A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Two small green eggs from my hens on a bed of hash browns, pancetta, and mushrooms, seasoned with Trader Joe's umami seasoning which is mostly mushroom powder.




Apple cake with crumb topping.


Perhaps I'll do Mayak eggs tomorrow.

I am back in LA, tanned and happy and in possession of several dozen farm-fresh eggs, some of which I have already distributed to friends and neighbors. I then spent two hours madly watering and pruning.

Some garden shots. The lavender flowers are from a potato. Some of my potatoes died in a heat wave, alas. I am hoping to salvage the cucumbers, which were badly affected. When I pulled up a dead potato plant, though, I found two baby potatoes! A harvest!

Harvest. The "crystal melon" is also known as a lemon cucumber. I ate the cucumber and carrot raw, sautéed the potatoes and chard (sequentially in the same pan), and ate them with a fried double-yolked egg from the chooks.

This is everything I wanted.

It feels strange and insensitive to say that I'm happy, considering everything going on. But I am, in between periods of panic and rage and stir-craziness and numbness and so forth. I'm in such a better place than my three years of absolute personal hell. Even if I do end up dying of covid-19 (I'm high-risk), I feel that I'd be much more OK with that than I would if I'd died then, which would have essentially been because I couldn't get doctors to believe that I was actually sick.

At this point, I have the world's best cats, a beautiful garden that's already starting to feed me and others, an eager audience for my writing, and a business that's providing financial stability to me and others... self-publishing my id-tastic romance novels about traumatized shapeshifters and their pet flying kittens.

And those flying kittens bring me enough money that I can do some good with it, from donating to organizations like OutRight to helping out some individuals. Other people helped me so much, in so many ways, from paying for my medication to letting me live with them for months to finding a treatment to simply believing in me, when I was in no shape to give anything to anyone else, literally or emotionally. It feels really good to be in a place where I can give some of that back.

A garden symbolizes hope. It symbolizes the possibility of new life. It symbolizes persistence. But it's not just a symbol. It's a real thing. Put a seed in dirt, water it and tend it, and a sprout may grow. If it doesn't, try again, or somewhere else. When you get a sprout, keep watering (but not too much) and pick off the bugs, but don't be surprised if one morning you wake up and bugs ate the entire thing, or someone pulled it up. Try again, maybe in a different place. Use some bug spray, or maybe try a different plant. If you don't give up, eventually you'll learn how to tend your seeds, and one day you'll have a harvest that will feed you and others.

I have two butternut squashes (hard-skinned yellow squash), delivered to me as an emergency substitution for something I actually like. I can't return them because coronavirus, I don't generally like squash, and my neighbors don't want them.

My exception to the squash hate is when it's a savory dish that tones down the sweetness. The only time I've ever liked pumpkin was a savory dish I had at a banquet in Taipei with, I think, dried shrimp. Please suggest to me a savory dish, ideally some kind of Asian, which I can make with this squash.


I do not have dried shrimp, but I do have fish sauce and furikake. I don't have pureeing equipment.

Look, I made my own!

ETA: You can follow my adventures on Instagram, I'm updating live.

I attempted to do it in 18 minutes while having a Zoom chat with friends. This was beset by a number of technical difficulties. But I emerged with both the chat and the matzah!

My neighbor left a bottle of wine for me, hidden on her doorstep between two planters. Today I am going to attempt matzah ball soup (with the homemade broth she also left for me), charoset (I crushed pistachio nuts yesterday with a rolling pin while watching Mr. Robot), and crisp-braised duck legs with all the root vegetables that have been sadly lurking in my fridge or cabinets for much too long.

This pandemic combined with my chest freezer has made me WAY better at not wasting food. Previously I didn't have room to freeze much, and also had a lot more distractions. All the same, I selected the duck recipe specifically to use up beets, etc, which are otherwise going to go bad.

The turnips are a lost cause - everyone says they become very bitter once they start sprouting, and they look like a forest. I think I'm going to plant them instead, and get turnip greens.

Chag sameach!

Complete in three volumes, this manga is a cozy post-apocalypse tale about the adorable adventures of a young girl and her beloved pet giant mutant tentacled spider.

It’s also a cooking manga.

12-year-old Nagi is living alone and lonely in the mountains since her dad wandered off. But luckily, she encounters and adopts a giant mutant spider baby, which she names Asa. Asa doesn’t speak, but they and Nagi communicate just fine anyway. (Nagi uses “they/them” pronouns for Asa; it’s not stated whether it’s because Nagi doesn’t know Asa’s gender, or if she does know and Asa is nonbinary.)

Each chapter features Nagi and Asa having some kind of adventure and also cooking, so you get titles like “Danger & Pita Pockets.” Recipes included. That is, Nagi or people who Nagi meets cook, and Asa helps out, eats, and carries trays of food on their back.

I only read the second two volumes of this—Lyda and Mason left it with me, along with other manga, to mail back to them. But it was easy to pick up on earlier events, which I gather prominently featured pumpkin dumplings.

Giant Spider & Me is bizarre and also extremely sweet. Some people think Asa is a dangerous monster, but nothing ever gets too threatening and the love between a girl and her giant spider always carries the day.

Adrian Tchaikovsky would enjoy this. I did too. It’s like there’s some kind of conspiracy afoot to make me fall under the spell of our new many-legged overlords, I mean our adorable arachnid friends.

Giant Spider & Me: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Vol. 1

I have no idea how I obtained this book. This is not that uncommon for me, as I often grab books from used bookshops, garage sales, library sales and giveaway shelves, etc, and then don’t get around to reading them for years. And years.

I do remember why I obtained it, which is that I thought it was exactly what it said it was: a compendium of historical American recipes and cooking practices.

HA HA HA HA OH BOY WAS I WRONG. And wrong in the most serendipitous way. This book is so much more awesome than that, in the sense of the xkcd comic (“It’s like a sword, but awesomer.”) Had I known the wonders that awaited within its peculiarly metallic cover, I would have opened it way sooner.

While waiting for my bread to rise, I idly pulled it from the shelf, opened it at random, and read this:

Johannes Kepler was a well-known German astrologer. He was born in 1571 and died in 1630. His work on astronomy has long since been forgotten but his creating liverwurst will never be forgotten.

Um, WHAT?

Instantly riveted, I began flipping through. I found…

Spinach Mother of Christ

The Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ was very fond of spinach. This is as well known a fact in Nazareth today as it was 19 centuries ago. Her favorite music was that of the crude bagpipes of that time, and this also is a well-known fact.

Her recipe for preparing spinach spread with Christianity throughout Europe. On the eve of Christ’s birth in the cave that was called a stable, Her only meal was spinach.

And…

The person who named the muskrat should forever be ashamed of himself. If he had given it a nice name such as water opossum, water rabbit, or something of this nature, their carcasses would be worth more than their pelts are today. The name muskrat is simply not appealing to most people from an eating standard.

And…

Pate De Foie Gras was first made for Joan of Arc by one of her army cooks, Jean Baptiste Patrie who was from the goose rearing region of France. Herter then launches into a history of Joan of Arc which begins, Never underestimate the strength and courage of a woman who is really mad at you.

At this point, still trying to figure out whether this was a very elaborate parody or a batshit work of outsider art, I turned to the beginning. Best book opening ever, y/n?

In the lumber camp days and pioneer days the cooks learned from each other and the old world cooks. Each taught the other his country's cooking secrets. Out of the mixing came fine food, prepared as nowhere else in the world. I am putting down some of these recipes that you will not find in cookbooks plus many other historical recipes. Each recipe here is a real cooking secret. I am also publishing for the first time authentic historical recipes of great importance.

For your convenience I will start with meats, fish, eggs, soups and sauces, sandwiches, vegetables, the art of French frying, desserts, how to dress game, how to properly sharpen a knife, how to make wines and beer, how to make French soap and also what to do in case of hydrogen or cobalt bomb attacks, keeping as much in alphabetical order as possible.

Still perplexed and also cracking up, I looked up the author. Batshit work of outsider art it is!

I also enjoyed its Goodreads reviews, such as Holy god was this an AMAZING find at the used bookstore. While a little tough due to a disregard for commas, it's an amazing book to read out loud. With the Myan prediction of the world ending in 2012, I found the sections on what to do if a nuclear winter should occur particularly helpful.

I'd be a miss not to also give the virgin mother a shout out for her spinach recipe.

Also, it's golden. Literally.

And

One of my favorite things about Herter's books is that so many of them feature pictures of toddlers holding shotguns posing by dead animals.

I’ve flipped through this rather than reading cover to cover, but did spot praise for various Confederate figures, who in addition to being very fine men also invented chicken. There’s also a rant about the evil of women’s magazine editors who destroy the natural urge of women to bake by providing them with fake recipes that don’t work. So, general offensive opinions warning as I’m sure there’s plenty more like that, though I have to say that the plot to destroy womanhood via fake recipes for souffles that don’t rise provided me with more hilarity than offense.

In conclusion, the word "madrilene" used in cooking is strictly a phony.

Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices

What it says on the tin. Reese kept hearing Michael Pollan various people make complaints about how terrible it is that people buy things, especially food, instead of cooking them from scratch like they did when everyone ate potatoes and buttermilk every day in the good old days.

So she decided to see for herself if that was true, by doing head-to-head comparisons of things bought and things made - everything from bread (make unless you have a truly great bakery nearby, it's delicious and easy) to goat milk (buy, your neighbors will hate you if you keep blatting goats in your backyard) to maraschino cherries (buy, home attempts resulted in concoctions of even more hideousness and inedibility than the store-bought versions.)

She intersperses recipes (mostly pulled from an assortment of other cookbooks rather than original) with often hilarious accounts of her attempts at everything from cheesemaking to beekeeping, to cost-benefit analyses of cost, hassle, and whether the hassle is worth it. I found her voice and style charming - she's slightly hapless without being incompetent, i.e., her results probably map fairly well to mine. She's also very upfront that she's writing for the kind of person who is both interested in and capable (financially, timewise, etc) of actually doing at least some of the things she's discussing.

Though I often had completely different ideas of what's too much hassle and what's worth it, her analyses did give me a solid idea of whether I'd find trying something at home to be worthwhile. Bread, for instance, is a pretty big hassle if you have a demanding office job, and not worth it if you're not much into bread anyway. If you work from home, enjoy making it, and appreciate good bread, it's 100% worth it. But much as I love cheese, the process of making it sounds too fiddly and gross, though Reese found it mostly worthwhile. On the flip side, she thought homemade rice pudding doesn't come out any better than the store-bought version, and so is not worth it. HERESY.

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should (and Shouldn't) Cook from Scratch to Save Time and Money

Yesterday was effectively skipped, as Sherwood and I went to a restaurant for lunch. I did feed her some homemade toast first.

Today I made kamut (Khorasan wheat), which is sort of like farro, in my rice cooker. I had intended to use it as a salad base, but 1) my remaining kale had gone bad, 2) it took approximately three times longer to cook than I expected so I ate my composed salad ingredients (carrots, salmon collar, pickled daikon, parsley, olives, eggs) separately while waiting the eternity it took for the goddamn wheat to cook.



And then the bottom burned, which is not a problem I have with rice. What was not burned was actually very nice and tasty with just some salt and butter (it's a bit buttery-flavored by itself, which adds to the effect), as I'd already eaten the intended toppings, but obviously needs to be cooked on the stovetop rather than in a rice cooker.

Bow before my perfect soft-boiled eggs though!



(I didn't eat two separate helpings of salmon - the top image is the meat still attached to the bone, the bottom is the salmon pulled off the bone and sprinkled with parsley. I also had some elderflower cordial and Melba toasts with garlic-herb goat cheese (not pictured.)

Lessons I have now learned from this experiment:

1. Salad greens are better from the local Japanese market than the farmers market. Farmers market baby kale, arugula, etc, is cheaper but very prone to going bad quickly and/or having bug issues, so it's not actually a savings as I repeatedly have had to toss part or all of it.

2. Smoked fish is better from Santa Monica seafood than any farmers market vendor I've found yet. Their prices are jaw-dropping for a reason.

3. I am never buying supermarket carrots again. The little spring farmers market carrots are crisp and delectable, like carrot-flavored ice, and can be eaten with pleasure all by themselves.

4. I am never buying supermarket yogurt again, either. The kefir lady's kefir is way better.

5. I am never buying bread again unless due to time pressure and an urgent need for sandwiches. I like my bread better than even the farmers market bread lady's, and mine keeps better, too.

6. Whole grains are a pain in the ass.

Yesterday I made this salad suggested by rushthatspeaks: One of my favorite salads of all time is dark greens (raw kale would work, and I'd suggest either shredded or de-ribbed) with pitted kalamata olives and oranges (peeled, pitted, cut in rounds not segments). Combine the ingredients, drizzle with a little olive oil, and, and this is key, sprinkle with slightly more salt and fresh-ground black pepper than you were originally intending. Best salad.



It was indeed the best salad. I used those amazing mandarin oranges and baby kale, flat leaf variety. Seriously, it was so good I will probably have a reprise tonight.

This morning I visited the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market. It's much more famous than my regular one but I like mine better, though I met some lovely friendly vendors who admired my hair and matching sweatshirt. Very few vendors took credit cards, and while there were a lot more vendors, the variety of produce was only somewhat better. (The really unusual stuff tends to get scooped up by chefs and is gone by the time I get there.) Also I like having both produce and ready-to-eat food, which the Santa Monica market does not.

I stopped at a stall which had a sign advertising miner's lettuce, but it turned out to have been bought out by chefs.

"But I have stinging nettles!" the greens lady said, in a tone the opposite of the one which people normally use to tell you stinging nettles are in the vicinity. She picked up a bunch with her bare hands.

"Are they... de-stung?" I asked, wondering if there was a way to do that other than the one I knew of, which is to cook them.

"Oh, no," she said cheerfully. "I like getting stung! It's very healthy! Good for arthritis!"

I am definitely coming to an understanding of where all the stereotypes about California come from. But hey. We have great produce.

I bought apricot and strawberry kefir (thick, eat with a spoon style) and cultured butter from the same kefir lady as at the Mar Vista market, as I'd polished off her apple kefir. Also carrots, flowering Chinese broccoli, orange blossom honey, bacon, eggs, and macadamia nuts (grown in California! they had photos).

Today I am baking bread again, from the same recipe I used last time. I have a feeling that will be the best thing I get from this whole experiment. Home-baked bread is the greatest.

Bow before my beautiful composed salad!



I'll have the scallops tonight. If I feel sufficiently ambitious I'll duck into the Japanese market for some ginger and try saute them with Chinese sausage and greens. I may have to buy some greens from the market as well, as the kale is too tough for what I'm thinking of. But hey, I'd rather break my self-imposed rules than have an inferior dinner, and I do need to eat those scallops tonight.