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Oct. 14th, 2004 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikTonight I made minestrone, but I made it with canned beans, and compressed the overall cooking time down to about 45 minutes. (From a more usual half a day to a day of soaking the beans, and 3-4 hours of simmering.) Which I've never done before, I think.
It was... odd. Taken on it's own merits, it was pretty decent (even with canned beans, there is something refreshingly real about minestrone, which is, afterall, mostly a pile of vegetables simmered together, with a bit of pasta). But there is a richness and depth of flavor that comes from the slow cooking. I'm not sure how much is just the difference between canned and dried beans -- the canned beans seemed bland, and didn't thicken the broth in the way I'm used to.
C, by the way, so far looks to be an excellent housemate, though with all three of us caught up and distracted by various projects, it's hard to say if the current situation is representative. (Then again, it's fairly representative for me, really...) We have traded off making soup for eachother, which has been delightful. It's so nice to have someone else around who cooks. And there is a curious sense of companionship I really like, of being vaguely aware of someone else, busily working on their own thing as you are busily working on yours, crossing paths and chatting in little bits, occaisionally throughout the day.
Tomorrow wushu starts, and I'll get to see both how well I've actually gotten over my cold, and what my schedule actually feels like with all the components present. Right now I am feeling curiously content. There is a sense that I can study (oh, the university, I understand at last the reverence some have...) do my martial arts, and cook and make occaisional observances in the direction of the quiet arts of the home (and perhaps a few in the direction of the Arts proper) and that will be enough, my life will be complete and balanced. It's not true, of course, but perhaps it is true enough for today.
(If I have some time this evening, perhaps I will re-read "Gaudy Night". I just read "A Preseumption of Death", a book written by Walsh but based on and including some of Sayer's wartime writings... and enjoyed it quite a bit, to my surprise. She did not convincingly manage to ape Sayers, but her writing about living in wartime England was entirely worth reading.)
It was... odd. Taken on it's own merits, it was pretty decent (even with canned beans, there is something refreshingly real about minestrone, which is, afterall, mostly a pile of vegetables simmered together, with a bit of pasta). But there is a richness and depth of flavor that comes from the slow cooking. I'm not sure how much is just the difference between canned and dried beans -- the canned beans seemed bland, and didn't thicken the broth in the way I'm used to.
C, by the way, so far looks to be an excellent housemate, though with all three of us caught up and distracted by various projects, it's hard to say if the current situation is representative. (Then again, it's fairly representative for me, really...) We have traded off making soup for eachother, which has been delightful. It's so nice to have someone else around who cooks. And there is a curious sense of companionship I really like, of being vaguely aware of someone else, busily working on their own thing as you are busily working on yours, crossing paths and chatting in little bits, occaisionally throughout the day.
Tomorrow wushu starts, and I'll get to see both how well I've actually gotten over my cold, and what my schedule actually feels like with all the components present. Right now I am feeling curiously content. There is a sense that I can study (oh, the university, I understand at last the reverence some have...) do my martial arts, and cook and make occaisional observances in the direction of the quiet arts of the home (and perhaps a few in the direction of the Arts proper) and that will be enough, my life will be complete and balanced. It's not true, of course, but perhaps it is true enough for today.
(If I have some time this evening, perhaps I will re-read "Gaudy Night". I just read "A Preseumption of Death", a book written by Walsh but based on and including some of Sayer's wartime writings... and enjoyed it quite a bit, to my surprise. She did not convincingly manage to ape Sayers, but her writing about living in wartime England was entirely worth reading.)
