In which nobody will find this interesting, but I’ma write it anyway because I feel like it!
One thing I thought, at first, was really cool about the whole MIU campus experience was the vegetarian (!!!) dining hall. Vegetarian! All of it! I’d gone vegetarian within, I think, half a year of moving out on my own, and like everything at that age, it felt new and right and fresh and moral and wonderful.
Every single meal offered at Annapurna, the MIU campus dining hall, contained rice & dal. So you might go in for a meal and find deeps on the hot bar containing rice, dal, and then mixed vegetables, and maybe veggie burger patties or tofu slabs or beans or whatever the regular menu was. Always rice and dal, every single day without fail. There was always a salad bar and a milk dispenser. Pretty sure there was fresh bread, too? At least there was always bread and toasters. There was always hot milk with ghee at dinner, so you could take some in a thermos back to your dorm to drink before bed (because apparently Ayurveda said boiled milk with ghee balanced Vata or something. It was supposed to help you sleep, at any rate, and there was a big pseudo-scientific explanation about denatured protein strands or something that probably wouldn’t hold up if I could remember it clearly enough to research it, but with a little sugar and a pinch of turmeric it was really tasty).
Breakfast always had milk and cereal, plus something hot, like toast and eggs and/or tofu scramble, but I basically never went to breakfast unless I’d been up all night. There were herbal teas available all the time, but I don’t think there was coffee, I think you had to make your own in your room.
Anyway, most of the food was incredibly bland and unappealing to me then, even the exotic stuff. The dal was always Jain-style (because the place apparently couldn’t discern between “students” and “monks”?) so no onions or garlic, just asafetida, which is super boring. The vegetables were always overcooked. Even Mexican night was inexplicably bland, especially for a place with a spice rack literally the size of a barn door.
I remember that, when I finally understood, after I’d been working first in the kitchen and then on the cook’s aisle for awhile, that the two people who ran the place were both, like, trained professionals, basically experts, who cared about the food and the quality and the taste, I was surprised. Because the food was not good and did not seem, to me, to be the result of caring or expertise? The place literally served “dal pizza” on pizza night, which was made of nothing but dough, leftover dal with cinnamon added (??!), and fucking raisins. Sure, maybe a couple of the self-hating guys on Purusha (a group for dudes who were really on the program: celibate, restrictive diet, extra-long meditations, etc., the fraternity of Mother Divine, which was the same but for women) ate it, but it was absolutely devoid of joy, let alone tastiness or even nutrition.
It turned out they were extremely limited in what they could do because of all the Ayurvedic and other strictures handed them by admin. At the time, the opinion was that Ayurveda said onions and garlic were too stimulating for anybody meditating twice a day, and furthermore required all the fiber boiled out of vegetables. Made for bland feed, especially for college kids, but I guess that’s what admin, faculty and staff, and very “on the program” people wanted, so that’s what they got, even though the paying customers (aka students) wanted tastier food.
Most of us survived on milk, rice with butter and soy sauce, toast, and cereal, and waited for our favorite meal to rotate by again. (Mine was what they served for Thanksgiving: tofu slabs, broccoli, and mashed potatoes with a really awesome vegetarian gravy I still make to this day.)
Anyway, that place was my introduction to Indian food, and I don’t think there was ever roti or chapati served at Annapurna, only rice. So I never learned to eat dal and flatbread back then, even though that’s probably how nearly all of India does it.
But now, thirty years later, I have, and I LOVE ROTI AND DAL!!! It’s so good! Especially for breakfast! It’s just completely delicious and filling and satisfying. And fast, if you make the dal and the dough in advance, then all that’s needed is to nuke some dal, heat up a pan and roll out a ball of dough.
I’ve also recently (recently? uh, within the past half decade or so?) learned how easy roti is. It’s so easy. It’s literally just flour, water, and a little technique.
ROTI
Combine whole wheat flour and water, enough to bind. Work into a ball, place in a bowl and cover. Let rest half an hour.
Heat a pan or griddle to medium high.
Take some dough, roll into a ball smaller than a ping pong ball. Dip in all purpose flour, then roll into a thin disc using as much flour as it takes to keep it from sticking to the counter.
Cook on the hot pan, undisturbed, for maybe 30 seconds, then flip. Press down repeatedly with a rolled-up dish cloth until the roti fills with steam and puffs up. Flip another time or three as needed to complete cooking.
Remove the roti to a flatbread warmer (or another towel), brush with ghee, and cover.
Continue until you have all the roti you want or are out of dough, and enjoy!
In which I had a massage appointment today!
About a year ago, a couple of women set up their massage practices in a building a few doors down from where I work and promptly started coming in for lunch enough that I met them, and eventually I booked an appointment with one of them and have been going every month or three since.
I don’t know exactly what the style she does is called, but it’s some variation on deep tissue. She’s Thai, so odds are non-zero it’s sen line work. Let’s just say it hurts, but a lot less than that German one that requires a dozen appointments where they dig their thumbs into your body like you’re being interrogated.
Anyway, as I was lying there experiencing the touch and subjective feelings of nurturing and care of a massage, it occurred to me that a lot of people have never had a professional massage in their entire lives, let alone enough of them to have opinions about the various styles, and I felt really kind of sad about it. Getting a massage is, well, good for you. Not to sound like a “wellness” peddler, because I’m not, but it truly is a net benefit to get body work even if you’re not particularly injured.
The first time is a little nervous-making, because you’re doing stuff you just never do in the course of your regular life: undressing in a strange room, lying naked under a sheet while a stranger rubs you, experiencing all the endorphins that you have, until now, only ever experienced in the presence of your intimates: people like your mom, or your child, or your very nearest and dear-ests. And it does take a few sessions with each new therapist until you can just lie there and take it without worrying about reciprocity, farting, or sweating on the sheets.
But OH MY FUCKING GOD, IS IT WORTH IT, and for a whole list of reasons.
Continue reading »
In which it must suck to be a first responder.
It’s the 4th here in M-F, which means at least ten amateur large fireworks displays within a half mile of our house. It’s insane. I can sit on the patio and see four without even turning my head, it’s loud as hell, and even in the dark there’s a massive smoke haze.
Heard about four sirens half an hour ago, and then another two or three shortly after, so I assume all the first responders are already out dealing with fires and blown-off digits. Went ahead and ran the big sprinkler on full blast in the dry back yard so that if (when) a shell lands it won’t set the entire property on fire.
Note to self: next year, figure out how to hose down the entire roof by, oh, 8:45. Just in case.
It’s a truly enormous amount of fireworks out here every year. Just 360 degrees of noise and smoke and pretty lights. I don’t mind fireworks, but I can totally see how this night would suck ass if you were back from Iraq with PTSD or whatever.
I tried to take a photo of the view from the patio, but cell phones aren’t great for that sort of thing. Just know there are A LOT OF FIREWORKS VISIBLE FROM OUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW!
In which I can’t fucking cook AT ALL anymore?!
Yesterday, I hurt my back walking across my kitchen. Just walking. (After doing several other things, chores, window cleaning, and dropping something and startling so hard I somehow actually caught it: that was probably when the twinge really began. But we’ll say I was walking. Because I was.)
It was fine by bedtime, but sleeping fucked it up. Getting out of bed hurt, a lot, and would have looked ridiculous had anyone been present to see it. Sitting on my chair through CCP exam prep hurt like hell, so halfway through I texted work and asked if anybody could come pick me up (because I doubted I could get on my bike, and didn’t want to have to walk).
They told me they didn’t need me and to just take the day off, since I have to work Sunday anyway. So I did!
Lying down hurt, I nearly died trying to get up to pee, and sitting hurt too. But standing was okay, comparatively, so I decided to make tamales. Tamales! Yay!
I’ve had the ingredients for literally a year, because I just kept not making tamales. The cotija was nicely aged and really delicious. I put it in the mini-chopper because fuck grating by hand when you’ve got electricity.
I doubt it was the same can of artichoke hearts; pretty sure I made some dip and replaced those once or even twice, but the masa is definitely a year or two old—I had to sift it to get the clumps out.
Soaked the very dry corn husks in hot tap water for two hours, but they probably could have used three. I don’t really know, because I’ve never used corn husks before (this is maybe my third attempt at tamales, and the other times I just used parchment paper).
I made sauce from scratch from dried chiles and garlic! Because I’m cool like that! And I know how!
Except I very nearly reduced it all the way down to ash, but luckily walked back into the kitchen just in time to take it off the heat and add a little water to bring it back. Thank God.
Get you a friend who gives you an entire set of Pyrex bowls that once belonged to her grandmother because she “doesn’t use them, and you will” like I did, and then you too will have an entire set of kick ass retro Pyrex bowls! Look at that shit! Nesting bowls! Pyrex! Retro! Free!
It’s been two and a half hours, but I’m all ready now! Inexpertly assembled my artichoke and cotija tamales with masa that I suspect, from my extensive watching-Mexican-chicks-on-YouTube tamale training, was just slightly too runny. But still viable! Husk, masa, cotija, and diced artichokes. Yum! Gonna be so good! Got them all more-or-less upright on a mat of additional corn husks, on a trivet, inside the Instant Pot, over two cups of water. Yes.
They spent 40 minutes in the pressure cooker, and when I let the pressure off so I could open the Instant Pot, it didn’t smell deliciously corny and savory with cheese and artichokes. It smelled ever-so-slightly of… Playdoh.
So here’s the thing. We all have bad habits, right?
Well, one of mine is occasionally using oil out of the fryer. Do I know this is stupid? Yes I do. Do I do it anyway? Yes I do. Has it ever come back to bite me in the ass? No it has not.
Not until today.
My masa recipe calls for six tablespoons of vegetable oil, and since I keep my vegetable oil in the back of a floor-level cupboard, and my back is fucked, and I didn’t know if I could get down onto and up off of the floor without crying, I opted to just use the oil in the fryer instead.
It’s relatively new because I recently replaced it, the oil, that is, and the color was fine, so I genuinely didn’t think twice about it. I do this shit all the time! All I ever use the fryer for is falafel anyway, so the oil might actually add some subtle flavoring to my boring, lard-free vegetarian masa recipe. Win-win, right?
Wrong.
Turns out the oil is rancid. All my work (and not-entirely-unrelated pain!) was basically wasted. Well, not really, I mean, they’re edible. I ate two. But only just barely.
If that oil were an hour older, these things’d cause cancer from all the free radicals.
So, now I have a dozen tamales, which normally I’d freeze with pride for future fast and super delicious dinners, that took hours to make, and to which I was looking so very forward because it’s taken me over a year to get around to making them, and I got an unexpected day off and needed to stand up anyway, that taste pretty bitter and bad.
Oh, and Monday I made dal makhani, but for some reason added nearly an entire teaspoon of methi powder, so even with a Hail Mary addition of sugar and extra cream it’s still bitter overall and fairly disappointing. Why the fuck did I do that?!
Conclusion: I can’t cook anymore.
I used to be able to, but now I can’t. I will now be forced to survive on salad and freeze-dried Indian food from Cumin Club.
—
UPDATE: It’s the next day and it wasn’t the oil. It was the masa itself. I tried to eat another tamale, it was gross, and the bag of masa flour was sitting right there, so I opened it and stuck my hand in and smelled it AND IT’S THE FLOUR, THE FLOUR IS RANCID. So I tossed it. And all my tamales. So sad.
In which I realized yesterday that I’ll be 60 in five years.
On Wednesday mornings, I attend a 2-hour class, via Zoom, for ACS CCP exam prep. Right now we’re covering milk, specifically acidulants used in cheesemaking, and even more specifically the difference between acids like lemon juice and acidity caused by the addition of cultures. I have my camera on but with a piece of tape over it, and I’ve just sat here in front of my computer and put on my makeup.
Not only is my entire face continuing to melt right the fuck off my skull; not only is my face’s already pronounced asymmetry getting much, much worse due to this process; not only do I now have two tiny, fine eyelashes growing out of the inner corner of my left eye for no goddamned reason; but it’s hard—so hard it verges on literally impossible—for me to use my own fingers to open compacts. My nails are now so thin and fine they break rather than grow, my fingers are weak compared to a decade ago, and a lot of my makeup products are samples, so they’re particularly small.
So, in order to open a tiny eyeshadow compact, for example, I have to use a tool. Specifically, a pair of tweezers. I can’t open tiny compacts without an auxilliary tool now. That’s how fucking old I am.
I keep expecting my body to still be 35. Whenever I witness some new process I’ve developed to accomplish something, like using a pair of tweezers to open a compact my fingers aren’t strong enough to open, I feel like I’m somehow failing. I should be stronger, I should be in better shape, this is all my fault.
But then I remember I’m literally pushing 60. That’s a really important data point. I’m much closer to 60 than I am to 43, let alone 35. Of course I have a weird method of getting out of bed; I’m old, and our mattress is still on the floor! Of course I need one of those sticky round things to open jars; I’m old and my hands were already tiny and comparatively weak to begin with! Of course I’m stiff for several minutes after getting up from sitting on the floor during an entire episode of ‘Picard’; I’m old and Westerners my age typically don’t sit cross-legged on floors for an hour and half at a time. (I’ve been a floor sitter my whole adult life, but it’s no longer easy as it once was now that I have no ass. Hormonal changes rearrange fat deposits, and collagen loss means one’s sit bones are virtually unprotected, so now I really need a folded-up blanket to sit comfortably.)
Although I no longer have Facebook or Twitter accounts, I do still use Instagram, and it keeps feeding me the Tiktok videos of some woman doing Gen X content. And every time I see her (which is more than once per session, alcorithms being the way they are), I think, “Gen X? I’m Gen X. That lady’s old.” And a split second later, I realize she’s probably a year or two younger than I am myself.
I’m old. I’ve finally aged into the dumb way I dress, with all the long skirts and flowy tunics and shit. My general shape and amount of remaining post-menopausal collagen are the result of genetics, not a personality flaw! It’s fine! I am worth more than the way I look!
Well, to myself, at least, if not to a society driven by an obsession with youth and sex. But that’s another rant.
And there have been compensations: I have a man who loves me anyway, an interesting job that’s also part-time, and we have a house I think is really cool-looking and wonderful and comfortable. I can buy groceries without checking my balance first. I have a vase full of red tulips from the yard sitting on the kitchen table. We just had the HVAC serviced, and the new capacitors have made an obvious difference. Birds are singing in my yard right this very moment, and I can hear them because it’s fine enough out to have some windows open! Life is good, even if I’m slower and weaker than I once was. I just have to remember that I’m not 43, I’m pushing 60, and that’s okay!
But Christ I’m old. Honestly. It’s so weird.
In which my life is super awesome and I’m not worthy.
It’s Sunday, so we slept in. I got up around one o’clock, or maybe noon, and had something to eat, and then, because it was a gorgeous, warm, green, rainy spring day, I went outside to meditate.
“Lusk Creek,” or rather, the irrigation ditch alongside our property, is full and high and running fast. It sounds absolutely wonderful, full of gurgles and swishes.
It was raining, but the patio is covered, and a breeze was blowing so my wind chimes were ringing.
Water and wind chimes are two things I’ve always liked, and now here they are! In my life, where I can just enjoy them whenever I want! I can see running water from my living room window, and the house came with half a dozen old wind chimes the sellers didn’t bother to pull down! And there’s not just a carport, but a separate covered patio too?! Absolutely amazing how lucky I am. It’s as if the universe manifested this house just for me to love to live in.
I love the light in every single room. I love the odd layout. I love the location. I love the jewel-toned rooms. Other than the neighbor’s endlessly-barking dog, and the occasional summer party bumping Tejano music on the next block, it’s incredibly quiet out here. The weather is mild three seasons of the year, but even the scorching summers aren’t that bad because it always cools off at night.
I get the impression the Yeti merely likes the house, but I fucking dote on it. Furnishing and decorating my own house has been just as fun as I’d always suspected it would be, after renting nearly all of the past 35 years of my life. I doubt I have any decorating taste or talent, but I enjoy the shit out of looking around at my house. I love the little gold mirror flower decals over my altar (representing Amma’s White Flowers meditation technique), and the Vishnu in the hallway (a piece of art I bought, what, over fifteen years ago, and have never hung before?!).
I love two of the three rugs we’ve bought in the past year, and the third matches well enough (I just don’t care for the pre-distressed look currently trending in rugs). I’m super happy with the kitchen now that it’s white rather than yellow (although I’m considering switching out the hardware from copper to silver).
And though the yard is likely to be brown by July, right now it’s lush and green and lovely!
Whether we live here for three years or twenty, I will have enjoyed myself a great deal.
In other news, I planted more herbs in pots yesterday, and participated in an online/virtual retreat over the weekend that was restorative and nurturing. Yay!
In which I knock out an entire to-do list.
I’m not sure what I intended to do Tuesday, no doubt I’d had a mental list, but what I ended up doing was a list of things literally more than a decade in the making.
I bought my Amma doll in the late 90’s. I’ve had the face repaired by the dollmakers, and I’ve had to repair the body myself after a dog carried her around, but suddenly it’s 2023 and the doll’s dingy and dusty and her clothes are yellowing and she’s half falling apart.
So Tuesday I put on some satsang videos on YouTube and got out my Amma doll!
I soaked her white clothes in Oxyclean, then hung them out on the line to air dry in the sun. I put her mala, bracelets and anklets into jewelry cleaner, then rinsed and air dried them. I brushed her hair and cleaned dust off her body. I mended two holes, dressed her again, reapplied her gopi chandan tilak, and refreshed her perfumes. I even sewed the lid back on the basket I keep her clothes in, and that thing’s been broken since before I left Iowa!
Now she looks and smells and feels brand new!
It was a lovely, quiet, contemplative day. Something very much needed. Haven’t seen Amma in three years now because of the pandemic; used to see Her every single year.
Maybe She’ll come to the U.S. this year!
om shree gurubhyo namaha hari om
In which politics is broken.
Periodically, I write to my representatives about something or other.
After some time, usually several weeks, I get an email, usually titled “Responding to your message,” which is always a form letter outlining the rep’s stance on whatever the issue is.
Their previous stance. They never indicate that my opinion as a constituent will affect how they legislate or vote at all.
I recently wrote about student loan relief. One of my reps responded with something soft about student burdens and then some vague shit about trade schools. (Specifically: “Trade schools, which generally cost less than do those offering a four-year degree, should be supported along with other types of post-secondary education. Such schools provide access to well-paying jobs usually with a lower burden of long-term educational debt. I am working to encourage and improve such offerings.”)
I… don’t care about which sort of college people went to? Doesn’t matter if it’s a state, trade, or ivy. I don’t give a fuck. I want student loan forgiveness. You’ve just said your response to student loan forgiveness is UTTERLY UNRELATED NONSENSE ABOUT TRADE SCHOOLS and A LOWER BURDEN OF DEBT, which means you’re not going to vote the way I fucking want you to.
People who want to go to trade schools should absolutely go to trade schools, literally nobody disagrees with this. Jesus fucking Christ, you moron. What we want is for it not to be obscenely expensive!
I understand staffers count the number of contacts that are either pro or con on any particular issue, but the canned responses never indicate that knowing what their constituents want actually impacts how our reps do their jobs at all. Except maybe briefly, in election years.
In which I’ve gotten up from a nap hungry.
Apropos of nothing, I have a sudden and intense desire for a fish sandwich from McD’s?!
What the hell! They’re terrible! Every time I eat one (this happens once or twice a decade, on average) I regret it.
—
Update: For the record, I settled for an open-faced tuna salad and tomato on toasted Ezekiel bread. It was delicious.
In which the internet is stupid. But it’s also awesome!
Made the mistake today of looking the house up on Zillow, and that bastard of a site had the nerve to estimate the value under what we paid for it only eleven months ago!
Well, I looked at recent sales of similar houses in the area, and they’re going for, like, $313k, so prices are still high and people are still paying them, which means their estimate is garbage. So screw you, Zillow!
—
Everybody at work thinks I’m some sort of diva for being afraid I can’t pass a test with no official text books, practice tests, or sanctioned goddamned course of study, and which features a pass rate of under 50%, but I know I can’t know what I don’t know I don’t know.
So I went online and asked r/cheese about study groups, and through the kindness of a stranger and a circuitous route of emails, I got admitted to an official STUDY GROUP for the Certified Cheese Professional test!!!
It starts a week from tomorrow, is conducted over Zoom, and is free. And now I think I have an actual chance to pass the test.
It turns out I’ve already read, or own and have begun to read, all the books the teacher recommends in the welcome email. So that’s a relief!
I did no studying at all this weekend. A mini-break before class starts!
—
I just can’t keep my nails done now that I’m menopausal.
I don’t know if it’s lack of collagen or what, but whenever I try to wear press-on, or even gel, nails, any moisture whatsoever that sits anywhere near the nail plate (which always happens at work, primarily because I have to wear gloves all the time) makes my nails lift. They just separate from the nail beds! It’s gross! And it takes months to grow them out and it sucks. I love the occasional manicure! And now I just… can’t have them anymore?
It’s bullshit.
And they’re far too thin for old school acrylics. If anybody took a Dremel to my nail plates it would go right through and hurt like hell.
Plus I’m terrified of what would happen if I smacked an acrylic nail against a cheese rack or something real hard. What if the entire nail came off instead of just the acrylic overlay?! How gross would that be?!
—
The Pendleton blanket — well, throw, really; it’s not a whole blanket — has arrived, and it’s glorious and beautiful and I love it. Here it is at the foot of the guest room bed.
I also got a Pendleton wool scarf, and it too is fantastic.
—
The diet is tedious and a pain in the ass, and I ate 2,607 calories on my cheat day because I was fucking starving and just wanted to be able to eat freely.
I managed to give up cocaine overnight but not eating food is a whole ‘nother level.
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I suck at anniversaries, but I do have a basic understanding of the passage of time and it occurs that the Yeti and I have known one another for a decade now.
And we’ll have been living together for nine years on April 16th. Really doesn’t seem that long at all, but time contracts more and more the older I get. Still, I begin to suspect that he’s a keeper!
—
I’m having the kitchen painted semi-gloss white on Friday.
Life is too short to hate your kitchen walls just because you chose a stupid matte color last April.
