I just got back from a bike ride to Seward Coop, and I get the feeling this might be the last time this winter I make such a ride in above-freezing weather. The temperature is just beginning to dip, but the air has a certain harsh quality that warns of winter. It's not all bad though -- I also passed places that smelt like cut pine, which is a reminder of the good things winter brings.

One of those things is pleasure in cooking for a new season. Now that I'm back from the store, here's a few things I'm considering for my winter menu:

Salads

I didn't make too many salads this past summer, but I want to return to the craft. I plan to mix grapefruits, satsuma oranges, and pomegranate seeds. I love kale, both the curly kind and lacinato.There are both pecans and walnuts in my fridge -- I think I'll candy some of them.

Hearty Bean Dishes

I'm cooking up a big pot of black beans right now very simply, with just a single whole pepper and some salt for seasoning. Adam loves these, and I can use them in salads, tacos, soups, tacos, and tacos. I also got some kidney beans to begin making the seven chili recipes in The Tex-Mex Cookbook. I also really want to figure out how to use soy, adzuki, and mung beans. Just one or two recipes that actually work for Adam would make me happy.

Cookies

I want to master and memorize a few key cookie recipes. Adam has chocolate chip down pat, but I want to work on icebox cookies, cookies with oatmeal inside, and double chocolate cookies.

This morning Adam and I got up early for our flight to Texas. The early morning is a good time to leave town – a good time to see the town in a different light. Just before the seven o’clock hour, dawn is safely past, but the sharp angle of the weak autumn sunlight satisfies us that the day hasn’t yet begun. On the corner of Oak and Washington, there was a man inside a not-yet-opened pizza franchise. Standing under the full and hard lights of the new business, behind an unfinished bar, he had tools in his hands, and looked to be working with a purpose.

I went in early this morning for an appointment with the eye doctor. I told them how a I was seeing an odd spot in the vision of my right eye, especially apparent whenever I looked at light, blank surfaces. The doctor dilated my eyes to ensure there was nothing wrong with my retina. When there wasn't, he said it was just a "floater." We all have floaters, he said, some more apparent than others. It's not harmful. Would mine ever go away, I asked? No, it won't. But I'm just noticing it a lot now because it's new. Pretty soon I won't notice it at all. Why, the doctor himself has a major floater.

Overcoming a feeling of laziness, I went out Wednesday evening to the showing of The Red Lamp, a film setting of one of the "eight revolutionary operas" popular during China's cultural revolution. Afterward our classical Chinese reading group met up (our professor once again ordered shrimp pesto pizza). After an hour of casual chatting, we manage to read through the rest of my painting colophons. (Transcriptions and translations coming soon to WanderMonkey)

Adam went to Washington, DC for the NGLCC national dinner, which leaves the house to me for a day or two. There are definitely moments when I miss him powerfully, but for the most part 2 days is actually a nice bit of alone time, I think. After watching two Chinese films at two locations in the city Friday night, I turned down a chance to hang out with university folks and rode my bike home. The night was very still, and the route through Loring Park, downtown and the West Bank was unusually empty.

I made a nice little bachelor dinner and ate while I worked, papers and plates together on the table. I slept. I'm up again, now cooking oatmeal as the unusually warm sunlight streams into the kitchen. Everything's perfectly quiet, except for the sound of oatmeal bubbling. Oh, and the cat, who can be quite noisy. He's playing outside, but I'm sure he'll be back soon.

I'm suffering from a critical inability to focus. I keep trying to picture the action of my mind as devoted only to one single thing at one time. But it just hasn't seem to happen this week. I think I need more sleep, more exercise, and less time on the web. 

I stumbled on this recipe from someone who lists himself as a chef for P.F. Chang's. Of course, it's not authentic American-style Chinese unless there is a gloppy sauce with lots of soy sauce, sugar and cornstarch. And with good reason! What red-blooded American does not love sweet and salty sauce that covers each grain of rice? Especially when you modify the recipe so that the ginger is more than doubled, with most of it thrown into the sauce and pulsed through the blender, which means every drop has gingery goodness. 

Yep, with a good blender you can put in as much spice as you like. How spicy would like your Chang's sauce?

We went to see The Importance of Being Earnest together at the Guthrie, and  21st_medici laughed so hard he cried. Really. We came home and made muffins whilst we await the results of Maine's Question #1. Right now it's looking like a close loss, "With 84% of precincts reporting, it's 52.57% for yes."

My biggest concern is 21st_medici's mood if the numbers don't swing round in the end!

Anybody know how to make ginger chicken or ginger sauces that are really, really ginger flavored? Like for ginger lovers and what not? I'm going try starting with this recipe when I get back from Texas.



I don't think I'll have time for matchsticks though, at least not a regular basis, so I'd kind of like some recipe where I throw the ginger into the food processor -- maybe incorporate it into the stir fry sauce?

Cooking tips to myself:

1. When you get home from the grocery store, put on the water to boil and cut up and blanch the broccoli, etc. (He said, thinking of the yellowed and aged broccoli that has been known to lurk in the crisper)

2. Also take out your fresh parsley, basil, or cilantro and make herb paste instantly. (He said, looking down at the sorrowfully wilted cilantro from last week's farmer's market).

One of the panels at Gaylaxicon was a "Jeopardy!" game of GLBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy stuff, but the questions were so poorly written that few of them could be answered by the contestants -- many times, the entire audience was stumped as well.

That got me thinking, "Hey, I could write better 'Jeopardy!' questions." Here's an example I thought of last night, watching True Blood: 

In True Blood, when this character's cousin is told "What do you mean, 'if you get lucky'? Your standards are so low you always get lucky," the response is, "Hallelujahs. Yes'm. Hallelujahs."

Notes on a Panel of Gay Sci Fi Writers:





Leatherdale, Clive. The Origins of Dracula: The Background to Bram Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece. Westcliff-on-Sea Essex U.K.: Desert Island Books, 1995. 

Takeshi Kaneshiro in Perhaps Love. Gay incest yaoi. 
Anime always seems to go places where others fear to tread.
Zombies. Angels, bisexual, sex with. (Milton)
Alexander the Great's Body was encased in honey.
They stilll haven't found it. True Blood.

Vampire listserves of the 1980s.
"Rich is sexy."
"I don't know what that's about"
(note, the author was surprised to find it was popular,
it was hot. Why? Don't know.
Try writing another one.)

Fiction of fandom.
Reader->Writer. Writer->Reader.
(Mostly the Former)
Key to a successful series?

1. Early on, have a story.
2. Then, begin the unending sex scenes.

Werewolves.
They are predators. I mean, bisexuals.
Nope, predators. Wait!
But where's the identity politics?
Autobiography, BDSM blood fetishists.
The create clans, not sexualized attracting. (As opposed to, oh I'll take lots of sex, thank you, but then monogamy.)
Polyamory, and other reasons why Sci-Fi conventions are good places to talk about alternative sex lives.
The demon sadist is able to destroy the body of his masochist, then heal it again.

Did you know that time tavel romance was hilarious?
Strong Women go back in time to meet Strong Men.
Mina Harper was a 'new woman.'
Mr. Darcy, Vampire
Pride and Prejudice and...well, ok.
Throwaway Romance
Classic, Gothic.
You know, Dark Angels. But what the hell, with
Steampunk? I don't get that?
Wait, what? Steampunk is the one thing I get. Let me talk!
No, wait, let him talk.
The press, silly. The commercial vs. ugh, the decline of the
queer , uhm press.
Stylistic conventions, formulae, genre problem
"gay"
auto
sex v. politics
Just give me the sex!

This really brought the poem to life for me late Friday evening. This tripod webpage is 'hyperlinked' with commentary and intertexts; Bartleby is a good plain-Jane version of the text.

Somewhere in Mineral Wells, there is an old washing bucket with the
slogan "It's all in the rubbing!" wood-burned into one of the slats of
the washing-board.

A day or two ago I had a variation on a recurring dream. I'm in summer school classes of some sort. Parts of the day I go to my classes as expected of me, but I take one or two hour breaks throughout the day. This seems completely natural -- life-giving, even. I often hang out with Adam. In one break, we are canoeing on a river.

Gradually, I realize that there are major responsibilities I've simply been foregoing. A nice counselor man with long black hair and a sympathetic face appears at one point. He looks a bit like Yanni, but with a more American face, sort of like Bob Saget. He explains patiently that I have been missing entire classes, seminars, workshops. And this is odd to him, because I signed up for these things in the first place. Isn't this what I want? he asks. 

Every weekday from 5pm to 6:30, for example, there is a theater workshop I registered to attend. I see the poster for it on a wall.  I imagine myself learning to act by practicing with my peers, other young smart people. Maybe a girl. I feel that would be great fun. I can see I would have registered for it, though I'm frightened that I can't recall any such thing. And 5pm - 6:30pm every day seems too much of a burden. How will I have the energy to cook dinner after the workshop? Won't I be cranky from exhaustion before we even get started on this workshop? At the same time, doesn't any kind of enrichment require extra effort? 

On Tuesday, whilst drinking myself to a stupor in the afternoon,21st_medici  seemed to question whether I went about grading papers and planning lessons properly. I crashed into a depressed, loathsome sort of state, and cried profusely at a coffee shop. Looking back, that actually seems funny.

Thursday afternoon, I met up with 21st_medici  at the public library, where he seemed to me to be unusually quiet. I guess maybe I should have just thought that was because we were in the library. But with careful prodding, I managed to have him snap at me, thus confirming that he was in a bad mood. I told him what a bad mood he seemed to be in, and he remarked that was surely the thing to make it all better. This as well is an amusing thing to recount, now that it is past.

Dog days, I suppose. Leave us lie.

So this is the Fringe Festival, 11 days of mixed amateur and professional theater short shows. This one is especially representative of what better Fringe shows have to offer: