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An inadvisable soup and an advisable book
Jan. 19th, 2019 12:29 pmI maintain that lentil and banana is a possible combination, although perhaps better not improvised. I was flicking through the recipe book wondering whether a very simple lentil soup could be happily bulked with chickpeas, and I came upon a banana soup with enough similar elements that I went, "Hmm, there are frozen bananas in the fridge, aren't there?"
The bananas had been frozen because they were teetering on the brink of edibility. They tasted just slightly peculiar, as though they'd recently had an interesting conversation with mould and liked the idea of getting better acquainted. Just a whisker off normal, though, close enough that I wouldn't have hesitated to bake with them. Lentils soaked, cooked; bananas blended with milk, into pan with blended lentils, zest and juice of one orange. No magic redemption of flavours yet. Still slightly peculiar, still hopeful. Sprinkled in some salt, as the recipe requested. Salt came charging up behind the sourness of the orange and the peculiarity of the banana and kicked them both into the rafters. That thing where flavours come together as perfect complements? This was the opposite of that. My flatmates were all curious enough to try it, and the outlier was Charlotte, who said, "It's edible. It isn't nice, but it's edible." My opinion was closer to Hayden's, i.e. pained facial wiggling.
Cornstarch? That cut the salt. Didn't make the soup good or anything, but it retreated back in the direction of merely weird. A little cinnamon? A night in the fridge working out its internal inconsistencies?
Actually, yes. It is now an inoffensive, servable dessert soup. But I still feel like a hedge wizard going, "Well, would you look at that, the entity I summoned at random didn't eat my face." Strict following of recipes for the next few weeks, I think. I seem to have fallen out of practice at making things up as I go along without actually having lost the conviction that it's perfectly straightforward.
...
Last night I finished Pamela Dean's Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. This hadn't been the plan, but at a certain point I realised with surprise that I couldn't possibly stop until the end. There were good reasons not to stay up until half past one in the morning, but I don't regret it.
The easiest thing for me to say about this book is that its main character, Gentian, is a teenage girl with an unusually real-feeling network of relationships: parents, sisters, friends, closest friends, and the possibility of romance wavering between 'desirable' and 'existential threat'. She also has a passion for astronomy which comes through completely without ever being explained. By the time she has several times been described doing astronomy, you know why she's an astronomer and what it feels like for her.
The book has a gathered-together feel, not directionless, but as though its direction has been produced by bundling a lot of different twigs together. It has more of the actual texture of life than most books do. And its characters (like all the Pamela Dean protagonists I've read so far) quote constantly and pass bits of Shakespeare back and forward plausibly and sing rounds, which I can see might not be catnip for some people, but. (That's even more so in her Tam Lin; I've read a few people saying that it described the ideal university experience they didn't have -- well, except for the part where it is in fact a retelling of Tam Lin -- and that's true for me too, but at the same time it makes me more enthusiastic about the university experience I am having. Pamela Dean books give book recommendations, (Tam Lin is the first thing that's made me think I would actually very much like to read The Waste Land sometime), and song recommendations, and recipe recommendations, and a general sense that life is a thing to be very enthusiastic about).
As to what direction the bundled twigs of Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary have, better not to say -- but some while after I got to the end, when I'd finished being on the edge of crying (not to say it's sad, or say it isn't -- what makes me cry in books is a sort of marvelling emotional "Oh" moment) I realised that something I've been trying to write for a while was in fact a less detailed and powerful version of what this book is doing. Which falls somewhere between "I am grateful and glad this was done so well" and "Drat." I'll see if I can use the book to make my story better without just making it sub-Pamela-Dean.
This whole entry has to an extent been essay-related procrastination. My enthusiasm is active, but it has leapt right over the actual necessary contents of January into next month. Walk to university. Make essay have words.
The bananas had been frozen because they were teetering on the brink of edibility. They tasted just slightly peculiar, as though they'd recently had an interesting conversation with mould and liked the idea of getting better acquainted. Just a whisker off normal, though, close enough that I wouldn't have hesitated to bake with them. Lentils soaked, cooked; bananas blended with milk, into pan with blended lentils, zest and juice of one orange. No magic redemption of flavours yet. Still slightly peculiar, still hopeful. Sprinkled in some salt, as the recipe requested. Salt came charging up behind the sourness of the orange and the peculiarity of the banana and kicked them both into the rafters. That thing where flavours come together as perfect complements? This was the opposite of that. My flatmates were all curious enough to try it, and the outlier was Charlotte, who said, "It's edible. It isn't nice, but it's edible." My opinion was closer to Hayden's, i.e. pained facial wiggling.
Cornstarch? That cut the salt. Didn't make the soup good or anything, but it retreated back in the direction of merely weird. A little cinnamon? A night in the fridge working out its internal inconsistencies?
Actually, yes. It is now an inoffensive, servable dessert soup. But I still feel like a hedge wizard going, "Well, would you look at that, the entity I summoned at random didn't eat my face." Strict following of recipes for the next few weeks, I think. I seem to have fallen out of practice at making things up as I go along without actually having lost the conviction that it's perfectly straightforward.
...
Last night I finished Pamela Dean's Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. This hadn't been the plan, but at a certain point I realised with surprise that I couldn't possibly stop until the end. There were good reasons not to stay up until half past one in the morning, but I don't regret it.
The easiest thing for me to say about this book is that its main character, Gentian, is a teenage girl with an unusually real-feeling network of relationships: parents, sisters, friends, closest friends, and the possibility of romance wavering between 'desirable' and 'existential threat'. She also has a passion for astronomy which comes through completely without ever being explained. By the time she has several times been described doing astronomy, you know why she's an astronomer and what it feels like for her.
The book has a gathered-together feel, not directionless, but as though its direction has been produced by bundling a lot of different twigs together. It has more of the actual texture of life than most books do. And its characters (like all the Pamela Dean protagonists I've read so far) quote constantly and pass bits of Shakespeare back and forward plausibly and sing rounds, which I can see might not be catnip for some people, but. (That's even more so in her Tam Lin; I've read a few people saying that it described the ideal university experience they didn't have -- well, except for the part where it is in fact a retelling of Tam Lin -- and that's true for me too, but at the same time it makes me more enthusiastic about the university experience I am having. Pamela Dean books give book recommendations, (Tam Lin is the first thing that's made me think I would actually very much like to read The Waste Land sometime), and song recommendations, and recipe recommendations, and a general sense that life is a thing to be very enthusiastic about).
As to what direction the bundled twigs of Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary have, better not to say -- but some while after I got to the end, when I'd finished being on the edge of crying (not to say it's sad, or say it isn't -- what makes me cry in books is a sort of marvelling emotional "Oh" moment) I realised that something I've been trying to write for a while was in fact a less detailed and powerful version of what this book is doing. Which falls somewhere between "I am grateful and glad this was done so well" and "Drat." I'll see if I can use the book to make my story better without just making it sub-Pamela-Dean.
This whole entry has to an extent been essay-related procrastination. My enthusiasm is active, but it has leapt right over the actual necessary contents of January into next month. Walk to university. Make essay have words.
