063 tuesday april 5 except a week late
alley sketches / window poem / "fish" sandwich / cheap thrills
editor’s note (that’s me): somehow this did not get sent as an email last week even though i worked medium hard on it. i got it mostly done the night before and got up early and everything. and the food was good, too! rare for a vegan fish experiment!
due to my policy of not really ever remembering to read the comments on these i didn’t notice until i was getting ready to publish the april 12 edition. so this week i guess we’re doubling up. there’s this one, which should have been last week, and then i’ll send out what should have been the april 12 edition tomorrow on april 13th. and then i think we’ll be on track.
sorry about that. ignore the topical oscars joke. i didn’t go through and change anything so this is an exact time capsule of the guy i was one week ago.
well gang i’ve been thinking about my initial hip shot take on the “Oscars incident” for a week now and i think i need to correct the record and set a few things straight, as well as to revisit my first impressions again, now, with the benefit of one thousand years’ subjective time of hindsight.
in some ways i goofed up. i can own up to that. in some ways though i think i was more right than ever. it’s funny how that happens. you get older and you learn to trust your gut a little more.
just kidding. what’s going on this week? what’s been happening? for me i think the big story is that the pollen levels here in my mid size american city have been reaching astronomical levels. the barriers of Flonase i have been hastily putting up are weakening slowly but surely, and every day now there are a couple of additional thin layers of micro-discomforts being layered down on top of my other more macro discomforts.
it’s the time of year when i start having vivid fantasies of tiny pressure washers blasting ice-cold glacier water into every crevice of my nasal cavity. or submerging my face in ice-cold glacier water but it’s also crystal clear and i can somehow still breathe through it and see through it and do all my day to day activities. like a big bubble of it around my head, like a reverse diver’s helmet or something. i guess that one is a little less vivid but it does still involve ice-cold glacier water.
it’s also the time of year when the temptation to abandon literally every other activity including work chores other personal responsibilities etc. in favor of drinking cold drinks on various patios starts becoming very strong. in the near future i think we will refer to this season as “summer” as a way to distinguish it from the west coast’s new fifth season, “fire.”
and speaking of which it’s time to start making your plans for may and june. get those outdoor activities locked in while the air will probably still be safe to breathe. get those camping trips planned while you can still enjoy a campfire and the sight of a natural feature that’s more than 1/2 mile away. personally i am starting formulate plans for my yearly spring (soon to be referred to as summer) trip out to the alvord desert.
alright let’s see what we have this week.
1. alley sketches
i like drawing buildings, i don’t think that’s a secret. i think they’re probably third or fourth on the list, after things like “mountains” and “coniferous trees” but certainly above things like “people” or “realistic people” or “people who look believable at all even a little bit.”
they’re fun to draw from memory or imagination a lot of the time, but one thing that is difficult for me when i do that is capturing a good level of detail. you think of a building as four walls and a roof, and some windows and doors, but really there are a lot of other things going on that add a level of character and depth. there are electrical and telephone wires that enter and exit in unexpected places. there are vents, way more vents than you probably would guess at first. there are exterior lights, there are holes, there are holes that have been patched but in a way that still leaves them noticeable, wavy roofs, splintered beams, repaired siding.
real buildings are often not built in ways you might assume. there are interior constraints you can’t tell from the outside that you might not think of when you’re drawing from imagination. things don’t all get fixed at once, even if they should be. things get added and subtracted over time. so windows don’t line up, or they aren’t the same size, or they’re in unexpected locations. doors are awkwardly pinched into corners and trim has to jog around unexpected additions.
so from time to time, and not as often as i should, it’s nice to make myself draw some buildings from life or from photos. this builds up my mental library of all those little details and features and mistakes so that when i do draw buildings from imagination, they feel a little more real. which makes them more fun to draw. which makes me more likely to draw some in the future. and so on and so forth.
the other thing i’ll say is that when doing this type of sketch exercise i think there’s a temptation to look at reference photos and become overwhelmed by the colors, textures, and level of detail. and especially when you are doing art digitally, you can very quickly fall off the deep end of getting way too into the weeds on tools, textures, colors, etc. so i very purposefully limit my tools when doing these. one brush for linework, one brush for washes. and only two colors allowed for the washes. the real images of course have an infinite variation of shade and shadows but limiting my allowed range makes me take a step back and focus on the bigger things that are happening. is there a bigger lesson in there maybe?
no. we’re actually just specifically talking about art.
2. poem
“window poem” - april 2022
i have two full rows now of thin little books with funny names
when it’s sunny out i think that every life basically contains the same amount of magic
these people have a real facility at looking back from just the right angle to make things sparkle
(when it’s warm out i don’t think of it at all)
when it starts to rain i think well maybe it’s true
that in some ways
i have been limiting myself
3. “fish” sandwich
i think it’s fair to say that i have lost whatever faculty i may have once had at taking decent photos of the food i finish making after the sun has gone down.
nevertheless.
i think it’s also fair to say that in the past i have been guilty perhaps of overthinking things when it comes to vegan fish replacements. long time readers will probably remember some of the early disasters in that area.
and i was almost guilty of that this week as well. i caught myself thinking about wrapping things in seaweed. i was close to attempting some advanced slicing techniques to try and capture the flakiness of fish. but in the end i held myself back.
first up we are cutting the tofu into roughly the right shape. i always forget to account for the thickness the breading and battering adds. so instead of cutting the tofu cube in half, thick-wise, i would cut it into thirds. thinner squares, basically. i did the freeze-thaw trick on this tofu, by the way. essential step for things like this.
dry ingredients for the breading. this is where all of the “fish” flavor will be coming from. as i said, i did consider trying to layer in a piece of nori, like on top of or wrapped around the tofu square maybe, as i have seen done sometimes in the past. i also opted not to marinate the tofu at all, which i do when i am using it to make california roll filling.
here we have flour, a little baking powder, some Old Bay, some garlic powder, salt, and seaweed flakes.
yum. i tasted it while it was still dry to see if it was fishy enough but honestly who knows. if it’s possible to judge something’s post-fry taste by its pre-fry taste that’s a skill i don’t have.
dredge the tofu square in the dry, then the wet (in this case just some plant milk with apple cider vinegar, which allegedly makes sort of a “buttermilk” - but you can also use eggs or Just Egg or whatever) and then i put it back in the dry and instantly realized i should have just gone straight to the panko bread crumbs and now that i had already put it back in the dry i had to do another layer of wet so the bread crumbs would stick. so i ended up with maybe double the amount of breading layers that i planned for. “than” i planned for? been having a little trouble lately with that specific type of preposition. hopefully that’s not a sign of impending cognitive collapse. english is tricky. “double the amount that i planned for.” pretty sure that’s right. you wouldn’t say “the amount than i planned for” that would be insane. ok i think we’re good.
tartar sauce stuff. pretty basic. mayo lemon dill relish and dried dill and then i also added some horseradish and capers which i think really added a lot of flavor.
sandwich assembly. hope that gif works! you can still see my handprint on top from where i smooshed it down. whoops.
this was super tasty and very easy. i considered adding a slice of vegan cheddar for the full filet-o-fish experience but decided not to.
4. cheap thrills
i think this is a somewhat common “icebreaker” type question. something to get the conversation going at a party. although i guess these days they’re more likely to be “engagement bait” type questions. generic and open ended enough that anyone can participate but specific enough to be interesting.
the question is “what’s the most enjoyment / benefit you’ve gotten from the least amount of money.” the most bang for your buck in other words. the biggest improvement in your quality of life for the least amount of money.
i was thinking of this because i currently have one extremely obvious one, which i think i have mentioned here before and which we will get to in just one minute, and that then got me thinking of other ones in my life, whether past present or (i guess?) future. i don’t think this list is very exhaustive and i think it would be very interesting to know what some of my historical choices would have been, like in my 20’s or whatever, but that’s data i don’t have. unless i remembered it and listed it below.
number one with a bullet currently is the bright red plastic smoke detector cover i got to put on one of the smoke detectors in my apartment. i live in a studio, the smallest one i’ve ever lived in, and for some godforsaken reason there is a smoke detector hovering on the ceiling right above the stove. i eat a lot of roast broccoli and before i got this cover i literally could not even open the oven without it going off. and the smoke detectors in new construction are interlinked, so the kitchen one would go off and immediately also set off the one in the “bedroom” which is literally 2 feet away from the kitchen one. a whole series of baffling and infuriating decisions which were thankfully rendered harmless by a little red plastic shower cap that slips over the top of the smoke detector and keeps it from detecting my oven. i think it was like $3 for a pack of 3. “isn't that incredibly dangerous” you might be asking. great question. as i previously mentioned there’s another smoke detector 2 feet away from the one in the kitchen, but there’s a little piece of wall coming down from the ceiling that separates them just enough that the one in the bedroom, to this day, has had zero complaints about my cooking. so i think i’ll be fine. better, actually, because of all the healthy broccoli i can eat.
my jar scrapers which is what they call “small spatulas” now. they’re small and flexible and just the right shape to get into, yes, jars, but also to whip together sauces, pry things out of muffin tins, spread sauces on buns, etc etc etc and so on. i have 2 currently and they’ve lasted me like 6 years so far. i think it’s about time to re-up, actually. and seeing these prices, how could i not!
a cool blue windbreaker i bought at a garage sale in Seward Alaska for one dime. i think i also had to listen to a war story from the old guy selling it. which hey, i would have paid several more dimes to hear anyway, probably.
my library card. nerd answer but who cares. honestly if you have a problem with it you can go drive your car into a lake, to be honest. free books and ebooks audiobooks and all it requires is a little patience.
pens from work
stamps from the post office. my current list of pen pals is pretty short but sending a piece of physical mail has to be one of the best activities you can do for 44 cents or whatever postage is. doesn’t have to be a letter even, you can just buy a cool card for three dollars when you see it somewhere and write like three sentences in it and sign off with some kind of breezy goodbye and have USPS whisk it off to a friend for you.
big glass bowls from ikea. they’re like four dollars i think and you can literally use them for every meal.
small glass bowls from ikea. they’re like three dollars.
NOT the washcloths from ikea! not absorbent. seem to be made of plastic!
a little green bowl i found at a thrift store for one dollar in which i keep my salt. it’s fun to have a little bowl of coarse salt to take a pinch from. feels very chef like.
that’s all i can think of right now based on looking around my apartment and doing like a mental inventory of my life. i’m sure there are others. probably some other article of clothing that’s dear to me that i’ve forgotten about. but that’s all i got for now.
alright well. have a good week everyone. take your Flonase or approved store-brand equivalent. see ya next Tuesday tomorrow! bye.