Oh dear. It looks like I really need to learn how to make posts on my phone, which I am sure it is capable of, wireless wondertool that it is. My mad little tricorder, if only I could make the bluetooth work as well as the old one. It seems as though the Facebook stole all my internet sharing abilities. I really did intend to make some posts here I swear!
But since I'm going to post the promise here, perhaps I will actually get around to it. So without further delay, my planned website posts for the Winter Season, that I definitely will manage to do even if I have to write them away from the internet and put off writing something better:
- Another couple of recipes: Including ones that I've cooked this time. I actually have been making some sweet foods recently. I made a big cake, a lemon meringue pie, and a whole bunch of chocolate brownies, and they all went down a storm! I think there are some pictures of them around, so I'll have to repost (and make another pie, it tasted awesome!).
- Re-post some of the cool photos that I bothered to put onto facebook over here. This basically is like three separate posts. So... because I can't figure out how to double layer numbered lists in wordpress right now I guess I'll list them below...
- Two (or maybe one big one) about some karaoke sessions. These were really fun, in and around central London, though one only kinda counts as karaoke because while I did sing there were a bunch of guys wielding plastic instruments all around. It was playing Rock Band on a stage, and didn't feel embarrassing at all after the fourth vodka.
- An origami post. I've been making a few origami things, and while I'm not sure about the legality of posting folding instructions, some of the final models have looked quite nice and I'd like to share them. I have sent a few to people, but pictures are okay too sometimes.
- I guess two Lit-Soc posts? I need to promote the radio play, which I intend to do this weekend even if its not been officially launched yet. We recorded a new version of an old Mutual recording of Poirot. I think that our Poirot has a better accent that Harold Hubert, and it all sounds really nice, even with my awful acting! Also I feel the need to push sketches again. There's a new magazine which I edited(!?) and I'm working on revising the first anthology to get some pictures in there, a bunch of new works and hopefully some support from SOAS for it.
I'm not going to say anymore than these because this actually looks like quite a lot already. I would post a deadline, but each one really needs one and I'm not sure in which order I want to post all of these.
A better post next time I hope!
My Grandmother’s Cookery Book
I meant to post this weeks ago! What happened?! I had so much to talk about, but it all feels like old news now. Terrible. I had some entertaining story about buying a half dozen PlayStation games for less than £10, less than £3 if the only expensive one is discounted. And they even all work. And talk about Fresher's Fair at SOAS, which I attended again, almost entirely illegitimately. I put my email address down on another seven society forms. Why? Well I obviously felt that I wasn't receiving enough spam mail, This regret surfaced almost immediately, when within 24 hours I was already being informed about all the wonderful student events that I can't possibly attend.
I've also had some fun in the last two weeks attending the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions events, that I never managed to make it to while actually a student. They were really fun actually, I hope to make as many events as possible this year, especially if the Lit-Soc meetings are happening on Thursdays, so I'll have double reason to get into SOAS as a sketchy graduate who just can't get enough of the University he just spent three years avoiding like the plague.
Last weeks CSJR lecture was on Printing and the Visual Representation of Linguistic Data in the Discovery of Ancient Japan. Which sounds really intense! But was really about how a couple of Japanese scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries essentially created the modern way of translating ancient texts written in Chinese script into Japanese. It was very interesting, but I did prefer the first lecture, which was on Practising Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Symbol, Prayer, and Mirror. It was given by Professor Ikuo Higashibaba of Tenri University in Nara Prefecture, and it looked at some of the practicalities of Japanese Christians under the Tokugawa shogunate. There was some cool stuff about the different prayers that were being said and how they evolved over time, especially ones that were just vocalisations of the original latin prayer instead of a proper translation, and these mirrors that look plain but when you shine a light on them reflect an image of the crucifixion.
So now I'm really far away from what I was going to type about. To distract myself, and actually get something good done instead of just moping around waiting for stuff to happen, I'm going to type up some of the old handwritten Cookery Books that my grandmother wrote and I found over the summer. Hopefully it won't take too long, and I'll be able to put it into lulu and have some really nice books to help remember her by.
I've done a few recipes so far and I'm going to share one or two here every once in a while until they're completed. So for now enjoy her recipe for a Vegetable Risotto.
Cooking Time: Approximately 30 minutes
4 Servings
- 1 Onion
- 3 Tomatoes
- 4oz Mushrooms
- 2 Tablespoons Oil
- 1 Small Green Pepper
- 6oz Rice
- ¾ Pint Water
- Seasoning
- Grated Parmesan Cheese
- Chop the vegetables fairly finely.
- Fry them in hot oil for about 10 minutes until they are really soft.
- For the last 3 minutes put in the rice and blend thoroughly with the vegetable mix.
- Add the water seasoning. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and cook for 15 minutes in a covered pan until all the liquid is absorbed.
- Serve with cheese.
I've also got to share some awesome links! Until I get my website sorted so I can put these into a more permanent space this will have to do!
ajhumphreys - My Sensei's website! It's just got renovated in full html which, in the world of crazed php and the like, I think looks really classy. I helped to edit the two pieces up under 'Writing' at the moment, they're little children's stories which almost demand to be illustrated. Someone illustrate them!
magpiemind - This is the blog of the new Lit-Soc President, though she's not linked the Anthology on there yet! The reviews are pretty cool.
sketches - I think you know by now what this is. But more people need to buy it, it must be read! £5 (+£3 shipping) isn't much for a book at all, just last week I was in Waterstone's and there was some piss-poor pulp novels for sale at £10, even more for US imports even though most of the US books had British printed versions on other shelves for like £4 less.
Okay, so now I'm going to climb next door and strangle the workmen who have been hitting my walls for the last six weeks.
The new specialist sketches subdomain is coming along, I think. At least I think I've done everything I can do for it at the moment. I was assured that it was all so simple, even I couldn't completely mess it up, and then reassured that I wouldn't have to do too much beyond producing the images and text. So with the thought that after sending that to the powers that be I'd have a pretty looking subdomain up and running in a week or so I sat on my laurels. It sure is nice to have friends who will help out with these sorts of things.
Well that was over a month ago now. I'm getting vague visions of myself pouring over PHP textbooks long into the winter.
It feels like ages since I was doing substantial work, I've not really had too much inspiration for the old creative writing recently. Just idling along and occasionally spending two hours trying to add something, anything, to some old unfinished piece, and then scrapping it almost immediately afterwards. And writing the same work experience (or lack thereof) on application forms is getting really dull. So in order to get in a bit of practice I'm going to try and update this blog a little more often. Probably not as many heavy Critical Theory entries, though I won't count them out. And since this is being typed first instead of hand written, which is what I normally do, I'm getting back into thinking stuff up while looking at a screen again. Hard memories of late nights, early mornings and then late mornings and early afternoons on essay deadline days are coming back already, but no! I shall think of those only as pleasant occasions and persevere!
But yes, happy days and things to type about. I decided to get a wok a few days ago. There allegedly is one somewhere in the house, hidden very well, or perhaps being used as a flowerpot. So, being fed up of cramming the skillet full of noodles every time I wanted a stir fry, a new one was the way to go.
I spent a whole day thinking about what amazing dish would christen the new wok, and eventually decided upon a fairly basic chicken stir fry, with noodles. Probably because it didn't require another shopping trip to get more ingredients since I'd made one the day before getting the wok. I used:
Dished up and ready to eat.
3 chicken breasts,
2 peppers, one green, one red,
1 clove of garlic,
lots of green onions (about 8?),
lots of bean sprouts (though not enough),
noodles,
some Chinese 5-Spice, a dash of coriander, and a packet of Roasted Peanut satay stir fry straight-to-wok sauce.
No Shiitake mushrooms! I ate them all in the last stir fry. Everything got chopped quite small, and the peppers and garlic almost liquified. I'm not a fan of the texture of peppers so I tend to do this a lot, but I always leave the onions quite large and the bean sprouts untouched because I really like their little mild bite. Lightly fried the chicken while the water boiled. Added the regular vegetables but not the bean sprouts while noodles cooked. Put in the seasoning and made sure it tasted good. Chucked the noodles and bean sprouts in and tossed it all around.
I really like having the high walls on the dish because I take a great deal of pleasure from throwing things over in the air, but with a skillet I only ever do that with things like pancakes and eggs since they end up nice and flat and easy to catch. The wok has the sides to throw whatever I want around in it without spilling too much.
I think it tasted really nice, but then again I eat crazy things like Frosties Tacos (future post!). It needed more bean sprouts than I used and possibly slightly smaller (or at least thinner) pieces of chicken. Everyone said it was really good, and all of it got eaten. It was so filling and really good at the end of the day when there was nothing else to do so you could just sit and absorb it.
- Oh, wait.
