Archive for November, 2008
While we weren’t looking
Congratulations to the Americans. One hopes all goes better with President Obama.
In other political warfare, we wuz ambushed in the open. California, Florida and Arizona in the last week passed or amended legislation to effectively ban same-sex marriages.
Less than half a year ago, the Supreme Court of California held that such a ban was unconstitutional for California, and more than 18,000 same-sex marriages have been performed since. The same couple who brought that case to court will challenge the new referendum. It’s complicated. Legal scholars are analysing the process, not the content, of routes to getting this clearly discriminatory question to or above the court.
How many fucking times do we have to do this?
As often as it takes.
Well, it is a beautiful spot
Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of queer subversiveness in the morning.
A couple of lasses got married on the grounds of the Taj Mahal. Go the Swedes!
P/s ignore the creepy, opportunistic priest.
An interview with Annie Proulx
She talks about Wyoming and writing. I’m wondering if she wasn’t a big time successful writer, would she be relegated to the ranks of that odd group, that is, straight women who write gay fiction?
Read the interview here.
The sound of reading
Librivox aims to compile audio recordings of books in the public domain. In turn, they will place those recordings in the public domain. They are asking for volunteers, and you don’t need any experience to apply.
Librivox has the following project types. Pick one that suits:
- collaborative: many volunteers contribute chapters of a long text
- solo: one volunteer reads an entire book
- short works (prose and poetry): short works and poetry!
- dramatic works: “actors” record parts, all edited together.
- other languages: projects in languages other than English.
Details at http://librivox.org/volunteer-for-librivox/
Thanks to SBTB for the link.
Preserving fruit
I like to sleep. I also like staying up late at night. Eventually, the body wins. Something must’ve knocked me out yesterday because I was horizontal for most of the 24 hours that was Saturday. Can’t have been the massive food shopping and cooking detail, no no.
From a huge farmer’s market, we indulged in spicy smoked sausages, hand-stuffed olives (must try making those), local farmhouse cheese and delicious salt-bush lamb. Salt-bush lamb are sheep that graze in drier, harsher, outback conditions. Their meat is surprisingly not gamey but is deeply evenly flavoured. Just fantastic.
This week’s recipe give-out is a challenge to make your own pickle or conserve. Probably the easiest to make is jam. Pick a tart fruit, cook it with the same weight in sugar, and add the juice and zest of one lemon. Microwave jars to sterilise, pour in the cooling jam, and cap them tightly. They make great gifts.
If you like extreme pickles, try preserving lemons for cooking. Get unwaxed, thick rind lemons. Quarter them almost to the tip, rub salt inside and outside them then line them up in the jar – adding a spoon of salt for each lemon that goes in. You can spice them up with bay leaves, peppercorns, chilli or other whole spices. Cover the whole lot with fresh lemon juice, as much as possible, as during pickling you’ll be turning the bottle every week.
After at least 6 weeks, the lemon rinds are ready for use. Remove the pulp and thinly cut the rind, you’ll use only a little, when stewing lamb or other sweetish, earthy dishes. Ideal for Moroccon and North African meat dishes.
You could pickle other citrus fruits such as limes, oranges, citrons, tomatoes etc in a variety of pickling agents, juice them or even oven dry them. They are well worth making.
