Thing-a-day.com

Because I am still reading Jane Austen (five novels down, one to go!) and I am a fickle creature, I got tired of my old Jane Austen desktop that I made earlier this month and replaced it with a much simpler one.

As you might imagine, I hate a cluttered desktop, so I keep them relatively simple when I make them for myself. All elements here are public domain, so please download and use this if you like it and have a 1280 x 786 desktop.

And yay! I made it to the end of February!

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I have been doing things, but I’ve just been lazy in posting them, so here goes:

Day #24: Fried Rice with Bok Choy and Scallions

Day #25: Hummus and Pita Chips

Day #26: Steamed Kale with Miso-Tahini Dressing

Day #27: Commonplace Notebook

(Traditionally, a commonplace book is a notebook where people copy reading quotations as they come across them. This, however, is a book where I’m hand-writing my favorite poems, and perhaps some prose quotes, so I can carry them around with me.)

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OK, my track record here is pretty terrible. But, what problem is there that a chocolate chip cookie can’t solve?

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Nothing too adventurous today, just some focaccia.

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So, after having missed four days due to being busy, here is my thing:

The Serious Work of Being Dead

After the funeral,
Lying in mineral,
Blood-streamed with chemical –
No piece of chronicle,
No room for madrigal.

So, I’m not even going to dignify this with the word “poem” or even “verse exercise.” Just stringing together some similar sounding words and giving a ridiculous title to it. However, I am impressed that it came out in dactyllic dimiter. How many people do you know who write in dactyllic dimiter?

But, just because I am fascinated with the relationships between writers and readers, I will point this out: look how much we are indebted to to others, even when writing something under 20 words. “Piece of chronicle” is from John Donne’s “Canonization,” and the words chronicle and madrigal together comes from Edmund Blunden’s 1924 collection of John Clare poems Madrigals and Chronicles.

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Tonight I made a stir fry of bok choy and red onions for dinner. Actually, I suppose it’s closer to a braising of bok choy and red onions, but whatever, I’m not particular. The sauce over them was good, but I put way too many fennel seeds in it. Everything still turned out OK though.

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click to see full size (1280 x 786)

So right now I’m reading Jane Austen, and you Austen fans know what that means — a senseless craving to own empire waist dresses, or at least look a pictures of them. (*cough* and Hugh Grant and Colin Firth *cough*)

I made this desktop from a picture of a woman from 1817 on Wikimedia Commons. Eighteen-seventeen is a little late for Austen, but it’s the only picture I found that I could really work with. I’m just sort of experimenting with styles on this one, so she looks all blown up and grainy on purpose. The quote is, of course, the famous first sentence of Pride and Prejudice.

Feel free to download and use this if you like it.

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Am I the only person who’s ever thought of taking a cookie cutter to tofu? I doubt it.

However, this project didn’t turn out quite like I’d planned. I made the broiled tofu recipe from Veganomicon, dipped my tofu in braising sauce, placed it on a lightly oiled baking sheet, put it in the oven, and set the timer for 5 minutes. The total broiling time in the recipe is 16 minutes, but knowing my oven as I do, I knew that it would probably be 8 minutes, so I went and did something else and came back with one minute left on the timer to find the pan smoking. I think the pan itself started cooking at the edges.

I don’t have a broiler pan, but just used a baking sheet as the recipe said to do. However, my baking sheets are cheap and have been in that “ruined, but not enough to throw out yet” state for months. Well, tonight was the clincher. I’m getting some proper steel baking sheets before I bake anything else.

Since only the edges of the pan burned, the tofu came out OK. It didn’t have the broiled texture that the recipe describes because it was only in the oven for four minutes, but it came out like lightly baked tofu and was still good.

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So, I have no knowledge of sewing, so I obviously did not make these. My thing-a-day here is not the undies, but the pictures.

I like the combination of patterns and colors. And, I ask you, what is better than new underwear? Really?

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OK, after having missed a day I’m back with some more soup. This time, it’s Pookie Soup (so called for reasons I don’t care to disclose).

This soup isn’t very original or complicated, and I’m sure you could figure out how to make it on your own, but it’s special to me because it’s the staple soup of my household. Whenever there’s nothing around to eat, I always have the stuff on hand to make it. It’s a very free-form soup, but here’s the recipe.

• olive oil
• 1/2 medium-sized onion (I always use yellow onions sliced into half-moons)
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
• any combination of the following spices to taste: oregano, thyme, marjoram, or rosemary (I usually just use two at a time)
• two cups heated cooking liquid (I usually do a cup of salted and a cup of unsalted stock, but you could do all salted or all unsalted, or you could just use water)
• 1 28-oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes in juice, chunked with the juice reserved
• some starchy, grain-y, or legume-y type thing, whatever you have around. I use
  • 1 15-oz. can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, or
  • 1 15-oz. can of white beans, drained and rinsed, or
  • 1/2 cup long-grain rice (I prefer brown basmati), or
  • 1/2 cup couscous, or
  • 1 medium potato, cut into quarter-inch dice

  I like using these things over something, like say, kidney beans, which might overpower the other flavors.

How you make the soup ultimately depends on which starchy grain-y or legume-y type thing you’re using.

1. Heat however much olive oil you think you’re going to need in the bottom of a medium-sized pot.
2. If you’re using a potato, you’re going to have to fry/sautée it in the oil at medium heat for a long time before beginning the rest of the soup, probably 15-20 minutes or more, until the potatoes are tender. Then go on to step three. The advantage here is that you can chop and prepare everything else before hand.
3. If you’re not using the potato, sautée the onions until they’re soft, maybe 7-10 minutes.
4. Add the garlic and the spices and sautée for a couple more minutes.
5. Add the heated cooking liquid and the juice from the can of tomatoes. Bring to a boil and then turn down until it’s just simmering.
6. Add the chickpeas, beans, couscous, or rice. If you’re using the chickpeas or beans, just cook until they’re heated through, which should just take a couple of minutes. If you’re using couscous or rice, add another cup of water and then simmer. The couscous will only take 8-10 minutes to cook, while you’ll need to simmer the rice for 30 minutes or longer.
7. If using potato, add the tomatoes when the soup is simmering. If using chickpeas or beans, add the tomatoes with them. If using couscous or rice, add the tomatoes a few minutes before they’re done.
8. Serve hot. This makes about 5-6 bowls and tastes better the next day (what soup doesn’t?) If you used couscous, add another cup of water before storing. It really soaks up the liquid and no matter what you’ll probably have a gelatinous mass of couscous stew on your hands the next day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Today I made the Revolutionary Spanish Omelette from Vegan with a Vengeance. It’s supposed to be cooked in a frying pan, but my pan hasn’t reached the point where I can bake something in it in the oven and not have to spend hours scrubbing it afterwards. So, I did it in my new 9 x 13 Pyrex casserole dish.

Since it’s vegan, the “egg” is a tofu mixture made yellow by saffron and flavored with spices. Like the traditional omelette, it has potatoes and onions baked in it. Doesn’t look like all that much, but it’s one of my favorite dishes and I enjoyed making it since I haven’t had it in a while.

Ok, so I was not feeling very creative today. However, I am excited about Valentine’s Day for some reason. And, I’m getting tired of my desktop. So I decided to combine these two things and make a simple heart desktop.

It seems that I am so artistically inept that I cannot draw a decent heart or photoshop one from scratch. So, I took a public domain drawing of a heart that I found and manipulated it for my devious ends.

Ta-da! If you like it, feel free to use it. My desktop res is also a little wonky, so you’ll probably want to manipulate it to fit your desktop, unless you too have 1280 x 786.

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Another small thing for today.

Miso soup is a staple of Japanese cooking. Miso is a fermented paste made from soybeans, rice, barley, or other beans. Chances are, if you’ve eaten at a Japanese restaurant, they brought you out a little complimentary bowl of soup with weird stuff floating in it. That’s miso soup.

I like miso soup because it’s simple and comforting, and you feel all healthy when you eat it. Since I’m vegan, miso soup is sort of my chicken noodle soup. I personally just like it with seaweed, tofu, scallions, and miso, but some people put chopped vegetables and mushrooms in it. Miso can be found in Asian groceries, health food stores, and might even be found near tofu in large grocery stores. At home we use brown rice miso, which is dark brown and has a strong flavor, but you can use whatever kind of miso you like. The seaweed can be found in Asian groceries, health food stores, and probably in the “ethnic” section of large grocery stores. The advantage to keeping the soup simple and leaving vegetables and mushrooms out is that it only takes a little while to prepare, but if you want to add them, put them in before the tofu and scallions and adjust the cooking time accordingly. So, here’s my recipe for

Simple Miso Soup

• 6 cups water + 1 more for diluting the miso
• 1 large (5 or 6 inches) or 2 small (3 or so inches) pieces of kombu, wakame, or nori (leave the kombu whole, but chop the wakame or nori into small pieces)
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions
• 7 0z. firm tofu (1/2 pack of the stuff like Nasoya sold in grocery stores) chopped into 1/4-inch dice, no need to drain it
• 3 or more tablespoons miso, depending on how strong you like the miso flavor and what kind of miso you have
• soy sauce or salt to taste

1. Put the seaweed in a pot with the water and boil for 5-10 minutes. If you’re using kombu, use tongs to remove it from the pot and discard it or use it for another recipe. If you’re using a more…edible variety of seaweed, just keep it in the pot.
2. Add the tofu and scallions and simmer for another 5-10 minutes. Then turn the heat to low.
3. Take a glass measuring cup with one cup of water and microwave it for a minute. Add the miso to the warm water and use a spoon to mash it against the side of the cup and dissolve it. Once the miso is mostly dissolved and the water in the pot is no longer boiling, add it to the pot. (Miso’s healthful properties are destroyed if it’s boiled.)
4. Chances are that the miso flavor will be OK, but the soup won’t be salty enough. Don’t use more miso as a means of salting the soup! By the time it’s salty enough, the miso flavor will be way too strong and you’ll have wasted half a container of miso on one pot of soup. Instead, use soy sauce or salt to season it.
5. Serve hot. This makes 3-4 regular size bowls of soup, or twice as many small bowls if you’re using it as an appetizer.

And here are my results from today:

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My books.

I was going to write something to go along with this, but didn’t have time to write something good, so here goes. These are works of art that I have produced over the course of months or, in some cases, years. Each was the product of love, work, and personal growth.

The New College Latin & English Dictionary. Used nearly every day for two semesters.

The Selected Poetry of Lord Byron. Purchased when I was 16 or 17.

The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659. Used for only one class, one semester, but this book was loved and it shows.

The Poetry of Our World, an anthology of modern world poetry. Purchased this when I was 16. It introduced me to Elizabeth Bishop, Zbiegniew Herbert, Philip Larkin, Anna Akhmatova, Paul Celan, Shuntaro Tanikawa, and others.

John Clare Selected Poems. This is the first book of John Clare that I bought. It sat on my shelf unread for at least a year, and then, when I picked it up and read it, my life changed.

John Clare Major Works. My main workhorse during the year in which I wrote my thesis on John Clare.

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I decided to start small with my Thing-a-Day and make a new banner for this site. So there she is, Virginia Woolf, my muse of sort.

My specialty: I’m not good at drawing, but I am good at taking various elements that I didn’t make and photoshopping them together. Expect more of it to come this month.

If you do a Google image search for Virginia Woolf, you’ll turn up this picture about a million times. I got the pattern from Squidfingers.com, which has a tone of these great, tiny complex patterns that I like using for desktops and things.

See it in action at my other blog.

The field of literary criticism and studies has changed almost to irrecognizability over the last century. Whereas now literary and cultural theory dominate literary studies, it seems like literary criticism 100 or more years ago was just a white dude talking about how great another white dude was and comparing him to yet another white dude. The art was by no means precise. A Clare poem is “Blakean” and a Shelley poem has “liquid trilling notes of song” and if you don’t know what that means, then clearly you’re not in the literary criticism club.

Now, phrases like “liquid trilling notes of song” (which, I’m sure, somebody said about somebody) are enough to make me want to ralph into the nearest trash can, and I think a lot of critics starting in the ’30s felt the same way. I mean, what does that even mean? And when did praise suddenly pass for critical thought? Thus began the search for more precise and objective ways to analyze a piece of literature. Now, I have no illusions about the fact that true objectivity does not and cannot exist, but with things like literary and cultural theory, an attempt is made to at least use some sort of method or guiding principle when analyzing a work of literature. Theory helps the reader know where you’re coming from, which helps them anticipate your biases and assumptions. And, even if a critic is not using a particular theory, I think it still behooves her to write in such a way that her biases out in the open.

That being said, the process of reading and responding to literature is still highly subjective. How old were we when we picked up a particular work? Who did we have a crush on at the time? Where did we find the book? What was the cover like? Were the pages smooth? Did it smell good? While these things may seem irrelevant, they’re actually crucial to the experience because literary works don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s one of those “if a tree falls in the woods” type of questions. If a literary work exists and no one reads it, well, you can’t deny that it physically exists on paper, but it might as well not exist at all. When you read the work, it depends on you – on who you are as a reader and what kind of experience you bring to it. This is why we find ourselves able to read good works over and over again, because each time we read it, we essentially bring a different person to it who experiences it in a different way.

I’m bringing all this up because, even though saying that a poem has “liquid trilling notes of song” is not really useful to many people as criticism, subjective and personal accounts of literature still have their place and are still important. Those of us who study literature can probably remember a milestone in our lives that is in some way connected to a piece of literature. For instance, I can honestly say that stumbling across the facsimile edition of T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land on a shelf in Barnes and Noble when I was 16 changed the trajectory of my life and led me to where I am now as a student of literature.

And so, one of the things I’d like to do while I’m doing the Thing-a-Day is write some accounts of how I experience my favorite authors. This isn’t going to be “Me and T. S. Eliot: A Love/Hate Story,” but I’d like to shed a little light on how these authors strike me and how they affect my thinking and the ways that I react to the world around me.

I don’t know how many people would consider this a “creative” project (as opposed to knitting a slip cover for my MP3 player?), but to me, it’s definitely more creative and less critical. And I may not get around to it, because it’s something I’m not going to force. So, we’ll have to see.

crossposted at my other blog.