Codicil – Derek Walcott
“To change your language you must change your life.”
This is true. I have written this before. You can’t just adopt the language – a shell – without changing your life.
And change requires throwing things out. Every day I am getting rid of something – mostly old pieces of clothing. But there is no way forward sometimes without shedding the things that came with you from the past. Things that are like security blankets.
I can always hear it and feel it. The interrupting. The pronunciation. The slurring. The lying. The swearing. The phoning. The hypersexuality. The fighting. The whining. The entitlement. The bravado. The “hehe” giggling under the breath. The extra loud. The “I don’t have to take this any more”.
I don’t have to take this either.
Cooking is not really my thing, especially when hanging out on my own at home. But I become experimental and slightly ambitious when feeding others.
This weekend, it was sweet potato-millet-sweet corn-black bean burgers (with some avocado-tomato cream sauce), mixed potato wedges and chicken cauliflower chili.
Everything turned out really well even if I had no confidence in these items.
Sweet potato-black bean burgers
1 medium sweet potato
1/2 cup dry millet
1/2 cup oats
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup corn
2 tablespoons olive oil
When sweet potato is cooled, put it in food processor or blender with the oats, one cup of black beans and all the spices along with a tablespoon of oil (I had to add a bit extra oil because this was very dry). Mix until smooth.
In another bowl, mix the sweet potato mixture with remaining whole beans, corn and cooked millet.
Heat the other tablespoon of olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat, place patties or large balls of the mixture in the pan and flatten into burger-shaped patties using a spatula. Brown each side.
While burgers are in the pan, toast buns and also make the avocado sauce.
Avocado sauce
1 ripe avocado
3 ounces plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Roma tomato, diced
Mash avocado with a fork. Mix in the Greek yogurt, lime juice, and salt. Stir in the tomatoes, and set aside for serving.
Serve burger on toasted bun with fresh avocado cream sauce. I also melted some cheddar on the buns while toasting them.
Mixed potato wedges
Scrub two or three regular potatoes and two medium sweet potatoes and slice into wedges. Toss in a bowl with salt, pepper, paprika and a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in a 200C oven for about 40 minutes (turning the potatoes over once at about 20 minutes in).
I don’t know if other kinds of addicts get a rush from meeting other addicts. I suspect not because with drugs or drink, it might provide a kinship but also means there’s less of whatever substance being used to go around. This does not apply with TV. There’s plenty to go around, the more the merrier.
Being a TV addict is a relatively new identity for me to embrace. I spent many years not watching any TV (largely during my education), so there are blind spots in my TV knowledge (although not many because I read a lot of pop culture publications and still caught TV out of the corner of my eye). I suppose it has always been a bit of a hidden addiction for people of a certain type. Academics and intellectuals proudly and not without judgment in their voice announcing that they don’t watch or own a television. To some degree this high-culture anti-TV bent has been mitigated by the current golden age of television, in which serialized stories are a new form of in-depth cinematic genius and character development. It’s fine now to rattle off a handful of culturally acceptable programs, i.e. Mad Men, Breaking Bad and maybe something slightly more obscure.
But to admit that you pretty much watch a huge amount of what is offered… that’s still a bit of a mark against you. But you know what? I just turned 40… and I don’t care. I am 40, and I can do whatever the hell I want (or don’t want) with my time!
Something that makes me feel more confident about this choice is not just that I am 40, but also, meeting other fellow TV addicts who understand that you do not necessarily neglect everything else in your life in favor of vegging out in front of the telly. No, it is one thing that is going on among many.
I have a colleague who has seen all the rare and obscure and strange TV that I never thought I would be able to share or discuss with anyone. And that was not just a rush but helped make some of the more challenging work days better. It also made me feel that the lifestyle I have chosen is conducive to binge watching and not feeling badly about it.
Recently I discovered that another former colleague is almost as TV addicted and has very similar tastes to mine. Few things are socially as satisfying as being able to share the storylines and clever bits of dialogue – or to be able to discuss your own “tier” system for viewing (the can’t-miss, great shows; the stuff you don’t miss but is not quite great; the rest… or in my case, the stuff I hate but could not stop watching because it fueled the fire against stupidity, e.g. The Following, Looking, Brothers & Sisters…).
I don’t know that any other amateur TV addicts take it as seriously as I do, often writing feverish, critical blog posts (not well-thought-out or researched enough to be professional-level criticism) when inspired to, but the sense of relating to someone based on their tastes and also on their tendencies to overdose is comforting.
Meeting a guy who professionally sold office supplies and offered me an endless supply of different pens on a regular basis. Yeah, back then, that was fab. But not the kind of guy I was going to, say, marry. But back then fistfuls of pens would get me really excited.
These triggers for excitement change a lot… strange to think that nowadays I get really fired up talking about infection control or antibiotic resistance or cutting-edge plastic surgery techniques.
Or that I am excited when new web browsers come into the world.
And then the things that make us inexpressibly sad. US Vice President Joe Biden and all the loss he has experienced. Reading an MIT commencement address delivered long ago by former politician Paul Tsongas (before he died, young). Lachrymose, feeling this mortality and the grief unfolding. More nostalgic than normal.
Seeing that Duran Duran will play the WA State Fair… igniting Duran nostalgia, reminding me of a third-grade field trip back when chaperone parents were still allowed to drive kids in private cars – I went with a guy whose mom had a new Camaro or something like that and we listened to Seven and the Ragged Tiger over and over. I envied that her car had a cassette deck and could automatically reverse and play the tapes. My parents’ car, which eventually became my car, had nothing of the sort.
In junior high my best friend and her “former” best friend from elementary school went to see Duran Duran on their sort of “comeback” tour in 1988 – funny to think of it being a comeback since they had not really gone anywhere. They had just gone quiet for a handful of years. I imagine that I protested and pretended to like Duran less than I did because I was jealous that my friend and her former friend (just because their parents would buy them tickets, of course) were going to the concert.
I write about this former friend a lot, especially in the throes of nostalgia, because so many things remind me of her. Hearing U2, Robyn Hitchcock, Crowded House, being in Scotland, seeing Starburst candy (which is not the norm here in Sweden), making snickerdoodle cookies or cinnamon rolls (she was always the one to make the glaze).
We drifted apart long before we actually lost touch entirely. For so many years I wanted to have closure or to know that she was okay. She really just disappeared from the face of the earth and there was no way for me to find her. She is one of the few people without a discernible web identity/presence. It’s almost impressive. I went out of my way trying to find out for a really long time, making a nuisance of myself at times.
I have mostly let go of that, and I have come to understand the selfishness of that need. Maybe she wasn’t okay and my demanding to know she was could have been just another nagging thing for her. Especially because her well-being is and was not my business. Our past friendship creates no obligation for her to share any of it. I still hope she is well, regardless. Sigh – the intensity of youth friendship and that compact worldview of youth make it hard to imagine a closer friendship even if, reflecting, there was very little to it.
This week’s season finale (can you believe season two is already over? NO!) of Silicon Valley mentioned Varnish Software. In the morning following the air date, Varnish users and employees buzzed about this passing mention.
A few years ago, the unpopular, one-season medical drama Monday Mornings fairly prominently mentioned by name the antiseptic Hibiclens (a popular product from the company I was working for). No one at the company knew about it until I told them. Yeah it was not a popular show, and I don’t know if it was ever even on in Sweden, where the company has its HQ.
The difference in excitement levels, though, also illustrated the difference in how the employees in the two places use technology (and maybe consume TV content).
I oversimplify, I know, but I have worked in both worlds and think it’s fairly indicative. At the tech company, even people who did not watch the show found out about the mention. People kick into gear and try to capitalize on the mention in any way they can (at least Twitter or whatever avenue you can take). Even if the Hibiclens mention, which was even more prolonged and key to the unfolding substory, had been brought to the entire company’s attention and proposed as a marketing “bleep”, it would just have been ignored, as an, “Oh, that’s nice” moment.
The strangeness! I practically live online and barely went online this weekend at all. It was lovely. Just me, my KitchenAid and my oven.
I really need a more commercially oriented kitchen.
The latest bake … did not grab pictures of everything but most of the recipes are linked below.
M&M cookies and white chocolate macadamia cookies
Ginger cookies with pumpkin spice kiss candies
Vanilla cupcakes stuffed with Raffaello candy, vanilla frosting
Banana-oat cupcakes stuffed with Smil, frosted with caramel Swiss meringue buttercream
Brown sugar cupcakes injected with maple syrup, maple Swiss buttercream and candied bacon
Crack pie with M&Ms
Banana oat cupcakes stuffed with Smil/Rolo candy
A new experiment… I had three bananas ready to go and a bunch of oats that I just did not want to store any longer. I vaguely knew I wanted to make something with caramel. I had also intended to make some chocolate cookies stuffed with Smil (the Norwegian equivalent of Rolo) but did not want to make more chocolate stuff in the end, so I just threw a Smil into the center of each cupcake. It remains to be seen how these will be received, but hopefully it will be a successfully experiment.
How to go bananas yourself?
Preheat oven to 190c
1 1/2 cup flour
1 cup oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 mashed overripe bananas
Mix dry ingredients together and set aside. In another bowl, beat egg, add milk, oil and vanilla, then sugar. Add banana. Mix well. Add dry mixture until just mixed (do not overmix).
Place mixture into greased cupcake pans or into cupcake papers. I put a small amount of the mixture into a cupcake paper, added a Smil candy and topped it off with a bit more batter.
Bake 18 to 20 minutes.
I frosted with caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
24 tablespoons unsalted butter
three tablespoons caramel/dulce de leche
Over a double boiler, whisk egg whites and sugar. When sugar is dissolved, transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer – beat with the whip attachment until soft to medium peaks form. Switch to paddle attachment, start beating and adding in the butter a few tablespoons at a time. Once you have a frosting-like texture (which can take a long while – the mixture will possibly look curdled, like it cannot possibly come together, at some point, but it will come together – just keep beating), add the vanilla. When nearly ready, add the caramel and mix until well-combined.
Frost the cupcakes with the prepared frosting.
Thin mint Girl Scout cookies are pretty popular. And variations of this are indeed also popular. I have tried to make such things myself and it’s usually well-received but not that easy to make.
The other day I stumbled on an easy “cheat” recipe for thin mints using Ritz crackers and melted chocolate. I decided to try it out for myself. No idea if they taste as sinfully lovely as promised by the blog I found the recipe in and will find out only after feeding them to someone else… but alas, it seems it was very easy to put together at least.
faux thin mint cookies