tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3 2008-08-10T18:19:39Z knitting * college * writing * photography Movable Type 3.35 tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.112 2008-08-10T18:08:31Z 2008-08-10T18:19:39Z

I have successfully made it back from Vietnam! The trip was amazing, and there will be photos posted soon (but not nearly as many as there were for Rome, because I did much less sightseeing this time). This trip was...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com lot on this trip--about Vietnamese culture, food, language . . . I also got a lot of perspective. I think everyone from a developed country like the US should be required to spend some time in a developing country like Vietnam, just to realize how big the world really is, and how much we take for granted. Vietnam is a bustling, vibrant country full of beautiful people, and it was such a pleasure to spend a month there. . . . on the other hand, next time I go away for a month, I have got to make sure there are better spam control methods running. Coming back to 2000 spam comments is unpleasant in the extreme. Most of them didn't actually make it through the filter to get posted, but I still had to delete all of them. (Twice, actually--once in my e-mail, once here on the site.) The moment I get back to school, I'm upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type and installing some sort of spam control. (Probably some sort of captcha. I know some people are annoyed by them, but they're very effective, and much less annoying than, say, having to create an account and log in in order to post a quick comment.) Now that I'm back, it's just about time to throw myself hard into my senior year of college. I'll be writing an honors thesis and taking way more credits than I ought to since I'm determined to graduate with honors and with a minor in Religion. I'll also be applying to the Peace Corps--and even though they tell me that's a huge hassle, I'm extremely grateful that I'll be doing that instead of studying for the GRE and applying to grad school.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.111 2008-07-10T18:13:19Z 2008-07-10T18:18:37Z

I'm in Vietnam! Here are some photos! (Sorry, I don't have time for anything more sophisticated. But, enjoy!)...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com Here are some photos! (Sorry, I don't have time for anything more sophisticated. But, enjoy!)]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.110 2008-06-19T17:45:52Z 2008-06-19T17:58:09Z

Wow. Apparently I should post more often. I've been fielding tons of spam over the past week or so, and as soon as I made that last post, it came down to a much more manageable amount. (I know I...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com 30 pairs of socks and 11 hats. On the bottom right, the three bottom hats and three pairs of socks were donated by other students. I kind of wish I'd had more involvement, but ah well. That's still a whopping 300 warm toes and 22 warm ears. Excuse the mess. This was taken during move-out, and nothing's every pretty when you're packing up everything you own, especially when you live 3,000+ miles away from school. The top afghan was a collaborative donation from my school's fledgling Stitch 'n' Bitch club, and it makes me so happy! The bottom one is my first granny square afghan. (It had some truly horrible and bizarre color combinations, since it was basically made out of every scrap of worsted weight wool I could get my hands on . . . but it didn't look as bad as it could have.) In other, truly exciting news, in just over two weeks, I'm going to Vietnam! A close friend from school is Vietnamese, and she invited me to come along with her on their trip this summer. I am psyched. I'll be taking my computer, so assuming I can find an Internet connection, there will be blogging and photos.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.109 2008-06-18T05:54:45Z 2008-06-18T05:59:16Z

(Cross-posted from my LiveJournal to provide some content over here. There will be knitting etc. as soon as I get off my butt to photograph it.) How on earth do people deal with concept-based science fiction? When I tell people...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com Starfarers, by Poul Anderson. I'd heard of him, and cover quoted USA Today as calling him, "One of science fiction's most revered writers," so I figured it would be a decent place to start reading some 'hard' sci-fi. . . . I tried, people. I really did. I sifted through the first few pages of unconnected vignettes that didn't actually introduce any of the characters who had been listed in the dramatis personae helpfully provided at the front of the book, but had several talking heads setting up the stage for the ideas to come. Then I suffered through a long and very technical account of a television interview with a physicist which was clearly just as much an attempt to introduce the concepts the book was focusing on as it was relevant to the plot. Finally, the scene jumped again, and I saw several repair men watching the plot point soaring through the sky. They talk about how they'll brag to their grandchildren about seeing the sight. And then, one of them says to the other, "That is what they are lately calling the quantum field gate drive. Have you not heard? A ship springs from the energy state normal in this universe, what they call the zero level, to the superhigh energy level it gets from below the universe, and then falls back to down again to normal, over and over." I couldn't take it. I snapped the book shut. Setting aside the fact that the 'interview' (read: thinly veiled exposition of the science behind the story) already covered this ground--and I could forgive it more easily there, because it was a physicist being asked to explain his theories--people don't talk like this. Not in casual conversation. And the fact that these are yet more throw-away characters makes it even more annoying. Their purpose is to appear, convey information, then never be thought of again. My creative writing teacher last semester had a quote she loved, and I'm kicking myself for forgetting the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of, "The worst purpose of dialogue is to convey information. 'You know why we're on this space station, Caruthers--to save the world!'" I can see that if I'd hung on one more page, I would have started to meet the real characters of the book. But that's no good for me--you don't get 23 pages to win a reader over. The fact that only the ancestors of the main characters appear in the first chapter, plus all that emphasis on technical detail, makes it clear that this book has very different priorities than the kind of books I read. I'm sure it's a great book for the kind of book it is, but I want to read books about people. I like science fiction and fantasy because they provide vehicles for exploring things about people. I don't read for the spaceships. Likewise, I don't read fantasy for the swords and elves. As far as I'm concerned, Tolkien and all the millions of cheap imitations he spawned fall into the same category, only in this case the author is saying, "Look at this cool culture I made up!" instead of, "Look at this cool science I dreamed up!" So, instead of having a first chapter full of characters espousing scientific theory, you have a first chapter that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Hobbits. (Incidentally, though, that chapter was the only thing I liked about that book.) And I know I shouldn't criticize these books, because they're doing what they set out to do, and I can't try to make them do what I want them to do. But it frustrates me, because speculative fiction has so much potential. Creating an alternate reality is a tried and true method of exploring human nature in our own world. Sometimes this can be overdone to the point of preachiness, which is also distasteful--see Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. Actually, I just read her Gifts, which is much more subtle, and is, unsurpisingly, classified as young adult. I love young adult fantasy. It does such a better job of saying something that means something than most adult fantasy or sci-fi. If I ever do get around to becoming an author, that's what I'll write. Anyway, I'm guessing this is a side-effect of my being in humanities instead of science--I feel like the only stories worth telling are about people first and concepts second.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.107 2008-04-12T02:07:05Z 2008-04-12T02:29:07Z

If you're still reading this, you probably noticed that I haven't been updating. That's mainly because I'm taking six classes this semester, and it's all I can do to stay above water most of the time. Sometimes I feel pretty...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com Afghans for Afghans. As counterintuitive as it sounds, it's great to have something to focus on that isn't related to school at all. It keeps me grounded, I guess. It's also nice to be doing something where I can make with measurable, visible progress. I found a shoebox in the recycling and turned it into my Box O' Warm. Currently, it holds 7 baby hats and 17 baby socks. That's 14 warms ears, and 170 warm toes. (Can you tell I'm really craving measurable results? When you study the humanities, there's so little of anything concrete. It's all interpretations and subtext and subtlety. But, dangit, 17 socks means 170 toes.) There are two groups of special interest in there. First, I had all this leftover Harry Potter themed yarn sitting around, so I hope some babies in Afghanistan don't mind showing some house pride: Second, I took my first foray into the world of dying a few weeks back, with Koolaid and the dorm kitchen. I had made a pair of socks with white yarn, because it was all I had at that moment, and I needed to dye them so that AfA would accept them. I threw in a couple other socks while I was at it. From left to right: white socks dyed with cherry Koolaid; white socks dyed with strawberry Koolaid; green socks overdyed with some sort of blue Koolaid; striped socks overdyed with blue, next to socks made with the same yarn but not dyed. I have also, heaven help me, learned how to make granny squares. Seriously--look: Those things are addictive! Once I start one, they just keep coming! Which is sort of a problem, because while I can read while I knit (and thus accomplish homework at the same time as I'm making socks; convenient), I can't read while I crochet (thus, no homework; inconvenient). If you're utterly appalled by the color choices, don't worry--they're going in a big fun patchwork afghan for AfA. If I post again before finals are over, it will be to share the rest of the bounty. Otherwise, I'll be trying to survive college without burning out or suffering a total breakdown. I have a feeling there will be wool involved.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.106 2008-03-13T01:01:21Z 2008-06-15T02:05:58Z

I'm on Spring break visiting my friend Mary in DC. Today we went to the zoo! I love zoos! I want to share all the pictures I took, and there are a whole bunch, so I'm going to put most...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com These are Asian Small-clawed Otters. I love otters. They're the best thing to see at the zoo, because they do lots of interesting things. (Second best is meerkats.) Behind the cut: meerkats, elephants, tamarins, and more! (Um, and not a stitch of knitting. Sorry guys--I'll post some up soon.) EDIT: Comments disabled because this post was getting a high volume of spam.]]> Panda! The pandas are apparently kind of the famous part of the DC zoo. We didn't see a whole lot of them, but still, pandas are pretty cool. Capybara. My favorite oversized Amazonian rodent! Hippo! This thing was enormous. What's not to like about elephants? They're so slow and peaceful and friendly. Me and my shadow . . . There were about a million Golden Lion Tamarins in the small animal house. Apparently in warm weather they're free-ranging on the zoo. And this one's a Golden-headed Lion Tamarin. Here's a super awesome hornbill. MEERKATS! This is the antithesis of the dramatic prairie dog. Look at him, just sitting there all fat and lazy. He's all, "I can't touch my toes!" Seconds after I took this photo, this orangutan puked all over the sill right in front of us. How often do you get to watch that? This bearded dragon was so posing for me, so I took advantage. Tortoise! Some sort of iguana. It kind of reminds me of Joanna from Rescuers Down Under.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.104 2008-03-06T05:07:06Z 2008-03-06T05:34:10Z

Yeah, I'm still alive. School's been rough--you've heard it all before. Spring Break is next week, so maybe I'll find time to post some. The couple projects I've found time for (read: tore time away from the gaping maw of...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com This is from the bathroom of an Amtrak train--I think it was the Capitol Limited, but that was a while ago now. Every time I go to the bathroom on the train, I see that sign and think, "I have GOT to post a picture of that on my blog," because the little janitor looks exactly like the devil. Maybe having the devil threaten you works, because the train bathrooms are surprisingly clean. Most of the time. I still hate touching anything in them, because they feel like a cross between an outhouse and an airport restroom. Ick. But, the soap is good. It smells like cherries. And yes, they are always that horrible seventies olive. Except when they're a horrible seventies mustard. Or, if you're really lucky, horrible seventies orange. Poor Amtrak--sometimes I want to give it a hug. I also got this picture (part of my fascination with graffiti): I'm trying to figure out whether it was written all by one person, or by two people. The handwriting on the "Wook" looks different than the handwriting on the "ies". But, it would make more sense if somebody had written, "Woo," and some nerd had seen it and turned it into "Wookies". Only, it wouldn't have been a very good nerd, because they misspelled Wookiees. (Also, the Wookiees' home planet is Kashyyyk, spelled with three Ys. It has to be a bitch transliterating that language.) I've concluded that it's probably more likely that it was all one person, but that scratching into enamel with some primitive tool could change the handwriting halfway through. Wow. Sci-fi obscurity AND amateur epigraphy. This post is totally a twofer on the geekiness front.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.103 2008-02-17T20:12:49Z 2008-02-18T00:11:03Z

I finally went through my 827 pictures from Rome and managed to pare them down to 318, which I have now exported into a nice little Picasa photo album and uploaded for your enjoyment. Click here to go to the...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com Click here to go to the album. I should note that most of the claims I make about what you're seeing are either vague memories of what somebody said while we were in Rome, or me consulting a guidebook (which I didn't have while I was actually there) a month and a half later to try to determine what's in the photo. As such, inaccuracies may exist, and I apologize. Don't use my photo captions to study for any tests and you'll be fine. Also, there are a few obvious typos--it's kind of a hassle to get them fixed, so I probably won't. Sorry about that. I understand that 318 is a lot of photos, so they're organized in the same order as our trip, with little narration and anecdotes to keep you interested. Since I never managed to write up the trip, this is the closest I'll come to telling you about what went down. But, if you don't want to sit through the entire thing, here are a few of the highlights: Links go to the first photo from a given site--just keep clicking "Next Picture" until you get bored or start seeing pictures of cats and ivy instead of, I dunno, Pompeii. St. Peter's The Baths of Caracalla The Colosseum The Forum The Capitoline Museum The Ara Pacis The Pantheon Ostia Pompeii PS: This project involved uploading over 900 files on an Internet connection that was spotty at best. I think I've managed to fix most of the files that didn't quite make it, but if you notice one I missed, could you drop a comment here so I can fix it? Much obliged.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.102 2008-02-13T05:54:12Z 2008-02-13T05:58:17Z

This blog was designed to be "public face" as a counterpart to my LiveJournal, which is full of whining and memes and the like, but occasionally I'll feel the urge to post something more substantial on my LiveJournal. So, in...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com This blog was designed to be "public face" as a counterpart to my LiveJournal, which is full of whining and memes and the like, but occasionally I'll feel the urge to post something more substantial on my LiveJournal. So, in the interest of keeping this blog updated when I have No Time Whatever for knitting, I thought I'd start cross-posting some of the more interesting posts. My apologies to those of you who see these twice. I've been meaning to write a post about the bittersweetness of speculative fiction, particularly my favorite kind of speculative fiction, the kind that combines the fantastic with the real world. I love it, of course, but part of the reason I do is that when I read it, I'm filled with this aching longing to be part of it. It's been like that since I was a child--I wanted so badly to stumble across another world like Narnia that I used to carry around a kit of essentials that I would need if I did magically get transported to another world. (For all my fantasizing, I was a practical kid, and I knew that an adventure would be less fun if I didn't have a toothbrush.) As I've grown up, I've been struck more and more by the sobering realization that nothing fantastic will ever happen to me. I'm never going to visit another world (like in Narnia). I'm never going to witness an encounter with aliens (like in Doctor Who). I might do interesting things with my life, but never something fantastic. Never something with magic. That ache has been particularly bad lately, because in the past few months, I've been introduced to Doctor Who, and The Golden Compass. It's The Golden Compass I want to talk about here, and the concept of daemons. I feel like I should clarify the concept briefly to avoid confusing people who haven't read it--the daemons in the trilogy have nothing to do with what we call demons nowadays. They hark back to the original meaning of the Greek word daimon, a little spirit. In the trilogy, every person has one, and in the world of The Golden Compass, a person's daemon is sort of semi-embodied--it takes the form of an animal. A girl in my speculative fiction class commented on how lonely reading these books always makes her. The concept of these daemons, that are always with you, so you're never alone. And when I read the books, I can't help but picture myself with a daemon of my own. (I'm even fairly confident of what it would look like.) And I ache. Orson Scott Card once said that speculative fiction is the last surviving realm of religion fiction. This isn't what he meant, but it makes me think that perhaps this ache I get when I explore speculative fiction is exactly the ache that has driven people to religion for all of human history. It occurred to me in the shower yesterday that if Philip Pullman's trilogy were a religious text, I would convert in a heartbeat, just so that I could believe that it was really true, that people had daemons and everything. (Given that Pullman is infamously atheist, it's a strange impulse on my part, but there it is.) Over and over, growing up, I was exposed to the idea that everyone on Earth is looking for something do believe in. I wish I could believe in magic.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.101 2008-02-07T04:46:38Z 2008-02-07T04:52:59Z

Tonight, the creative writing department sponsored a reading of student works, and I was able to participate. I read an excerpt from one of my stories from last semester. But, I think my best work in that class was actually...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com Tonight, the creative writing department sponsored a reading of student works, and I was able to participate. I read an excerpt from one of my stories from last semester. But, I think my best work in that class was actually done in a couple of the exercises we did. So, since this blog is supposed to be devoted to my hobbies in general, I thought I'd share one of my favorite things from last semester. If you come here to look at pictures of wooly handknits, I won't be offended if you skip this one. It's called "Lord's Day", and I'm sticking it behind a jump so as not to spam the blog. (For anybody reading on the RSS feed, I have no idea how the feed handles those, so . . . we'll find out!) just called. Her little boy had a fever last night, so Anita wants to keep him home and won't be able to come tend to nursery this morning. Through the window over the sink, Jeannine can see Abbie in the backyard in her nightgown, dragging the cat across the yard by his middle. And of course, Sister Ruth thought of Jeannine straight away, the children love her so much, and would Jeannine mind terribly taking over nursery duty this morning? Jeannine shuts off the water and assures Sister Ruth that she'd be happy to, and she's sorry to hear about Anita's little boy, and no, it isn't any trouble, and of course she'll have a good morning, thank you. She hangs up the telephone and dashes outside to collect Abbie and hustle her back inside, noting along the way that the cat needs to be fed. Inside Jeannine is grateful to discover that Owen is awake, though she snatches a box of Lucky Charms out of his hands and directs him to the pancakes on the stove. Her husband will fuss about the lack of a family breakfast, but judging by the sound of things, he is still in the shower and unable to complain just now. Jeannine carries Abbie upstairs, stepping over a battered sombrero and red plastic telephone on the way. In the bedroom, she argues with Abbie about which of the several dozen virtually identical ruffled dresses with bows the toddler will wear today. She has just negotiated that if Abbie wears the purple dress with the white bows, she can take her ballerina mouse to church when Owen calls from downstairs. There is a note of distress in his voice that Jeannine can't ignore, so she reluctantly leaves Abbie and steps over the sombrero again on the way downstairs. She finds Owen having a breakdown on the front doorstep, holding his hands in front of him like something diseased. There was dog poop on his shoe, he explains, and he tried to clean it off, and he got some on his hands! It takes several minutes to convince him that this is not the end of the world as we know it, or even of his individual life. Jeannine sends him inside to wash his hands and crouches on the porch to scrape the shoe against the grass. The cat strolls around the corner of the house and looks up at her with his 'feed me!' eyes and a loud meow. A glance at her watch tells Jeannine that is is now 7:52, and she has exactly 38 minutes left to take care of the dishes and the cat and the sombrero, 38 minutes to have her family and herself clothed, groomed, and in the car. And she thinks that if the Lord really did want them to honor His day of rest, He should have provided for a lot less church and a lot more hot baths and live-in nannies.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.100 2008-01-28T23:53:21Z 2008-01-29T04:54:43Z

I promised I'd post something that had nothing to do with Harry Potter, so here it is! This is the pair of socks I worked on on my trip to Rome. When I knit something, the circumstances under which I...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com It was not easy. Nothing about London is easy. I'm fully convinced that Heathrow is built over a portal straight to hell. I ended up spending twelve hours in Heathrow, trapped on a crowded concourse with not enough seats for all of the other stranded passengers. I had no money, because all of my money was in dollars, and I couldn't change it into pounds since my final destination was Rome, and I didn't want to deal with the massive fees to withdraw a small amount of money to hold me until I left the airport. So, for twelve hours, I sat in the airport, knitting on these socks and eating the trail mix I had just happened to pack in my backpack (thank heaven I hadn't finished it on the plane), and trying to get enough out of the drinking fountain to quench my thirst. I did at one point meet a very nice British woman who gave me some chocolate. (She didn't even know that I was starving. At that point, I was so jetlagged and travelworn that I didn't even know I was starving.) At any rate, after some time on standby, I finally made it to Rome, where I discovered that not only had my luggage been lost, but also every ATM in the airport was nonfunctional. So, I was hungry, and exhausted, and in bad need of a shower, and I was stranded in a foreign country at 3am, with no money. I think it was only because I was on the verge of tears that I managed to convince a cab driver to take my credit card. That's the story. Once I made it to Rome and met up with Aud and got to bed, the trip was amazing, but I admit, there was a point there in Rome's airport where I sincerely wondered why I had thought it would be a good idea to leave my warm fire and my soft cat and travel halfway around the world by myself. Oddly enough, though, I really like these socks. They're made from Knitpicks Essential Tweed in Plum. I tried a 6x2 rib on the leg and foot, and I really like the look. (Also, it was much less annoying to knit than, say, a 2x2 rib.) I also corrected a lot of the things that have been bugging me about my other handmade socks--feet that are too short, and heels that are not deep enough, so that the sock gets worn out right above where the heel stitch starts. I hate to say it, but this post is probably about the closest you'll get to an account of my trip to Rome. I had big plans to go through day by day and post pictures of what we did and talk about it, but . . . I don't think it's going to happen. I'll throw up the photos into an album eventually, though, and you can look at that and pretend it's accompanied by witty and pithy narration (which is more than you'd get here anyway).]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.99 2008-01-26T18:49:04Z 2008-01-26T18:57:41Z

Here's another one from the backlog . . . and this one's really from the backlog. I finished this baby back in September, and I've been wearing and enjoying it since then. I just never got around to posting it....

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com really from the backlog. I finished this baby back in September, and I've been wearing and enjoying it since then. I just never got around to posting it. Remember that double-knit Ravenclaw scarf I posted a while back? This is the companion hat. I thought to myself, double-knit is like the answer to intarsia--you can do it in the round, you don't have to worry about floats, and it makes the fabric double thick over the ears. It's perfect! The words on the hat say, "Wit beyond measure . . ." The entire couple is from the Harry Potter books, and reads, "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." Oddly enough, it's present on the diadem of Ravenclaw, so a hat is an appropriate object for it. Like the Ravenclaw scarf, it's made with Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Sapphire Heather and Amber Heather. The WotA was much too rough against my forehead, so I had to sew in a patch of fabric there, but I'm still in love with the colors. People seem to be impressed with the fact that I figured out how to put words in my clothing. I'm a little amused by that. My only regret on this hat is that my cast-on edge is incredibly sloppy, and I'm a little self-conscious about that. Other than that, though, I love it. Next post will have nothing to do with Harry Potter, I promise.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.98 2008-01-25T05:17:49Z 2008-01-25T05:26:42Z

I've got a huge backlog of finished objects to share, and since the photos are already all edited and everything, I figured I should start throwing them up here. Here's something I've been wearing pretty much constantly since I finished...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com These were made with leftover yarn (Knitpicks Essential Tweed in Plum) from a pair of socks I haven't posted yet (I've abandoned chronological order at this point, but will post the socks eventually). The cables were inspired by the Deathly Hallows symbol, but I couldn't figure out how to make a triangle and had to settle for a diamond. I'm pretty sure I saw a method for making horizontal cables online once, but when I made the first of these, I was on an airplane somewhere over Greenland, so I had to work with what I had. I think the cables look nice, anyway, if not particularly Hallows-y. I've decided that the trick to Harry Potter knitting is to take techniques that look traditional and skew them just slightly from what you'd expect. (Actually, that's the trick to the Harry Potter aesthetic period, even outside of knitting.) So, instead of a more common rope cable along the edges, I did this snakey thing. It is a traditional cable pattern, but I've always thought it looked weird, which was perfect for this project. I'm liking the fingerless mitten thing so much that I'm considering making myself another pair. If I do, I'm going to do a gusset thumb instead of an afterthought thumb like I used on these. I'm finding that the afterthought thumb is just not that comfortable--it stretches strangely across my palm.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.97 2008-01-20T20:11:25Z 2008-01-20T20:52:54Z

Amberdulen asked for the recipes for those soups I made yesterday. The idea of me posting a recipe is kind of laughable, especially since I was basically just chucking stuff in a pot to see what happened, but it occurs...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com this recipe, but ended up straying a lot. (Also, I was using dried beans instead of cans.) I'm pretty sure the failure of that soup was nobody's fault but mine, but I also have no testimony that that's a decent recipe. You know, FYI. Kickass Lentil Soup Ingredients: lentils carrots celery onion garlic olive oil salt cayenne pepper oregano parsley onion powder garlic powder (yes, I doubled up on the onion and garlic--I regret nothing) I used three pounds of lentils, one large onion, and about four cloves of garlic, and I got way, way more soup than I needed, even to last the entire semester. Lentils don't need to be soaked, so just wash them briefly and put them in a big pot with water. (I always need more water than I think, but it's easy to add water as you're cooking, so don't stress over the amount.) Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil, if you like. I did. Once you've got them on the stove, you can toss in the first batch of seasonings--definitely salt the water, and if you want to throw in the other seasonings, you can. The longer they're in there, the longer the lentils have to pick up the flavor, but on the other hand, it's easier to know what to add once you can taste the soup. While the lentils are cooking, chop up the onion and garlic. Saute the onion in olive oil, and once it's started getting translucent, add the garlic and saute them both until you're satisfied with them. Then, dump the whole thing, oil and all, into the soup. You can chop up the carrots and celery while you wait for the lentils to cook. Add the carrots when the lentils are getting pretty soft, almost completely done. (It won't hurt them to cook after they seem done, and you don't want the carrots getting mushy.) Wait until the carrots are getting soft and the lentils are pretty done to add the celery, since it cooks a lot faster than carrots. Keep adding seasonings throughout the cooking process--I have no idea how much of anything I put in. The only suggestion I have is that a little cayenne goes a long way, so start small and work your way up. Fun fact: Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a pot of lentil soup. (At least, that's what they told me in Bible class.) I can totally, totally buy it. Lentil soup is amazing. Three Bean and Ham Soup Ingredients: pinto beans great northern beans black eyed peas ham of some kind onion garlic olive oil salt (but not too much) cayenne pepper parsley onion powder garlic powder The best way to get ham would be to wait until you've made an actual ham and then use the bone and leavings--that's what my mom would do. Since I didn't have leftover ham, I bought some at Wal-mart. It shouldn't be nice ham. You can pick up a couple hambones, or something similar for just a couple of bucks. Also, with the beans, I used half pinto beans, a quarter great northerns, and a quarter black eyed peas. But you can do whatever you want. It's a very good idea to soak the beans first--it reduces the cooking time, and can help cut down on the gas after you eat them. There's lots of information on soaking beans here. Once you've soaked them with the method of your choice, drain off the water. Put the beans in a pan with water and your ham. You can salt the water if you want, but ham's pretty salty already. Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil exactly as described above--start with the onion, and add the garlic later on. Dump that whole thing in with the beans once it looks good. From there, you pretty much start throwing in seasonings until it tastes good. Again, a little cayenne goes a long way, but this would taste good either as a really mild soup or as a really spicy one, so have at it. I can't remember if I put oregano in this one--I only had four spices on hand, and I was kind of throwing them around willy-nilly. Do what feels right. When the beans are completely done, take the soup off of the heat and pull out the ham. Cut away any meat you can salvage from the bone/fat, and chop it up and throw it back in the soup. I think carrots and celery would not be amiss in this soup either, but I had used all of mine on the lentils. I suspect this would also taste really good with dumplings. (Some people have suggested to me that dumplings belong with chicken, not with ham. Try it, though--you'll like it.) Dang. Now I'm really hungry, and dinner's not for another hour.]]> tag:www.arraskysong.com,2008:/middle//3.96 2008-01-20T03:09:59Z 2008-01-20T04:49:52Z

(I should preface this by saying that the reason it's important enough to merit such a long post is that I'm just barely beginning to spread my wings and cook for myself, so it's exciting.) Last semester, I hatched the...

Emma http://www.arraskysong.com flavor. Eh, you win some, you lose some. I'm not throwing it out, because I only had enough freezer bags to make exactly the right amount of soup for the semester, and because I didn't know how well the other soups would turn out, 13 of them are filled with the black bean. I'll eat the others first, and if I decide the black bean is edible, I'll eat it--if not, I'll throw it out. The lentil soup turned out fantastic. I made a good lentil soup at Thanksgiving while I was staying with a friend, and it sold me on the beauty of a simple lentil soup--I was shocked at the idea that a soup could taste great without any sort of fat or anything in it. The soup I made today had lots of garlic and onion, and carrots and celery, but I also added a little bit of cayenne pepper, which made a huge difference. It wasn't enough to make the soup spicy, just enough to give it a little kick. I came downstairs and told my roommates that I had just made a kickass lentil soup. EV said that soup isn't generally something that can be described as "kickass", but I maintain that this soup is. Finally, the ham and bean soup also rocked. I used pinto beans, great northern beans, and black eyed peas, with some chunks of . . . well, something that amounted to big hunks of pig fat. I dunno--it was in with the hambones, but there were no bones. It was only $2.50, so I'm not arguing. And lots of garlic and onion, of course, both fresh and in powder. And since the cayenne worked so well with the lentils, I added a bit of that too. It tastes great! Now it's 11:30. I just spent seven hours in the kitchen--I think the technical term for that is "slaving over a hot stove". Things I learned: --I like cooking, but it gets old after five or six hours. --Cumin smells really, really good. --Cayenne is awesome. (And a little goes a long way--but I didn't learn that the hard way!) --It's really hard to spoon soup into plastic freezer bags. And really messy. --I can actually make food that tastes good! --I learned a lot more about cooking from my mom than I thought I did. I also discovered that I cook a lot the same way that I knit. I can try to follow a pattern, but I much prefer just to make it up as I go. And if I do try to follow the directions, I'll inevitably end up changing the number of stitches and decreasing differently and dumping in a bunch of parsley and extra garlic (always!). It's just so boring to follow directions--there's so much more opportunity to be surprised if you're always making everything up as you go along. Of course, I know a lot more about how knitting works than I do about how cooking works. So, the opportunity for completely screwing up is still pretty open. But, if that happens, it happens. I spent $66 in Wal-mart. I bought several things that weren't for the soups, so let's say I spent $55 buying stuff for soup--and that includes a big pot, a bottle of olive oil, and a few jars of spices, stuff most people would already have around. With that $55, I made enough soup to keep me in lunches three days a week for the rest of the semester. There are 14 weeks in the semester. That comes out to just under $4 a week. That's like one trip to McDonalds, and my food is a lot healthier. The point? Beans are basically the best thing EVER--they're cheap, filling, nutritious, and easy to make. Oh, and super versatile.]]>