Ursula

This is a get-well-soon card for glasseye's father, who's up for back surgery. glasseye made me promise to share it with The Internet.

Because of construction, my access to my main e-mail account will be unreliable all week. LJ comments still work, or you can e-mail me using my school account: uaw at u dot washington dot edu.

Here are the sleeves I made (and pandorasbox' lovely kirtle) at the Feast of Saint Bunstable.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, pay some attention to the seasons, and don't have your own garden, there's a point in the winter when you're reduced to Washington-sticker apples. This is a vegetarian version of a recipe from New Food of Life, a Persian cookbook. It has the advantage that it's much faster than the original, meat version.

Vegetarian Apple Khoresh
(Sweet-and-sour apple stew)

Peel and thinly slice two large onions. Brown in some oil. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Add a cup of lentils, stir, then add a tablespoon of tomato paste (optional; I've used spiced carrot paste & nothing, but ketchup might work too), three tablespoons of sugar, three of good vinegar, and half a teaspoon of ground saffron dissolved in a bit of warm water. (Yes, I said half a teaspoon of saffron. This is a Persian recipe!) Cover with a couple of cups of water, and simmer until the lentils are done and most of the water is gone, adding more water as necessary.

Meanwhile, core and peel about five apples, cut them into wedges, and saute them in more oil until they turn a nice golden brown or you die of boredom.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Arrange the apples on top of the lentils in a casserole or cast-iron pan, and bake until you want to eat it. (This step is satisfying, but I think more relevant in the non-vegetarian version.)

This is good with basmati rice and with plain yogurt that has had the whey drained out of it and plain water (and garlic?) stirred in. You can make the lazy man's saffron rice by dissolving more saffron in water and splashing it over the top of your rice.

I'm trying to make sleeves like the ones worn by the woman in the lower left-hand corner or the girl with an apron in the back of this painting:

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/ghirland/domenico/6tornab/62tornab/3birth.html

How do people think they would have been fastened on the upper arm & wrist? Buttons? Lace? Pins? A couple of stitches?

glasseye's birthday is on Monday, so tonight I made baklava, fusing the recipes from five different cookbooks (Lebanese, Persian, Armenian, Madhur Jaffrey's Worlds of the East, and the Joy of Cooking.) ryunohi calls it The Great Honey Versus Sugar Syrup question. It looks to me as if this is a question of ethnicity, not just personal taste: I don't have a Greek cookbook, but I theorize that are two basic styles of baklava, a Greek version with walnuts, honey, and cinnamon, and a Persian style with almonds, pistachios, sugar syrup, cardamom, and a huge amount of rosewater, and everyone else interpolates between. The Illuminated Table, The Prosperous House suggests that in sixteenth-century Turkey, sugar was for the rich and honey for the poor, and perhaps the Persian style retains that theory of sugar as luxury? Or maybe they just don't want to drown out the rosewater. I went for an intermediate style: some honey (I would have used more, for glasseye's sake, but we ran out), almonds & walnuts mixed, cinnamon and cardamom together, and only a tablespoon of rosewater in the filling, as opposed to a half-cup in the syrup.

***

Yesterday I bought, and finished, the new Lois Bujold book. It would have been more satisfying if I hadn't just re-read Curse of Chalion. The romances are very similar: a wearied soldier of advanced years falls in love with a lively but practical girl of under twenty, and though one wearied soldier is thirty-five and the other fifty-five, their genetics and general level of wear make their apparent ages identical. And I was thrown once or twice by identical wordings: " '____,' he breathed" at moments of intense realization. (Does Miles Vorkosigan breathe monosyllables, too? I think he does.) I imagined the beginnings of Part III: a wearied female soldier of advanced years (almost forty!) falls in love with a lively but practical man of twenty-something, a noncombatant, possibly a potter, and angsts about the impossible age difference (when women are older, they can angst quite successfully with less than ten years' difference), until " 'Yes . . .' she breathed" and so on, and so forth.

The interesting bit to me, though, was the flora: I've wondered before what would happen if fantasy novels took a different landscape for their default-- New World, say, as opposed to vaguely-England-- and this landscape was decidedly American. It's sort of high-fantasy Pioneer, in fact, with farmers and coppery-skinned land-sensing Lakewalkers, and corn and poison ivy and racoons. In context, this may well be post-magical-apocalypse Midwest, rather than high fantasy on another world. I looked for puns in the placenames, à la Sheri Tepper, but if there were any they were too subtle for my coastal eye, and in general attitude this story feels like high fantasy, rather than the heavy-handedness of "What man has done once, he need not destroy the earth to do again" (a particularly unsubstantiated maxim, I always thought: cf. Roman Empire).

A few days ago I was hunting through the OED to answer one of those burning questions of early modern life, namely, would it be more authentic to refer to myself in the SCA as Ursula Georges otherwise Loyall Pursevant, Ursula Georges Loyall, or just Ursula Loyall, when I chanced upon the following descriptions of a herald's duties:

1562
They...are named ancient Herehaughtes, who haue made distinction betweene the gentle and the vngentle.

1592
Buying Armes of the Herald, who giues them the Lyon without tongue, tayle, or tallents.

1592
The herralde to blason their descente from an old house.

1598, Jonson
The first red herring that was broil'd in Adam and Eve's kitchen, doe I fetch my pedigree from by the Harrots bookes.

and a little out of period:

1687, Dryden
Do you not know that for a little coin Heralds can foist a name into the line?

From this data I conclude that, although heralds in the SCA are criticised justly and unjustly for all sorts of things, they have been remiss in their efforts to recreate one of the more renowned (albeit late-period) abuses of heraldic power, namely, taking money to create false genealogies. I feel that therefore, in the interests of authenticity, I should point out that I am VERY HAPPY to be bribed to make up genealogies, and can in fact use my onomastic skill to invent a lengthy and plausible genealogy for your persona at a moment's notice.

1. My cat turned my computer's display upside-down this afternoon.

2. 'The distribution of your message dated Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:21:08 -0700 with
subject "Re: Rules or not?" has been postponed because the daily message
limit for the SCAHRLDS list (150) has been exceeded. No action is required
from you; your message will be reprocessed'

This morning I wandered around U. Village, the trendy outdoor shopping mall down the hill from me. I bought a pair of shoes that I've been yearning after for a while, since they're the summery version of the little red shoes I'm very fond of. It's still strange to me that I'm grown-up enough to want more than summer sandals and winter boots-- and grown-up enough to pay for them! Such luxury! But the real purpose of the expedition was to pick up a plate I made for glasseye from one of those places where you paint your own dishes. I painted his device, a green shield with an ermine chief and a white sun. The shield came out a lovely glossy green, but I'm most proud of the stylized leaves round the border.

I was at Paint the Town a week ago, for a birthday party for my officemate, S. I don't think I've talked about S much here, but I've definitely enjoyed sharing an office with her and I'm very sad that she's leaving. She'll be moving to Michigan in just over a week! S is sweet and kind and friendly and has any number of talents, including the harp and yoga and drawing. I wish I had gotten to know her when she first came to this city, two years ago, instead of waiting until we did share an office. It's so sad to realize friendships too slowly.

S's birthday was just the start of a busy weekend. Saturday morning I walked to the farmer's market, and bought whole-wheat bread, spinach, chard, fresh garlic, and feta cheese. I spent a quiet afternoon, but in the evening J&L arrived, bearing riches from China! They gave us a gorgeous little teapot shaped like an eggplant with a miniature eggplant for a lid. glasseye and I and J&L stayed up late into the night, sharing -- variously -- beer, Scotch, and ginger-lemon tea, and talking about China, Philadelphia, and old times together. The next day we all went to Folklife, along with J's mother, aunt, and grandmother. We all wandered around together, so I didn't get to dance. :( But we did hear all sorts of music, in particular Spoonshine, bluegrass with string bass! And I spent a long time looking longingly at silk coats, made by a local artist from Indian sari materials. Wonderful thick material with a twirly skirt -- but the best pattern, with little swirling rosebuds, was on a coat one size too small, and I wanted to be absolutely in love before I bought one. (The booth was called Silk Dragons. I got a card, but she doesn't have a website.) I celebrated Memorial-eve by making elaborate pizzas, two with leeks, mushrooms, and white wine, and two with spinach, olives, and the feta I bought earlier in the weekend. Yum.

That brings me back to tonight's culinary adventure, which was Persian rice with barberries. Barberries are incredibly sour, like the dried-fruit version of Sour Patch Kids. I love sour food, but two cups were a little much! And I forgot part of the tah dig step, so no crunchy buttery bottom layer to my rice. But it was one of the most beautiful dishes I've seen in a long time, all white and red and yellow (the recipe asked for a teaspoon of ground saffron), and small amounts with yoghurt and garlic were wonderful.

[Same game.]

Dear World,

Why didn't you tell me that Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote novels for adults? Or, for that matter, that she had a scandalous affair and was divorced twice?

( SPOILER for A Lady of Quality which none of you care about anyway )

I don't care how much it talks about Christ, this is revolutionary, I tell you, revolutionary. Damn you, Trollope! Damn you, Barren Ground!

[Same game.]