Lifestream

Finished season 2 of Ozark and I guess Wendy is Walter White, not Marty?

While it's perhaps inaccurate to call the current Covid-19 crisis "unprecedented" (given that the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918 led to many of the same measures), I think it's reasonable to say that it's unprecedented in my lifetime - and I'm not exactly young.

Accordingly, in these heady times, I don't think it's uncommon to discover a thing or two about yourself. Hell, introspection is almost inevitable, given the circumstances.

In that vein, this is my "Things I Learned In Lockdown" post. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

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Chorizo stuffed olives

I never fully understood how spot on Maya Rudolph's impression was.

I seriously don't understand the point of the time limits in these debates.

Does anyone else have a problem with the song "You're So Vain"?  The song is not supposed to be about him and yet it's totally about him, right?

I have just realized that "I'd be down for that" and "I'd be up for that" mean the same thing 😮

Apple butter is in our future

Made Tres Leches cake.  It was good, but I was expecting it to be...I don't know...drippier?

I don't think I'm ever going to be a fan of polenta.

Outdoor popup library, apparently.

TIL about chicken pudding, a dessert popular in Turkey, made with milk, sugar, vanilla...and actual shredded chicken breast.

It's funny how I can suspend my disbelief about most things in movies or on TV except when people in restaurants order "a beer" or "a whiskey". People never do this! They're always more specific.

A rare selfie! I'm so sorry.

Not long ago, I joined an Italian cooking group on Facebook. I thought it would be a good opportunity to pick up some tips and recipes. I left the group a couple of months later, after some members became...oh, let's call it "agitated"...over whether Sunday ragu was a "sauce" or a "gravy".

It sounds like a joke, doesn't it? Personal attacks stemming from disagreements over culinary terminology seem like such a cartoonish Italian stereotype that you almost think it just can't be true. Or maybe you just don't want it to be.

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TIL about Sardinian maggot cheese.  I...am not sure what else to say about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu

TIL that blackstrap molasses is not the same as fancy molasses.  NOT AT ALL.

TIL about the Barbie Liberation Organization who, in 1993, bought up 300-500 talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and switched their voice boxes so the Barbies would say things like "Vengeance is mine" and the G.I. Joes would say things like "The beach is the place for summer".  They then returned the dolls to the stores ("reverse shoplifting") to be sold to unsuspecting children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_Liberation_Organization

I'm currently in the process of corrupting Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce with the addition of a red bell pepper and I have to say I feel a little naughty.

I'm never excited to eat a Nanaimo bar, and yet they're always so good when I actually eat one.

I am not sure what to say about a political figure that points to actual riots happening under his own administration and uses them to criticize the guy who's running against him in the next election.

When it comes to food and drink, I tend to lean towards the simple. Or, more accurately, I tend to lean towards the simple and well-made.

One of my favourite memories of the Dominican Republic, for example, was the coco loco - literally just a coconut with the top sliced off and rum mixed into the milk, served with a straw and maybe a squeeze of lime. When the coconut is fresh, the drink is amazing.

Another example would be Marcella Hazan's (in)famous tomato sauce. It literally has only four ingredients (canned tomatoes, butter, onion and salt) and notably no garlic or herbs, so the sauce doesn't really have anywhere to hide; it tastes like buttery, slow cooked tomatoes which is, well, you know, delicious.

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Found an interesting side road

Lemon ricotta pound cake, a close cousin of the cannoli pound cake I posted previously. This time it's actually a pound cake, more or less. And yes, it's delicious.

Pound cake batter is objectively the best batter.