Salon post: January 18

[jenett]

Good morning!

Topic of the week
What thing have you learned or done recently that's brought you joy? (Or at least a certain amount of pleasure. Doesn't have to be a peak joy experience.)

Alternately, related to what I'm up to, do you read Tarot? (Or use them in other ways?) Do you have a favourite deck? What's your approach? (Other oracle methods also welcome. We are an inclusive discussion here!)

Not interested in either of those? As always, whatever other topics people want to talk about very welcome. Start a thread, see who joins in.

A useful tool
melannen put together a bookmarklet (based on one by astrolat) that allows you to quickly share links on Dreamwidth and that will check to see if you're linking to a locked DW post. Instructions on the bookmarklet over here It'll create a new DW post, autofill the subject line, and then you can edit or add other commentary.

What I've been up to
Unpacking. I got all my books on bookshelves last Sunday, labelled them a couple of days ago (and now I need to go through and update my locations in LibraryThing. That's a longer project).

Tonight is for finishing tidying up the living room and cleaning before I have witchy students over tomorrow. (For a class on Tarot.)


Useful notes
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House rules:
This is a public post, feel free to encourage other people to drop by, just note the 'if posting anonymously, include a name people can call you in responses' rule.

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Comments

[cjsmith]

Such a book might be quite useful. One thing that consistently trips me up is that the vast majority of recipes I've encountered will presume a certain baseline of vocabulary and skills. Saute' this, steam that, salt to taste. My cooking buddy recently bought me a copy of Essentials of Cooking and already I can tell it is going to help a TON.

("Salt to taste" never fails to frustrate me. HELP ME OUT, FOLKS! If I knew how much of everything to put in, I wouldn't be reading a recipe!)

[warriorinside]

That's just the trick. Salt to taste is different depending on what you like and who you're feeding. When it says that, it literally means that. You may have to experiment with how much salt you add, but go easy at first. You can always add more, but you can't take it out once it goes in, and too salty is ACK not to mention health problems some people have with salt.

Remember this: a dish will not always be right the first time you make it. It's not always you that makes the error. Some recipes just plain aren't workable without modifications. If you're thinking about making a dish for company, make a test run first. Make sure that the recipe is actually any good :)

[cjsmith]

I'd say that goes for chile, too, and cinnamon, and cilantro, and... It ALL depends on what you like and who you're feeding. But recipe writers only do the cop-out for this one particular ingredient!

Intellectually I totally grok that a dish won't always be right the first time. My hangup is that I really really really hate throwing things away. I think my unwillingness to get things wrong has been a major reason why I haven't cooked for so long. (Well, one major reason. There are some others, and they are doozies.)

Baking, now! Here is my (usually-controversial ;) ) view. Baking starts with ingredients that will all taste good in virtually all proportions. I mean, okay, you can't swap the amounts of sugar and salt, but other than that, flour sugar butter maybe egg and maybe some sweet spices or other is a pretty good palette. You might get a texture you didn't want but you're going to get something yummy. YOU CAN'T GO WRONG! YAY BAKING! :) :) :)

This ends CJ's simplistic view of the kitchen. :)

[warriorinside]

Well, many diets exclude added salt, and I know one person who eats her food so salty nobody else can stand it. She likes it, and her blood pressure is normal because she has a diagnosed sodium deficiency. She'll get sick if she doesn't do that. *shrug* Takes all kinds to make a world.

The reason they cop out here is because all other spices balance with each other. Salt is its own thing and affects the taste buds directly instead of indirectly via scent.

I feel you on cilantro, though. My taste in cilantro is leave that thing out of my food, tyvm. (I'm in that 10% of the population that think it tastes like soap.)

[cjsmith]

Yeah, I can think of specific reasons to cop out on many of the others, but basically it all boils down to "most people don't care that this one quantity isn't given". Since I'm the one who does care and I am in the minority, well, I won't use those recipes by myself until I get the Magic Knowledge everyone is supposed to have.

My sympathies on the cilantro soap thing. I have the brassica bitter thing. Broccoli, cauliflower, all that stuff please do not go in mouth.

[adrian_turtle]

I disagree with you about baked goods being based on things that will mix happily in all proportions. Doubling the flour leads to terrible cookies. I've found that soup is much more accepting of different proportions.

I'd say that goes for chile, too, and cinnamon, and cilantro, and... It ALL depends on what you like and who you're feeding. But recipe writers only do the cop-out for this one particular ingredient!

Recipes almost always seem to have ground pepper "to taste." And salt is sometimes "to taste," and sometimes "1/2 teaspoon" is listed in the recipe and "correct seasoning" at the end. (Occasionally "1/4 teaspoon salt, or more to taste."

Some of my cookbooks have what you call "the cop-out" for many different ingredients. I don't think it's a cop-out. I think it's a valuable acknowledgement of where the recipe is flexible. (Or where the writer knows it's flexible.)
"If you prefer this soup only slightly spicy, reduce the cayenne to a few dashes."
"1.5 tbsp caraway seeds (optional)"
"2-4 cloves garlic, finely minced."
"Stir in a little more broth if it is too thick." (Especially after giving very exact amounts of everything else.)
"Add nutmeg to taste."

[cjsmith]

It's true that if one exerts undue force on the proportions, even a baked goods recipe can turn out yucky. Forgetting the flour entirely, for example, is often memorably not good. :)

Anywhere someone says merely "to taste" is also an acknowledgement that they don't care to provide at least a starting point for someone who doesn't at all know what they're doing. In which case, cool -- that recipe (and oh so many others) are Not For Me. Did I mention I don't cook? Here's one of the many reasons why.