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Nov. 1st, 2009 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksSo ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaudior is doing National Finish My Fucking Novel month this month. I... know better than to think that's possible on my end, but I am going to seriously throw myself at this brick wall. Tentative hopeful deadline of February, at which point I will have been writing this book for four #!@#(! years and oh god I am so looking forward to making draft. Because revising is the part that will actually go quickly.
Apart from that it has been pretty boring on my end. I have been knitting. The teach-myself-to-knit scarf is now taller than I am, and the balls of yarn seem about the same size they were when I started. There is some kind of yarn black hole going on here. But I have learned to cable, and found my natural gauge, and am comfortable with several kinds of increase and decrease. Am trying to prevent myself from starting to learn colorwork on this scarf, as since I do not know how long it is going to be I do not want to have a bit full of colorwork stuck randomly in somewhere along the length without having any symmetry or rhyme or reason to it. But colorwork is very, very tempting.
Have also been cooking a lot. Upon checking my last progress-in-learning-to-cook post, I find that I am pretty happy with where I've gotten in the last couple of years. I don't really have a repertoire, because about a year and a half ago I stopped using recipes for almost all non-baking purposes; this is because I've internalized the ability to look at the fridge, figure out what would make a good dinner, and make it. So I wouldn't say I have a repertoire because I almost never make the same thing twice the same way-- after all, the next time I make a thing I probably won't have leftover stock from the precise soup I had this time. But I have a set of things I know how to work with, and some good notes both mental and written on what works and doesn't work with what. The standard I am aiming for on a day-to-day basis has gone from 'edible' to 'professional or better', and some things that have come out of this kitchen have been so good it's been difficult to believe.
I can now make dinner for three people three evenings a week with some reliability, without collapsing or screaming too much at anybody. Or two people four or five days a week.
I can make mayonnaise and aioli. I can poach an egg. I can make an omelet I will eat, which makes me happy as I cannot eat most restaurant omelets because they are leathery. I can make the best quiche I have ever had, and I have found ways I like to cook Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, and chard, all of which I hate. I can buy a bunch of parsley in confidence that half of it will not go bad before I get to it. I can get three or four dishes on the table at the same time, and I don't use every pot in the house for a meal.
I still can't reliably estimate how much longer it's going to take to make something than seems reasonable, so sometimes I get those dishes on the table c. 10 pm. My knifework sucks and does not seem to be getting better; I think I will actually need an instructor to fix that. (I cut myself about every other day, and it should not take fifteen minutes to dice a tomato.) I have yet to find anything that makes zucchini remotely edible.
And that's about what has been going on.
gaudior is doing National Finish My Fucking Novel month this month. I... know better than to think that's possible on my end, but I am going to seriously throw myself at this brick wall. Tentative hopeful deadline of February, at which point I will have been writing this book for four #!@#(! years and oh god I am so looking forward to making draft. Because revising is the part that will actually go quickly.Apart from that it has been pretty boring on my end. I have been knitting. The teach-myself-to-knit scarf is now taller than I am, and the balls of yarn seem about the same size they were when I started. There is some kind of yarn black hole going on here. But I have learned to cable, and found my natural gauge, and am comfortable with several kinds of increase and decrease. Am trying to prevent myself from starting to learn colorwork on this scarf, as since I do not know how long it is going to be I do not want to have a bit full of colorwork stuck randomly in somewhere along the length without having any symmetry or rhyme or reason to it. But colorwork is very, very tempting.
Have also been cooking a lot. Upon checking my last progress-in-learning-to-cook post, I find that I am pretty happy with where I've gotten in the last couple of years. I don't really have a repertoire, because about a year and a half ago I stopped using recipes for almost all non-baking purposes; this is because I've internalized the ability to look at the fridge, figure out what would make a good dinner, and make it. So I wouldn't say I have a repertoire because I almost never make the same thing twice the same way-- after all, the next time I make a thing I probably won't have leftover stock from the precise soup I had this time. But I have a set of things I know how to work with, and some good notes both mental and written on what works and doesn't work with what. The standard I am aiming for on a day-to-day basis has gone from 'edible' to 'professional or better', and some things that have come out of this kitchen have been so good it's been difficult to believe.
I can now make dinner for three people three evenings a week with some reliability, without collapsing or screaming too much at anybody. Or two people four or five days a week.
I can make mayonnaise and aioli. I can poach an egg. I can make an omelet I will eat, which makes me happy as I cannot eat most restaurant omelets because they are leathery. I can make the best quiche I have ever had, and I have found ways I like to cook Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, and chard, all of which I hate. I can buy a bunch of parsley in confidence that half of it will not go bad before I get to it. I can get three or four dishes on the table at the same time, and I don't use every pot in the house for a meal.
I still can't reliably estimate how much longer it's going to take to make something than seems reasonable, so sometimes I get those dishes on the table c. 10 pm. My knifework sucks and does not seem to be getting better; I think I will actually need an instructor to fix that. (I cut myself about every other day, and it should not take fifteen minutes to dice a tomato.) I have yet to find anything that makes zucchini remotely edible.
And that's about what has been going on.
