If I had a cat, my problem would be solved.
Here it is, the object of my indecision! A ball of yarn that has been plaguing my thoughts for the last month or so. I received it from a friend as a Christmas present, and I love it. The colour is deep and rich, the yarn is soft and shiny; it’s a lovely blend of merino wool and silk. Yet I am completely at a loss, because I have no idea what to knit with it. Continue reading
Here it is: yet another New Year, and inevitably New Year’s resolutions. It’s a great date, like that Monday next week when you are going to start exercising. New beginnings often include lots of false starts. That is why I never made any New Year’s resolutions before. Why wait if you can start there and then?
Last year had a lot of false starts for me (and lack of starts, which was even more frustrating). Therefore, contrary to my usual disregard towards New Year’s resolutions, I made some. I thought it was time to give myself a kick into my backside Baron Munchausen style. One of the goals was to start writting both of my blogs again.
Gotwifery will get an injection of knitting, since I’ve been doing that, but not sharing with anyone. I have some exciting projects in mind, and hoping you will give me some suggestions too.
Zero Gravitas is my other blog that focuses on science fiction. My goal last year was to read through Hugo and Nebula awards winners and blog about them, but I got distracted by other shiny books. I’ve set some more reasonable reading goals this time, so I hope it works out.
So here we are. This is a blog post. I’ve started on my resolution. Now the only trick is to keep it up, hah!
It so happened that this year I fell into a job (no other way to describe it). That’s why I have been quiet. I am so tired all the time, I can barely force myself to make dinner. Yet I’ve been feeling quite guilty for not writing for so long. So here, have a rant.
For the last month I have been cycling to work. Well, not all the way to work. That would be silly, since my work is about 40km (25 miles) away. Instead, I cycle to and from the train station and, oh boy, it’s pretty frustrating.
First of all, I’m not one of those “professional” cyclists, who wear tights and shiny jackets and have fancy space bicycles.
“We are the cyclists. Mere rules do not apply to us.”
Today I would like to share with you a quick brunch recipe that I have modified from a dish I discovered at Boston Tea Party Cafe in Bristol. The cafe serves excellent breakfast and brunch food (eggs benedict/royale/florentine, croque monsieur etc.) and I want to have it all, it’s so tasty. The original recipe for the egg dish I’m talking about today, however, is a potato and chorizo bake, but unless you already have leftover roasted potatoes it’s a bit fiddly. That is why I cook a version of it in a pan. It’s fast, filling and tasty. Once I came up of how to cook it for myself, I had it for breakfast everyday for a whole week. Nom nom nom…
Only 2 eggs here, cause I was cooking just for myself.
I have never read anything by Haruki Murakami (known for Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood), until a friend of mine gave me one of his books a couple of weeks ago. She saw the blurb saying: “the world of the trench-coated detective and cyberpunk sci-fi”, and thought about me. It was lovely of her. That was how a copy of The Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World came into my possession.
The book has two storylines that alternate with each chapter: the “hard-boiled” one and “The End of the World” one. The first involves a guy, who is a Calcutec, a man able to encrypt data by passing it through his brain. He gets called in to do a job, to “shuffle” some highly important data, and finds himself in heaps of trouble. The second story takes place in a town called The End of the World surrounded by an impregnable wall, where the inhabitants have to have their shadows cut away from them, before they are allowed to enter. It’s a strange town without pain or suffering, fighting or greed, but also no love or happiness, no song. There’s also a herd of unicorns. I won’t say any more about the plot, as I would spoil it for you.
I am biased when it comes to anything related to Portugal. Food? Oh yes, please. Weather? Beats UK every time. Wine? Do I even need to answer that? I even find the language, which a lot of people consider to be harsh and hissing, beautiful. When several years ago I discovered Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet who lived in first third of the 20th century, it was love at first sentence. He wrote wonderfully depressing things like: “I made the journey, bought the useless, found the indefinite,/ And my heart is the same as it was: a sky and a desert.” Isn’t he an excellent word-smith?
Pessoa also had a very interesting writing quirk: I call it literary schizophrenia.
Pessoa, my homeboy
In the last few years I have developed a taste for Indian food, and in the last couple – started dabbling in cooking it. From rajma (red kidney bean curry) taught to me by my Indian ex-housemate to carrot theplas (unleavened bread) from some internet page. If made properly, Indian food can be a stunning explosion of taste and smell. However, ‘properly’ hasn’t quite entered my Indian cooking vocabulary yet. Only recently, while looking up a recipe, I was pleasantly surprised that for once I had all the required ingredients. So, you know, the land of ‘properly’ is still a while away. That doesn’t stop me from experimenting and cutting a million corners. For me cooking is a bit like alchemy – you put everything into a pot and hope it doesn’t explode in your face.
Recently I have found a lovely blog on Indian cooking called eCurry. It not only has recipes for curries, but various salads, pancakes, breads, rolls/sandwiches, etc. and a very useful guide to Indian spices. The diversity of the recipes was what appealed to me the most. I have previously attempted an Indian Omelet, and it was easy to make and delicious! Try it!
So when an old friend of mine came to visit me over the weekend, I thought I should make something special for dinner. I decided on Indian, of course (any excuse to experiment). After checking what I had in the fridge, I settled on making a Chicken Curry in Fenugreek and Yogurt Sauce. You marinate the chicken, fry it up with onion and spices and then add the marinade as the sauce. Sounds pretty simple…
After avoiding the crime section in bookshops for years, the fact that I love whodunnits came as a bit of a surprise. In fact, it was so unexpected that I simply had to tell everyone about it. A blog seemed appropriate – there’s plenty of space to ramble, and it makes a sinister implication that this is not a one-time occurrence. There will probably be more. Flexing fingers is good for a person.
I always thought crime fiction wasn’t really for me. Of course I read all Sherlock Holmes years ago, but that’s classics, right? If I think of any current writers, I don’t believe I’ve read a single one. Stieg Larsson? Nope. P.D. James? Nope. And to be honest, to keep going I have to google who the best-selling crime writers are. It’s not my thing. It’s too real. I watched the Swedish film adaptation of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and couldn’t help thinking it was incredibly depressing. It’s sort of similar to my decision of not reading news, because it usually makes me angry, sad, powerless, and disappointed with human beings.
Gothwifery 