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Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Still working on that mushroom soup recipe.

Here’s the thing: My default recipe is a little complicated.

I don’t mean that in a bad way, but in a creative sort of way. The truth is, the recipe for this soup is straightforward. Here, I’ll lay it out for you:

  • mushrooms, lots
  • chicken stock, lots
  • sherry, ehhhh, fine, lots
  • soy sauce and pepper
  • beurre manie, more than seems reasonable (I usually use this much: 224g butter, 144g flour)
  • also but optional: onions, garlic, herbs

The devil is, of course, in the details. I wrote out the whole recipe and discovered two things. 

One, I have a hard time doing a thing the easy way. Well, that’s not entirely true. I tend to take a recipe, strip it down to the basics, then build it back up again so that it has what I consider the essentials of taste and texture. This leads to a basic recipe with many, many caveats.

And two, my memory for little things like quantities is not great. Both of these factors are further complicated by the fact that I never quite make a recipe the same way, and the point is to hand this off to people who want it to taste the way it did at a certain time (2023) and place (the wilds of northern Ontario). 

So… stay tuned!

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Photo by Christine Siracusa on Unsplash

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Thanks to my day job, Tuesdays are the worst… except when they aren’t.

Me: Tuesday morning, grumble, grumble, work, work, work.

/muzak, lunch, muzak

Me: What’s this in my email?

/insert the crackling of digital paper

Me: An acceptance letter for one of my favorite fun stories? How cool is that?

More details as we get closer to publication, but it’s great news. And it couldn’t have come on a better day.

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Photo by Amy Reed on Unsplash

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“Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.”

— Nolan Bushnell

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Photo by David Izquierdo on Unsplash

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While I’m more of a written word sort of a person, you may have noticed that this thing called a (checks notes) “podcast” has become something of a trend;) 

If you are a fan of the spoken word, speculative fiction, futurism, African writers, writers in general and interviews with same, this new series from Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination might be just the ticket.

The Imagination Desk: Introducing Griots & Galaxies

The Center for Science and the Imagination is proud to present the new podcast Griots & Galaxies! This is a ten episode series hosted by Jenna Hanchey, Chinelo Onwualu, and Yvette Lisa Ndlovu that explores the work of ten African speculative fiction authors and imagining new futures for the continent.

Here’s a link to the series page.

Podcasts: Center for Science and the Imagination

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Photo by David Watkis on Unsplash

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I’m looking to make a new special-occasion cake and find myself with too many recipe options. We’re also under a bit of a time crunch. So of course I will take three of these possible alternatives and combine them into something I hope will work.

Wish me luck!

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Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

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“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”

― Madeleine L’Engle

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Photo by Gabby Orcutt on Unsplash

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I came across an article about socks. Why share? Because I happen to like good socks, and I like history, and I like crafting. And these are very special socks.

1,600-Year-Old Ancient Egyptian Socks Made for Sandals

I had never heard about the technique behind these socks, which is called nålebinding or nalbinding (literally, needle binding). If I were to characterize the method, I’d say that it’s knitting without the needles, or crochet without a hook, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, nålebinding predates both. Now more closely associated with Scandinavian cultures, the oldest known examples date from the Mediterranean around 6500 BCE.

If you also wonder what it took to make a sock in ancient Egypt, check out this site for descriptions and instructional videos.

Nalbinding Stitch

I will now go appreciate the drawer full of socks I did not have to make.

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Photo by Tai’s Captures on Unsplash

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Perhaps you, like me, have found yourself trying to corral a recalcitrant cat (or dog, ferret, bunny or lizard, I don’t judge!) onto a scale. Perhaps that device frightens or just generally annoys your cat for whatever reason, and that cat refuses to stay on the scale for the requisite time required for weighing.

Perhaps you have also been watching a Lot of shows about veterinarians, and you come up with an idea.

That idea might look something like this.

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Stand at one end of your makeshift chute with a treat and the cat will come to you. All that’s left is to wonder how on earth the cat Still hasn’t reached his target weight.

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This is for the artists out there.

New tool lets artists fight AI image bots by hiding corrupt data in plain sight

From Hollywood strikes to digital portraits, AI’s potential to steal creatives’ work and how to stop it has dominated the tech conversation in 2023. The latest effort to protect artists and their creations is Nightshade, a tool allowing artists to add undetectable pixels into their work that could corrupt an AI’s training data…

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Photo by James Kemp on Unsplash

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I was recently invited to be a guest on the West Virginia Uncommon Place podcast. It was a fun interview, and I enjoyed the opportunity to explore multiple facets of writing, including how the landscapes and ideas we think of as home influence our creativity.

An Interview with Jennifer R. Johnson: Unveiling the World of Science Fiction Writing – WV Uncommon Place | Podcast on Spotify

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Photo by Jason Pischke on Unsplash

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