Questions from Stolen_Tea
May. 31st, 2006 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikJust finished another section, so I'm taking a break... Y'all know the meme.
1. What's your favorite food to prepare? That is, what do you most enjoy the process of making? (If it's bread, what's your second favorite? ;) )
Well, it probably is bread, because I enjoy the rhythm, discipline, and innate simplicity of making bread. (Baking bread isn't hard if you do it regularly, but it has to be a part of your life. At the least the way I do it, with the maintaining the yeast culture and grinding the flour...)
I'm not sure what my second favorite would be. I really like things that are slow cooked over time, the kind of things you get started cooking, and then mostly do other things, stopping by every once and a bit to give them a stir and make sure there's enough liquid or whatever. I really love cooking with things I've grown or foraged myself -- I like the immediacy of the connection with the the land and the seasonal cycles. (And foraging is just fun.) And then at the far extreme from slow cooking, there's a lot of the cooking where most of the work is chopping up this and that, and you use a lot of fresh herbs and get everything arranged and set to go, and then the actual cooking is done in five minutes, and all the flavors are very clear and bright.
2. What's the biggest downside of living on a boat? (As opposed to a similarly-sized place in the general vicinity...)
Not having a bath tub to soak in. I generally far prefer baths to showers, and when I'm feeling down love to take a book into the bath and soak for hours. Sharing a house with me with only one bath, and that a wonderful long old fashioned claw foot tub, was probably no fun at all.
Messing with propane, and the silly propane oven is the next biggest. But not so bad. Though if I had my own boat, I might even try to put in a brick oven.
3. Do you tend to prefer watching sunrises or sunsets, and why?
Sunrises. When I was a kid, and then more formally in my teens, I kept sunrise observances, and I love the feel of sunrises. (Conversely, for years I simply couldn't sleep through a sunrise, even when I'd barely slept and I was in a room without windows. Nnngh.) There's something very clean and clear about sunrises, to me, and even moreso in the light half of the year when most people aren't awake for them. There's a lot of room to do things, both in the absense of people, and the coming day.
Sunsets are nice, but generally more prosaic.
4. You do realize that your cell phone probably has a higher-quality monitor than your computer, right? :P
You realize that you only started bitching about my monitor after I installed an update that trashed my video driver and knocked down the refresh rate, right? Yes, it sucks. Yes, it annoys me. And one of these days I'll have the time to bother figuring out what needs to be done to fix it. (I've checked the simple stuff.)
It's an old monitor. But it was a very good monitor once upon a time (say, ten years ago). Either someone will give me a hand-me-down that's better in the meantime, or I will keep using it until it breaks or I happen to be feeling affluent... and then I will buy a really nice monitor that I hope will last me just as long. I really like the Dell flatscreen I have at the lab, I must admit.
5. What sort of music do you enjoy listening to?
That's hard. A lot of classical. Various other bits and pieces that I've picked up at one time or another. I mostly don't own a lot of music -- I always liked playing music better than listening to recordings. And I have a really good auditory memory, so my backbrain will usually come up with an appropriate (or otherwise) soundtrack if I need one. Right now I'm listening to XTC's "Greenman". Earlier I was listening to Ani di Franco's "Anyday". The White Stripe's cover of "Jolene" and Fastball's "The Way" have also been through this morning.
1. What's your favorite food to prepare? That is, what do you most enjoy the process of making? (If it's bread, what's your second favorite? ;) )
Well, it probably is bread, because I enjoy the rhythm, discipline, and innate simplicity of making bread. (Baking bread isn't hard if you do it regularly, but it has to be a part of your life. At the least the way I do it, with the maintaining the yeast culture and grinding the flour...)
I'm not sure what my second favorite would be. I really like things that are slow cooked over time, the kind of things you get started cooking, and then mostly do other things, stopping by every once and a bit to give them a stir and make sure there's enough liquid or whatever. I really love cooking with things I've grown or foraged myself -- I like the immediacy of the connection with the the land and the seasonal cycles. (And foraging is just fun.) And then at the far extreme from slow cooking, there's a lot of the cooking where most of the work is chopping up this and that, and you use a lot of fresh herbs and get everything arranged and set to go, and then the actual cooking is done in five minutes, and all the flavors are very clear and bright.
2. What's the biggest downside of living on a boat? (As opposed to a similarly-sized place in the general vicinity...)
Not having a bath tub to soak in. I generally far prefer baths to showers, and when I'm feeling down love to take a book into the bath and soak for hours. Sharing a house with me with only one bath, and that a wonderful long old fashioned claw foot tub, was probably no fun at all.
Messing with propane, and the silly propane oven is the next biggest. But not so bad. Though if I had my own boat, I might even try to put in a brick oven.
3. Do you tend to prefer watching sunrises or sunsets, and why?
Sunrises. When I was a kid, and then more formally in my teens, I kept sunrise observances, and I love the feel of sunrises. (Conversely, for years I simply couldn't sleep through a sunrise, even when I'd barely slept and I was in a room without windows. Nnngh.) There's something very clean and clear about sunrises, to me, and even moreso in the light half of the year when most people aren't awake for them. There's a lot of room to do things, both in the absense of people, and the coming day.
Sunsets are nice, but generally more prosaic.
4. You do realize that your cell phone probably has a higher-quality monitor than your computer, right? :P
You realize that you only started bitching about my monitor after I installed an update that trashed my video driver and knocked down the refresh rate, right? Yes, it sucks. Yes, it annoys me. And one of these days I'll have the time to bother figuring out what needs to be done to fix it. (I've checked the simple stuff.)
It's an old monitor. But it was a very good monitor once upon a time (say, ten years ago). Either someone will give me a hand-me-down that's better in the meantime, or I will keep using it until it breaks or I happen to be feeling affluent... and then I will buy a really nice monitor that I hope will last me just as long. I really like the Dell flatscreen I have at the lab, I must admit.
5. What sort of music do you enjoy listening to?
That's hard. A lot of classical. Various other bits and pieces that I've picked up at one time or another. I mostly don't own a lot of music -- I always liked playing music better than listening to recordings. And I have a really good auditory memory, so my backbrain will usually come up with an appropriate (or otherwise) soundtrack if I need one. Right now I'm listening to XTC's "Greenman". Earlier I was listening to Ani di Franco's "Anyday". The White Stripe's cover of "Jolene" and Fastball's "The Way" have also been through this morning.
