smoky flavor
Not much to update you on today. I spent a lot of time last night helping Shobhit make another large volume of food for dinner that could last for subsequent days' meals, this time a lentil dish and a potato based dish, which we ate with frozen naan that we had just gotten at Trader Joe's. We did a bunch of chopping of vegetables while lentils cooked in a pressure cooker, and then we needed onions and a few other things so we broke for the short walk to the store. We came back and did more chopping.
I found myself thinking about the key difference between Shobhit and me when it comes to cooking. Shobhit loves to cook. He says it relaxes him. It does not relax me in the slightest, especially when cooking with him. Usually it does feel pretty symbiotic, actually, but there are times when he tells me I'm doing something incorrectly when it really does not matter how I am doing it (peeling carrots, for instance) and it makes me want to knock him upside the head. Kind of the opposite of a calming effect, there.
But even when that's not happening, generally speaking, I just help Shobhit with cooking for self-serving reasons, not for any joy in the process at all. This can be very time consuming, and if I help, it will get done and I can actually sit down to eat faster. Also, I try to be fair. I help because it's fair. It doesn't mean I especially enjoy it. It's just something I do, because, well, we've got to eat. If I were independently wealthy and could just hire someone else to cook all my meals that, sure, I would still like made from scratch -- I would absolutely do that. Especially if it could be someone who was also a nutritionist and could help me eat healthy but also have tasty meals. That's not the world I live in, though. I'll never be independently wealthy.
We sat down to eat at the coffee table while we watched the season premiere of Succession, which, honestly, I found to be just . . . all right. I remember the first season by and large being far more compelling. But! I trust it will get more compelling again, judging by the critical reception of this season actually being notably higher than that of the first. After that, this week's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and two episodes of Cheers.
Oh, and then we both ate way too much ice cream -- more than a pint between the two of us. I finished the last bit of the pint with the salted caramel cupcake flavor and then we shared the rest of the pint of red velvet cupcake flavor, which I had only taken a few bites out of previously. Both were from Cupcake Royale, which makes spectacular ice cream by crumbling their cupcakes into it. Anyway it was too much and I saw immediate effects today, weighing in higher than I have in weeks. I need to get my shit together!
I also, actually, did a little bit of reading last night. I'm about 35 pages into Toni Morrison's debut novel, The Bluest Eye, which I checked out after seeing the documentary about her but before she passed away. Anyone seeing me read that novel now will probably assume I'm only reading it because of the author's recent death, and that kind of annoys me. I was reading Toni Morrison before her death made it trendy again, damn it!
Anyway, I started it a few days ago and it pretty immediately held my attention. It's due back this weekend but I don't want to return it as then I'd have to wait for it to cycle through now ninety holds on it -- when there were hardly any holds on it at all when I first checked it out; these other people actually are wanting to read it just because the author just died. Well, they're just going to have to wait while I rack up overdue fees.
I learned yesterday that climate change-induced arctic forest wildfires have produced a cloud of smoke in the arctic that is larger than the European Union. Anyone who is not unsettled by news like this is a fucking moron.
It's pretty much a guarantee now that I will be personally witness to visible sea level rise, right here in Seattle, within my lifetime -- assuming I live a natural life without it being tragically cut short by some random event. The focus has shifted from any hope of preventing sea level rise to attempts to lessen it. And this wildfire shit? Seattle has somehow lucked out this year, with an unusually mild summer that so far has been devoid of wildfire smoke billowing over our city -- the key point being that now this is an unusual summer, when it does not feature smoky skies in August (so far, anyway; summer isn't over yet). And a cloud larger than the fucking EU? How many years will it be, I wonder, before there are so many wildfires around the globe at a given time that clouds of smoke simply meet each other and fuse, and it literally blankets the entire planet? Who needs a giant meteor? We're just slowly acclimating to apocalyptic environments like lobsters in a pot of boiling water.
I told Shobhit I just hope I can live a long life before all this shit makes humanity itself extinct. He was like, "I'm sure you will." Maybe he's right. I bet anything, though, that the world will still be a far bigger shithole before my very eyes before that happens.
[posted 12:35 pm]