I am arrived back from France.

ybunny and I had a great time.

Will update about it tomorrow.

FYI: Food Friday will be Food Saturday Evening this week. :)

Decent supervision.

Again, I make up words and that is NOT OKAY.
(Unsurprisingly.)

Tomorrow, ybunny and I leave for Paris. We'll be there until Friday afternoon-ish.

I'm excited, but I'm also a bit 'meh'.

A good food blog contains lots of pictures.

Unfortunately, most of the time, I am without such niceties.

Recently, I can blame this on a connectivity problem with our Mac Mini, aka the computer the pictures live on.

I like food pr0n as much as the next person.

So, I'll give you a few links of where I get my fix.

Bento
Lunch in a Box

Bento Anarchy

Bento Lunches

No, I don't make bento lunches myself, I don't have the time or equipment, but I think the intricacy of some of them are awesome.

Cakes
Cupcake Bakeshop

Cupcakes Take the Cake

Jintrinsique

Gluten-free
Gluten-free girl

Gluten-free Goddess

Gluten-free Blog

Veggie
Vegetarian Organic Blog

Misc
Potlikkery

I come back to these, though I do peruse new ones every so often. :)

You know you wanna share. Where do you see gorgeous, drool-worthy food?

FYI, it's Ascension Day.

The Mass chants for Eastertide (but not Easter day itself) are 'De Angelis'.

We switched over from using 'Orbis Factor' once Lent was over.

Today, as you might presume, we were to do 'De Angelis'.

I sang the Kyrie for 'De Angelis'.

The organist played 'Orbis Factor'.

There was a bit of confusion and extemporanising, but we got there in the end.

I guess that's what happens when you get two Protestants together doing the music for Mass...accidents happen. :)

Otherwise, the organist and I rocked the chapel. \m/

Photo by neonwilderness

Yeah, baby!

First time. Hee.

So far behind!

Okay, for anyone keeping track, I'm going to put asterisks by the books I've read previously since I'm allowing myself to read some that are not new to me.

I thought that it would be easier to do all new content, but I find that sometimes I just really want to allow myself to sink into prose that I know to be delicious rather than try something that might not be to my taste.

( Book Reviews: 27-37 )

Whew. I shouldn't put this off for so long.
I am now caught up, hurrah.

I don't understand how COPAC works sometimes.

Search query (keywords): moses king

Results: (third entry)
Sound recording, Aretha Franklin, 'Young, Gifted, and Black'.

I love me some Aretha, but it seems as though quoting her might not get me very far in my thesis...

I'm working on my paper 'o doom. I will finish, but I will be a quivering mass of semi-hysterical crazy by Friday, I'm pretty sure.

1. The good.
Package from graphxgrrl arrived today. Cookies!
And, I was just thinking, 'hmm, I'm hungry' and the postie rang.
So, good timing, graphxgrrl, good timing.

2. The bad.
This happened a while ago, but I was reminded of it yesterday and it pissed me off at the time, and remembering it pissed me off again.
I often say things, the recipient of my communication doesn't listen/doesn't understand/doesn't care, and thus I am ignored/reprimanded/condescended to. In my opinion this is hugely unfair. Yes, I get the butthurt from this. *sigh*
The incident: We were singing $MUSIC and we didn't have enough copies to go around. The choir has 30-odd members.
The choir master said, 'I know the school owned 50 copies of this originally'.
I said, to the assistant conductor, 'why don't we photocopy a few so we have enough right now, since we own more than enough but can't find them'.
He apparently wasn't listening closely and reamed me out about music and copyright and publishers starving to death.
It he had listened, it all made sense. I'm not suggesting copying music that we DON'T own copies of, sheesh. I tried to explain what I meant, but he wasn't listening any more then than when I made the suggestion originally.
We get to suffer and share one piece between 4 people in the altos because the music librarian suffered a fit of alphabetic amnesia when filing? Lovely.
I know, I'm a big baby about this sort of thing. *headdesk*

3. The bizarre.
After the ecumenical service yesterday, I walked back to my office to leave my hymnal.
There were two people that can only be described as 'neds' walking the other direction with a baby carriage past the front of the chapel.
There were about 20 people, who had come for a christening, standing out by the founder's tomb. These people were all Scottish.
One of the neds yells, 'Gae tae f---, ya Yugoslavian vampires'.
I literally stopped in my tracks and pondered this wide-eyed.
There might be context there that I don't understand, but as far as I could tell it was just totally random.

Today has been a long day.

Just winding down at the moment, more about real life tomorrow.

( the meme, bookishly )

FYI, I'm tremendously sorry for the lag in replying to some of your comments. Lots is getting pushed to the side during this crunch time.

I was talking to drjoan about the rise in prices for food in the US. It's amazing that a 10lb bag of rice used to cost around $8.50, now is heading towards $25. It used to be that grocery shopping when I was back in the US made me despair of UK prices.

Jake noted that in Alabama a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk is around $5, before tax.
Here, for the rough equivalent of a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread, both organic, is $6.96. Yes, that's more, but it's starting to narrow.

An overall grocery shopping trip is still more in the UK, but again, it's narrowing as well.

Our usual modus operandi for groceries is to buy basic veg (cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, etc.) at the Aberdeen Market from the farmer's stand there. Sometimes the eggs come from there as well.

We buy milk, cheese, and yogurt at our local Somerfield.

We're trying to coordinate joining a farm share based in Aberdeenshire. (My schedule has made this difficult recently.)

But, the rest we have delivered via online groceries, usually from Sainsbury's. (Not that Tesco isn't good, so far their delivery people have irked me.)

We stock up on kitchen roll, toilet roll, cat food (wet and dry), kitty litter, tinned veg and soup, frozen sundries, and cleaning supplies.

For Sainsbury's, the delivery fee is £5. Considering the price hikes in bus fare over the last three years (a student day pass when I arrived was £2. It is now £2.30.), paying the delivery charge saves either bus fare for two people (for us both, £5.10) or for two days worth of me going back and forth (£4.60).

There was a grocery delivery service in Chicago as well. I don't remember the name, but I think it had a green pear as a logo. It seemed so decadent to get groceries delivered.

Now, it seems like the normal thing.

Recently, I've had two deliveries in two weeks time. Both were because we were offered £10 vouchers that had expiry dates. But usually, it's a monthly or even bi-monthly thing.

My friend C says that of course online groceries are normal. What's weird is that I bought groceries for Tom online before I moved here. She says it boggles her mind that we managed to 'live together' before we lived together. :)

Online groceries? Any thoughts?

So, list. Listy McList.

1. I was almost crushed yesterday at the library. The basement contains all the old volumes of just about everything. Because they're short on space, they have shelves on a system that allows for only two aisle-gaps at a time. When you needs to get to books between shelves that are together, you check the next row down to see if anyone is there and then shove the row down.
Except that yesterday, Dorky Looking Boy didn't look and almost squashed me between French History and Yugoslavian Sociology.

2. This week is all about the Masoretic Text of Exodus. This is the kind of thing I live for. The rest of my phd work can go hang.

3. I'm tremendously behind now on my books for 2008. The thing is, I've not stopped reading, but I felt the urge to read a few books I've read before. So, I debating whether to just let them count or what.

4. I participated in a MRI study about singing. Basically, I spent 40 minutes inside an MRI machine vocalizing. Pretty neat pictures in the end, but I wouldn't volunteer for this again. Randomly, the same afternoon, I was given a £5 voucher for doing a quick thing for the Computing Science people on positive reinforcement and automated responses.
I don't know either.

5. I was speaking to one of the phd students in medicine. We were talking about the proliferation of knowledge and how the idea of a 'renaissance man' is almost impossible in today's world. We started talking about how some take this so far that they refuse to look at research that is more than five years old. (Definitely more a problem in her line of research than mine.)
She said, 'I take comfort in bacon.'
I honestly didn't know what to say to that. I just burst out laughing.
She realized what I thought and started laughing as well.
And yes, it makes more sense if you realize she was talking about Bacon.

6. Sometimes I wonder why I can't get things done. I'm guessing that two-and-a-half hour board meetings don't help.

7. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to play for church at the weekend. For once, I wish we could stick to the rotations. This is giving me (more) white hair.

I have a whale of a headache, but I suppose that's what I get for doing all my errands in one fell swoop.

One thing that seems to be a shared experience between dorms in the US and the UK is quick noodles.

In the US, the most prevalent are the various one that fall under the general heading of ramen noodles and, in my experience, the ones I hear most remembered from dorm life in the UK are collectively known as pot noodle.

I started with ramen noodles when I went away to boarding school. I'd had them before then, but mostly as a something to eat when sick.

But, during my first stint in a dormitory they took on a pervasive aspect I never could have anticipated.

People used them for food, obviously, but they also have barter value (I'll lend you my new black heels if you give me those two packs of oriental flavor, etc).

While pot noodle seems to be a 'boil kettle, pour in water, stir' situation, ramen was best if made on a stove. This is converted to interesting and not entirely successful microwaving experimenting.

I honestly hated microwaved ramen, so, on a whim, I tried just eating the noodles dry.
And I discovered that they were EXCELLENT. Mmm.

Nowadays, with my dorm days behind me, I still like to have raw ramen on occasion.

Luckily, there's a grown up version.

( Cabbage and Ramen Salad )

Supervision went well!

I am 'massively improved' which pleases me pink.




Now, off to errands after a lunch with clairdeluney.

I find bits and bobs of all manner of things in my office.

Today, I needed to move my monitor.

A bit of back story: I absolutely hate people looking over my shoulder at my computer screen. Even if it's ybunny. Just one of those quirks, I suppose.

I wanted it to face further away from my office mates. So, I pulled the monitor toward me...and it went dead.
On the one hand, I was excited, because I hate this monitor and making breaking it would get me one of the swish flatscreen ones that both of my office mates have. On the other, FLAIL! I HAVE WORK TO DO!

So, I started fiddling with it. I picked up the base to see what the cord was wrapped around, and a small piece of yellow paper came unstuck.

The note said, '[Name], when you get down and discouraged just remember that you have many people that love you and care for you. There's nothing better to be doing than learning. -[Name]'

I know who it was addressed to. He's finished and he seems like such a together and confident sort of person. It's nice to think that he had worries as well.

(I do feel a bit as if I'm snooping on my own office, though.)

Well, I hope ybunny makes his flight.

He thought it was at 12:30 pm.

Actual flight time? 6:15am.


Good thing Norway should still be there when he makes a flight.

I need to put 'beat illness lethargy' on my checklist. Sheesh.

Well, ybunny goes to Norway tomorrow.
So, as a send off, we made spoonbread.

Every wondered how to use cornmeal to your best advantage?

( Spoonbread recipe )

It's delish. :)

1. ybunny and I still don't feel right. I'm still coughing and feel like death.

2. Probably more a corollary to #1, but I really have a hard time writing at the moment. The mental exertion makes me feel worse.

3. I got some condensed milk to put in the freeze dried coffee I have in my office, because it is the BITTEREST EVER. But, even the condensed milk isn't sweet enough to take the edge off that stuff. It's the Clipper Fair Trade coffee, which I used to like. Maybe just a bad jar.

4. Discovered last night that one of the guys I went to elementary school with is in the Georgia State Penitentiary for child molestation.
Unsurprisingly, he seemed the sort, even at 14 which was the last time I saw him.

5. I got to my office today to see that one of my church members that is doing his Masters in Geology left me a note at my office desk. How sweet.

6. I should have 30 books read by the end of the week. Four books by Friday? Unlikely. *ponders including a couple of cookbooks*

7. It's actually been six months since we were married last Sunday. Yes, that's right, I can't count. Thank goodness I'm in the Liberal Arts College.

8. Although it is five months away, I'm excited about drjoan and golfbisquit's visit. We're going up towards Wick, since that's the last bit of Scotland I've not been to.

9. I really dislike having office mates. I'd rather go back to living in a dorm that working like this. Yes, I know, I'm a heinous bitch.

10. 10k words by next Wednesday? Possible, improbable.

I'm such a foodie.

Saying that makes it a bit difficult to admit that, when I'm honest with myself, my favorite food is pizza.

That's not to say that I don't love all manner of casseroles, curries, stirfrys, soups, salads, desserts and so forth.

I think I realized that pizza was my favorite when started eating at Lupi's in Chattanooga. So very good.
It's a local pizzeria that makes their dough from scratch¹ and has a list of ingredients that covers most of their front wall.

Whether making my own crust and sauce to ordering takeaway and all levels of pizza preparation in between, I probably eat it three times a month.

But, when ybunny suggested it for supper last weekend, I felt a bit queasy.
The feeling continued up until today when we went for lunch to Pizza Express.

It wasn't just from being sick, although everything made me queasy while I was sick.
This was a specific aversion to pizza.

Even now, with lunch probably still cogitating in my stomach, thinking of pizza is still a little sick making. Such an odd development.² (Though, I only had to look at ybunny's, since I had cannaloni.)

Ever love a food and then go completely off it?

---

¹ - Once when I was there on a date, we stayed until just as they were closing. One of the guys working the ovens asked if we wanted the rest of the dough from the day. I took it to my dorm and baked it, except, I must not have worked it enough, because it rose...into a tower of baked pizza dough. Very odd.
² - Honestly, it would probably be best if the aversion stayed because it has continually been one of my diet breakers.

24
Anthony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough

This woman is one of my two favorite authors. (The other is Judith Tarr, fyi.) They both write history that makes me feel like I'm not only there, but that I'm learning something as I'm being entertained.

Unfortunately, this one just didn't do it for me like the rest of the Masters of Rome series has. McCullough has been accused of being in love with the idea of Caesar. I don't quite believe it, because I think her treatment of Sulla and Marius were just as painstaking and well crafted. But, I think if she was in love with Caesar, she was in a state of blah with Octavian and Anthony. And honestly, that's what it should be called. Cleopatra is just sort of a side story in the whole thing.

Doesn't matter though. No matter what she or Tarr publish at this point, I'll buy it.

25
Ireland (Horrible Histories Special) by Terry Deary and Martin Brown

We picked this up when we were in Kilkenny. ybunny read it while we were traveling around Ireland. Then, it languished on our bedroom shelves for two years.
I needed something light to wrap my brain around while sick, so I had a go.

It's...cute, in its way. Not a great history, but trivia filled.

I would like to read their version of US history at some point. Could be amusing.

Hey look, I'm one-fourth of the way through with this. Woo.

Regardless of how many people actually read Food Friday, I'd made a New Year's resolution to keep up Friday posting.

But, then, there were things that happened the last few weeks.

I can't even remember back to two Fridays ago.

However, last Friday was the beginning of most of this horribleness that is the flu/bronchitis/crawling death that ybunny and I have both had.

We've both been apathetic to food since then.
And, lemme tell you, it's hard to get excited about food when you're not really eating it.

So, fingers crossed that we'll be recovered by next Friday and I can go back to half-hazardly keeping my New Year's resolution.

ybunny and I should put a sign on the door saying, 'Virulent: enter at own risk'.

He got sick on Thursday, I got sick last night/this morning.


To amuse ourselves, we've watched telly until we're sick of it.
I have played, enjoyed, gotten irritated with, and now quit Facebook's Knighthood game. I might go back to it. We'll see.


There was and is snow. Pity I can't properly enjoy it. *throws pity party*

23
The English Plainchant Revival by Bennett Zon

I'm honestly not experienced enough with plainchant to really understand some of the charts they give or the distinctions between certain ways of resetting the shapenote manuscripts to modern notation.

However, I can appreciate the history.
It's actually a bit amazing the plainchant kept any sort of place in England considering the penal laws against Catholicism during the 17th and 18th centuries.

I liked the quote used just before the first chapter:
'Q. What is the use of singing and of organs in the divine service?
A. To help to raise the heart to heaven, and to celebrate with greater solemnity the divine praises.' (Richard Challoner, 1758-81)