[Recipe] De Lanor Asian-inspired Soup

My adorable brother gave me a nice recipe for an actual Asian soup. Since I couldn't find all the ingredients, I adapted it, and the new version is so nice that I'm sharing it with you...

For my de Lanor Asian-inspired soup, you'll need:
* some veal stock (I used a brand that comes in 4 doses packs, and I used 2 doses)
* 1 onion
* 3 or 4 shiitake mushrooms
* 4 or 5 black mushrooms
* 100 gr enoki mushrooms
* 3 or 4 baby pak choi
* 2 or 3 chives
* some olive oil
* soy sauce
* salt
* some dried Asian noodles
* some tofu
* hoisin sauce

Prep & cooking time: about 30 minutes

Here's some of the "cast": baby pak choi, enoki, and chives

1 - Cut the pak choi approximately in two (mostly white and mostly green), and wash them.

2 - Cut the white part of the pak choi in thin slices.

3 - Wash and cut the white part of the chive.

4 - Cut the onion in thin slices.

Here's a plate of (mostly) white:

5 - Put some olive oil in a big pot, and sauté the onion, pak choi, and chive on medium-high heat. Add a spot of salt.
When they look tender, add one litre of water, the veal stock, and a few drops of soy sauce:

Let it simmer gently.

6 - Slice the black and shiitake mushrooms, and cut off the roots of the enoki mushrooms:

7 - Add the mushrooms to the soup:

8 - Cut the pak choi green leaves into smallish bits:

9 - Cut the green parts of the chives, and have them ready to be added when you'll serve the soup.

10 - Add the pak choi leaves and the noddles (the ones I chose are very thin and cook in about three minutes)

11 - [aka confession time: I bought the wrong kind of tofu, but my mistake ended up being delicious] I wanted to fry cubes of tofu, but the one I bought was too soft, and I ended up with scrambled tofu, which I generously coated with hoisin sauce.

12 - Pour a bit of everything from the pot into a bowl or plate; sprinkle with the cut chives, and add some scrambled, hoisin'ed tofu to the side.
There you go:

戴きます!

I Am [Somehow Like] Spock

I didn't become a trekkerie (that's what I call myself, since I'm a trekker and a trekkie. Deal with it) when I was a toddler, but once I started watching Star Trek, it took me two episodes to fall in love with everything in it.

I was am quite fond of Spock [Note to the world: the first to mention the pseudo-reboot gets introduced to my knee from up close], and it's rather recently that I understood why: I am Spock.

Well, I'm not a half-Vulcan man or a science genius, but my parents are as different as Sarek and Amanda Grayson.

My relatives treat me like a cultural mistake.

The Anglo-Italian side has been mostly ignoring me since long before my birth (there's a Sybok in my life, too).

The Franco-German side has always viewed me as a kind of useless addition to their prestigious lot (allow me to laugh at their stupidity and arrogance).

It took me a long time to build myself since I wasn't sure of anything about my roots (it's tough to build something when you don't have the blueprint or the background, and no one gives you the feeling that you belong), but I did it.

In the end, I got a little revenge: the two grandmothers, both matriarchs (in the ethnological sense, coz I had to be born into two pockets of true matriarchy in Europe), both ended up with only me as their only option to claim an heiress to both their lines...

What's that thing about karma and a beach? Something about 'and then you fry'?...

Cherry on my cake, I could have picked either of their surnames, but I decided to choose my own. It's healthier for me to have created something that has no link with either witch, and none of my relatives can say anything about me, because they don't know my new surname.

Strangely, the odd behaviour because I'm a "happy mix" (using "happy" loosely here) doesn't stop with my relatives. Some of the people with whom I work are treating me differently because they think I'm not the real McCoy (Look! Back to Star Trek!! Awful pun. Sorry!). We're all teaching languages, but they're using one language amongst themselves, and they switch to another one when I'm around. I understand both languages, but they sound as if I'm not worthy of being addressed in the other language - how delightful, guys (Oh! The Sarc font is on, methinks). That's grating on my nerves a bit, but I'm beginning to realize that they were probably raised in barns.

I think I'm going to start using another language to chat with them and wait and see how long it takes the penny to drop...

... I'm suddenly wondering if that plan makes me more "Romulan" than "human" (then again, it's not bad if I'm Saavik: she's the one who got Spock in the end).*insert impudent grin here* 

Cheerio!

I Must Be Fine Then

I really must have the Void at bay these days (which is awesome - for me).

There has to be something in the air - and I don't mean Christmas.

Ah... Christmas! I've got the feeling that I'm in a bad remake of an episode of Friends, as I know I'm getting something big for Christmas, and I know it's not to give me something big (I've never been interested in big, ostentatious gifts - I'd rather get the tiny thing that costs 50p, but that I really want... Been there, done that, didn't get the T-shirt), it's just to show off (and probably make me feel bad for not having that much money - and, by the way, the holidays are always too much "Oh, but you're wasting your life being a teacher/a writer. You could make so much money if only you <insert stupid idea #3 billion&2>").

But this is not about Christmas.

Nope.

This post is about the weirdness around me these days.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order:

- Neighbours have announcements to make, and I've got one of my own. They get notices on the message board... I don't (I can really feel the love /Sarc off).

- On an overcrowded bus, I keep moving backwards to allow an old lady (she could have been young, or be an XY, same issue: misplaced entitlement) to walk closer to the door as she was getting off at the next stop. At one point, I end up blocked by an old grumpy guy behind me. We reach the stop, and as I'm stuck until Grumpy frees me, the old lady barks at me to move. 

I froze a bit on that one... Wish I'd barked back that I wasn't made of paper and I knew no one who could blink me out and back in. Perhaps she was having a bad day, but mine took a nosedive because of her barking pettiness... Yea... That's the issue when the Void is hunting you: molehills end up looking and feeling like the Himalayas - dumped onto one's ribcage.

- I mention DIY projects to people I know, only to be told that the glue I plan to use is crap (I never mentioned the exact variety I'm planning to use, but, hey! How could I know anything?).

- I mention something I'm going to buy to renovate something in my flat, and I'm encouraged to have it delivered (that would just add a third of the price to the bill) as I'll be unable to carry such fragile and cumbersome items back to my flat in one piece (yea, I'm that clumsy in some people's mind - coz that wasn't out of kindness or concern for me. No... Plain old "That gal will never, ever be capable of doing that").

- Since depression doesn't show (no purple and/or green spots on my face spelling out what the issue is), I've been recently dealing with:

     * people who showed compassion for other people's psychological issues whilst totally ignoring mine ("Aren't you better yet?" Fuck, no. I wish I were, but there's still a sodding sword of Damocles in my life. Sorry to be such a bother, eh?).

     * people who said I should just stop taking the medication that's preventing me from blowing a fuse, coz (fasten your seat-belt! No. Really!) they've heard a doctor on telly say that too much St John's wort can become a poison. Gee! Thanks! Too much water's a poison, too. Should I turn to vodka then? (Mind you, that's beginning to sound like a reasonable option!)

I've got the feeling that whatever I say is going to be twisted, ignored, or belittled.

I'm currently disappointed and angry, but I've got one huge project ahead. That's a bit scary (*cough* Make that a lot!), but that's exciting, too... and you can bet that I won't talk about my project with the odd bipeds in my life, who've been, consciously or not, trying to bring me down.

With the amount of weirdness around, I really must be slightly better (I'd have been crying on a bridge, pointedly looking at the river, just last year).

I really hope I can keep keeping the Void at bay...

Once upon a... Bridge

How odd...

I was checking my photo folders (I've got folders that have sub-folders that have sub-sub-folders, etc...), and I found a little miracle. A collectable. A memory of a bitter-sweet past.

I give you, in the spring of the year 2008, the Pont des arts in romantic Paris:

Towards the Pont neuf ->

 Towards the Eiffel Tower ->

You'll spot a few locks on the first photo, but that was nothing compared with the mess it is today (just search for images for that bridge, and you'll get to see the extent of the damage [and I do mean damage because that idiotic fad of leaving a Love Lock is endangering the integrity of the structure, and the keys are polluting the river, but... hey! It's for lurrrve! /Sarc off ].

The pointless and dangerous locks are being removed, and a few sections have been covered with something that looks like plastic... and a few plonkers - in lurrrve - have used permanent markers to leave messages on those.

Since there's a big metal "X" in the centre of each section, I'd like to see those plastic-free (if you fall by stepping through those, you deserve to drown; that's active Darwinism), but it's certainly not going to happen because:

a - some brainless adults would try to step through those and either get stuck or fall into the river, and the Fire Brigade would have to intervene

b - some brainless pseudo-adults would be engrossed in taking a pseudo-romantic selfie, and their kids would fall into the river

That poor bridge is probably going to end up with plastic panels covered with graffiti.

It was such a lovely bridge...

... I bet the people who make locks, and the people who sell them, are laughing at the gullibility of the masses.

The people making and selling permanent markers are next in line for a good laugh, I fear.

*sigh*

Mind the Bucket

There are many variables in life...

How long will I stay in good health?

When am I going to get rheumatism?

With the unique DNA we all get, how tall will I be when I'm an adult?

Will my hair become lighter or turn darker when I'm over this or that age?

And so on, and so forth.

There's ONE thing we can all be sure of: one day, we're going to die.*

Now, my dear (superstitious, and scared of her own shadow) grandmother used to say that merely thinking about death wasn't going to make you die - and she had quite a point.

What brings this post on is that, today, I mentioned a tragedy where someone who died, at a young age and unexpectedly, had his wishes not respected by his parents because he'd left no will.

I said to someone that we are all going to die, one way or the other, that aneurysm is a silent killer that can be in all of us (and that's not taking into account the nutty cab driver behaving like a demented pilot in a bad Sci-Fi plot). That person looked at me as if I'd just predicted the day of his death when I recommended that he write a testament.

I can understand that fear... I'd like to go to sleep one night, and just drift into eternal peace, but that dream scenario might never happen, and I have a testament stating clearly what I expect after my death, and who should get my possessions (it's still in the black box, in my Tax folder).

I can understand the fear, but since we are all going to die, it's an act of love to unburden the people who will have to deal with everything once we've kicked the bucket: we plan things for them, and they don't have to think too much whilst dealing with the grief of our passing.

I'm probably unfair, but not planning for the future after our death has a kind of "playing ostrich" quality in my book. I've seen (or heard of) all kinds of tragedies, just in my family; just because male and female relatives lived as if they would live forever, as if they'd never, ever die - and when they did, their spouses and children were left to fend for themselves, and in a few cases things got really nasty. All that because someone played ostrich and refused to consider the possibility of death.

Then again, once they'd kicked the bucket, they no longer were with us to see the aftermath. That's one way of life

Be afraid all you like, but writing a testament, leaving your body to science, allowing your organs to be harvested, etc... These things don't take long, and once that's done, you don't have to think about it again.

There's nothing wrong with planning for a future that we're never going to see. To me, it was a way to try to leave some love around after I kick the bucket (which will happen someday - hopefully in about a hundred years... or more).

*: merely a statement. I'm fine these days (Void at bay for the moment). No need to worry.