Friday, January 15, 2021

 

It has been a feeble day on the walking front – 1975 steps so far.

 

Better for knitting, though. I’m most of the way around round 41 (of 50) on the borders of Gudrun’s hap. I’ve done the penultimate pattern round. It’ll take a long time to knit the edging on, but that’s a job I particularly enjoy.

 

Life

 

The doctor’s website now says that tomorrow’s vaccination session is for the mobile over-90’s. That lets me out. The implication is that he didn’t get as much vaccine as he expected.

 

Here’s a funny thing: last Thursday, which is “food day” in the Times, they printed a recipe for curing your own bacon, and one for making kimchi. The latter was by a chef I particularly admire, Skye Gyngell. There were also two articles, one by a man who had had great fun and great success curing his own bacon, and one by a woman whose kimchi had been a disaster – “too spicy, too sour, too fishy.” She threw it away.

 

Gyngell says that her kimchi recipe is “the most authentic and nicest I have come across”. “Nice” is a matter of taste, but I wouldn’t call it “authentic”. No gochugaru chili powder, no radish. (Mooli is usually specified; when I can’t get that, I get ordinary radishes and laboriously slice them.) And she includes half a cup of cooked white rice. The traditional approach is to make a porridge with rice flour. My own kimchi is based on Brad Leone’s recipe on YouTube, but I’ve looked at many others, including several posted by Koreans; and have consulted several books.

 

But what was funny, was to print the recipe alongside so hostile a review.

 

I’m getting low on kimchi. It will soon be time to make more.

 

Reading

 

I’ve moved forward in “Barchester Towers”. I don’t see androgyny in Charlotte Stanhope, Shandy. The author needs someone to hold the Stanhopes together, since the mother and the other daughter are useless, and he has created an admirable woman whose company one enjoys, so to speak, even though she lives mostly in the background. The Signora will need several paragraphs to herself at some point. I doubt if there is another woman remotely comparable anywhere in Trollope.

4 comments:

  1. Well now, Charlotte Stanhope... she is more responsible than the other Stanhopes but that is not to say very much, is it? She has encouraged Bertie in his idleness and Madeline in her folly. At one point Trollope says she made a fine old young lady or a very fine young man. I think she is shown as a controlling force at the centre of the family enjoying the power which that gives her but without any moral purpose.
    And, oh yes, Madeline! What a creation!

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  2. =Tamar11:30 PM

    Getting up and about regularly is more the point, I think. No need to overdo. What was it, "Pas de zele"? I forget who said it.
    Somehow I never encountered Trollope. My local bookstore closed, drat it.

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  3. Anonymous2:12 PM

    Jean I'd be happy to be your Kim-chee sous chef and slice those radishes. I like chopping crisp vegetables. Very therapeutic:). Chloe

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  4. It has been a long time since I read Barchester, this makes me want to dig it out. I think I have an audio book version, as well. Somewhere. And Tamar is right about the regular movement, at least according to current research. The regular movement of being in the office helped me much more than I realized.

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