The other day I hemmed a pair of jeans for Mr Man. The method isn’t difficult but can be a little tricky to get right. All those thick seams and difficult fabric.
I don’t sew much, so I had to go through the usual process of pretending like I know what I’m doing. A lot like life, really. Thankfully, muscle memory has been in charge of threading sewing machine needles since I was about twelve.
Once I finished, I realized something interesting. The results were good. Better than the last time I did it, actually. And the interesting part was that it wasn’t perfect, nowhere close, but I seem to have figured out what mattered.
For hemmed jeans, it’s thread color.
For writing, I will argue, it’s the emotion that connects reader and written.
It’s possible that I sometimes try too hard, in an effort to get everything right. (Hahahahaha, that seems even sillier when I write it down. Yeah, that’s not happening, like, ever;)
But what if I don’t need to get the whole thing right? What if I just need to get the right things right?
Step one, figure out what those things are. Step two, take the next step.
I’m looking for a good German plum cake recipe. There are (of course) many versions available online, but the problem with that is you never quite know what you’re getting, and I only have the one batch of plums.
There’s also an added complication. I am looking for a plum cake recipe because I made one as a teenager, and it was astoundingly good. Flavorful pastry base, creamy plum filling, and delightful streusel crumble on top. Now, that remembered experience is the standard to which I hold all future plum cakes.
Was it actually as good as it is in my mind? Maybe not, but I think so:) My mother also remembers the cake. It was her favorite type of German dessert, from when she lived in that country once upon a time. She brought home a classic German cookbook, source of the original plum cake recipe.
I hold out hope that she still has the cookbook, and can find that recipe, but until then, I am on the hunt for the kuchen of my dreams.
“The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.”
Octavia Butler’s alternate realities and ‘speculative fiction’ reveal striking, and often devastating parallels to the world we live in today. She was a deep observer of the human condition, perplexed and inspired by our propensity towards self-destruction. Butler was also fascinated by the cyclical nature of history, and often looked to the past when writing about the future. Along with her warning is her message of hope – a hope conjured by centuries of survival and persistence. For every society that perishes in her books comes a story of rebuilding, of repair.
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I was also interested to see this piece on largely forgotten female composers, complete with interactive map. I’m not a classical music buff, but I didn’t even know Amadeus had a sister, much less one who was also a child music prodigy. Now I do, and I’m better for it.
Two siblings, both considered child prodigies, dazzled audiences across Europe together in the 18th century, leaving a trail of positive reviews in their wake. But while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went on to be celebrated as one of the world’s greatest composers, the accomplishments of his sister – Maria Anna – were quickly forgotten after she was forced to halt her career when she came of age.
Tuesdays are back to their normal busy schedule, but I am having one of those days when I’m more-than-usually aware of the good things. Not only, but also.
I thought today might be a workshop or writing day, but instead it turned into a computing and sewing day. That’s fine, I’m happy I made progress with what I had.
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On that same note, last night’s dinner was a medley of things we had in the fridge. They are also the sorts of flavors I associate with summer: fresh herbs, tomatoes from the garden, and sweet corn.
I was reminded of a dish I had in Boston years ago, a delicate, almost ethereal ravioli stuffed with shrimp and corn in cream sauce. The corn’s sweetness is complex enough not to seem one-note, and elevates the flavor of the shrimp. It’s a good memory, and while I don’t remember the year or the restaurant or the other eleven items on the tasting menu, that dish made a lasting impression.
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We also decided to try our hand at homemade pasta. The same friends who lent us the KitchenAid ice cream attachment also lent us their pasta rollers. Taste and texture were good, and the process was fairly straightforward, considering I’ve made pasta only once? before.
Notes to Future Me: use the eggs we get from our local source, the ones from Costco were a little too small and threw off the ratio; knead more enthusiastically; and use more flour than you think you should for dusting the sheets before rolling and cutting.
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My father asked how I made the sauce. I have a fairly casual relationship with most recipes, but here it is, more or less. If you don’t have all of the ingredients, substitute red peppers for tomatoes, dried basil for fresh, or whatever’s in the pantry. That’s what I did:)
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Creamy Summer Shrimp Fettuccini
Ingredients
2 slices bacon, chopped into bits
1 shallot, sliced fine-ish
1/2 C. corn kernels, cut from cooked cob, frozen, or canned
1 C. cream
1 T. lemon juice, or to taste
white wine, whatever you’re drinking, a splash or three
shrimp, big handful
cherry tomatoes, handful, halved
basil, six giant leaves from the garden, sliced
reserved pasta water to taste, plus backup cornstarch if you add too much
salt, pepper, Parmesan
fettuccini
Instructions
While the pasta water heats, sauté the bacon and shallots until translucent.
Add corn, cream, lemon juice, white wine and cook down for a couple of minutes, until slightly thickened.
Add shrimp, cook until opaque.
Add the tomatoes and basil and heat through.
Adjust the sauce for flavor and thickness with salt, pepper, more wine, cream and/or and pasta water. If it’s too thin, mix up a slurry of 1 T. cornstarch and a cup of cold water, add until you have enough liquid and cook until thickened.
Serve over pasta, topped with grated Parmesan.
* Note: I would say that have moderately-sized hands.
I have found a source of caffeine that I can actually drink and I am suuuuperhappyaboutthat!
Ahem.
I gave up coffee voluntarily in grad school (because school was stressful enough and also when you need a giant pot to get through the day that’s your body telling you something) and then had to give up tea a few years later for digestive reasons. So I’ve been living a mostly caffeine free life for too long.
Recently, through a confluence of conversational touch points, I found myself telling my mother about yaupon, the only (known) caffeinated plant native to North America.
Yaupon (pronounced yō-pon) is a branch of the holly family. The scientific name is terrible (Ilex vomitoria, um, no thanks?) but the plant and tea have nothing to do with regurgitation (ok, that’s fine then!).
Native to the southeastern US, it was used by natives for thousands of years, and traded across North America and the Atlantic.
When picked, roasted and boiled, the leaves yield a yellow to dark-orange elixir with a fruity and earthy aroma and a smooth flavour with malty tones. As if orchestrated specifically for the mind and body, yaupon leaves’ perfect ratio of stimulating xanthines such as caffeine, theobromine and theophylline release slowly into the body, providing a jitter-free mental clarity and an ease to the stomach.
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Why am I going on about this tea? Because it’s native, sustainable, and it deserves to be thought of as more than a “pesky weed.” It’s tannin free, so unlike traditional tea from Camellia sinensis, you can steep it multiple times without that unfun bitter, astringent aftertaste.
Also, because I happen to have a bag from one of the more prominent yaupon companies, CatSpring in Texas, and I’m drinking a delicious cup with maple syrup right now.
This caffeine stuff works, y’all;)
* * *
Speaking of, let’s just take a brief moment to appreciate the role of caffeine, “the most widely used psychoactive drug on Earth,” in human history.
Beer built the pyramids, but caffeine powered the Enlightenment.
Whatever your beverage of choice, may your eyes remain bright and your synapses active!
So long as you go about it ethically, I don’t see any shame in shortcuts. On a general note, most of what has given us as a species an edge could reasonably be categorized as such. And personally, I am particularly in favor of techniques, tools and strategies that help me fill in gaps of time or talent.
I’ve mentioned drawing, and how I can’t. Oh sure, I used to be able to draw an almost perfect circle freehand and once drew the world’s most beautiful eye while I was supposed to be studying verb conjugations in high school French class, but that’s about the extent of my talents in that department.
That doesn’t stop me from wanting to do more. If only my fellow monkeys had developed some tools that could help me make up for such deficiencies!
Cue computer drawing programs, yes, but then what? There’s still the difference between what I see in my mind and what comes out on the page or screen.
Ooh, I said to the cat (who paid as much attention as usual, which is to say none), that is exactly the sort of art I like, part beauty, part craft, part epistolary exploration. Too bad I had to move away from Photoshop. Now what?
First, despair! Cue gnashing of teeth and rending of garments (just kidding, that’s wasteful and I really hate to shop).
Then it was time to get to work.
I decided to see if I could replicate some version of this technique in Affinity Photo. After forum diving, video watching, and a visit to The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, I produced this:
The Venus de Milo by Alexandros of Antioch, sculpted c. 150BC. Original photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash, text and doodles by Leonardo da Vinci. I don’t read Italian, much less Renaissance mirror writing, but I would love it if this was Leo’s to do or shopping list. “Note: buy looser robes with draping like this, because I like a healthy breeze around my private parts.”
* * *
Not bad, aside from the fact that it took forever and could use some real hatching and more dramatic outlines and the shading crashed the program about a dozen times. Still, it was progress I felt ok about.
Working through that puzzle also gave me time to think, and in that time I realized a couple of important things:
my computer is not the only computer in this house, and while the desktop upstairs has had the tech equivalent of a stroke and can’t be trusted with anything not backed up, I did manage to rebuild it into a functional system and it is now running a deprecated OS,
six bucks is not a lot of money, and
don’t I still have the disks for CS5, which includes Photoshop, kicking around somewhere?
True, true, and yes, yes I do.
Cue exciting graphic adventures!
* * *
I may have also sprung for a couple more tools from the same developer. Still affordable, and still worth it. This is what the Da Vinci Photoshop action produced, plus several other versions:
Da Vinci action
vintage sketch action
architecture sketch action
* * *
Have I been having fun? Yes, and here’s my absolute favorite so far:
Shortcuts can be terrific so long as they don’t impede learning. In this case, I got the mental workout of deconstructing and rebuilding an effect, plus the practicality of pre-built actions.
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