cooking

Today's Poll: How often do you jaywalk? Do you tend to cross on yellow lights? Will you cross a street on a red light if you don't see any cars coming, or do you wait for the green light? As a driver, do you get ticked off at pedestrians who cross on a yellow light? Answer in Blatherchat

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So I'm finding that I actually do enjoy cooking. As some of you already know, I have been a non-cook for years now. Sticking a President's Choice frozen dinner was pretty much the extent of my culinary knowledge (but hey, those President's Choice entrees are pretty good!).

I used to cook a lot when we lived out in the country, but after I got on the Internet in a serious way, this part of my brain got taken over. Mainly because once I got online, everything else faded into the background, including pots of cooking food on a hot burner. Did I ever tell you about the time I burned SOUP when Allison came for dinner and that we ended up ordering in pizza? It takes real talent to burn soup, let me tell you.

Now it seems that that part of my brain has grown back. Or that I'm paying attention to it again. Before, cooking seemed like a waste of time, time I could be online. Now I try to arrange my day so that I do have some extra time around 5 or so, and I'm also remembering to (*gasp* defrost stuff in the morning if needed.

Earlier this week, I made Spinach and Mushroom Crepes, a recipe from my beloved Moosewood Cookbook. Last night was curry chicken as well as cauliflower with potatoes (both from Indian cookbooks). It's sort of fun, chopping stuff up and throwing it all together and seeing what comes out.

Enlightening, too. I had no idea that a real curry chicken recipe didn't actually use curry powder, that the curry taste is actually a combination of different spices (curry powder is a short cut). I still use garam masala pre-made, but plan to start making it from scratch. The curry chicken I made last night was a "quick" recipe which took an hour, and spices included fresh garlic, fresh ginger, cinnamon stick, bay leaves, cloves, cardamoms, chili peppers, coriander, garam masala, turmeric, pepper. The fragrance in the kitchen as the chicken simmered was incredible, yum.

I'm almost ready to try out some of my cooking on unsuspecting friends. :-)

One of the reasons I don't mind spending an hour in the kitchen doing prep and cooking is because I'm not obligated to do it, of course. Jeff and I have an understanding that if I ever prefer writing until the last minute (because I'm on a roll), that we can always order in, or that he cooks. So far, this has worked out pretty well.



I've decided against using cascading style sheets for my new journal layout. As much as I love what CSS can do, I was troubled by the fact that the test blog I set up using Movable Type's bare-bones template looked really wonky in both Netscape and Omniweb. I'm going to still switch to Movable Type, but will stick with the limitations of regular HTML.

I also had always planned to stick with the UBB Blatherchat, too, in case some of you were concerned about the Javascrip pop-up comment feature in Movable Type.

Today's Marketing Day! I forgot to mention that I got an article late last week, so I'm working on three articles. My goal is to send out three more queries today; I still have eight circulating.



BLATHERPICS:

Today's Blatherpics are some pretty old Urban Tapestry photos.

	Kylea and Allison eating donuts in Winnipeg during a visit years ago. I just heard from Kylea in e-mail, and she got me all nostalgic about that visit, especially our visit to Toad Hall Toys. Kylea did the penny whistle part in "The Lady" for our CD, "Myths and Urban Legends".
	Ookla The Mok about to record one of their parts for our CD. Note Luis's drum set. Note that this is in Allison's living room. In retrospect, I am amazed that no neighbours complained (she did give them a nice warning, so I'm sure that helped).
	Dave Clement and Tom Jeffers recording their parts for "Sex and Chocolate" on our CD. Note the high tech level of our recording equipment. The things in front of the faces (not the mikes, the other things) are pantyhose stretched over coat hangers, to reduce microphone "popping".