(no subject)

[ritaxis]

So now I know how financial aid for foreign medical schools works, and that's why we're taking out a loan on the house. Just for this year, so far, because we don't want to be paying on the rest of it for longer than we have to. Also because the interest rates on the Stafford loans are not much worse than we can get on the house.

I want to make a hypertext novel. Of course the best candidate for that is Bella and Chain, which is already hypertext, but I'm not returning to it until I have a first draft of A Suitable Lover and a final draft of The Conduit. (which might make a good hypertext novel too, and also might make a graphic novel if anybody wanted to draw a lot of hoboes and migrant workers, plus a Band of Scary Things from Beyond the Fields We Know)

I am so unfocussed.

Talked to the law student today. His anxiety levels are not going down. Nor is his intense feeling that he must beat out the competition or be doomed to perpetual failure (which is defined as making less than $100K a year. This boy grew up poor, by the way).

Yesterday was the Arboretum plant sale (and the Native Plants Society, in one spot). I bought:

salvia sinaloensis
salvia pink thing
another salvia
two ginormous salvias
leonotis
mimulus selection (deepish speckled orange)
australian thing kind of like a mimulus but different
piggyback plant (California streamside native. I must be crazy. I never water in August! but I'm going to put in a drip system, I swear)
2 iris douglasiana natural hybrids, essentially for the nice fellow

I have planted five of these in my front yard. The others go in the back over the next couple of days. Have to take advantage of the planting season (that is, the rainy season).

Yesterday was also the farmer's market, and I spent a whole heck of a lot of money getting everything I could imagine except chard, celery and turnips, which I think I will get anyway at the grocery store. I have already eaten more parsnip than any human being needs to. The parsnips were huge! I guess if your parsnip is as big as your head, it doesn't taste like overly sweet carrot anymore, it tastes like raw parsley, no matter how you cook it. But it was good with teriyaki sauce. I have also eaten large quantities of green salad and sauteed zucchini. Also miscellaneous meat and vegetable stew, with lentils added instead of potatoes. On account of potatoes being on the don't list and lentils being on the do list. And lentils being wonderful. Also, yesterday I ate some concord grapes and it doesn't seem to have been a problem. I would have expected them to be an issue -- aren't they sweet as all get out? Anyway I have successfully added canteloupe-style melons and concord grapes into my diet now. I was not successful with bread, even a half slice of whole wheat bread, which did not flip that switch but did cause painful heartburn. Oh well. I'm still working on the edibility of eggplants, which is kind of iffy, but that's my plan for replacing pasta with tomatoes in any form. I suppose lentils will do for replacing rice, at least the pilaf-y "fragrant rice" I like to make when I have the time.


Also, am I the last person in the world to discover Crystal Waters? Nice voice.

Comments

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

According to Alton Brown on Good Eats, eggplant has little nutritional value. Therefore, you can cook the hell out of it without worrying about destroying nutrients. The skin especially can be hard to digest. One method my mother used to employ for cooking eggplant was to microwave it and then add seasoning. The raw garlic, although yummy, probably did not help, but I think it was the eggplant skin that always did me in. I like the skin, but I think it needs to be very thoroughly cooked for my stomach to be able to tolerate it.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It's that two of the three times I've made eggplant-instead-of-pasta dishes the eggplants were too astringent. But two of the three times I was using long varieties (Japanese, or Italian). The time they were good they were the large round kind. So I got a small one of the large round kind to experiment with this week.

I'm just the opposite of personhead papersky: she makes lasagne with no tomatoes, whereas I will be making lasagne with no lasagne and lots of tomatoes. Unless I am ever blessed with an opportunity to cook for her, in which case I will make things we can both eat.