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Hoopiversary #5
It was five years ago today that I started hooping. What a life changing experience. Except, really, it isn’t. I am still me but I dance more. I have always been drawn to creating projects, organising events, choreographing performances. Now I have a great excuse to do all of that – the hoop. Hooping still bring…
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Summer Survival by Liquids
The summer weather in Tokyo is always brutal. Every year seems worse than the last, but it’s usually about the same – there are a couple of weeks when it is entirely too hot to eat, think or do much of anything. We push through the days without aircon here at home. It’s not a…
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Precipitation
Geology in action at home. My pyrite is precipitating iron sulfate. If I add water, I can make sulfuric acid: 2FeS2 + 7O2 + 2H2O -> 2FeSO4 + 2H2SO4 Hang on, the weather has been is ridiculously humid. Could the acid have formed formed without direct water? Gosh, my house may be polluted with acid humidity.
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High Fat, High Yum Shepherd’s Pie
This weekend, Tod made an incredible shepherd’s pie. It’s an adaptation of one from Alton Brown and it makes the best I’ve ever eaten. The reason it was so good is the large quantity of lamb fat and cream in it. If you are afraid of fat, this is not the dish for you. Otherwise, it is truly…
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Summertime
You are expecting a rant about summer, aren’t you? You know it’s not my favorite season. But I am talking about Summertime by George Gershwin from Porgy and Bess. Tod & I are learning to play it in our music lessons. Our lessons with Huw that started out as ukulele instruction for me and piano…
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Right in Front of Me
I am closing out July by organising the rest of my summer. I’ve got a lot of projects going on from now until the end of the year and they have gotten scattered. So I wrote them all down on little cards and put them up on the wall above my desk. Now I can…
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Pigs in a Futon
Remember “pigs in a blanket” from your childhood campfire days? I present Tod’s newest fusion invention, Pigs in a Futon, a Japanese variation where toasted mochi replaces bread dough around the grilled sausages. We had a random set of ingredients that needed to be used last night and puzzled a while over how to combine…
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Pesto Eggplant Bake
This is a variation of a favorite recipe, Baked Eggplant Parm, that I blogged about in 2010. The original has been a staple of our dinners ever since but I think this variation is just as delicious. It came about while I was visiting Heather in Utsunomiya. Her garden harvest while I visited was a…
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Updating and Fixing the Blog
So many months of neglect while I Facebooked my life has left poor old Mediatinker creaky and broken. Commenting only seems to work for the spammers. The server is sloooooow; the version of Movable Type is ancient. There are no social media hooks. The design is unavoidably retro. It is time to upgrade and fix…
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Ice Cream Fruit Pie
Summer is full of fresh fruits at the peak of their juiciness. Peaches, plums, melons, and berries of all kinds fill the produce section. Irresistible and so delicious. But after a few weeks, fruit salads and smoothies wear thin. It’s too hot to bake. What to do? Make an ice cream pie with fresh fruit! You’ll create…
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