#wok sale

[trewelove]

NOT going to play y8 however im grateful for that bondbingo thing so many beautiful zhào tidbits all for ME!

[discyours]

Had to trash a ceramic nonstick pan after two months because the packaging didn't say anywhere on it that it can't handle high heat. When you look up care instructions it gives you some bullshit about how you "don't need high heat to cook your food in such high quality cookware".

Weak. Never speak to me again

[bestpickme]

✅ 5 Best Electric Wok on Sale 2023💥

[gaystan]

KENNY MCCORMICK’S first job was at age 15 and at city wok. they get to and from their job by a child’s size purple razor scooter bought at a garage sale for 50 cents

[feyburner]

Hello teacher feyre, I've been following your cooking tips and recipes and I wonder if there's any recipes/tips you have for someone who cooks only as a means to an end (food on the table), so something quick or easy. Thank you in advance!

You can’t go wrong with the basic carb + protein + veg. There are infinite variations on this in every cuisine. Whenever I’m cooking dinner it’s just carb (usually rice or quick homemade flatbread of some sort, sometimes Asian noodles; I’m not a pasta person) + protein (chicken, beef, pork, tofu) + veg (whatever was on sale).

The fastest and easiest way to cook things is sautee/stir fry imho, I know baked sheet pan meals are also a thing but for speed + Cooked Well I really only trust the oven for roasting veg. I’ve never had much luck with roasting meat in the oven, it never browns to my satisfaction (except for whole roast chicken). I only use the oven for braising.

Stir fry is hella easy. All you need for a good stir fry sauce is roughly equal parts salt/savory, acid, sweet, spice/herbs + some water or broth, maaaybe a thickener (cornstarch slurry). I usually just improvise with whatever I feel like. Soy sauce, rice vinegar, brown sugar or honey, chili sauce or sriracha as a base, add water or broth until you have enough to cover what you’re stir frying. Salt and black pepper. Not the fanciest but it takes 5 min.

A typical dinner I make is rice, chicken, onions + bell peppers. First get the rice going in the rice cooker. Usually just with water, sometimes with broth, or coconut milk + lime zest if I have a lime. Pat the chicken dry and rub with kosher salt and whatever seasonings (can’t go wrong with S&P + garlic powder, paprika, chili powder or Cajun seasoning, or herbs: parsley sage rosemary thyme. Or get pre-made spice rubs! Who cares!). Cut into bite size pieces. Sometimes I’ll velvet/marinate it, sometimes I’m lazy. Sautee the chicken in a hot wok with oil until it’s browned. (I cut into bite-size pieces so it cooks fast inside too. Or you can do “hands off” for whole chicken breasts: Heat oil in a pan with a tight-fitting lid. Press seasoned chicken breasts flat with your hands. Place 2-3 chicken breasts in pan, brown 2-3 minutes on one side. Flip. Put lid on pan. Turn heat to low and and do not touch for 9 minutes. Perfect juicy chicken breasts every time.) Remove chicken from wok, pour out juice if desired, add onions, sweat a few minutes until softened, add peppers, sautee a few more minutes until peppers are softened/browning but still a bit crisp, add minced garlic, toss 1 more minute, done. Season through the process with whatever you want. Baseline = S&P, garlic.

When you’re cooking fast the thing that is most important is highlighting & enhancing the flavor of your raw ingredients. You’re not putting hours into a curry or a braise, so just season to show off the flavors of your onions, peppers, etc. S&P, garlic, and a finishing sprinkle of lemon juice, can’t go wrong. Spices and seasonings to your taste. Soy sauce. Whatever. Sautee until it looks like something you want to eat. Done.

Ground beef or pork, sausage cut into coins. Whatever’s on sale. Spinach is a big one in our house bc wilting spinach in a pan takes 5 minutes. Onions—edible in 5 minutes, don’t have to spend 45 caramelizing. Yukon gold potatoes—wash, chop, boil 9 minutes in salted water until fork tender, drain, quick pan-fry for a good crisp.

Figure out your staples—what you like, what’s cheap, what’s easy—and figure out fast ways to cook it and you’re done. Carb + protein + veg = you will never run out of things to cook, just switch up seasonings and whether you do a stir fry sauce or not.

The thing about cooking regularly is you figure out your go-tos and that makes it much easier. You don’t have to look at new recipes every night. You realize you can pretty much do anything to anything once you understand the 101 Basics of how to cook it.

Sorry this is rambling. Hope it helps a bit??? Feel free to ask for clarification.

EDIT: Wait I thought of actual tips.

- Always heat pan first, then oil, then once oil is shimmering/shivering add food. It’s faster, and you don’t ever want food sitting in room temp oil—it’ll just soak it up and get oil-logged instead of browning or crisping.

- You can use more flame than you might think. Default to medium/medium-high heat unless a recipe says otherwise, or unless you’ve already browned something and now you want it to keep cooking without burning. But if you cook everything on low heat out of caution it’ll just be slower and you won’t get satisfying textures.

- Season throughout, not just at the beginning or end. Flavor (especially salt) builds, and needs to build.

- Salt is your absolute best friend. Nothing is complete without it.

- Taste often. Don’t just make a sauce and dump it in without tasting. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure.

- When adding cornstarch to a stir fry sauce, always do a slurry (equal parts cornstarch + water whisked until smooth, usually 1 Tbsp each). Don’t ever just dump a spoonful of cornstarch into something. It will give you cornstarch lumps which will never dissolve.

- You want things to be dry when you toss them into hot oil. Especially meat, the reason for patting dry then rubbing in salt is to dry out the surface (salt draws moisture to the surface, then you can wipe it off again). This is how you get a nice crispy brown crust. Water = steaming, not crisping. (Most veg is easily steamed or blanched if you want to reduce the amount of oil you’re consuming.)

Okay I’m done. For now.

[sreegs]

this started out as a short rant about non-stick cookware but i've got an infodump about cookware in general and suggestions for what's the most useful vs the least useful in the kitchen. the thing about cooking is you can do a lot with a little equipment, despite appearances to the contrary. however the vessels you cook in are the most used tools in the kitchen, aside from a chef's knife

ok, first my little rant about non-stick cookware:

it doesn't last, and that's the main flaw of non-stick cookware. whether it has a non-stick coating or it's a special material that is inherently non-stick (at first), eventually they wear down and the non-stick benefits you bought the pan for pretty much disappear.

that isn't to say non-stick cookware is not useful. I have one non-stick frying pan in my kitchen and I use it to cook eggs and other things that are notorious for sticking. i also use it to reheat leftovers just because it's easier to clean. that's all i use it for

so, if you're in the market for cookware because you're moving out or just finally getting a kitchen of your own, do not go buying all non-stick pots and pans. sauce pans, skillets, stock pots (the big pots you use for soup), sauté pans, etc, those actually need your food to stick in some cases, especially for soups and sauces. why's that?

it's about the fond. example: when you're making a soup you usually start by sautéing solid ingredients in the pan first. those get browned and they leave a bit of slightly-burned foodstuff on the bottom of the pot. that's called fond. it's super concentrated savory flavor. right before you add the stock to the soup, you "deglaze" the pan by adding a little bit of liquid to the bottom of the pot and gently scraping it off and integrating it into the soup. fond is also like the basis of all sauces and stews and gravies pretty much anything else you're cooking

where should you buy cookware? obviously you can always buy new, I suggest buying direct from the manufacturer if you really want new. you can also find good cookware at garage sales.

if you have access to them, restaurant supply stores have cheap cookware but it's also made to be beat to death in a commercial kitchen. it works just as well as the stuff aimed at the consumer because, well, metal pans are metal pans. it's not rocket science. but there is cheap bad cookware in the restaurant supply store so shop carefully

so what kind of cookware should you buy? here are options i recommend, but not in any particular order:

stainless steel

stainless steel pans are versatile and they last forever. they work on the stovetop and they go in the oven too. so not only can you use them to fry up some veggies, you can also use them to roast a beast in the oven. they're easy to keep clean, though they eventually get a patina especially on the bottom. use dish soap. the easiest way to get tough spots off them are gentle abrasives like Barkeeper's Friend. these range from cheap to expensive, and some of the expensive ones are worth it (but not too expensive. like $100-200 range for really nice ones. remember, they last forever, so it's like a one-time fee)

good stainless steel pans should be heavy. if you're out shopping for them, pick them up and compare how they feel. if you spot a really cheap one and it feels light like a non-stick pan, avoid it.

carbon steel

these got popular lately, and frankly i don't have too much experience with them since the one i had ended up being left behind in a move. however they're totally fine to work with and are easier to maintain than a cast iron pan. however they sometimes come with wooden handles (a lot of them are wok-shaped because, well, a lot of woks are carbon steel), so remember you can't put wooden-handle pans in the oven. also since they're thinner they're probably not as good for the oven as other materials in terms of both performance and longevity

taking care of them is a little harder than stainless steel, because after you wash and dry them, you have to coat them in a thin layer of oil to prevent rusting

cast iron

okay first i want to get the cleaning bit out the way: YOU CAN WASH YOUR CAST IRON PANS WITH DISH SOAP. that bullshit about only using salt and water and never getting soap on it is from an era when soaps were made of lye. MODERN DETERGENTS ARE NOT MADE OF LYE, THEY'RE NOT EVEN SOAP. HOWEVER: DO NOT SCRUB YOUR CAST IRON WITH METAL SCRUB SPONGES

now about cast iron itself: it's cheap and it's a long-term investment. your cast iron gradually becomes a non-stick pan over time if you maintain its seasoning. a cast iron pan becomes seasoned naturally over time as long as you wash it soon after it cools down from cooking (don't ever leave food or water in it, it will rust), and after it's clean, you cover it with an extremely thin layer of cooking oil.

you can re-season cast iron that has lost its seasoning too. i don't want to turn this post into a cast-iron infodump post so i'll leave it to you to google "how to season cast iron pans" and "how to maintain cast iron pans". just remember the "don't wash it with soap" line is bullshit unless you actually have dish soap that contains lye, like where'd you get that?

these are also great for cooking in the oven as well as the stovetop. their high-density and dark color make for good heat distribution. a lot of people swear by cast iron as the best material to sear meat with, however i never really noticed the difference between cast iron and stainless steel.

enameled cast iron

le creuset can sit on it and spin. don't buy their shit it's overpriced. enameled cast iron is much more affordable from companies like lodge who already make cheap, good, regular cast iron pans. it's a cast iron pan coated with ceramic. enameled cast iron is really good for even heat distribution, however you do have to be careful not to chip it. it may also, despite your best efforts, just wear down over time because ceramic isn't as wear-resistant as metal.

enameled pans can go in the oven as well.

non-stick pans

only buy one (1) non-stick pan. make it a frying pan or sauté pan. and do not spend a lot of money on it. like $40-50 tops. i've seen $100+ non-stick pans and i think someone made those as a joke. it's a grift. you will be replacing it on a semi-regular basis depending on how often you use it.

if your non-stick pan uses a coating, if it starts flaking it's time to get rid of it. those ceramic non-stick pans you just gotta toss it when they lose their smoothness

that's it. post over. go cook. if you have any questions send an ask

[transactinides]

SOMEONE COMMISSION ME RN JUST SAW A WOK SO PERFECT I STARTED CRYING ONLINE FOR SALE......

[troublcmakcrs]

▸   @cflight   ⟶   ❛  'i just don’t understand you’ (for craig)  ❜   ╱   (  random , accepting .  )

   Craig hid his snickers behind his hand, holding the phone a bit away from him so that it wouldn’t pick him up.  When Ekira claimed not to understand him, the grin slipped off his face, and he looked over at them.  He was pretending to place an order to the City Wok restaurant, just to hear the proprietor talk about how ‘shitty’ all their food was.  It was fine to make fun of the voice because it was actually just a white guy putting on an exaggerated Chinese accent—not that the kids in town hadn’t found it hilarious even before they discovered that.

   “No, see, it’s funny,” he insisted.  Of course, literal pissbaby Ekira wouldn’t understand.  “’Cause it sounds like he’s saying ‘shit’—”  Realizing he was explaining the joke and that that stopped it from being funny, Craig sighed and hung up on Lu Kim, who was undoubtedly cursing the little asshole kids in this town for denying him another sale.

   “Obviously, you don’t get it.  You’re boring.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

THE 12 MOST UNFORGETTABLE DESCRIPTIONS OF FOOD IN LITERATURE

Haruki Murakami’s stir fry, Maurice Sendak’s chicken soup with rice—only the most gifted writers have made meals on the page worth remembering.

By Adrienne LaFrance for The Atlantic

In literature, references to eating tend to be either symbolic or utilitarian. Food can indicate status or milieu (think about all those references to Dorsia in American Psycho), or it can move the plot forward (Rabbit Angstrom’s peanut-brittle habit in John Updike’s final Rabbit book). Even in the hands of the greats, food scenes can seem less than central to a story, more filler or filigree than substance. There are exceptions, however—moments in which food unlocks a higher story form. Here are 12 of my favorites.

>>>>>

In addition to having one of the best opening lines of any novel ever, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”contains some of the most memorable meals in all of literature. In a novel that is all surreality, darkness, and rabbit holes, Murakami’s simple descriptions of sustenance have an almost metronomic quality—the only thing anchoring the story to reality as it slips away from its main character, Toru—while setting the tempo for a strange, unfolding mystery:

“At noon I had lunch and went to the supermarket. There I bought food for dinner and, from a sale table, bought detergent, tissues, and toilet paper. At home again, I made preparations for dinner and lay down on the sofa with a book, waiting for Kumiko to come home … Not that I had any great feast in mind: I would be stir frying thin slices of beef, onions, green peppers, and bean sprouts with a little salt, pepper, soy sauce, and a splash of beer—a recipe from my single days. The rice was done, the miso soup was warm, and the vegetables were all sliced and arranged in separate piles in a large dish, ready for the wok.”

Such scenes show up repeatedly in Murakami’s work. Every time, the effect is somehow both mouthwatering and unnerving. Note the simplicity of the menu, the methodical preparation, the sense of time and of waiting. Murakami’s descriptions of food do exactly what his novels do best—they take the mundane and make it somehow magical, take the real and warp it into a dream.

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“Under the Jaguar Sun,” by Italo Calvino

Calvino’s particular skill is his dreamer’s eye, his ability to make stories of incredible lightness out of a too-complicated world. In “Under the Jaguar Sun,” a collection of three short stories that engage the senses, he describes the act of cooking as “the handing down of an intricate, precise lore.” Each dish can be a kind of story that reflects the person who eats it—one that attaches a meal to the ancestral. (Anyone who has tried to interpret her Italian grandmother’s handwritten recipes will see the humor and the profundity in this kind of bequeathed knowledge.) Calvino writes, too, of food’s unique ability to capture a moment in time. In one scene, he describes a couple sharing a meal in an orange grove in Tepotzotlán, Mexico:

“We had eaten a tamal de elote—a fine semolina of sweet corn, that is, with ground pork and very hot pepper, all steamed in a bit of corn-husk—and then chiles en nogada, which were reddish brown, somewhat wrinkled little peppers, swimming in a walnut sauce whose harshness and bitter aftertaste were downed in a creamy, sweetish surrender.”

With mesmerizing style, Calvino captures the way a perfectly prepared dish can, for an instant, become the very center of the universe, the way a meal between two people can hang suspended in an everlasting present.

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“I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections,” by Nora Ephron

One of the most durable things about Ephron, a decade after her death, is how easily brilliance seemed to come to her. That same sense of ease is apparent in her appetizing description of a ricotta pancake, from the collection “I Remember Nothing.”The recipe materializes unexpectedly at the end of a charming essay about the cultural meaning of Teflon, and it conveys just enough whimsy to inspire the reader to give it a go:

“I loved the no-carb ricotta pancake I invented last year, which can be cooked only on Teflon … Beat one egg, add one-third cup fresh whole-milk ricotta, and whisk together. Heat up a Teflon pan until carcinogenic gas is released into the air. Spoon tablespoons of batter into the frying pan and cook about two minutes on one side, until brown. Carefully flip. Cook for another minute to brown the other side. Eat with jam, if you don’t care about carbs, or just eat unadorned. Serves one.”

A few easy ingredients! A casual flip! Serves one! Ephron delightfully blends creativity and sophistication. Only real grown-ups are out there inventing new kinds of pancakes from things like ricotta, obviously. The truth is (I’m sorry, Nora) that this pancake is not actually very tasty, at least not when I tried making it. But she loved it, and that’s all that matters.

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“Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months,” by Maurice Sendak

Please tell me that you know of Sendak’s Nutshell Library, a tiny four-volume set, each roughly the size of a deck of cards, first published in 1962 and made in every way for the eager hands of early childhood. When I was very small, I treated my beloved copy—which remains in arm’s reach on my desk now—with something like religious fascination. Each book is a banquet of mischief and reverie. Picking Pierre as a favorite meal in literature—as you may recall, Pierre, the boy who doesn’t care, is eaten by a lion—would probably be more Sendakian, but to me, nothing can surpass “Chicken Soup With Rice.” This book of simple nursery rhymes takes readers through the months of the year, each one attached to a verse about the pleasures of eating chicken soup with rice in locales across the globe (“far-off Spain,” “old Bombay”) and ever more extreme conditions (the bottom of the ocean, a literal robin’s nest). The singsong, paired with darling illustrations and Sendak’s devil-may-care attitude winking from every page, is forever-enchanting stuff. I couldn’t possibly pick just one, but here’s September:

In September for a while I will ride a crocodile down the chicken soupy Nile. Paddle once paddle twice paddle chicken soup with rice.

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“Swann’s Way,” by Marcel Proust

You were expecting this one, I know. The madeleine in “Swann’s Way” is so indelible, that, I will confess, I avoid eating them entirely, because a real madeleine would only ruin my memory of the memory described by Proust. On a winter day, the narrator comes home to his mother, who offers him tea and one of the “short, plump little cakes” called “petites madeleines”:

“Mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory … I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?

Years after first reading “In Search of Lost Time,” I’m sometimes transported involuntarily to this moment—the minutes slow, my senses heighten, and I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that if you look at it just right, all of life’s pleasures can be found swirling in a cup of tea.

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“Revenge of the Lawn,” by Richard Brautigan

“Revenge of the Lawn” contains, quite possibly, the most fully realized post-breakup scene of any collection of words I have ever read. A pot of instant coffee comes to serve both as a pretense for an invitation into a former lover’s apartment and a deathblow—the simultaneous familiarity and discomfort of being around a person you once knew so well. In the scene, Brautigan describes the stretchy quality of time after he persuades his ex to have coffee with him:

“I knew that it would take a year before the water started to boil. It was now October and there was too much water in the pan … I threw half the water into the sink. The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet. I looked out at the back porch. There were sacks of garbage there. I stared at the garbage and tried to figure out what she had been eating lately by studying the containers and peelings and stuff. I couldn’t tell a thing. It was now March. The water started to boil. I was pleased by this.”

Or, as Brautigan put it elsewhere in the story: “Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.”

+

“Goodbye, Columbus,” by Philip Roth

Food, like sex, is everywhere in Roth’s work—sometimes inextricably. But let’s put aside the liver in “Portnoy’s Complaint,” the BLT in “American Pastoral,”all that Tiptree strawberry jam. Roth’s descriptions of food aren’t just prurient. They’re also wildly vivid, often preoccupied with class and abundance, and vehicles for the expression of his characters’ desires and resentments. In the novella “Goodbye, Columbus,” the protagonist opens the door of an old-fashioned refrigerator—actually, the second fridge in the home of his affluent summer fling—and discovers that it is overfilled with dripping, fresh, fragrant, expensive fruit:

“Shelves swelled with it, every color, every texture, and hidden within, every kind of pit. There were greengage plums, black plums, red plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches, long horns of grapes, black, yellow, red, and cherries, cherries flowing out of boxes and staining everything scarlet … I grabbed a handful of cherries and then a nectarine, and I bit right down to its pit.”

The bite, after the luxuriant description, is defiant, almost sacrilegious—perhaps his way of crossing an invisible line.

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“Harriet the Spy,” by Louise Fitzhugh

No hero in literature is quite like Harriet M. Welsch—daring, terrible, perfect Harriet—who, by the way, took a tomato sandwich to school every day for five years. Fitzhugh’s descriptions of the sandwiches are not themselves memorable. (Each one is the same, after all.) But that simple sameness—not just the meal itself but also Harriet’s total commitment to it—makes these tomato sandwiches unforgettable. Harriet, while spying one day, encounters Little Joe Curry, the delivery boy for an Upper East Side bodega:

“Harriet peeked in. He was sitting there now, when he should have been working, eating a pound of cheese. Next to him, waiting to be consumed, sat two cucumbers, three tomatoes, a loaf of bread, a custard pie, three quarts of milk, a meatball sandwich about two feet long, two jars—one of pickles, one of mayonnaise—four apples, and a large salami. Harriet’s eyes widened and she wrote: ‘When I look at him I could eat a thousand tomato sandwiches.’” Or, as she puts it elsewhere, charmingly and succinctly: “There is nothing like a good tomato sandwich now and then.”

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“Sentimental Education,” by Gustave Flaubert

Flaubert set out, he once said, to tell the moral history of the men of his generation. Across his work, food plays a prominent role in how some of his characters are condemned. The decadence of 1840s Paris is bewildering to Frédéric Moreau, the central character of “Sentimental Education.”

At one dinner party—held in a giant room “hung with red damask, [and] lit by a chandelier and candelabra”—overindulgent guests are served champagne-drenched sturgeon’s head, roast quail, a vol-au-vent béchamel, red-legged partridges, and potatoes mixed with truffles. In another memorable party scene, several bottles of champagne are opened at once, and “long jets of wine spurted through the air … each opened a bottle and were splashing the company’s faces” while tiny birds flapped in through the open door of an aviary—some of them settling in women’s hair “like great flowers.”

It’s no mistake that in the scenes where Moreau escapes Parisian society, such moments of culinary opulence and excess are conspicuously absent.

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“After the Plague,” by T. C. Boyle

In the title story of Boyle’s story collection, the pandemic that rips across the planet is different from our own. Most of the world’s population is killed quickly and gruesomely, and the main character, Francis, is among a small number of the living who roam the overgrown wilds of Santa Barbara. At one point, Francis meets a woman, a fellow survivor, and they begin dating, helping themselves to the spoils of a civilization now abandoned:

I picked her up two nights later in a Rolls Silver Cloud and took her to my favorite French restaurant. The place was untouched and pristine, with a sweeping view of the sea, and I lit some candles and poured us each a glass of twenty-year-old Bordeaux, after which we feasted on canned crab, truffles, cashews and marinated artichoke hearts.

Boyle describes the magnetism of new romance with dystopian, aching imagination and humor—reminding us that humanity’s core impulse is toward survival and connection, no matter what hell our species endures.

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Pachinko,by Min Jin Lee

In Pachinko, Lee’s gorgeous and epic tale of a family’s life in 20th-century Korea and Japan, food is a marker of passing time, of scarcity, of necessity, and of nature. Consider the soft blanket of mushrooms in the forest where Sunja steals away with the first man she falls in love with. Or the care and worry attached to her unlikely wedding: the thoughtfully procured rice, the strips of seaweed folded like fabric, the udon noodles steaming beneath the gaze of two soon-to-be newlyweds, a couple who barely know each other. Lee’s gorgeous descriptions of food demand the reader’s attention—and show us the labor required to transform nature into nourishment. The reader encounters savory pancakes made from bean flour and water, a pail of crabs or mackerel, homemade pumpkin taffy, stewed codfish, a soup kettle “half-filled with water, cut-up potatoes, and onions, waiting to be put on the fire.” No other novel I’ve read recently so effortlessly makes meals appear both meager and luxurious. Much of Pachinko’s power comes from its generational sweep, a story that shows just how long a life can be, and how resilience and sustenance can help us make it through.

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The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Anyone who has ever tugged on a pair of waders and stood thigh-deep in a cool river on a hot day, casting about for brook trout, then reeling one in, can tell you about the particular satisfaction that comes from catching, cooking, and eventually eating your own dinner. I think this is one of the reasons I can never stop rereading The Sun Also Rises, a book that poses several questions of life-shaping importance, not least of which is: Why aren’t I in Spain right now, trout fishing in the Irati river?

The Sun Also Rises has a quality I’ll never fully understand: It takes place a century ago and somehow feels fresh, still. I’ve found that you can read it at any stage of life and relate to Jake, the American narrator whose travels are fueled by his yearning for an unavailable woman. Another unforgettable scene sees Jake and a friend on a train from Paris to Pamplona, propelled by wanderlust and longing:

“We ate the sandwiches and drank the Chablis and watched the country out of the window. The grain was just beginning to ripen and the fields were full of poppies. The pastureland was green, and there were fine trees, and sometimes big rivers and chateaux off in the trees.”

Riding along with them, we see mortality and rapture commingling, vitally, just the way they do in real life.

(Follies of God)

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Unexpected

I mean, the work day wasn't unexpected. I got left with the lion's share of the fiddly annoying bullshit, which I finished ... well, more or less on time, since the grand finale for the afternoon was a seventeen-minute monstrosity by The Breast Guy. I was just about to start that off and praying I'd finish at least more or less by 5pm when my mobile rang - my stepfather. He's been at the other flat a lot lately, which means hey, great, maybe something's going to happen and this one will start getting renovated soon! (Though watch; I'm going to end up living back at the other flat for another three-plus years while he procrastinates. But at least he's doing stuff and I might be able to have an actual shower and non-leaky faucets sometime before 2025.) Anyway, I probably sounded frazzled, since his first response was, "Sorry to disturb". Then he asked if he could drop something off and I was like, "...Okay, sure", while wondering what the hell he could possibly be wanting to drop in my general direction.

The answer? ...Cutlery, apparently. They got new cutlery for themselves and thought I might like their old set (or, well, part of their old set, because I am highly unlikely to ever need more than four place settings at a go).

No, see, as may have been gathered by this point, the parentals have a lot more money than I do. This is why I tend to ask for things like cookware as Christmas and birthday gifts - they can afford the good stuff and understand this stuff as an investment. You know, better to have a really good pot that you may not have to replace in your entire lifetime than have a cheap piece of crap that'll be unusuable in a couple of years. The "Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness" as applied to cookware. Now, when I was first living on my own, I had cheap crappy aluminium cutlery with about the heft of the average chewing gum wrapper (and almost the same ability to bend). But I graduated from that, in a sense - really good sale on a cutlery set at Habitat. So I have some pretty solid cutlery but not ... you know, The Best. The parentals, however? Probably not The Absolute Best either, but I have always been rather admiring of their cutlery. It is some solid shit, lemme tell you. So I guess they remembered how much I liked theirs and thought I would give it a good home. Which I obviously will, because if there's one thing my ongoing cookery kick has taught me, it's the benefits of having good shit in the kitchen.

Long story short, that cheered me up enough to get through the seventeen-minute monstrosity with ... okay, I was only really tempted to fling the laptop at the nearest wall once. So that's a win. I still hurt like hell, mind, and I'm counting the days to my week off (a little under two weeks and counting - my birthday present to myself every year), but there was a bright spot. New kitchenware has that effect. I got myself a wok recently, and my next purchase is going to be a 9" by 13" baking tin, which I need for a specific Baking Yesteryear dessert. (Actually for a lot of Baking Yesteryear desserts. Also brownies.) Also, bright spot in that the workday is over and after a little bit of time to let some of the OW fade, I will be making gluten-free fish fingers (well, technically cod goujons, but that's a wee bit pretentious) and relaxing with a little bit of Baldur's Gate 3 or something.

[40sandfabulousaf]

大家好! The boss and I caught up with Antho, our mutual friend, who introduced us to a stall specialising in mala. We left the ordering to him and he filled our small table with enough dishes to feed 5! The food was so delicious, I couldn't stop eating even after I was stuffed to the brim. None of us stopped until we wiped all the plates clean.

I'll share about what I got up to during Chinese New Year in the next post. This week, I came across a stall selling tomato soup fish bee hoon (vermicelli). In a nutshell, they serve the tangy broth used in tomato egg noodles with thick slices of fresh fish, tomato chunks, tofu cubes, lettuce and thick bee hoon. Digging through the noodles, I discovered a generous portion of fish slices, so for the price of $7.50, it was decent value for money. I'll return to try their original flavour sliced fish bee hoon soup.

Hokkien mee, frequently a combo of thick bee hoon and yellow noodles, is wok fried with egg, veggies and a flavourful broth. The noodles absorb the broth, making them very tasty and a firm local favourite, any time of the day. There are 2 versions: with prawns (usually sold by stalls that specialise in this dish) and without (sold at cai fan, or mixed dishes and rice) stalls. The former usually has a much more robust prawn flavour since it's eaten on its own, whilst the latter is milder tasting so as to pair well with other dishes. Both are very delicious.

This Chinese New Year, whilst I love my country deeply, I'm also fiercely embracing my ethnicity and roots. Grandpa came from Xi Men, Taipei, ROC and spoke solely in Hokkien for all his life. When he told me stories about how he came to Singapore, he always said he came from China. So to me, there was never any question about Taiwan; it's part of China. Nonetheless, the issue of Taiwan remains strictly between it and China. I have enough respect to keep my nose out of China's internal affairs.

We might be feasting during this festive period but elsewhere in the world, including in Gaza, hunger persists. Palestinian civilians currently survive off animal feed and rice. Food supplies are dwindling whilst Israel is interfering in how and where aid is delivered. Why haven't the US, UK, Canada and other Western countries said anything about the abuse of human rights? 下次见!

[littlehouseontheaerie]

Little Meals on the Aerie, Week of 9/25

I love meal prepping, so I'm going to share what's on our table this week! I pack breakfast and lunch for us to take to work. For dinner, I make ahead nearly all of this to reheat the day of. I don't often get home until 6pm, so I want dinner on the table in fifteen minutes flat!

Considerations this week: Chicken was finally on sale! I'm testing vegetable side dishes for Thanksgiving because food holidays are the best holidays.

Breakfasts: Bagels with honey pecan cream cheese*, pear custard pie, yogurt, so much delicious seasonal fruit.

Lunch meal prep for the Spouse: Honey mustard chicken, butternut squash with bacon, acorn squash with parmesan.

Lunch meal prep for me: Those Sweetgreen Harvest Bowls were amazing so let's do that again, with honey mustard chicken this time. Also, chicken salad with seasonal fruit.

Make-ahead dinners:

Sunday dinner (vegan night): Pesto pasta to use up some basil and roasted tofu.

Monday: Chicken and broccoli in a lemon-ginger sauce (via the Wok)

Tuesday: Quesadillas with corn, beans, and chicken (just a general riff on whatever we have), and an elote-style salad kit.

Wednesday: A salad kit with chicken legs and crescent rolls.

Thursday: Pizza night! Dough is make-ahead, defrosted and prepped the day of because I work from home on Thurdsay.

Friday: Food shopping day, so we grab a dinner out!

Weekend: Flexible to deal with hunger levels, activities, and leftovers.

*So story time on the cream cheese. We went to Panera for breakfast sandwiches and has anyone else noticed that it is $1.70 for a serving. of. CREAM. CHEESE. I was so insulted that I make it at home now on principle.

[maximalist-conksuck]

wok was on sale for a very low price, marketed as carbon steel, reviews were bad but based on the complaints I figured it was people not knowing how to properly care for carbon steel and inadequate instructions from the manufacturer, i presumed complaints of the non-stick coating peeling after a few uses were in fact cases of people not properly removing the protective lacquer it was shipped in. but no, i am the dumb one, it does in fact have a shitty non-stick coating.

[chicago-geniza]

Black Friday sales are Evil but cooking supplies are Expensive and I just got a wok for $20, which means I now own two (2) pans (the other is an individual egg pan from my mom, and you can't really cook anything in it besides an individual egg). I picked up some veg and a ginger simmer sauce and frozen fake chicken and am going to make a stir fry later this week. Realized I could drag the stool from the counter to the sink/the other side of the counter and sit down while I washed dishes and did food prep so this is going to revolutionize my culinary / sanitary experience this winter. Never again will my dishes grow mold because I can't stand up for long enough to wash them, never again will I live on toast and microwave meals because standing in front of a stove, especially when it's hot, makes me pass out and/or puke. POTS is the Victorian invalid disease I stg. Sorry I can't do basic ADLs because I swoon like a sickly 19th-century protagonist suffering from unspecified "indisposition." All I need is the blood-spattered handkerchief

[tufoupiloupary]

today I cycled around on my bike for 35+ km, saw my friends, met (and held !) a mouse, dropped off some applications to wok as a sales clerk in the fabric district of Paris and worked on darning a jumper :^)

[cakesexuality]

I've spent the better part of yesterday afternoon convincing myself I don't need a mini wok station or a raclette grill, tell me about something you don't have any way to justify buying but you just want anyway? Either bc it sounds fun or kind of neat or bc you just always wanted it :)

You chose this as the right week to use this question, because I was just in Montréal a few days ago and I went to a mall while I was there

The first thing I saw that I wanted but couldn't justify was an eyeshadow palette I've been eyeing up online ever since it was launched, probably a year ago but I'm not sure. It's pink, which is my favourite colour, and it smells like bubblegum, which I love as both a scent and a flavour, and the exterior of the palette looks like a Game Boy Advance, which is the handheld gaming system I had as a kid. However, I have to simply trust the claims that it smells like bubblegum, because Sephora had it displayed very close to the perfume section, so the perfumes were overpowering the smell of the palette 🥲 And then it was $36 for 8 shades! I'm not someone who really buys high-end makeup, so I'll probably wait until the palette goes on sale somewhere

There was also a strong temptation while I was at Sephora to get a mini of the Orgasm blush, but I've heard that it's overhyped, so I'm not sure if it would be any better than a similar-looking drugstore blush I already own

Another thing I saw that I wanted was a purse that was made of really soft faux fur, it had floppy bunny ears on it, it was about the size I would need for a purse, and it was only $20, but I had limited space in my very small suitcase, so I wasn't sure if I could bring it back with me, and I don't really need new purses, I just want new purses

I also saw a $130 Lego kit to build Mjölnir, and Thor is my mom's favourite superhero so it could've been a Christmas present for her, but that was both too much money AND too big to take home!