that I was eating a very moist (but not soggy) yet fluffy sweet cornmeal cake. The texture was halfway between pudding and cake. I can make a cornmeal cake, but it has a normal cake texture. Does anyone know how to make my dream cake? If so, please point me toward a recipe.

I use this on chicken and lamb before grilling, broiling, baking, or roasting, though it's probably good on other meat as well. It's also excellent on roast vegetables. Most recent use: a mixture of chopped roasted turnips, sweet potatoes, and onions, tossed with the spice mixture and olive oil. Spice-rubbed chicken on top of that. Truly fantastic.

To use: Rub liberally on to meat or toss with vegetables before roasting. I like to pull the skin off chicken thighs, apply the rub to the meat, then replace the skins and apply it to the skin. Roast skin-up for spicy crisp skin.

Ingredients:

Brown sugar.

Powdered ginger. Slightly less ginger than sugar.

Cumin. Maybe a fourth or fifth as much cumin as the sugar. (ie, much less cumin.)

Salt and pepper. About as much or less than the amount of cumin.

Mix thoroughly. Taste. Adjust seasonings accordingly.

If you have your own super-delicious spice mixture, please share in comments!

Yoon and I have now made this twice, once with apples and once with apples and pears; both are fantastic. It's very easy, too.

INGREDIENTS

Four to six apples (I used Granny Smith) and/or pears (I used Bartlett)

Minimum 1 cup flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup butter

Lemon juice from 1/2 lemon (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Peel and chop apples and/or pears, removing cores. Scatter in buttered baking dish. Optionally, toss with lemon juice (I really liked this.) Combine flour, cinnamon, salt, and butter (softened or melted) with fingers or pastry cutter until it resembles crumbs rather than dough. Keep adding flour until the texture is right. Scatter crumbs over fruit. Bake for about 35 minutes. Serve warm, optionally with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

1. Is Bookmooch not working for anyone else? It's refusing to accept my password.

2. Yesterday it occurred to me that I need a pair of tennis shoes, my old ones having fallen apart, as I'm going to be wandering about in the muddy ruggedness of my parents' place near Yosemite this weekend. (Yes, hiking boots would also do, but I really don't have enough need for those to buy a pair. I detest buying shoes-- trying them on is tiresome, they are expensive, and it's hard to tell if they really fit or not in the store.

While walking to the neighborhood cafe, two small girls shrieked from across the street, "LEMONADE!" I went over to buy their homemade lemonade, and they directed my attention to their teeny-tiny garage sale. "We have shoes," one proudly announced.

"A bit small for me," I said.

"Try these!" insisted a girl. "They're Mom's."

They were a nice pair of white Nikes, barely worn, and they did look like my size. Mom emerged with some sugar for the lemonade, and said, "I've hardly worn those. I thought they fit in the store, but they didn't."

I tried them on. They fit perfectly. So I got a cup of tart lemonade and a pair of perfectly good Nike sneakers for three dollars and sixty cents.

3. If you want to send good wishes, light a candle, or whatever you do to send good luck to someone's way... I have several projects awaiting decisions right now. They are all collaborative, so good wishes should be directed to me and anyone working with me. Thanks!

4. What are some good, simple winter dishes that can be made with ingredients found in a very small market that is unlikely to have anything that anyone in America might ever consider unusual, exotic, or yuppie? (I could bring non-perishable spices with me, but it's a five-hour drive.) I plan to cook while I'm in the boonies near Yosemite, and I know what sort of supplies they have. I already know about thirty-garlic chicken, and am already planning to make potato salad and apples stuffed with sausage meat (if they have sausage meat.)

ETA. 5. Oh, and I had a lucid dream last night: I knew I was dreaming, so I took advantage of it to try to influence the dream and have fun. Pretty cool, that only happens a couple times a year (unless it's more but I don't remember.) I tried to fly, but could only manage weightless leaping. And I had sex with Logan Echolls. Because he was there. It seemed like a good idea in the dream. No, it wasn't very good. He kept looking at me like, "Who is this woman and why is she molesting me?"