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My perfect mashed potatoes

The secret is in the water; literally, it’s IN the water.

See, when you boil potatoes, a lot of special starches and sugars and stuff leeches out into the water. When you drain the water before mashing them, you throw away a lot of good stuff, which is a big part of what makes mashed potatoes “dry” and bland, even when you add large amounts of cream and butter and things.

So don’t throw out any water.

Here’s how you do that:

First, cut your potatoes into smaller cubes than you probably do. (I’ve left the skins on for flavor and also, that’s where a lot of a potato’s nutrients are, like protien and iron and vitamins B and C, just to name a few)

The reason for cutting them smaller (besides avoiding giant peices of skin) is so that there is less space in the pot between each peice for water to fill, so you use less water to cook them. That’s important because you won’t be draining any water, so you can’t afford to have too much water! For the same reason, just barely cover them with water when they go on the stove.

But! Before you do that, put the pot on the stove with some butter, garlic, and seasonings; let the butter start to sizxle just a little then put most of a single layer of potatoes in the pan and let the brown and sear. Turn them, brown them on all sides, get ‘em fairly dark (I forgot to get a pic here because I was worried I’d burn the butter).

Ready? now throw the rest of the potatoes in right on top, and add your water, give them a stir. This way, you’re boiling in some of that lovely fried potato/french fry flavor.

Okay, so, as they cook, you may need to add a little water, not too much! ideally the very highest piece of potato will be poking just above the surface. Now, when your potatoes are really really soft, mash them directly into the water. Just pull them off the stove, leave all the water in, and start mashing. Trust me. At first you’ll think there’s too much water. If you get them mashed and they ARE a little too liquidy, just put ‘em back on the stove. You’ll have to stir often or constantly, but they will steam off additional water without losing any good stuff.

Now add some salt, and taste. Right?! And you haven’t even put in any cream or cheese or anything yet.

Speaking of which, you can use like, a third of the amount of butter or cream or anything, and they will still taste better than usual. So they taste better AND they are higher in nutrients AND lower in fats and salts! That’s a lot of win — enjoy your potatoes!

Fuck Columbus! Indigenous Rights! And happy Thanksgiving!

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Ready for some delicious syrup made from grape hyacinth (muscari) flowers?! LET’S GO.

Ingredients:

1 cup grape hyacinth flowers

1 cup water

2 cups sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Instructions:

Wash the flowers (we REALLY don’t want bugs in our syrup).

Add the flowers to a mason jar or other heat-safe container. Pour 1 cup boiling water over the flowers and let infuse for 1-2 hours (no longer or it can turn bitter!)

Strain the flowers and add the infusion to a pot along with the sugar and lemon juice.

Simmer over medium heat, until the sugar is completely dissolved.

At this point, your syrup is technically done. BUT if you want it to be thicker, you can continue simmering, stirring occasionally, until it’s to your liking.

Remove from heat and pour into a sterilized mason jar. At this point you can either 1) Store your syrup in the fridge if you plan to use it soon, or 2) Water bath can it for long term storage.

YOU DID A SYRUP! This can be used to make lemonade, mixed into cocktails, poured over ice cream. . . you do you!!

[studyflxwer]

I let myself rest and now I'm daydreaming about academia and academic research and writing again

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Cooking horror game where you play as a cook working in the galley of a ship in the 1800s. There’s some kind of supernatural nautical horror story going on in the background but you barely notice this because you spend all day cooking in the galley.

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Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

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the fact that "eco" and "ethical" are two separate concerns in the global north, and that "eco" is a much more popular concern, with many "eco" products being made in actual sweatshops, is a big part of why i am The Joker

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This is the funniest thing I've ever read. I would have LOVED to see that

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Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF

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why did no one tell me quantum computers looked like that

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not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]

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I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.

There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.

And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.

I've always wanted a green burial, and I find it comforting that when my remains are laid in the ground, they'll be accompanied by the tiny ecosystems I spent a lifetime tending, and who will return the favor by sending my molecules off in a billion new directions.

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“Discipline consists of various techniques, which aim at making the body both docile and useful. The human body becomes a machine, the functioning of which can be optimised, calculated and improved through the internalization of specific patterns of behaviour,” wrote the philosopher Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish.

Don’t we all have friends who are fanatical about skin care and don’t… really (whispers) have great skin? How can that be? It’s simple: the end product of a skin care regimen isn’t perfect skin, but the regimen itself — something that, in high American style, you have to steadily escalate over time, lest you stagnate. Don’t you want to improve?

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A customer contacted our team with questions, and then finished their email with: "I am daunted by the complexities and unknowns." I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

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Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF