My cooking free-for-all started when everyone else in the house went on a Florida visit and left me alone for a week. I ate so much food that I couldn’t feel lonely: my stomach took up all the room left by my family.

Night one was my second attempt at making sushi. While the food was tasty and I ate it quite happily, I have decided that I should leave sushi-making to everyone other than me. However,  I am getting a bit ahead of myself. To start my process, I grocery-shopped with the same kind of stunned euphoric covetousness that those kids in A Christmas Story had in front of the toy store window. Tuna, cucumbers, avocado, nori wrappers, sushi ginger – who knows where I would have stopped if I’d had a slightly larger grocery budget (ie a grocery budget at all). Back at home, I cooked rice, sliced cucumbers and avocados, thawed tuna and sliced it. I may have been dancing to a mix of Coheed and Cambria and Protest the Hero. It is a bit of a blur. Sushi rice was made with extra vinegar and sugar (I had made less rice than the recipe called for, since I was going to eat it all myself, then forgot when I made the sauce…) and fanned awkwardly with a plate. Finally, the moment of truth arrived and I arranged a roll. The damn thing wouldn’t stick. I gently squeezed it and rolled it about in the sushi mat, but it still threatened to unravel. Since I was starving, I shrugged, sliced the ungainly thing into ragged pieces, and set about making whatever it is you call those balls of sushi rice with things stuck on top of them. Again, my lack of skill stymied my attempts at creation. About three balls into this new process, I became sick of it. Sushi type 3 was undertaken with great success: scoop the rest of the sushi rice into a bowl and scatter the rest of the vegetables and fish across the top. I retired to the table with my grand (and terribly ugly) assortment of sushi… and ate it all. At some point, I forgot that I’d made somewhere between 2 and 3 cups of sushi rice, and simply kept eating. I only realized how much food I had eaten as I chased the last few grains around my bowl.

I couldn’t bend my body at all for the next half hour without putting painful pressure on my engorged stomach. It was amazing.

Dish two of my Home Alone Cooking Extravaganza was a favorite combination of mine: meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Unlike the sushi, I didn’t even try to eat it all that day. It kept me happily fed with leftovers for the next two days. After reading (and drooling) over the Fine Cooking article on meatloaf, I undertook a very traditional meatloaf with a ketchup-brown sugar glaze, my favorite part of the meatloaf. Comfortably matched to it were my mashed potatoes, which are getting to be pretty consistently good, even if I do say so myself. So tasty.

Did I mention that my wonderful family had bought me some fresh cider to keep me company in their absence? I guzzled so much that I’m surprised I didn’t start pissing apples. Or maybe I did, and just didn’t notice, thanks to my food stupor. Which brings me to the final item of cooking excitement of that week:
An excellent (package-mix) spice cake with home-made buttercream frosting! Except for the fact that I made it with salted butter (which resulted in salted frosting, odd but tasty), I declared the frosting a complete success, and after slathering the slightly-warm cake with it, had about 2 cups left, which I promised Dad (probably walking on a beach at the time) I’d save. In a fit of artistic frenzy, I decorated the whole sugary pile with candy corns and candy pumpkins. With the return of my family only days away, I undertook a heroic, nay, epic task – to devour the whole cake, so as not to share it with spoiled Florida-goers. I’m pleased to say that I succeeded in my goal, comfortably, happily, and apparently no worse for the wear. So delicious. The white cake made later for the rest of the frosting rivaled it not at all.

A few days later, I went to visit my boyfriend. To appease the poor fellow, who, being away at school, missed that whole gluttonous celebration, I roasted him a chicken with lots of garlic and no carrots (he doesn’t like cooked carrots, the crazy lad) and made more mashed potatoes and boiled spinach (which he loves, go figure). If I were the conniving sort who wanted to win over his roommates, I feel like I would have considered it a wild success. I’ll go ahead and consider it that anyway, since I’ve never been accused of being too humble. I had to return home before turning the carcass into soup, but only marginally garbled directions seem to have allowed him to do fair justice to the bird all by his lonesome (and by that, I mean that his erstwhile roommate probably helped lots).

This Sunday was marked by potstickers and sugar cookies – the latter made with part coconut oil as an experiment. Very tasty and quite the prettiest cookies I’ve ever made. I ate too many potstickers two days in a row, forgetting that I meant to save some for the guy, who probably hates to hear of my cooking escapades while he is away. Also I discovered that soy sauce mixed with a bit of vinegar and sugar makes the tangy dipping sauce that I like so much for my potstickers.

Now as before, I am lining up a secondary fit of cooking for my upcoming trip to visit love and college. More dumplings may be in store, or bread or more cookies. I tend to plan on things that I want to eat for my visit, since there never seems to be much food in the apartment. I suppose four guys eat food as quick as they buy it. My aim is to bring and make enough food to feed me and him for the time that I’m there, and leave them something to snack on and think wistfully of me when I return home.

Stressing over Thanksgiving? Hardly. Rather, giddy with excitement and indecision and curiosity: what will I make? Will it turn out awesome or merely good? Will there be leftovers, and if so, will I have to share them? So much to know, so much to look forward to. All holidays should be big food parties, and will be, if I have any say in the matter. Now, what’s for breakfast?

In other news, I’ve got a stack of books to read from my last library collection expedition (nevermind when I will find time to read them). I’m quite excited about one called Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. Aside from looking like an interesting novel, as it purports to tell the tale of a young gay Japanese man just after World War II, and his struggle to express his identity, the title caught my eye because it is a phrase in a Protest the Hero song. Protest the Hero is a Canadian metal band that I enjoy listening to, in no small part due to their occasional forays into literary, historical, or feminist dialogue. I’m curious as to whether the phrase “in the confessions of a mask” is in any way linked to the title of this book. My current hunch is that I am likely deluding myself. The lyrics to the particular song “Divine Suicide of K.” were apparently written by the band in high school. It seems a bit of a stretch that they would have encountered this particular novel and had it resonant so strongly with them in high school, when I never encountered it or the author while pursuing my bachelors in literature (although it was an English degree, technically). The chance is there, however, and I fully intend to read the novel with this thought in the back of my mind. And perhaps with Protest the Hero playing on my computer. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The second must-finish project was my stash vest: a patternless monstrosity of bright green blue and red stripes. It turned out surprisingly well. Now I am onto several other things, a sad sock whose brother has been an only child far too long, a sweater for a friend, and other things. I guess the sock is on the “finish this month” schedule, but I’m not sure if anything else is. Guess one project this month is acceptable, since Feb is such a short month.

Portrait of Madame Arthur Fontaine, by Odilon Redon, in pastel

Basically, I’m thinking of writing in this again and needed to push down that last post so that I don’t immediately get discouraged by the length of time between posts.

Picture courtesy of a conversation with my sister, when she told me about Odilon Redon, Gustave Klimt, and Egon Schiele.

Why this depiction of “female satisfaction”? The images, especially the geyser, are traditional images for male ejaculation (and thereby, male sexual satisfaction). Why are they being used to show how satisfied the woman is by the sex? I find the question of whose satisfaction we are witnessing even more problematic when the woman in either couple is depicted, more or less unperturbed, standing beside the gushing whatever. That doesn’t look very satisfying to me, even if they do both smile a bit.

The KY Intense site has such reassuring information as “The K-Y® Brand’s market research team understood the link between a woman’s physical pleasure from intimacy and her overall intimate satisfaction.”

Also it seems a little confused as to whom the product affects: “K-Y® Brand INTENSE™ was specially formulated for a woman’s use, but will not affect a male partner when used as directed.”

OR DOES IT? “K-Y® Brand INTENSE™ allows a woman to experience a whole new level of sexual satisfaction and helps her partner enjoy a more intense and pleasurable sexual experience.” (my emphasis)

Beneath the whole fluff of advertising, there may be a decent product. There may even be a necessary product. That is not what I am remarking upon. Rather, the issue is how even a product for female sexual satisfaction is still marketed using images that portray male satisfaction. Can’t it be just about me, even for a moment?

I wonder what images our society even has for female orgasm. Fireworks seem appropriate, although they still carry the phallus /rocket idea. The so-called “reaction room” at the site features this image (fireworks around a phallus the Eiffel Tower). This site also shows such unambiguously male ejaculatory symbols as a cork popping out of a bottle and a volcano exploding. Also odd are the portrait of a couple on a beach that, when administered with KY Intense, expands to include a child, or the bunny slippers that breed like rabbits. The prize for creepiest attempt at depicting female satisfaction goes to the item on the bookshelf, presumably a stereo or some sort. Wave the magic KY intense wand over it and you are treated to a few seconds of an extremely deep man’s voice (“Baby-ahhh”), some “fat beats”, and a drawn-out male gasp/sigh.

An odd advertising strategy over-all. Kudos to KY for considering us lowly females’ sexual satisfaction, but couldn’t they find a way to sell it without limiting the occurence of female sexual pleasure to male orgasm?

For those who want to watch the commercials, the links are here and here.

We’ll see if that will work. Knitting is probably a good calming, pre-work activity because I get bored of it pretty quickly, unlike watching tv episodes (I’ve still got one of Dexter to catch up on) or reading a book.

This Saturday, I’m going to attend the wedding of a neighbor of mine. He’s only two years older than me… weird to think that people like me are getting married now. My mom and I are going so as to represent our neighborhood solidarity, but I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea. I barely know him or his brother. It is a little odd to be attending the wedding of someone you don’t really know. But my mother wanted to go to her friend’s son’s wedding, so I’m going as her date, basically.

Maybe I’ll flirt with all the eligible young men that will (of course) be in the crowd. I’m sure my mother would be amused. Or I’ll get drunk on champagne and embarrass everyone else. There are all kinds of wonderfully exciting things that could happen that probably won’t.

One thing I know: I won’t be catching the bouquet. I’d rather let it hit me in the head. (That doesn’t count, does it? I figure it’s like football or something….)

Anyways, this book supplements Ms. Hesser’s experience as a chateau chef with her observations about the elderly French gardener M. Milbert. Divided season by season and month by month, she fills the book with recipes based on the Burgundian garden’s seasonal harvest. While I’ve flipped through most of it, a more indepth reading has only taken me through September or October at the moment. The idea of the garden is charming, growing all kinds of things from potatoes, onions, and leeks, to plums, cherries, and currants. The recipes are pretty fancy, even if they are not all terribly time-consuming, and described in a much more poetic fashion that usually reserved for cookbooks.( So far, I’ve read the word “unctuous” more times here than probably in the past year.)

Although the recipes in the book sound delicious, it is (predictably) the garden anecdotes that interest me the most. I want a walled kitchen garden with a stone cottage opening out to it. I want a plot of thyme growing right outside the kitchen door. I want to weed and turn the soil and worry about rain. Alas, I am stuck here in this apartment with little space to garden and the wrong season.

I’ve been daydreaming about my future garden (ie next year’s garden, then the year after that’s and the year after that’s…) instead. It is a little surprising how quickly I’ve forgotten my gardening knowledge. What blooms first in the spring – daffodils or grape hycinth? When do I start getting peas off my plants? What about strawberries? I’m going to have to look at some gardening books to make sure that I’m mentally planting everything at the right time and in the right space (will onions affect the taste of strawberries? Will tomatoes kill other plants? Or keep off bugs?).

One pleasant thing about my new gardening urge: my best chance to start the garden of my daydreams is to return to Winchester when I graduate. And as this is probably my most responsible option post-graduation, it is also now one of the more appealling. I don’t need to see my boyfriend all the time if I have nigh unlimited gardening space. Also this would be the best for a planted garden, as opposed to a potted one, since I could start my garden there in the spring and visit it on weekends, then move back when my lease was up at the end of May or in the beginning of May, right after I graduate. Otherwise, I won’t be able to plant things until rather late in the season.

Peas are factoring into my daydreams most majorly at the moment, hence my worries about planting seasons being up before my move. June is way past pea-planting season. Potatoes, too, are an early crop, as well as a vegetable I greatly care for. A strawberry bed is really only feasible at my parents’ house, since it is a perennial planting, and just so happens to be part of their plan for next year.

The house in Winchester is luring me back to it with something else: its kitchen. A lovely, new kitchen with quality appliances including a gas stove/oven. And all kinds of utensils that I haven’t found the time or money to buy yet. When I cook there, I have to remember that things will cook in about half the time I am expecting, since the stovetop flames immediately instead of slowly pushing heat through the electric coils. More counterspace! More cabinets!

And best of all, a willing taste-test crew! Yes, my family are consistantly the most willing to try my concoctions and compliment them way beyond the food’s deserving. My mother likes many of the same foods  that I do, and I know she is feeling the same pinch of cooking things that no one else wants to eat… Dad and the brother, if they eat it at all, are almost certain to say nice things about the food. None of the suffering looks while shoveling food to which my roommate subjects me.

Granted, I’m not sure that I want to move back home, despite the allure of a garden and a nice kitchen. The tension between my dad and my brother is a little upsetting, but mostly, I’ve simply enjoyed living with people my own age and I don’t look forward to returning to the (now a little suffocating) nest. My parents, especially mom, try very hard to show me that they know that I am not quite a little girl anymore, but they still forget. And our lifestyles may not make us very good roommates. I’ve developed a more night-owlish existence than they have, and those extra hours after everyone has gone to bed, including (it seems) all of Winchester, can be rather lonesome.

Of course, a true gardener rises with the sun and goes to bed with the sun (sounds toasty), so maybe I’d adapt. Whatever happens, I’ll find someway to be happy and have a garden and my own space.

First off, I found it distracting that the author shifted from talking about works that allow the reader to escape into them to talking about works that are about somebody escaping. Not the same thing. I feel that the issue here anyways isn’t really something that is primarily a writer’s issue. Escapism is a reader’s issue. It is a way to approach a work. While at times a challenging undertaking, one can read almost any work in an escapist manner. I myself am guilty of reading Othello in an escapist fashion: I read it for the deliciously diabolical character of Iago and enjoy his mental acrobatics without allowing myself to get mired in the issues of jealousy and racism and whatnot. It may not be so easy to accomplish with other works that are staunchly against being read as escapism. I imagine that it is difficult to read, say, Heart of Darkness in an escapist fashion, but it is possible that it may be pleasantly escapist for someone.

Writers are also readers. Many writers also write in a way that will encourage readers to read their books (with style, content, characters, logical progression of events, that sort of thing). With these two things in mind, it is logical that writers would write works that facilitate being read as escapist. If people are going to read it as escapist anyways, where is the point in making it a deep psychological condemnation of mankind? Or, why not do both? If an author throws in some aspects that encourage escapist reading: absurd creatures, exciting color schemes, attractive people, melodrama, he or she can also work in other things, social commentary, etc. Hominids comes to mind, with the attractive French-Canadian woman. Oh, pardon, she was a scientist…. who stripped down to her (lacy) underwear within the first 10 pages of the novel, neatly signaling to readers “Hey, I’ve got some good escapist elements here! You may have to sift through my ravings against humanity, but there are probably breasts in here! Almost certainly!” The fact that he reneges on this promise is of no account.

So we have works come about that are written to focus on the huge market for escapist reading: the old pulp works that our author was trying offhandedly to defend, and the many many sf works out there that focus mainly on the elements mentioned above (possibly without the color scheme, but on that note, anyone seen the Avatar preview? Just how blue do these aliens have to be before we stop taking them seriously?). Expectations of escapist readings effect the plot of the story, as well. We all knew that Bella was going to end up with Edward. Or Jacob. Or at least die dramatically due to her refusal to chose between the two. I haven’t even read them and I can tell you that much was bound to happen. She wasn’t going to get sick of this nonsense and go get a sane life as a bank teller or an insurance agent. I hear that Meyers even offers a solution for the age-old problem of what to do with the left-over lover once the love triangle is resolved. If you don’t know, ask your friends. It’s pretty hilarious, in a creepy sort of way.

Works, of course, that are trying to dissuade people from reading them in an escapist manner (the author uses the term “realist” here, but I’m not sure if his sense is immediately accessible) will try to avoid things that we as readers know trigger an escapist reading: breasts, pretty people, happy endings, that sort of thing. (Okay, I’m being somewhat flippant here, but really we all know what our escapist stories have in them and there is probably an enormous amount of overlap that may or may not surprise you.) Anyways, let’s call the reading approach opposite “escapism”… “illuminating”. It isn’t the best, but “intellectual” has some of the wrong connotations, so illuminating will have to do. By that, I mean that the reader is approaching the text with the intent to acquire some insight, to determine and evaluate the author’s stand on a variety of different issues. This is generally the sort of reading encouraged in our literature classes. Again, one can approach almost any text with this sort of reading, hence our sf class, however, it is again facilitated or made difficult by the contents of the text.

To conclude, I am claiming that “escapism” is first and foremost a reader’s action, not the writer’s. Escapist works are those that aim to be read in this fashion, but terming any book strictly escapist or not escapist is problematic because there is always that one smartypants (or occasionally, lots) who says “yeah, well, I can watch Star Trek for its deep anxieties over whiteness and the postcolonial societies that it grew out of.” Or there are troublemakers like myself who say “Yes, I know Othello is a tragedy concerning a man’s destruction of himself and those he loves because of his failure to think twice about his actions, but, really, I just read it for Iago. He’s so dreamy. They should totally make a new movie of Othello with Iago played by Hugh Jackman.”

Getting longer....

The new process is obviously much tidier than the former, and less work. Don't know why it took me so long to think of it...

Other posts will have to wait until I’ve done some more work around here, but I had a fantastic weekend!