But no one can say I'm not keeping busy. Made a coconut sambol for tomorrow, and am in the midst of a long recipe for lamb satay, yum. It's a dish I really like, and I don't make it often because a) it takes a while and b) it's loaded with coconut milk. Rich. :-) This is advance cooking for a small dinner party tomorrow; Jeremy Adams (of the Independent Press Association) is coming to town and coming over, and there are various people I'd like him to meet, some of whom I'd like to meet each other too (Karen and Roshani will finally meet, yay!). It'll be straining my seating past the limit, but there'll be plenty of good food -- people can always sit on the floor if they have to...
This is all in between fifty page chunks of the Thackeray. I could just sit and read it all in one go, I suspect -- it's continuing quite funny, and he often surprises me, which is remarkably rare in these old novels. But it's good for me to get up and do things, too. Read some, chop onions. Read some, fry onions. Read some, chop more onions. (There's other stuff in between, but there is, inevitably a lot of onion chopping when I cook curry.) I'm trying some adventurous stuff this time around; if it goes well, I'll let you know. Here's the tentative menu, for the curious:
- assorted toasts: shrimp curry (* = mom's recipe), curried mushroom pate (new MA invention), cheese and mango chutney (adapted from tea sandwiches)
- chicken and potato biryani rice (*)
- uppuma (*)
- skewered lamb satay in coconut milk (Charmaine Solomon cookbook, adapted from beef recipe)
- eggs nested in chili onions (my invention)
- green beans and carrots in yellow curry (ditto, based on *)
- chili leeks (*)
- cabbage mallung (Solomon)
- coconut sambol (Solomon)
- chutney (jar)
- raita (Solomon)
See, I told you you would love VF. Unfortunately, his other books are not in the same league. Whatever you do, avoid reading Trollope, because if you read one you are doomed to reading about seventy more wonderful wonderful novels. Knowing you, especially avoid reading the Palliser novels. You won’t get anything else done in life for the next year.
Yummm! That food sounds delish!!
Sigh, it always makes me hungry when you do that… but don’t stop.
Now if y’all just come visit me in Chicago, you too could have dinner parties thrown for you…
GAC, thanks for the note re: Thackeray’s other books; will keep in mind. Ditto Trollope — definitely not planning on seventy more any time soon. Is this your academic period, or do you just happen to know lots about it?
Hmm, well my doctorate is in American Literature pre-twentieth, with a minor in Victorian, so I am enmeshed in the 19th century. Really, though, I am a constant reader, still teaching, and have been doing it for a long time. It all adds up to knowing a lot of stuff. I teach everything, though, Chaucer, Renaissance, 18th Century, mostly I stop around the death of Edith Wharton.
I read hundreds of journals every week, and I like to start with you (and let me admit it, Schmuel, whom you led me to) early in the morning before my day begins. I don’t read any other webjournals with regularity. Boy, are you ever going to love Trollope some day, especially The Eustace Diamonds and The Small House at Allington.
so GAC do you want to help me with this paper I’m writing on Denise Levertov… probably not. outside your scope of… focus. but i’m stuck. sadly stuck with trying to relate her poetics to modern date poets a la Joseph Stroud. anyone? anyone?
Well, I have taught Levertov a bit but don’t really know more about her than the average street vendor. What I read was good, though. But the next time you plaintively query about “The Revolt of Mother,” I might respond.