Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Adrian is out of town for a few days, and I am feeling accomplished, because I made a tasty thing she won't eat for supper for me and Cattitude last night, and a different tasty thing that she can't eat for lunch today. I do some of the cooking around here, but less than Cattitude and Adrian do, and lunch more often than dinner.

Cattitude is making us crab cakes, another thing Adrian doesn't eat, for tonight's dinner.

Dinner last night was rice pilaf with roast pork, using leftover meat from the day before, and lunch today was a red pepper and cheese omelet.

My Penzey's spice order just arrived. I ordered enough this time that they threw in, free, a "joy of cinnamon" mini-gift box: Penzey's cinnamon (a blend), Vietnamese cinnamon, and cinnamon sugar, plus cards with tips on what to do with them. I would never buy cinnamon sugar, because it's not worth the money, but Penzey's was giving it away several years ago, so I took a jar. It turned out I liked it at least as well as the cinnamon sugar I mix up for myself from sugar and cinnamon.

This order was mostly restocking our pantry, plus one new thing to try, a blend called "Krakow nights." Also, we decided to try powdered rosemary instead of cracked, because the little pointy bits on the cracked rosemary can be annoying in some cases.

We didn't buy as many spices as it looked like: I got up to the "free gift box with purchase" level because gift cards were on sale ($35 for a $50 gift card), so I bought one. We shop at Penzey's enough that I've used up at least three previous discount gift cards, so it's worthwhile, in part because gift cards count toward the minimum order for free shipping, and it's no longer convenient for me to go to Penzey's in person.

I made chick pea and cauliflower curry for dinner tonight, because we had half a cauliflower, and canned chick peas are an easy source of protein.

I thought I remembered the recipe/process for this curry better than I did.

Adrian and Cattitude were both happier with the results than I was, probably because they weren't thinking about what they should have done and didn't.

Things I forgot or mis-remembered: I forgot the flour (which should have been added to the mix of dried spices, after sauteeing the onions).

I used twice as much broth as the base recipe calls for (I was thinking of a rice pilaf recipe), and I think the correct amount would have been halfway between (1.5 cups).

I put oregano and ground cumin in the spice mix, thinking of black beans and rice, and I don't think they improved it. Maybe garlic powder next time? (The spice mix is smoked paprika and Penzey's Singapore seasoning, in place of curry powder that includes hot pepper, plus ginger.)

Also: canned coconut milk is a bit thinner than whole milk. Adrian realized halfway through the meal that we have unflavored nondairy yogurt (coconut and cashew based), and added a dollop to her bowl; that worked well enough that Cattitude and I followed suit.

I originally forgot the raisins, but Adrian is temporarily avoiding dried fruit after dental work, so it's just as well I didn't add them along with the broth.

Raw cauliflower cooked this way was bland, so I probably won't make this curry again.

Some garlic powder might have worked well here.

Also, I am out of practice cooking more than one thing at a time, so I got Cattitude to make the rice, as well chopping the vegetables.

Too sour, the flavor isn't very interesting, and it's not very juicy. That's based on sharing pieces of one apple with Adrian and Cattitude. We bought three, and it's probably worth trying another before giving up on it.

Adrian, Cattitude, and I had lunch outdoors in Coolidge Corner, then went to the farmers market. I had mushroom borekas for lunch, because I don't get mushrooms as often as I like, and I knew I liked Rami's borekas.

We came home from the farmers market with tomatoes, yellow (shiro) plums, two kinds of berry, St. Nicholas red bell peppers, a baguette, some merguez sausages, and a few apples (and I think that's everything). Cattitude is eagerly looking forward to making tomato sandwiches tomorrow, now that large-enough good tomatoes have arrived at the market. It's early for the St. Nicholas peppers, but we were expecting tomatoes large enough to slice and put on a sandwich sooner.

I also tried ice cream from a truck that parks at the Brookline farmers market on Thursday afternoon; I got red raspberry chocolate chip, and ginger, and was unimpressed: the ice cream was nothing special, and this is Boston. JP Licks has peach ice cream this month, and the branch where I bought a pint of peach ice cream yesterday is also in Coolidge Corner. Still, I'm glad I tried it, and I have some Lizzy's ginger ice cream in the freezer.

I walked slowly and carefully today, because my hip was hurting this morning, and I walked a bunch yesterday (JP Licks and Trader Joe's, via green line C.) Part of being careful is that we took the shuttle bus that's replacing green line B this week, and then the 66 bus, which saves a bit of walking distance, and the trip home by that route avoids the uphill-all-the-way walk from green line C.

My mother visited us for three days, arriving by train from Tuesday afternoon, and flying to New Orleans this afternoon. We mostly just visited quietly, except Wednesday we went out to dinner at Cafe Barada, in Cambridge, which has good Lebanese food and a good outdoor patio (a real patio, which has been there since long before the pandemic). It had been hot earlier in the day, but cooled off by the time we went to dinner.

adrian_turtle made chocolate souffles Monday night, and we liked them enough to immediately order proper straight-sided ramekins, so she could make puffier souffles. Those arrived yesterday, and Adrian used them to make more chocolate souffles, which we ate at about 6:00. Very good, but next time we should either make and eat the souffles after dinner, make savory souffles as dinner, or just have a large green salad for supper. Neither my mother nor I had much appetite for asparagus and baked fish a couple of hours after the souffles.

[more later, probably]

Misc. comments 66: ( terminology, the river Thames, recipes and ingredients, family trees, classifying fruit, covid precautions, learning math, subscription prices, reasons for blogging )
( covid vaccination and masking )

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minoanmiss was talking about kids at the place she works trying to get out of math class. amaebi talked about her son's math classes, and I wrote:

Reading this comment, I think part of why I came out of high school still liking math may be the teachers, and another part may be the slightly odd curriculum they were using. It was the "experimental" math track per my high school, and "unified" according to the university that promoted it; we got a lot of the standard material, up to calculus, but also propositional logic (in eighth grade), Cartesian geometry (instead of Euclidean), and combinatorics. The school also had a "regular" math sequence, and students who found experimental too difficult (or, I would guess, whose parents thought it was too weird) could move into those classes, which also led to calculus).

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In response to brithistorian wondering about weird magazine prescription costs:

My guess, beyond late stage capitalism being weird, is that they're somehow still selling advertising to companies based on the number of people who are reading, or at least getting, the print edition.

If so, it benefits them to be sending out more paper copies, even to people who read the digital version and will throw the paper magazines away without opening them. It sounds like the prices of daily newspapers increased when they were selling fewer ads. What I paid at the newsstand in the morning was about enough to cover the paper and printing costs, and the reporters' and editors' salaries, the fees for syndicated comics and columnists, and any profits all were paid for by advertising.

It's not quite "if you aren't the customer, you're the product," but it's a little bit in that direction. At one point, my daily English-language newspaper options in New York included several that cost about 50 cents, plus two free papers given out at subway and railroad station entrances, and the Wall Street Journal and Women's Wear Daily.

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finch was talking about "why do I blog anyway?" and I said:

Part of why I post here is for my own later reference, which includes both things I hope will be interesting to others, and minutiae of stuff like starting on new meds. I made a bunch of posts early in the pandemic because I could feel time just slipping away, then.

My posts here are also about talking to people, which is sometimes conversation and sometimes "here is information I think you might find useful.".

There's a pinned post at the top of my Dreamwidth account page, which says this is [partly] an online substitute for a paper journal, and also invites new readers to introduce themselves.

I saw the physical therapist today. After I told her about falling last week, and about my suspicion that part of the problem is proprioception rather than balance, she gave me a couple of exercises to improve my awareness of where my limbs are and the position of my feet.

She also suggested occupational therapy, for cognitive diagosis and help. I'm OK with that, so need to talk to either my primary care doctor or my neurologist.

Note for next time: wear looser pants, possibly with leggings as an underlayer. I was supposed to be paying attention to how my legs and feet felt, and sensation on the bottom of my feet, and I was distracted by the denim of my jeans against my thighs. (These are the heavier denim jeans, but not the ones with a fleece lining for really cold days.)

I stopped on the way home at Lizzy's and got three pints of ice cream to take home. I didn't get any to eat right away, because yes I can walk and eat ice cream at the same time, but maybe not after dark, on a less-than-even surface. 36F/3C isn't too cold for ice cream, but it's too cold to sit outdoors on a metal chair.

Then I came home and made duck soup with matzo balls. I'd turned the duck carcass from our Thanksgiving bird into broth yesterday, saving the meat. Today I made the matzo balls, heated the soup, and added the meat and matzo balls to the soup. It was good, and very welcome (Adrian had had a hard day). I tried making smaller matzo balls than usual, yielding 11 instead of 7-9 from the same amount of glop, and they came out denser than usual, which is also denser than I like. Still worth eating, but not as good, so I'll go back to fewer, larger matzo balls.

ETA: Or maybe it's the cooking time: I cooked the matzo balls for about 31 minutes, rather than 38-40 (the recipe says "30 to 40 minutes."

Three things: heat, the Boston city council election and the ballot drop box, and the farmers market

The building heat is broken, and it was cold last night. I sent in a maintenance request after breakfast this morning, and a couple of hours later a maintenance person knocked and told us that there was a problem with the boiler, and they had sent for someone to fix it.

A few hours after that, someone knocked to tell us that the problem wouldn't be fixed at least until tomorrow morning, and offered to lend us space heaters. At my suggestion, adrian_turtle accepted two (they offered three, "one for each bedroom"). We had by then gotten out the two space heaters we own, and hadn't used (or needed) since we moved in. We have mostly been sitting in the study, when not doing things in the kitchen (cooking, making tea, washing the dishes from lunch) or exercising: cattitude did some VR gaming with Patricia, and I've done three sets of PT exercises.

I took the trolley to Copley Square today, in order to drop off my absentee ballot for the city council election. When I got there I discovered that the drop box was closed for Halloween. The sign was ambiguous, so I went into the library and asked the information person whether she knew whether the drop box would be available later, but they hadn't told her. So I called 311, and learned that the boxes will be usable again from tomorrow around noon through Election Day, so I will go back sometime in the next few days (or ask Cattitude or Adrian to do so).

While I was in Copley Square I went to the farmers market -- the chance to do that is why I decided to drop off my ballot today. I got a loaf of bread and a slice of a "chocolate loaf" from Hi-Rise Bakery, plus three Macoun apples from one vendor and an unexpected small box of raspberries from another. Those three apples were the only unbruised and unblemished apples in a half-full box; it has not been a good year for local apples, and the Macouns have been small, but tasty.

ETA: This election is for city council, four at-large seats and one for each district. Both the candidates for the district seat seem reasonable; I voted for the challenger (Jacob deBlecourt) rather than the incumbent. For the at-large seats (eight candidates for four seats) I eliminated the two anti-vax candidates quickly; one is also an insurrectionist. That left six people, which came down to three I like and one who seems OK. In the end I voted for Louijeune, Mejia, and Santana, the three I was sure of, and Murphy as my fourth vote, because I really wanted to vote against Vitale and Nelson (they're the anti-vaxers) and Nee-Walsh after she said that Black Lives Matter had set the cause of Civil Rights back by fifty years.

I'm still here, but have nothing useful to say about any of the news, and don't want this to be the all-medical-appointments-all-the-time channel.

Dinner tonight was green beans sauteed with red bell peppers, which was very good: adrian_turtle went to the farmers market and got some St. Nicholas peppers, a very tasty varietal that we'd been told had about a three-week season. We had some more than a month ago, so weren't expecting these.

My mother will be visiting us at the end of the month, and I need to sort out a Boston-to-New York train ticket for her. I know what train she wants, and have asked her to call and give me her credit card information to use for the ticket. That's so if anything odd happens, she will have the relevant card with her when she's at the station. I may go to South Station with her when she leaves here, but it might make more sense for Adrian or cattitude to do it.

I opened my calendar to check on something, and saw that I do not have a medical appointment at 8:30 tomorrow morning, but at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. I'm glad I discovered that now, and not at 8:30 tomorrow morning at Mt. Auburn Hospital.