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No FMK this week, because I am way behind on reading, and also because I am going eclipse-hunting over the weekend! I will be bringing eclipse-related books on that trip. And thinking about this xkcd strip which was the main thing that got me into the new year, anyway.
Probably it will rain all day, but at least I can say I tried.
So instead of books, since I will be doing a lot of driving in the middle of nowhere, my question this week is: What songs are on your eclipse playlist? "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "The Sun Is A Miasma of Incandescent Plasma", obviously. But what else?
I have been working on the book collection, though! I went through and re-did my to-read lists, of which there are three: one on the library website, which has 300 books on it, of books the library has; the Goodreads one, which includes only books my library doesn't have and has about 250; and ~2500 owned-but-unread, so that's totally doable at my current rate as long as I never add any more to any of the three lists.
(Anybody want to be goodreads friends, by the way? if we aren't already, drop me a line. my gr is connected to my rl so I don't link it here but I will def. add people.)
Me and Mom also cleaned out the cookbooks over the weekend, which was fun! We both agreed on keeping the ones that had some kind of sentimental value to the family, of course. After that, I wanted to keep the ones that were old enough to be historically interesting, or had some kind of distinctive theme. She wanted to keep the ones that were basic anthologies of Bland White American cooking (like the many, many church cookbooks we have somehow acquired.) So between us, pretty much the only ones we could agree to get rid of (other than obvious duplicates and super-dated 'eat on a budget' ones) were the various "healthy diet" cookbooks - low fiber, low salt, low 'additives', meatless, whole food, low fat, 'heart-healthy', 'longevity', low sugar, etc. We were never really a household that was into fad diets, but the general 'you have to eat right' thing just oozes into the cracks regardless, somehow. But we looked at all of them and were both like 'do you see any value in keeping this? Yeah, me neither." I feel like that says something good about this household's current food culture.
(Also I learned that there was a period in my youth when my parents were considering going vegetarian! Knowing Dad, and going by the cookbooks we found, probably for environmentalism reasons. I never even told them about my environmentalist-vegetarian phase in college because I figured they'd just think it was overdramatic! [my rule was no food made of dead animals unless a) I was Being Cooked For; or b) it was made of the bits that would have been thrown out otherwise. So Mom's cooking was allowedunder both rules and I could also still have scrapple and spaghetti-os and taco bell, which is really all I would miss of meat anyway.] We got rid of most of those cookbooks too. I kind of go vegetarian by default when cooking for myself because it just doesn't occur to me to include meat, and if I ever go actively vegetarian again this will be the only specialist cookbook I need. I think at this point I'm holding out for vat-meat, though. I want my pink slime chicken nuggets that are made of real pink slime, dammit.)
And I still can't get over the "Healthy Snacks For Kids" cookbook dating to when I was a kid, although I don't remember ever using it, that falls open to the "low-fat, low-salt sandwich" recipe that is BREAD, PEANUT BUTTER, MAYONNAISE, AND BACON. I kind of want to keep that one just to O-o.
We got rid of about fifty cookery books. There's only about 200 left. That't TOTALLY reasonable for a family of two that cooks an actual meal at most twice a week, and usually from recipes we know by heart, right?
Probably it will rain all day, but at least I can say I tried.
So instead of books, since I will be doing a lot of driving in the middle of nowhere, my question this week is: What songs are on your eclipse playlist? "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "The Sun Is A Miasma of Incandescent Plasma", obviously. But what else?
I have been working on the book collection, though! I went through and re-did my to-read lists, of which there are three: one on the library website, which has 300 books on it, of books the library has; the Goodreads one, which includes only books my library doesn't have and has about 250; and ~2500 owned-but-unread, so that's totally doable at my current rate as long as I never add any more to any of the three lists.
(Anybody want to be goodreads friends, by the way? if we aren't already, drop me a line. my gr is connected to my rl so I don't link it here but I will def. add people.)
Me and Mom also cleaned out the cookbooks over the weekend, which was fun! We both agreed on keeping the ones that had some kind of sentimental value to the family, of course. After that, I wanted to keep the ones that were old enough to be historically interesting, or had some kind of distinctive theme. She wanted to keep the ones that were basic anthologies of Bland White American cooking (like the many, many church cookbooks we have somehow acquired.) So between us, pretty much the only ones we could agree to get rid of (other than obvious duplicates and super-dated 'eat on a budget' ones) were the various "healthy diet" cookbooks - low fiber, low salt, low 'additives', meatless, whole food, low fat, 'heart-healthy', 'longevity', low sugar, etc. We were never really a household that was into fad diets, but the general 'you have to eat right' thing just oozes into the cracks regardless, somehow. But we looked at all of them and were both like 'do you see any value in keeping this? Yeah, me neither." I feel like that says something good about this household's current food culture.
(Also I learned that there was a period in my youth when my parents were considering going vegetarian! Knowing Dad, and going by the cookbooks we found, probably for environmentalism reasons. I never even told them about my environmentalist-vegetarian phase in college because I figured they'd just think it was overdramatic! [my rule was no food made of dead animals unless a) I was Being Cooked For; or b) it was made of the bits that would have been thrown out otherwise. So Mom's cooking was allowed
And I still can't get over the "Healthy Snacks For Kids" cookbook dating to when I was a kid, although I don't remember ever using it, that falls open to the "low-fat, low-salt sandwich" recipe that is BREAD, PEANUT BUTTER, MAYONNAISE, AND BACON. I kind of want to keep that one just to O-o.
We got rid of about fifty cookery books. There's only about 200 left. That't TOTALLY reasonable for a family of two that cooks an actual meal at most twice a week, and usually from recipes we know by heart, right?
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Low-fat and low-salt, however, it is NOT.
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I went vegetarian with 17 and never lapsed (aside from accidental consumption of gelatine and such). Unfortunately vat meat would be unlikely to credibly recreate the two meat dishes I still really miss, which are Christmas goose and the regional blood sausage we have here (what I think is called "black pudding" in English? it's made from steel-cut oats, raisins and spices in blood and you cut the sausage up and fry it, and it's delicious, though it seems to be getting less popular -- at least a few years ago when I was making it for my father I had to really look for a butcher still offering it).
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It's actually easier to get German(ish) blutwurst in my part of the US than it is to get British-style black pudding! You have to go to specialty German or Pennsylvania Dutch places, but there are plenty of them around, and they usually have something they call blutwurst, at least. It sounds like your regional variant has much more interesting fillers in it than the one time I tried blutwurst here, though.
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What I was referring to is called "Grützwurst" i.e. "porridge sausage" and it mainly grain, just made more delicious by the savory pig's blood. The final texture once cooked is like a fried grain porridge crumble. (Some people think it doesn't look very appetizing and call it by names like "dead grandma" or "traffic accident".)
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The typical dish my mother always made was "Grützwurst mit Himmel und Erde" ("with sky and earth") meaning with applesauce and mashed potatoes, and it looked very much like the picture on this Austrian cooking page:
https://www.gutekueche.at/gruetzwurst-mit-himmel-und-erde-rezept-5039
except that the Grützwurst here in Hamburg usually looks a bit darker and often has raisins in it, but the consistency is mush like in that picture.
Also my mother used applesauce from a jar, roasted onions from a box and instant mashed potatoes because that way this is a very fast food you can make in fifteen minutes, not everything from scratch like that recipe calls for.
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(Although tbf the blutwurst you see here probably does not resemble what you are describing as blutwurst much either. It was boiled sausage links. My main memory of it is that it was rubbery.)
I saw Dead Grandma mentioned on the wikipedia page but their version of that sounded like a different thing again. (it included liverwurst, which is an old favorite of my grandma's actually.)
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I didn't like liver as a kid at all whether fried (my father loved it, so we had it regularly, but fortunately my mother did not insist on everyone eating it) or as liverwurst spread. Though as teenager I habituated somewhat to certain milder liverwurst variants. Still not a favorite I missed one I stopped eating animals.
I have no idea whether the Blutwurst here is rubbery because I have never actually eaten any. I think as a kid I was grossed out by blood in the name or something?
I mean when I was little I did not really realize that Grützwurst was made from blood too. What you can see is the grain, and even non-fried it's not as if blood oozes out of it like with meat. So when I realized what the ingredients were I already liked it.
But here local Blutwurst commonly looks like the left one in this picture from the German Wikipedia, and the butcher slices thinly for you so you can put it on bread:
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Blutwurst.jpg
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I will only eat liver as liverwurst. :P But I have a weakness for all meat products which are that porridge-y, spreadable texture. The Grutzwurst looks like something I would really like! Although I have always wondered if good blood sausage (and blood soup) actually taste like fresh blood, because I will admit that's not a flavor I'm super fond of. You mostly here about them here in vampire novels...
(I've actually found that cornmeal mush - aka polenta because apparently they decided that 'mush' isn't marketable - fried in a savory oil with the same spices makes a pretty good substitute for those kinds of meats.)
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But I think in Grützwurst the blood gets pretty thoroughly cooked, at least the way my mother cooked it, because she cut the sausage rings horizontally before starting to fry them, so there were more crispy bits. So if you get the chance you could probably give it a try without feeling like a vampire.
I don't remember it tasting like blood or raw (though the only raw meat I remember eating was the raw minced meat people put on bread here, and I wasn't fond of that texture and frankly it tasted blander than the same meat fried as a hamburger, so I'm not a connoisseur of raw meat products).
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