something queer going on

entertainment

kindkit — Sun, 02 Apr 2017 17:37:41 GMT

Things I've been watching:

That Mitchell and Webb Look. I've been binge-watching this for a couple of days now. I'm enjoying it a lot even though I find it (usually) more wry than laugh-out-loud funny. Sometimes it's actively unfunny, as in the sketch where a man goes into a little shop ostensibly to buy food, ends up buying two cans of cheap strong beer instead, and it's clear that this is a routine he goes through every day as he desperately, hopelessly tries to cover up his alcoholism. I was astonished to hear the audience laughing at it (or was it a laugh track?). Apparently the last sketch from the very last episode was the (in)famous old Sherlock Holmes, which makes everyone cry; somehow I'm not surprised that Mitchell and Webb chose to end the show that way.

Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain's most recent show, which is less about extreme food adventures than Bourdain's previous work and focuses to a surprising extent on history, culture, and politics. I was loving it, and then we got to the episode about New Mexico, where I live. I found it oversimplified, almost stereotypical, and much too filtered through Bourdain's romantic obsession with cowboys and the west (and guns--there was a long segment of Bourdain with gun enthusiasts that I skipped most of because it made me so furious). So now I wonder if the whole show is like that and I just didn't notice because of my own ignorance; other episodes, especially those set in troubled parts of the world, did seem a lot more serious and balanced to me, though.

Weeks ago I started watching Captain America: Civil War on Netflix and got so bored about half an hour in that I still haven't finished it. I guess I'll watch the rest eventually, but the whole premise is so contrived that it's hard to care. But part of the problem could be me: I often have a hard time settling in to movies, even though I can watch episode after episode of a TV series.

Things I've been reading:

Right now I'm about halfway through Matter, one of Iain M. Banks's Culture novels. I'm enjoying it all right, but I don't understand why so many people say these books are the best thing ever. The ones I've read have all been a bit same-y, and so the worldbuilding that was initially so impressive ceases to impress. I do give Banks some points for naming a ship Eight Rounds Rapid, though.

Before that I read Dan Chaon's new mystery/thriller Ill Will, which, again, I liked well enough, but which also seemed like another example of that phenomenon where a "literary" novelist writes a genre book and is wildly overpraised for things that are, in fact, pretty typical of the genre. Chaon did throw in a few self-consciously literary touches, but I don't think they were necessary or even beneficial to the story. And plotwise, I still can't decide if the surprise ending, which I saw coming almost from the beginning of the story, was in fact meant to be a surprise or if we were meant to notice the clues and be worried/horrified that the relevant character didn't notice. The second is more interesting narratively, but also makes the character so inept as to lost all my sympathy.

A while back I read Kai Ashante Wilson's Sorcerer of the Wildeeps but forgot to post about it. It's a little bit slight and short, story-wise (it's a novella, really, not a full novel) but it's fantastically well-written; I especially admire how Wilson melds African American Vernacular English and a high fantasy setting in a way that is first surprising and then just absolutely, seamlessly right. The worldbuilding is tantalizing, too, and I hope Wilson writes more in this universe. And did I mention that the main characters are queer men?

Other stuff: I have a 24-day streak on Duolingo in both German, which I'm just beginning, and French, which I studied for years and then neglected for years. Has anyone else noticed that some of the Duolingo example sentences are rather . . . dystopian? I keep getting ones like "Don't believe that soldier!" and "It's better to avoid that zone." Or, today, "A little robot came and saved them," which was nice.

A request: Now that I've joined the 21st century and have Netflix streaming and Spotify, I'd love recs for movies, TV shows, and especially music.

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recipe weekend

kindkit — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 16:37:52 GMT

Something I've cooked recently: Yesterday I finally cooked the soup with rice and chicken livers that I wanted to cook weeks ago. Being me, I didn't follow Marcella Hazan's recipe but adapted it for my own purposes. I sweated a couple of moderate-sized shallots in some olive oil, added a good glug of sherry and let it cook down most of the way, then added a BIG container of low-sodium chicken broth. (I had to make a lot of soup, because it's hard to find chicken livers in small quantities where I live, and they don't keep.) I also added a quarter cup of rinsed basmati rice and let that simmer until the rice was almost tender. Then I added a little over a pound of chicken livers, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces, let that cook for a minute or so, then threw in a couple of big handfuls of spinach. Oh, and at some point while the rice was cooking I added a few drops of fish sauce for a little umami kick. Result = delicious.

When I went shopping on Thursday I impulse-bought some dandelion greens, which I've never eaten before. Today I blanched some for about a minute in boiling water to reduce the bitterness, drained them, then cooked them in olive oil and garlic and ate them with some of the fava bean and potato puree that I cooked a while ago and have been keeping in the freezer. I put the greens in the bottom of a shallow pasta bowl and poured the puree over them. That was my breakfast* this morning, actually, and it was yummy.

*"Breakfast foods" are not usually my preferred breakfast foods. I like bacon and eggs, and I like pancakes and that sort of thing, but not all the time. So when I have leisure for a cooked breakfast it's often some kind of food more associated with lunch or dinner. Yesterday for breakfast I had tacos, though I suppose they were "breakfast tacos" (are breakfast tacos and burritos a thing outside of the southwestern US?) since the filling was scrambled eggs.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: I still have a lot of dandelion greens left, so later today I plan to make a salad of dandelion greens and spinach with a hot bacon dressing. There will probably still be some dandelion greens left after that, but I have no plans yet for the remainder.

I'm going to cook a lot of bacon at once and use the remainder for a potato salad with blue cheese and bacon that is one of my favorite foods ever.

I'm also, probably tomorrow, going to cook the stir-fried ground pork and greens with fermented bean curd that I mentioned in my last food post. I suppose I could add the dandelion greens to that, although I do have a big bunch of Chinese mustard greens I bought specifically for the purpose.

Yes, I am on a bit of a greens kick.

Something I'm vaguely thinking about cooking eventually: Dunno. I should look through my cookbooks. The weather here has been changeable, which makes it hard to know what I'll want to eat in the future. Not much more than a week ago we had high temperatures close to 80 F (26.6 C); in the past week it's been much colder and has snowed overnight several times. Anyway, I have so much food in the pantry that I should probably try to minimize shopping for the next couple of weeks and use some of what I already have.

I've been wanting to bake a cake but I still have uneaten treats from the last time I baked. Mmm, I think I'll have a slice of cranberry/dried cherry cake.

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recipe weekend

kindkit — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:11:56 GMT

Something I've cooked recently: Today I made an asparagus and smoked salmon tart. I couldn't find a recipe that was exactly what I wanted, so I improvised. First, I made a double batch of the flaky pastry from Paul Hollywood's Pies and Puds. This is almost a puff pastry: only about a quarter of the fat is rubbed into the flour, while the rest is layered into the dough as you roll, fold, and turn it. It takes time, especially since I chilled it after the first two turns, chilled it again after the fourth and final turn, and then again after I had rolled it out and lined an 8x12 inch shallow baking sheet with it. I then blind-baked the pastry for almost 25 minutes at 400 F, with the rack in the lower third of the oven and the pan nestled inside a slightly larger pan I had preheated--all this to prevent the dreaded soggy bottom.

After the pastry had cooled, I filled it with a mixture of about 12 oz mascarpone cheese (this was meant to be ricotta, but I got confused by similar packaging and bought mascarpone instead, and by the time I realized it was too late; the result was fine but v v rich), 4 oz hot-smoked salmon (the firm kind that's sold in thick whole pieces, not the delicate, bright red, pre-sliced kind), 2 sliced green onions aka spring onions, 1 large shallot minced and gently sauteed in butter, about half a cup or so of cream to thin the mascarpone, 1 egg to bind, and the grated zest of 1 lemon. Then I topped it with a nice row of asparagus spears I had parboiled until just barely tender. I baked it about 35 minutes, again in the lower third of the oven, at 350 F.

Things that could be improved: I had trouble rolling the pastry out as thin as I wanted, which meant there was still some soggy-ish dough under the filling even though the very bottom was crisp and lovely. Ricotta or a mix of ricotta and mascarpone would cut the somewhat excessive richness. Peel the bottoms of the asparagus, no matter how much of an annoying chore it is. More smoked salmon would not have been a bad idea--it seldom is.

Possible variations: I think the super-flaky pastry is the best match for the flavors and textures, but the tart would be easier and quicker with an ordinary flaky pie pastry or a shortcrust pastry. Would be easier to eat but not nearly as pretty with the asparagus cut up and stirred into the filling. Could omit the lemon zest and add some grated cheese such as Parmiggiano (to the crust and/or the filling) or Gruyere (to the filling). A second egg would make the filling set and cut more cleanly, but would make it too eggy-tasting for me.

I bought some raclette cheese on sale recently, so I've had raclette, or at least raclette adopted for a single person without a fireplace, twice. The first time I went fairly traditional, boiling some new potatoes, then topping them with shredded raclette and broiling until the cheese was all melted and oozy. The second time, I sort of made my own version of chile cheese fries--I cut some baking potatoes into wedges, coated them with oil, salt, and smoked paprika and roasted them until crisp outside and soft inside, and then covered a big mound of them with raclette and broiled.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: No concrete plans. I need to keep using an opened jar of fermented bean curd I have in the fridge, so I may make this recipe for bean curd with Chinese cabbage and ground pork, or something similar. The weather has been ridiculously warm here for March, so I mostly feel interested in salads and pastas and such.

Something I vaguely plan to cook someday: Oh, everything, as usual. I've been craving seafood, which is a problem because while I love eating it, I really don't love cooking it. Shrimp would be helpful for this, since you can get them conveniently frozen and pre-peeled, but since I've heard about shrimp farms ruining the environment and literally using slave labor, I haven't wanted to buy shrimp. Anybody know of US brands that are okay to buy?

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that St Patrick's day meme

kindkit — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 03:06:46 GMT

1. Have you ever been to Ireland?

Twice. I have been to Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Ennis, Lisdoonvarna ("Oh, Lisdoonvarna," as Christy Moore sings; the town had three very musical pubs and one hostel with a peat fire and no electricity), Doolin, the cliffs of Moher (walked there from Doolin, including a bit where the path was uncomfortably close to the edge of the cliff), Inis Mor, Spiddal, Gleann Cholm Cille, Cushendall, Belfast (where I lost track of the number of people who said to me, "We're not like what you see on television"--this was over twenty years ago and the ceasefire was new and shaky-- and also where I went to a Christy Moore concert), and Derry.

2. According to Facts about Ireland, 73% of Americans are unable to locate Ireland on a map bereft of country names. Whether you are American or not, can you find it on a map?

Yes.

3. Are you or do you know a natural redhead?

*sigh* Fetishizing red hair is creepy. I did date a redhead once, but not because of his hair color.

4. Will you be celebrating St Patrick's Day?

I have a bottle of Smithwick's in the fridge and will probably drink it tonight at some point. I don't care for St. Patrick's Day; back when I was most involved with Irish/Irish-American cultural stuff, we all took it deeply seriously and disliked the green beer and shamrocks and goddamn leprechauns and all that begorrah shite. (Heh, all this reminiscing has made me apt, like Laurie Odell, to become Irish.) My Irish-language teacher, a drinking man who loved a party, used to get a stern look about him as March 17th rolled around and would say, "St. Patrick founded no taverns, only churches."

5. Do you even know who St. Patrick is and why we celebrate his day?

He converted Ireland to Christianity, thereby doing it no great favor, although Irish monks did help keep learning and art alive through some rough centuries.

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a new weapon in my war on sugary drinks

kindkit — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 00:55:29 GMT

I've discovered that those flavored (but unsweetened) carbonated water drinks are not too bad. I think a considerable part of what I've been craving is the bubbles. Not all--I still miss the sweetness of soda--but these help.

I haven't tried stevia-sweetened soda yet but I might at some point. I feel like I ought to try to push through the sweet craving so that I just stop wanting soda at all, but that could just be puritanism.

It's interesting how much more expensive the water things are than mainstream sodas, which here in the US are often on sale extremely cheap (like, $12 for three twelve-packs) in supermarkets. Apparently soda sales are falling in the US, and the manufacturers desperately want their market share back.

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The Good Place

kindkit — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 00:57:56 GMT

I spent yesterday and this afternoon binge-watching S1 of The Good Place. It's funny and serious and generally amazing, and you should watch it! It tells the story of Eleanor, who after her sudden death finds that she's one of a tiny number of humans who have been accepted into The Good Place, where she'll spend eternity in bliss with her soulmate. And that's all I'm going to tell you, because it's best to watch the show as unspoiled as possible.

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a post that's not about food

kindkit — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 23:58:36 GMT

1) The first episode of Buffy aired twenty years ago. Buffy was my first fandom, although I didn't start watching until the summer reruns before S7, and didn't connect to the actual fandom until the summer after that. In some ways it's still the greatest fandom experience I've ever had--such excitement and interest, so many smart people writing smart things--and in some ways it was the worst. But fandom changed my life, and I wouldn't have found it without Buffy. Also, the show was, despite some failings, wonderful, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

I feel like I should watch an episode, but I can't decide which one. I've been contemplating a re-watch, so I guess I could start at the beginning . . .

2) I finished the Aubrey/Maturin re-read some time ago, then I re-read most of Jane Austen, and now I've moved on to some new stuff. I can recommend Lyndsay Faye's The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, which is the best professional Holmes pastiche I know of. Faye stays essentially true to the canon, without any of the tedious innovations (Holmes in America! Holmes solve the Ripper murders! Holmes was Jack the Ripper!) that many other writers perpetrate.* The things she brings to the canon are good things, such as a subtle and never preachy concern for the rights of women and the poor and some reasonable attempts at resolving canonical contradictions. What she brings to pastiche is what's so often lacking: emotion. Holmes and Watson's affection for each other is central. My favorite stories are the ones set during and after the Great Hiatus, exploring Watson's grief and then, after Holmes's return, his anger and hurt. There's nothing explicitly queer here, but the stories from Holmes's POV make it abundantly clear, I think, that Holmes is in love with Watson in some fashion beyond friendship. Watson, alas, is shown as even straighter than canon makes him--he's constantly noticing women--but his love for Holmes is deep and enduring.

*She does put Watson in America in one story, set before Holmes and Watson meet. It makes nonsense of Watson's timeline and isn't a great story, but I forgive Faye because the other stories are so good.

Faye is also the author of the excellent Timothy Wilde series, set in New York in the 1840s when a professional police force was developing, and the country was moving inexorably towards civil war. The books are beautifully written in a distinct, fascinating, slangy voice, there's an amazing sense of place and history, and there are canonical queer characters in important roles.

3) Right now I'm reading the late Oliver Sacks's autobiography, On the Move, and enjoying it very much. Things I didn't know about Oliver Sacks: he was gay, he was into motorcycles and bodybuilding as a young man, and he found lasting romantic love for the first time at the age of 75. Cool stuff.

4) I've started doing Duolingo again, on my phone this time, learning German and brushing up my French. I'm trying to read some French every day, which I haven't done for years . . . also on my phone. I never thought I would be someone who would use their phone so much, but it seems I am. Some stuff is just easier that way; I don't know why. I'm staying much more aware of the news, too.

Lest you think it's all SRS BZNS, I admit to spending a lot of time playing Atomas. It's fun and complicated in just the right way for me, because the rules are simple but the nuances are endless. Plus it's completely nonverbal, and since I'm a highly word-focused person, that helps me relax, whereas Scrabble makes me tense.

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recipe Friday

kindkit — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 21:01:56 GMT

I'm actually posting this on Friday for a change!

Something I've cooked recently: I finally got around to cooking the quails. It's just as well I didn't go to the expense and effort of the sweetbread stuffing, because after about four bites, my fun new issue with meat textures kicked in. So the quails ended up in the stock pot along with a few stray bones I had in the freezer--chicken, pork, ~~rude person~~. I had intended to make an Italian soup with rice, peas, and chicken livers, but then chicken livers were not to be had, so I cooked some rice in the stock and finished it in an old-fashioned French way with cream and a beaten egg. It was nice enough, but the cream rather overpowered the flavor of the lovely stock.

I also made a vaguely salade niçoise type thing with romaine lettuce, tuna, cooked potatoes, cooked green beans, tomatoes, and cucumber with an anchovy vinaigrette. One especially nice thing about this is that it keeps, so I got two dinner portions and two sandwiches for work out of it (to make the sandwich, stuff as much salad as you can into a hollowed-out section of baguette and drizzle on a little extra vinaigrette).

And, continuing this unexpected French theme, I cooked a vaguely cassoulet type thing. I took about a pound and a half of dried white beans (soaked overnight) and put them in an earthenware baking dish along with two carrots, two ribs of celery, and one large onion all cut into big chunks, plus about eight peeled garlic cloves. To that I added about a pound and a half of country style pork ribs on the bone (large pieces of fat removed), a bay leaf, a little salt, about a tablespoon of duck fat drizzled over, and enough water to cover the beans and most of the meat. I cooked it, covered, in a very low oven (about 225 F or 107 C) for a couple of hours, then added two supposedly French-style garlic sausages, whole, and two cut-up smoked garlicky and peppery sausages and cooked it for another couple of hours, removing as many of the vegetables as I could fish out after about an hour. I'd intended to add some kale and beet greens at this point but there wasn't room. Anyway, it turned out very nice; the beans were beautifully tender and the cooking liquid had lots of flavor. The pork ribs also come out tender and falling off the bone, but still with good flavor in the meat, so people without my texture issues might want to pull the meat into pieces and return it to the dish.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: Today, I bake! Naturally, the consequence of my sugar-reduction decision (which is, I can have any sweet things I bake or cook myself, but no soda and, as much as I can manage, no storebought cakes, cookies, candy bars, etc.) is that I'm going to bake a lemon-glazed loaf cake with dried cranberries and cherries. Er, and some brownies. Not just any brownies, mind you, but Aztec Gold Brownies, which are the best brownies I've ever made or eaten and possibly the best brownies in the world. I mean, if I'm trying to eat less sugar, I'd better make sure it's quality sugar, right?

Something I'm vaguely thinking about cooking someday: Everything? So many recipes, so little time. It's been unseasonably warm here, which has got me craving spring and summer things instead of the hearty pies I'd been meaning to bake all winter. Hmm, maybe an asparagus tart?

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sugar sugar

kindkit — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 02:42:41 GMT

So I'm trying to cut down on my sugar consumption. I love sweet things, but I increasingly feel like having a lot of sugar isn't good for me, and I worry about things like diabetes. My blood sugar was absolutely fine the last time it was tested, but I still worry. Mostly, I think, it's that becoming diabetic would be humiliating, as though I had failed by succumbing to a godawful victim-blaming trope that I detest. (N.B. I realize this is an internalized fat-phobia thing, and I don't believe I think about people with diabetes that way; I only apply it to myself.)

I'm cutting down on sugar, not cutting out; my decision at the moment is that if I make it myself, I can have it, but I'm going to try to avoid storebought sweets and especially soda. I figure, if I've baked a cake, at least I've baked a cake, but eating Oreos is no kind of accomplishment. (Girl Scout cookies, on the other hand, I may have to make an exception for. After all, it's a good cause!)

The soda thing though . . . AAARRRGH. When I was a kid we drank a lot of soda unless we were really broke, in which case it was Kool-Aid. Or, god forbid, water--our water at home had tons of dissolved iron in it, so much that all the sinks etc. got rust-colored stains, and it tasted nasty. Plus my mom loved Coke and it just seemed normal, if we had some around, to drink several big glasses of it a day.

When I was in college I mostly stopped drinking soda. This was partly snobbery (I wanted to be grown-up and sophisticated!) and partly spending a year in France, where soda wasn't literally on tap for free at the cafeteria. I hardly ever drank soda for the next, oh, twenty years.

And then I started working in retail, which is hard and tiring and sometimes you really want a sugar boost, and the soda was right there conveniently for sale. So I'd have a soda once or twice a week, and then I started at my new job and for various reasons it became a soda every day, and then I started buying six packs of it in the grocery store because it was cheaper, and then of course I started drinking it at home as well.

I want a soda really badly right now. *twitches* And I'm frustrated with myself for having become a soda drinker again after so many years. (Incidentally, my decision was triggered by this truly horrifying recent xkcd cartoon.)

I don't think soda/sugar is literally addictive, but soda is delicious and bubbly and sweet and caffeinated, and hard to give up because it hits so many pleasurable buttons. I don't want to drink diet soda because I don't like it, and I also have a vague sense, based on various clickbaity ads on the internet, that artificial sweeteners are bad for you. Then there's fruit juice, which mixed with sparkling water has a nice soda-ish effect, except that fruit juice seems to have so much sugar added to it that you might as well just have a Coke. Seriously, I almost bought some grape juice the other day, then I looked at the label and the second thing on the ingredient list was high fructose corn syrup. Et tu, Welch's?

Hence I am currently making iced herbal tea. I do actually really like drinking plain water, but sometimes I want flavor, especially now when I've got a soda monkey on my back. (<--- Irony. I don't for heaven's sake want to turn into one of those people earnestly lecturing about how Bad Foodstuff X is addictive, totally addictive, just like meth, and also if you keep consuming it you will have five undigested pounds of it in your stomach when you die.)

I'm not really looking for advice or anything, just wanted to talk about it. Also I just ordered a reusable yogurt container from amazon.com, so I can take yogurt with me to work without (a) throwing away a lot of wasteful packaging, and (b) having to buy and eat those little pre-packaged cups of yogurt with fruit, which are all lowfat or no-fat but have tons of sugar. Instead, or so I have told myself, I can bring good-quality whole milk yogurt with no weird thickeners or anything, and I can have as much as I want of any kind of fruit I want, and only as much sugar as I choose; I genuinely prefer a significantly less sweet yogurt to the packaged kind. However, I can't help feeling like I have just bought the most ridiculous, unnecessary, gadgety thing in the world. Generations of my working-class forebears are looking over my shoulder and asking, "You just bought a special container for yogurt?" (Dear ancestors: it will save money in the end, because those little cups of sugary yogurt are expensive.)

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Logan

kindkit — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 00:28:30 GMT

I saw Logan today. Non-spoilery reaction: it's pretty damn good and you should see it if you have any interest in the X-Men movieverse(s). Don't (unlike some idiots I saw today) bring young kids, though, because it's also pretty damn violent--apparently the creators thought they needed to justify that R rating with lots of blood.

Well, that was somber, wasn't it? When the end credits came, at first I hoped there'd be a post-credit scene with Logan clawing his way out of the grave, but of course after a minute I realized that it would undermine the rest of the movie and ruin all the thematic development. And at heart I love stories about aging and death and grief, even when they rip me into sad little shreds.

Nevertheless: oh no not Logan! oh no not Charles! *sobs* I found Charles's illness and death especially painful, both for personal reasons (his mental/psychic deterioration recalled my mother's dementia) and because, well, Charles. Yes, he was sometimes a dick and thought he knew best even when he definitely didn't, but . . . Charles. I fear for those young mutants a bit--who's going to train them and help them grow up? I presume there are adult mutants in Canada, but Charles was such a central figure in mutant culture and mutant communities that I think his death will be a serious, ongoing loss.

My own answer to the burning question of "where the hell is Erik?" is that in this iteration of the multiverse, Erik has been dead for a long time. I'm not sure where this parts from the continuity of the original trilogy, but there was a reference I didn't entirely catch to the Statue of Liberty, so I'm assuming something went horribly wrong as a consequence of the X-Men failing to stop Erik's X1 plot to trigger mutations in everybody, killing Marie (and thus emotionally alienating Logan) and Erik (plunging Charles into a despair he never quite climbs out of) and causing no more natural mutants to be born. But I should note that I haven't seen the other Wolverine movies, and also I missed a few minutes of this one for a bathroom break, so there may easily be explanations for some of this that I missed.

What I've always liked about the X-Men movies is their fundamental seriousness, and Logan is about 2/3 quite serious and character-driven story and 1/3 extremely bloody violence. I could've done without quite so many decapitations and impalements, but I guess in a way it underlines the brutality of this world--a world that has for some time been without the X-Men. The movie is also disturbingly resonant with Trump's America, considering the thing must have been written and filmed long before the election. It's not hard to see a certain pointedness in a story about getting a whole bunch of Mexican-born refugee children across the border and then north, north, across another border into Canada. Though the film does make a point of telling us that the kids have been granted legal entry into Canada if they can get there.

I could have lived without seeing a whole black family wiped out as collateral damage to Logan's quest. I can understand the points being made, both about how this family embodied "traditional American values" much more than the racists who wanted to drive them out and about the unfettered corporate power and cruelty that ultimately killed them, but I think those points could have been made without three more dead black people onscreen. On the other hand, we did at least get to know them as people before they were killed, which is a small bit of compensation in storytelling terms, I guess.

The story pushed the "Charles is Logan's father figure" thing very hard, and I could sort of see it despite the fact that Logan is significantly older than Charles. But I still ship them. In this 'verse, my shipping them amounts to "they were lovers for a while, and then it faded out because Logan had commitment issues and Charles had Erik issues, but they never stopped loving each other in a complicated, sometimes tender, sometimes resentful way that did have elements of paternal/filial love, and of course Logan would turn up to spirit Charles away to safety when it became necessary." And then there's poor Caliban, whose relationship with Logan was strikingly . . . marital. Not a very happy marriage, but all that stuff about "I don't want to nag" and "I can't do this if we don't talk" and etc. etc., and the fact that Caliban had no earthly reason to be there if he didn't love one of them--and I didn't get the sense that it was Charles--adds up to "they are or were sleeping together" being the best explanation. (Was Caliban in the other Wolverine movies?)

Besides its many other good qualities, it's a movie that leaves plenty of scope for fic. *hopes* The absence of Erik may be helpful in this regard (and believe me, I bow to no one in my love for Erik Lehnsherr, so I don't say this lightly) because it'll leave no room for all the treacly, cutesy godawfulness that the pairing has become in most fanfic. I hope, anyway. *hopes, against all experience of the way fandom can produce the most trivial, sugary fics from the most unlikely sources*

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one thing about Sherlock S4

kindkit — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 02:00:12 GMT

I just finished watching it yesterday, and there were some things I really liked, some things I thought were just strange, and one thing that irritated me enormously. Guess what I'm going to talk about?

Did Mycroft really have to be straight (or straight enough to decide he might take Lady Whatsername up on her offer, anyway)? A character with no canonical sexual history either in Doyle or in earlier seasons of Sherlock, a character whose revelation as gay would come as no shock to anyone in the audience, a character played by a gay actor, and Moffat decided it was necessary to make him straight. Gatiss presumably went along with it, although I think Moffat has the real decision-making power. I am frustrated, but not surprised, and in good measure frustrated with myself for hoping, even the tiniest bit, that a show run by Steven Moffat might ever make a major male character gay. (Then of course there's Irene Adler's continuing fixation on Sherlock--this would be Irene Adler the lesbian, remember?--and also the insistence that a relationship with Irene Adler is necessary for Sherlock to be a Real Boy and find happiness, but all this comes under one heading, namely Steven Moffat's Intolerable and Suffocating Heteronormativity.)

Of course, for my own purposes I've decided that Mycroft picks up that card because he's chosen to ignore the implications and take her invitation to go out for drinks literally; he's looking for someone to talk to and maybe be friends with, not for romance or sex with her. But I'm tired of having to do that.

/belated rant about something I should have known would happen, because Moffat

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recipe Friday on Sunday

kindkit — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 19:09:31 GMT

Something I've cooked recently: Yesterday I cooked a fava bean and potato puree from a recipe in Lynn Rosetto Kasper's The Italian Country Table. Naturally I mucked about with it by adding in some Greek loukanika sausage that I bought on sale a few weeks ago; it turned out to be too strong for me to want to eat it plain, but it seemed just the thing to flavor a pot of beans, and indeed the result was pretty nice. It turns out, though, that cooked dried fava beans taste a lot like split peas. I like split peas well enough, but it was a bit disappointing to pay for favas and get split pea results.

Also yesterday I made a batch of lemon curd, and then baked some eclair shells to put the lemon curd into. I used an actual piping bag to shape the pastry, and the results weren't too bad considering I've never piped anything before in my life, but there's room for improvement in that and also in making sure they're baked enough. Nevertheless, even less-than-perfect lemon curd eclairs are yummy.

Something I'm going to cook in the near future: Today I'm using up the egg whites left over from the lemon curd by baking mini-pavlova shells. While googling around for recipes I discovered a nifty-sounding trick: using toasted sugar to make the meringue more complex and less sweet. So I currently have two pounds of sugar toasting in my oven. I'll let you know how it works.

I'm also going to roast the quail that have been hanging around in my freezer for a while (the ones I bought thinking they were boneless, but they weren't). I'll make a sherry-mushroom sauce for them and some roasted potatoes.

Something I'm vaguely thinking about cooking eventually: Many many things, as always. There are still a million savory pies I want to bake before the weather gets too warm. And I have a jar of fermented bean curd in my cupboard that I've been nerving myself up to use. (Er, not in a pie. I have trouble committing myself to cooking just one cuisine, even for only a week or so, so my pantry always overflows with ingredients. I'll probably use the bean curd in stir-fried pork and greens.)

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my usual question

kindkit — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 02:53:34 GMT

I've watched about half of the first episode of The Man in the High Castle. Have any of you seen the series? Is it worth continuing? So far the show hasn't managed to make me care about the US being ruled by fascists, much less about its deeply boring straight white protagonists. But that could just be a case of the first episode being made as insipid as possible in order, in the minds of showrunners, to appeal to a broad audience.

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internet can haz

kindkit — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 18:41:56 GMT

I'm back! With real internet that doesn't rely on stupid unreliable hotspots. Or using my phone's data allowance.

*hugs all of you*

*hugs Netflix streaming as well*

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not OK, computer

kindkit — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 20:12:02 GMT

Weird problem which I hope someone with technical knowledge might be able to offer suggestions about. So: on Thursday evening I was able to connect to the internet from home using the wifi hotspot network I always use. On Friday morning, I couldn't. There was no connection at all, not even the one to the wifi sign-in page. Troubleshooting brought up the message "Wi-fi has no valid IP configuration." After several attempts I was able to fix it and it worked on Friday evening. Saturday morning it was dead again and wouldn't respond to the reset that had worked before.

I tried the first and sixth solutions here and they didn't work; most of the others aren't relevant to me because I don't have a router.

I tried connecting my old computer to the network and it seemed to work--at least, I was able to get as far as the wifi sign-in page, which I couldn't with the new one.

And today I took the new computer to Starbucks, where lo and behold, it connects just fine, not only to Starbucks wifi but to the network (xfinity) that I couldn't connect to at home.

So the problem is not my computer, right? But probably the local router I'm connecting through, which I have no control over because it's xfinity's router and not mine. At least this is what I'm assuming. But I don't want to keep having no connectivity from home, especially because since getting the new computer I can actually stream movies and music now.

So I guess I should contact xfinity, although the last time I had a problem they were incredibly unhelpful. But could the problem somehow be on my end? I'm wondering how my old computer could still connect.

ETA: Some research has shown that I can get a proper internet connection for less than I'm now paying for hotspot access, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

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recipe Friday

kindkit — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 02:35:16 GMT

Somthing I've cooked recently: Tonight I had the dinner of Good Shopping Luck. I treated myself to a pork chop from the fancy butcher, and then when I was in the supermarket I found some beautiful asparagus, seriously the nicest asparagus by far that I've ever seen in a supermarket, and on sale, too. So that plus some oven roasted potato wedges was dinner. The pork in particular was amazing, even though I overcooked it a little. I'd forgotten that pork actually has flavor. Om nom nom.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: Tomorrow I'm cooking a bean soup with escarole and garlic, and on Sunday there'll be mushroom risotto. I may also bake some spice cookies from the recipe in Ottolenghi and Tamimi's Jerusalem--I've been wanting to bake these for ages but I could never find currants anywhere.

Something I'm vaguely thinking about cooking someday: It turns out I bought the wrong kind of quail for the sweetbread-stuffed quail from the Hannibal cookbook--I needed de-boned quail and I bought bone-in. I did watch an instructional video on You-Tube about how to do it myself, but if it takes Jacques Pepin five minutes to de-bone a quail, it'll take me half an hour and a lot of swearing, and I have four of the little beasts. So I'll use the current batch of quail for something else, perhaps pan-roasted with a sherry and mushroom sauce, and see if I can find boneless quail anywhere.

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Broadchurch S2

kindkit — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 02:49:18 GMT

I watched Broadchurch S2 and thought it was good in many ways, but definitely not up to the standards of S1.

The reconciliation aspects of the end of S2 felt a bit too optimistic and too easy compared to the light-in-darkness ending of S1, or at least too quick--I felt we needed to see how we got there after such a devastating trial and especially the new cracks it made in the Latimers' marriage.

I also never felt that the basis of S2, Joe Miller's decision to plead not guilty, ever really made sense. How did he get from his guilt-burdened state at the end of S1, where all he wanted was to confess, to the self-pitying dead-souled monster of S2? It's something I could find perfectly plausible (he did, after all, manage to convince himself that his improper if not yet technically abusive relationship with an eleven-year-old boy was true love) if the show had laid the groundwork. We needed to see Joe's fear and self-justification develop, and a lot of the stuff about the old Sandbrooke case could have been cut to make room for it. Eve Myles and especially James D'Arcy were good as the creepy couple, and I can't entirely blame the showrunners for wanting to give D'Arcy plenty of scope to have sexual tension with every character in sight (not least with Alec Hardy) and to get his kit off as much as possible, but the plotline was a bit too distracting and the resolution a bit too triumphant for me.

Still, there were lesbians (older lesbians! who got a happy ending!), and a couple of women of color in prominent roles, and that was nice.

After finishing S2 I went looking for fic and discovered that by the time I filtered out all the crossovers designed to ship Hardy with Rose Tyler or some other Billie Piper character, and all the fics that ship Hardy and Ellie Miller, and all the weird fluffy crap in which Hardy is a super-great dad really and also a woobie, there wasn't much left. Certainly there wasn't the fic I wanted to read, which is the one about the fucked-up inside of Joe Miller's head, and how he lost his conscience and whether he ever finds it again. (All other things being equal, I will, it seems, be most interested in the character who is the biggest psychological, emotional, and/or moral mess. Cf. Will Graham, Erik Lehnsherr, Kerr Avon, Bill Haydon (and Jim Prideaux, equally though differently a mess), and on and on back to my first fandom loves, Rupert Giles (a secret mess) and his beloved nemesis, the chaotic Ethan Rayne.)

This goes back to my dissatisfaction with S2. S1 had a certain measure of compassion for everyone; it was even bold enough to show a little compassion to Joe Miller, confused reluctant pedophile and semi-accidental murderer. S2 withdrew the borders of its compassion somewhat, and in doing so became more conventional and less interesting. It reduced Joe Miller to a stereotype and it also flattened some characters who weren't on the right side, notably Ollie the journalist and the junior defense lawyer, whose name I can't remember and who never was allowed to rise above being the awful person that Ben called her in the empty courtroom. For me, a story in which all the characters, even the ones like Joe Miller who do terrible things and deserve to be punished for them, are fully rounded, fully human, is a better story than a less complex one where some people are just evil, or just empty and worthless.

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Broadchurch

kindkit — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 20:10:37 GMT

I just finished watching the last episode of S1 of Broadchurch.

Floods of tears. What a fantastic series. Okay, dubious police procedures, but emotionally just about perfect.

Is S2 also good, or does it ruin the exquisitely crafted story that is S1 by trying to continue it?

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today's word: presbyopia!

kindkit — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:24:30 GMT

I went to the eye doctor today, got an exam and ordered new glasses. $$$OMGSTICKERSHOCK$$$ It all cost about twice what I was expecting to pay, largely because I now need bifocals and apparently they are not cheap. I also need a strong prescription generally, which means either buying fancy ultra-thin lenses or wearing the proverbial Coke bottles, which I'd rather not.

Getting old is expensive!!!

(Luckily--for some value of luckily--when I lost my old job I had the option to take cash from my retirement account, and I did so specifically to get new specs, get my car fixed, and a few other not-small expenditures I'd been putting off.)

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recipe . . . Sunday?

kindkit — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 00:13:36 GMT

I didn't manage to make this post on Friday, so today will have to do.

Something I've cooked recently: I cooked the things I mentioned in the last post. The chicken fricassee with anchovies and olives turned out salty, as I ought to have expected, but it was nice when eaten with lots of polenta. The meatball soup was delicious even though it was made with supermarket chicken stock and supermarket frozen meatballs (also a tin of tomatoes, a bunch of chard including the chopped-up stalks, some barley, and a couple of minced cloves of garlic cooked briefly in olive oil and stirred in at the end of cooking for a nice garlicky kick).

Today I cooked some lentils (the nice little French green ones) with lamb merguez sausages. It was very simple and turned out well. I browned the sausages in olive oil, then set them aside and briefly cooked a couple of finely chopped shallots in the oil, added three minced cloves of garlic and a pinch of whole cumin when the shallots were ready, then added the lentils, some chicken stock, and half a bay leaf. I added water as needed as the lentils cooked, and once they were pretty much done I put the sausages back in to simmer for ten minutes or so--that way the sausages weren't overcooked and the lamb flavor didn't take over the whole dish. At the end I added some parsley and mint--I can now advise you not to bother with the mint unless you have a cheap source for decent quantities, because it didn't do much--and finished the dish with feta crumbled on top and a bit of harissa.

And I did end up making a Bailey's cake of sorts. It turned out that I didn't have any eggs and didn't feel like going out to buy any, so I modified a recipe for a very 1960s retro dish called "chocolate pudding cake," which has a cakey layer on top and a gooey chocolate sauce/pudding underneath. Its chief virtues are simplicity and not requiring any eggs. In its original form it's absurdly sweet and not very interesting, so I reduced the sugar, upped the cocoa powder, added some espresso powder, and used 1/2 cup of Bailey's in place of the same amount of water and milk. These changes improved it a lot, but one of these days I'll have to make a proper cake. I thought about making one today but I turned out to be almost out of sugar.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: I don't know how near, but I seem to have committed myself to cooking the quails stuffed with sweetbreads, in that I have bought some frozen quails. And I found an actual local butcher shop that can readily supply sweetbreads, as well as house-made charcuterie and all kinds of other treats, including the lamb merguez I used in today's stew. Not sure what I'm going to have with the quail, but I'm thinking about a mushroom risotto. I feel a bit ridiculous and a lot extravagant, cooking such fancy things just for myself, but on the other hand there's something to be said for the Hannibal Lecter philosophy of treating oneself as a most honored guest. This would be TV Hannibal, obviously; other versions of the character are (even more) terrible role models.

Something I vaguely intend to cook someday: I've got a recipe for a chicken pie stuffed with chicken livers that I want to try. I should probably make other pies too in the next few months, as this cold weather is far better for most pastry-making then summer heat. And I'm still craving soups and stews. This is part of the reason I'm using commercial chicken broth: my need for broth/stock has far outstripped my consumption of chicken and thus my accumulation of chicken bones, and I can't quite bring myself to buy chicken just to make stock from it.

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DAAS stuff

kindkit — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 13:41:52 GMT

1) Last night I watched this concert film of DAAS at Redlands Community College in Queensland. I'd never seen it before--last time I was fannish about DAAS, it wasn't on the internet. It was great to see routines I didn't know, even if a lot of it seemed like new pieces being tested that weren't fated to make the cut. The boys seemed to be having an off night as well. But all that means that the anarchic potential people say was characteristic of their live shows is much closer to the surface than in their more polished concert films. And if for nothing else, I must love it for the "sociology experiment" in which Paul selects a man from the audience and kisses him lengthily.

2) There's a moment in the song "I Love the French" when the boys shout out "baise mon cul." They probably thought they were saying "kiss my ass," but what it actually means is "fuck my ass."* I'm equally amused by the possibility that their ignorance of French turned an aggressive statement in a xenophobic song into a plea for some foreign lovin', and the possibility that they knew perfectly well what they were saying and it's some meta-ironic thing.

*Baiser is a notorious opportunity for French learners to embarrass themselves. As a noun, un baiser does indeed mean "a kiss." But the verb baiser means "to fuck."

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Wednesday reading meme

kindkit — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 22:57:01 GMT

Currently reading: I've been re-reading the Aubrey and Maturin books, because I'm in a mood where I have to feel very, very confident that I'm going to like a book (and that it won't betray me with things like "Oh by the way this character you've been reading as queer is totally 120% straight") or I don't want to bother with it. I'm in the middle of The Thirteen Gun Salute right now and still enjoying almost everything on this third reading.

Recently read: I think the last non-Aubrey and Maturin book I read was Ben Aaronovitch's latest Rivers of London novel, The Hanging Tree. I had mixed feelings. It wasn't a bad book by any means, and I love the series as a whole, and I love most of the characters, but the Faceless Man plot has dragged on far, far too long. I could just about live with that if the worldbuilding was still as good as it initially was, but I don't feel we've learned anything really interesting about magic for a couple of books now. I'm also uncomfortable with the way women's magic was handled in the book. It makes sense, given that women were excluded from formal training in the European magical system, that they would have developed their own tradition, but nevertheless something about "oh, women's magic is so natural and instinctive and not stuffy and academic!" makes me cringe. In fact everything about it makes me cringe. And finally, not enough Nightingale.

What I'm planning to read next: I'll probably finish the Aubrey and Maturin books before I move on. After that, I don't know.

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a beverage meme

kindkit — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 00:51:59 GMT

Seen in various places on DW, but originally from thefridayfive.

1. How do you like your coffee? I'm only an intermittent coffee drinker, and often I'm just drinking it for the caffeine. But there's one local coffee shop where the coffee actually tastes good, and I will go there sometimes for one a latte. I always take coffee with lots of milk (or better still, half-and-half) and no sugar.

2. How do you like your tea? It depends on what kind of tea. I drink green teas and certain black teas, such as lapsang souchong and good darjeeling, unadulterated. Same with iced tea. Cheap black tea, such as the "English Breakfast" blend I drink in the mornings to wake up, I take with milk and sugar. Oddly enough, I use the same blend of tea for iced tea, which I drink straight, but chilling the tea seems to tame the bitterness. I put sugar in most herbal teas, but my dream is to discover some that taste good without it, and I've finally found one: the chamomile and lavender tea from The English Tea Shop. It is the best herbal tea ever.

3. What's your favorite late night beverage? In warm weather, water. I drink lots of water all the time. I have to for medical reasons but I also really like it. In the winter I like something warm at bedtime--herbal tea or occasionally a hot toddy or hot whiskey.

4. If you could only drink one thing for the next week, what would it be? Let's assume that water is allowed regardless. So: lapsang souchong. I can drink it when the thought of almost anything else turns my stomach, which is important because I am not a natural early riser and I often feel gross in the mornings.

5. If you were on vacation, what would be the first thing you'd drink to celebrate? Assuming "on vacation" implies travelling, probably a local beer of some kind. Or wine if it's really a wine place and not a beer place, but I'm not a wine fan on the whole. If I were in Japan I would set out to drink all the gyokuro, because it's my favorite tea.

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recipe Friday

kindkit — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 16:19:58 GMT

Something I've cooked recently: Not a lot. On Sunday, while I was opening up a tin of tomatoes for a pasta sauce, I cut my thumb open pretty deeply on the lid. It still hasn't entirely healed, and that's put a damper on cooking and other activities requiring opposable thumbs.

However, today I'm planning to cook a chicken fricassee with anchovies and olives from a recipe by Marcella Hazan. And right now I'm frying delicious bacon for a delicious bacon sandwich.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: I'm going to make a soup with meatballs (store-bought in a moment of weakness, and there's half a packet left that I need to use up), chard, and barley or maybe farro or maybe Israeli couscous, depending on how I feel about it on the day.

Something I'm vaguely thinking about cooking eventually: I recently acquired Feeding Hannibal, the cookbook by the show's food stylist Janice Poon. Some of the recipes are far too ambitious for me, but I'm tempted by the quail stuffed with sweetbreads and hazelnuts, which is meant to mimic the flavor of ortolans (real ortolans, not the ortolan-shaped marzipan the actors actually ate during the scene). Quail are easy to find and not too expensive, and while getting hold of sweetbreads may be difficult, at least (unlike tripe) I love to eat them, with no ambivalence whatsoever.

I also plan to make brownies or cupcakes or something using some of the Bailey's I bought at Christmas.

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sometimes old fandoms really don't die

kindkit — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 00:28:32 GMT

Recently I rewatched some old Doug Anthony Allstars stuff and fell in love all over again.* I did some googling and discovered that DAAS have actually gotten back together**, with a new show that they performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and then toured.

I'm torn between joy (it's a fan's dream come true! it's the kind of thing that never happens, but it did!) and frustration that I'll never get to see them play live. Hopefully they'll release a DVD, anyway.

The new show, "Near Death Experiences," is apparently based around Tim Ferguson's worsening multiple sclerosis--he uses a wheelchair now--and the fact that they're all almost thirty years older. Where the old DAAS's favorite taboos to comedically break were sexual ones, now they're joking about illness, disability, aging, and mortality. Or in other words, the topics I am increasingly drawn to as I get older. I really, really want a DVD, oh yes.

Here's a pretty good interview with Tim:

A more group-focused piece in which Paul nearly loses his composure every time he's asked about his feelings for Tim:

And in case you're thinking "The Doug Anthony who with the what now?", have some clips from their days of youth and stardom. The second and third clips are HIGHLY NSFW.

*Seriously, we live in a world in which Donald Trump can be elected President of the US and yet I am still not Paul McDermott's boyfriend. How can this be?

**Sort of. Richard chose to keep his day job and was replaced on guitar by Paul Livingstone aka Flacco.

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