Darkoshi

...you get up and walk into the kitchen to get some ice cream which you've been thinking about in the back of your mind ever since looking up about the new ice cream shop which serves vegan soft-serve ice cream, and you see the bowl of cucumber salad you had left out, intending to eat after finishing dinner.

:: ok, I'll eat some cucumber salad, and *then* I'll have ice cream ::

... and then you walk into the kitchen again after eating salad, ready to get ice cream, and you see on the counter the 8 figs you had picked from the tree. You know if you don't eat them now while they are still fresh, they won't taste as good tomorrow...

:: ok, I'll eat the figs, and maybe then a little bit of ice cream. ::

I opened the can of mushy peas today. They taste good. They taste, if I remember right, much like Campbell's Green Pea soup. An item that I've never found a good ready-made vegan substitute for before now. I still don't like the idea of there being food coloring in these mushy peas though, and these were too expensive to buy on a regular basis.

I ought to cook it from scratch using dried peas. How hard can it be? Peas are small so they should cook fast, no matter if I get the split or whole ones, right? That may have been the difficulty when I tried it in the past though - cooking them long enough to get soft without them burning on the bottom of the pan.

The song "Gold" by Spandau Ballet includes this line in its lyrics:
These are my salad days

The term "salad days" was not familiar to me, but there's a whole Wikipedia article about it. It says:

The phrase was coined in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in 1606. In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says:
...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood/To say as I said then!

The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century, coming to mean "a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion." The metaphor comes from Cleopatra's use of the word 'green' — presumably meaning someone youthful, inexperienced, or immature. Her references to "green" and "cold" both suggest qualities of salads.

I don't know why, but it strikes me as odd, to think of Ancient Egyptians eating salad. But then, Cleopatra cavorted with Ancient Romans. Did Ancient Romans eat salads? Apparently so.

Bon Appetit Wednesday! An Ancient Roman Salad:
Romans loved salads. Columella’s writings suggest the Romans were much like we are today in their search for delicious and inventive salad combinations.[2] A main ingredient in all of these recipes was salt. In fact, the word salad comes from the Latin word sal, meaning salt.

According to the next articles, Ancient Egyptians domesticated lettuce. But they also considered it an aphrodisiac (or they didn't, depending on the article).

Watch out the Egyptian salad. Lettuce in Ancient Egypt: a ‘sexy vegetable’ and its usages

Lettuce and Kings: The Power Struggle Between Horus and Set

Ancient Egyptian Sexuality: Life in Ancient Egypt

... there I am getting dragged down a winding path of topics from where I started.

Going back to the Shakespeare Cleopatra line, it's neat how it is a double (or more) metaphor. Green is a metaphor for youth; coldness (temperature) is a metaphor for coldness (lack of emotion). And then salad, being green and cold, becomes another metaphor for youth and/or coldness.

Update, 2021/09/29:
The ancient Egyptian depictions of lettuce shown on the above link don't look much like modern day lettuce.

But today I came across a lettuce variety which does look somewhat similar to the Egyptian depictions:
Celtuce (also known as "stem lettuce".
Celtuce: A Stocky Stem Lettuce From China (video)

I'm in a standoff with my browser: I refuse to let it update as long as it keeps nagging me to update, and as long as I can't find a way to make it stop nagging.

It used to be when an update was available, it would pop up the message, and if I didn't choose to install it right away, it would remind me at a reasonable frequency, no more often than once a day. Now it is doing it multiple times a day. Suffice to say, I became very irritated and have dug my heels in deeper than ever. I don't want to completely disable updates, but... I haven't found any other solution so far. Maybe I'll need to downgrade to an older version. ::SNEER::
Bah.

.

One of my phones popped up a message saying that a COVID-19 Contact Tracing app was available (the first such message I recall having gotten). But it was an app for the state of North Carolina. I live in South Carolina.

.

Yesterday, my mom gave me leeks and a bunch of cilantro which she'd gotten from a friend.

I cut up and cooked the top dark green parts of the leeks separately from the rest. (I had read a webpage which said this part of the plant is inedible, but that is untrue. Perhaps on some plants the leaves are too tough to eat, but on these they certainly weren't.)

I stir-fried both parts in olive oil along with the cilantro. With the leek tops, I stirred in balsamic vinegar. It turned out quite good.

In the other pot, I added fresh ginger, a can of black-eye peas, and a package of potato gnocchi (after boiling it). It turned out quite good too.

.

Today was like a warm spring day. Upper 70s. Flowers are starting to bloom. Yellow flowers grew from the bulbs which I had thought were small onions.

.

I made this tonight.

Dissolve 2 cubes of veggie bouillon cubes in a small amount of hot water and set aside.
Brown 3 medium onions, diced, in vegetable oil.
Add the bouillon water and continue to cook the onions til soft.
Stir in a good amount of pumpkin puree; I estimate 4 to 6 cups.
Add approximately 1.5 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp curry powder, some cumin, and some diced fresh ginger.
Add 1 can coconut milk and stir well.
Simmer until done.

I was worried the dandelion greens might be bitter. But they turned out very good the way I cooked them. (It could be that the store-bought ones simply aren't very bitter to begin with.)

I dry-roasted some raw pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, and hazelnuts* in a pan with some salt, until the first one popped out of the pan. I set them aside. After they were cool enough, I rubbed the loose hazelnut skins off the hazelnuts and discarded the skins.

I squeezed the juice out of several miniature lemon-type citrus fruit that my mom gave me from her little tree. They look like tiny tangerines, but taste sour, though not quite as sour as lemons.** Then I cut up the remaining thin peels into small pieces, and set both aside.

I sauteed a clove of crushed garlic in some almond oil*. I added a leftover half package of Gardein Italian Saus'age (partially defrosted), and sauteed that till it started to brown.

Then I added the washed & chopped dandelion greens and citrus peel. After a few more minutes of sauteeing, I added the citrus juice. I also added a few handfuls of raisins. Then I continued sauteing it all until the dandelion got soft enough for my taste. Then I stirred in the roasted seeds & nuts, and sprinkled on salt.

*All of which I happened to have in my fridge; they're quite old. But they still tasted ok.

**They're not kumquats, though they look similar. They are a squat round shape rather than oblong and have a thinner peel. I remember reading the plant label after my mom bought the tree from somewhere, and that it had a warning about this variety being patented, so that you're not allowed to propagate it. The fruit have seeds; I'm not sure if my mom ever tried growing more trees from them. Now I'm curious if they would even grow, and am curious if my mom still has that plant label; it's been years since she got it. The tree is still in a pot, and she brings it inside every winter.


Summary of recipe ingredients:
1 bunch of store-bought dandelion greens (the large/long kind, not wild-picked)
~1/4 cup pine nuts
~1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds
~1/3 cup raw hazelnuts (filberts)
~1/3 cup of lemon or other citrus juice
~1/8 cup of citrus peel, cut into small pieces (could use zest instead)
~1/3 cup raisins
~4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 clove garlic
~1.5 cups of vegan sausage slices
salt to taste

Although I'm vegan, I don't often buy much fresh fruit and vegetables. Doing so results in needing to wash, peel, cut, cook, (etc.) as well as eat them, and to do so before they go bad, regardless of whether I have the time that day or week. Background stress. Not buying them avoids that. Usually I'll only buy a few easy things here or there. Avocados are good. Occasional fruit. Carrots; they last almost forever in the fridge without going bad.

I felt like cooking something this weekend though, and that fruit would be nice too. So yesterday I bought:

a passion fruit
2 oranges
blueberries
blackberries
jicama (pre-cut sticks, ideal for munching on! such a great convenience even though it comes in a plastic container)
fennel
dandelion greens

The fennel didn't have a bar-code on it. At the self-check-out station, it wasn't listed in the item look-up menu. A Kroger store employee came over to help, but we couldn't find it on their physical cheat-sheet either. Then I said, "It's also called anise, but I don't think it would be listed under that..." Yet it was listed as "anise / fennel".

.

My erstwhile flu or cold still lingers a bit. Last weekend, my upper right chest area ached for a day; might mean a slight lung infection. My throat has been phlegmy; I still have a slight cough and occasional runny nose. Otherwise, I've still been feeling ok. Still much better than the usual kind of colds I get, where my nose is runny and/or congested non-stop for days or weeks.

.

Kleenex has renamed their "Cool Touch" tissues to "Cooling Lotion". In the store yesterday, I wasn't sure if it was the same product. The ingredient list included polyethylene (plastic!?), which I hadn't remembered it having. So I took a photo of the label and didn't buy any. But comparing that now to a "Cool Touch" box which I still have, the ingredients are the same.

.

While walking, I passed a hickory tree and thought of that children's rhyming song, Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. Except I thought the rhyme must be like "Tickety tickety tock, the mouse ran up the clock" (since clocks go tick tock). I recall thinking, well if I *did* put in the word "hickory", how should it go, "Hickory hickory hawk?" I played around with other variations in my mind, "clickety clickety clock", "clippety clippety clop"

Looking it up today, I was surprised that my brain's initial word association of "hickory" with the rhyme was correct. It's interesting that those words "hickory dickory dock" may have come from Cumbric numbers.

As in the little finger-sized things sold in plastic bags, as opposed to actual immature carrots.
Did you know (or remember) they've only been around since the 1980s?

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/babycarrot.html

A family friend gave me some vegetables from his garden. Yellow squash, zucchini, okra, and several cucumbers. I'm on vacation this week and have been staying at Qiao's house, so planned to cook them here.

Qiao bought a bunch of kitchen stuff after moving in, including pots and pans, plates and glasses, and sundries. He hardly ever cooks though, so it doesn't get much use. He mostly goes out to eat, or brings home take-out. I've used his stove only once or twice so far, for boiling noodles. It's a gas stove, which still makes me nervous (gas stoves spit out flames! fire hazard! gas hazard!). But mainly because it's easier to cook at my house (where I have all my supplies) and to bring food over, or to heat food up in his microwave or his toaster oven.

Yesterday I realized I needed a cutting board. The two smallish ones that Qiao has are wood, and were sitting behind the sink for a long time and got black mildew marks on the bottom from it being wet back there. At home I have a glass cutting board, which seems more sanitary. Yesterday I bought him a glass one like mine. I also brought over my garlic crusher, mandolin, and oil and vinegar.

At the grocery store, I bought fresh chives and dill for making a cucumber salad. Generally I slice the cucumbers, and add salt and vinegar, and sometimes dried dill and pepper or a bit of sugar. It never tastes as good as when my mom makes it, nor as good as the wonderful cucumber salad I remember from German restaurants (which tasted different from my mom's). So I hoped that adding fresh herbs would help. I figure that chives are sort of similar to onions in flavor; I don't care to cut up onions for a salad, but I can do chives.

When I look up German cucumber salad recipes, they almost always include sour cream. The ones I remember were not cream-based. They were zesty, light, and refreshing. I could eat a whole plateful if only they'd serve that much. My mom sometimes scrapes onion juice into hers; I think that is part of what makes hers special; she also sometimes adds garlic. But I tried before, and mine still didn't get that special flavor I'm looking for.

I just realized, that Qiao doesn't have a cucumber peeler. Shucks. I could leave the skins on, or I could delay making the salad to some other day.

..

Oven mitt! That's another thing that's missing over here.

A duller paring knife would be good too. It's hard to peel garlic with a sharp knife.

..

Note to self: Do not put raw garlic in cucumber salad (or anything else) again. It causes way too much gas.

Let's see. Monday, the dogs dug out from Qiao's yard.
Tuesday night or morning, they dug out from my yard. Or maybe dug and climbed; I'm still not certain. Searched the neighborhood nearly 3 hours for them and then finally found them in 2 different backyards one street over. Which I only noticed because our neighbor's dog barked and looked in that direction. (When I was searching before, I tended to look everywhere *except* in other fenced areas, wrongly assuming that if a yard was fenced off with a closed gate, that the dogs wouldn't have been able to get in there).
Then we took them back to Qiao's place where we can keep the small dog (the main instigator) tied up with a cable more easily until the fence is better secured. I think I will have to put down mesh fencing along the ground after all.

Wednesday, I cut up and cooked 2 butternut squashes that my mom gave me from her yard. They grew on their own out from her compost bin; not just these 2, but several more, all summer long.

Thursday, Qiao's retina started detaching.. he had surgery on that eye just 2 months ago for the same problem, but this time it is even worse than before (even though at an appointment 2 weeks ago, the eye doctor said it was looking good). He has emergency surgery scheduled this week on Tuesday. I hope they can fix it. His other eye also had the same problem several years back, and that one has been ok since its surgery (which was done using silicone oil, versus the recent surgery which used a gas bubble). This time the doctor's notes say he might use a scleral buckle, and/or silicone, or another gas bubble. We're hoping it won't be a bubble again, because Qiao had a hard time keeping the required face down position last time.

Friday, I made a new patient appointment with a doctor, so that I'll finally have a "primary care doctor". The nearest doctor's offices to me weren't taking new patients. So it's at a place somewhat further away, but not too far. The earliest appointment date they had was early December. Initially, it will be to discuss these foot nerve issues and/or whatever comes back from the blood test results and/or maybe the cracking sounds my neck has been making for almost a year now.

Today I ordered a new washing machine. I found out that there aren't any specific standards that must be met to call a washer "high efficiency". I found out that different companies / countries use to measure tub capacity differently, so that what one might call 2.5 cubic feet, another might call 3 cubic feet. But around 2011 the U.S. government started enforcing standardized measurements. I found that a lot of washers now include a setting for "Casual" clothes. Ie., whites, colors, casual, delicates, jeans, bulky items. The other ones are familiar, but I have no idea how "casual" clothes are supposed to be different than the others, or how they are supposed to be specially washed.

At work, they are finally giving me a new laptop with an SSD hard drive. It will be Windows 10 though; I'll have to get used to that.

I've started updating my Firefox add-on "ToggleDocumentColors" for WebExtensions. But because of everything else, I haven't had time to do much yet. It has to be implemented totally differently than before, because WebExtensions don't let you read or update the browser about:config settings. That boggled my mind when I found out. So instead, the add-on will have to "inject" a CSS sheet into the page, and the user will have to enter their desired colors as add-on settings, instead of the add-on being able to use the color settings the user already entered in the browser settings.

On Friday morning, an alarm siren was going off in a nearby shopping center. It could be heard at my house even inside with the windows closed - in the rooms on that side. That includes the room with my computer, and we had a Skype meeting that morning, so I was hearing this faint high-low-high-low-high-low siren noise in the background for more than an hour. By the time I was ready to leave for work, I was so annoyed that I started yelling (inside the house), in a wailing way, imitating the sound. It was slightly amazing - I was really able to imitate it pretty well... sort of like the wailing done in some North African cultures when someone dies. Ululation, that is the word. But I was using my throat/vocal cords to ululate, as opposed to my tongue. My voice was hoarse for the rest of the day.

Late Friday evening when I got back from work, the siren was still going! I called the police to report it, and was thankful that I was going to Qiao's house for the weekend.

Sunday evening when I got back from Qiao's house, the siren was still going!!!! I called Qiao and told him that I was coming right back, after I gathered my stuff for work, and more food. On the way back, I drove down to see where exactly the siren was coming from. It wasn't from where I expected; it was from an empty store even further away.