Books and food

I almost always try to finish any book I've started, but sometimes I get disgusted and can't. That kind of happened with Good in Bed.

( Spoilers ahead, so don't click if you care )

I spent too much at Buns & Noodle and got Cassie Clare's novel, which is pretty cool so far, as well as an impluse buy based mostly on the gorgeousness of the book and illustrations, The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow, which is apparently also an anime series. I was there in the first place to get volume 3 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. A smart person would have seen that the store didn't have her intended purchase and would have left. A smart person would not have gone over to the YA section and found 8 books she wanted right away. :-) But having done so, a smart person would probably have pared the 8 down to a more reasonable 2.

Today I'm going to make miso soup, now that I have the ingredients for dashi. I use bonito in my dashi even though I'm mostly a vegetarian. It's just better. I was also planning to make sesame tofu, but I accidentally bought sesame dressing instead of sesame paste. I might try to fake something up with what I have.

It's thundering now and might finally storm; clouds have been building up without dumping any rain for a few days now. I hope that'll wash some of the humidity out of the air. Going outside has been like swimming through warm, wet cotton balls. ICK.

Confirmed!

I'll be back in beautiful Cascadia in July, yay! I'm going to Seattle for tvnewseditor's wedding, and I'll be there from 7/25 to 7/30.

I always get so stressed out making plane reservations. (Especially when Delta's web site lets you get as far as choosing flights, entering credit card info, and picking seats, and then gives you an unhelpful error and refuses to book them!!) I hate to fly anyway, and I start to worry as soon as I start to hunt for the tickets. But I have my flying drugs, and hey! I'm going to Seattle!

Yep, I'm prolific today

The miso soup came out yummy. The hardest part was getting the tofu and seaweed into the pot instead of my mouth. :-) Those little bits o' wakame are tasty!

Here's how I made it:

Dashi (stock)

Boil 4-6 oz. kombu seaweed in 2 quarts water. When it boils, remove the seaweed and take the pot off the heat. Stir in 1 1/2 cups bonito flakes and steep for about 7 minutes. (This is a good time to give some fishie flakes to any kitties you have about who may have been traumatized by a thunderstorm.) Pour into a bowl through a cheesecloth-lined strainer.

Miso (the Americanized cheatin' way, I suspect)

Take a cup of dashi and 4 cups water and bring to a boil in a pot. Turn off heat, stir in 2-3 Tbs miso (I used red). Add about 1/4 cup of wakame and however much diced firm tofu you have left over out of one of those Mori Nu boxes after eating a bunch of the cubes. Taste and feel it isn't quite right, so add 2 Tbs or so of soy sauce. Eat lots and lots!

I am going to try to find a foodie icon.