Bits and Pieces
Mar. 20th, 2023 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI’ve been thinking and blogging about a variety of ideas and potential writing projects. Yesterday, the thinking hit a point that I rarely get to: get out a big piece of paper and draw something that depicts linkages. It was a really worthwhile exercise that involved shockingly little erasing (I really could have done it in pen) and that was profoundly satisfying. I found a frame and hung it in my office to contemplate for a while.
While that exercise surfaced connections between the things I have been thinking about, what are lines of various sorts on the page are processes in real life. I’m going to list a few of the processes I’ve been engaging with recently (you’ll recognize them!) and then make some observations.
Shop my closet
Cook what I already have
Take the output of one thing and make it the input of another
Identify the next user before acquisition
Identify future uses before creation
Look at the things that you’ve had for a long time, and don’t use
Store where used
Only replace things that you are sure you want to keep using
Repair (of broken things)
Alteration (of things that are not quite right)
Bacon fat
Cooking a whole bird
Gravy
Stale bread
Wear what you don’t like until you know exactly why
Eat what you don’t (like) until you know exactly why
Working backwards from the last two, the general principle of those is that if you have something you really don’t like, and you cannot identify _why_ you don’t like it, you have a very real future acquisition mistake problem. You acquired this thing _for some reason_, and you are getting rid of it _for a different but not identifiable reason_. You could do this forever. Might as well learn how to identify the negative, so you can permanently get off this treadmill.
Eat what you don’t (like) is related, but a little different, because I have had foods around that I actually like, but don’t eat. Sometimes, there were foods I _loved_ and didn’t buy or eat. Then I started buying them and not eating them. I have since learned that if I love a food but don’t buy and/or eat it, it’s probably because I’m allergic to it. But I really should try to nail that down, so that I also don’t order it when I’m at a restaurant, because when I’m looking at a menu with interesting things, I’ll go, oh! I like that, and I never buy that, and I never eat that so I’ll get it here. Bad idea. I don’t need aversion training on eating at restaurants (any more), so even that silver lining has tarnished.
Bread honestly doesn’t stale around here typically, but when it does, I have a really detailed use path. End slices from my daughter’s store bought bread (we’re partway through the conversion to homemade bread — I just am not consistent enough on keeping up) go into the freezer. When they build up, they become bread crumbs, croutons, french toast, panzanella, bread stuffing. Staling is even more rare with homemade bread; generally, that is softened in the microwave with a little water to make steam and consumed before it rehardens. Every two weeks, there is a loaf of Izzy’s, and I’m not sure that has ever made it to stale. I was chatting with my sister recently, who has a long history with keto diets, and she recently has been running her yogurt maker and bread maker, but throwing out loaves of bread that go stale. She had completely forgotten the stale bread use path (actually, she only knew french toast anyway, and either never knew or forgot the microwave trick and didn’t want to hurt herself cutting hard bread, and was thus unable to use the full path with homemade bread).
During the early part of the pandemic lockdown, I wanted some bacon fat for some purpose, and didn’t have a jar going so I scavenged some from the bottom of the pre-cooked bacon container in the fridge. I felt a little weird about it, but after that I researched current nutritionist thinking on bacon fat (they are now fine with it, mostly) and started keeping a jar by the stove again. (The full story here is far more complicated, but I’m not going to get into it.) It turns out that even cooking a lot of vegetables with bacon fat, it is impossible to keep up with the amount generated by _one_ person in the house eating _one_ slice of bacon per day. So, I started trying to figure out what else I could use the bacon fat for, that I was currently using other fats or oils for. I haven’t reached the bacon-fat-on-toast stage (altho that is now visible on the horizon, whereas previously, it had been unimaginable), but I don’t pour oil into a pan hardly ever any more (if I’m cooking for a vegetarian, obviously I will).
When we signed up with Lilac Hedge so we could have things like lamb and bison again (we’d been missing them), I ordered a goose. I had cooked duck before, so I made a plan ahead of time to not have an oven fire AND to keep the goose fat. The goose fat was so amazing, that led to biscuit experimentation and making gravy with goose fat, which was of course, incredible. They sell jars of goose fat. It truly is a magic ingredient.
Like the goose fat got me thinking about pan sauces again, so when I cooked a chicken I made some gravy. The first time post-goose that I did that, it turned out fine, but I didn’t use it up. The second time, it occurred to me to make a vegetable and chicken stew and use the gravy in that (basically, like eating the filling from a shepherd’s pie or chicken pot pie or whatever). Gravy gone.
Roland got out the sewing machine recently to do a few projects that my daughter requested after I suggested them. She has been going through her dresser and creating new outfits every day for the next day. When she runs across something that does not fit, she’ll donate it, and sometimes but not always request a replacement. When she has something that has pilled, she’ll give it to me and I’ll razor off the pills. But recently, she tried some 3/4 length sleeve shirts and absolutely loathed them. She really liked the shirt, but those sleeves. I said, you know, I am pretty sure even I could fix that, but your dad could probably do a neater job. He recently made the alterations (trim, rehem).
When I bought the Lego Titanic (I bought extra letters and labeled it the Olympic. For reasons. But I did not mod the build because I’m lazy), I could immediately see it was going to take over a full table. I didn’t want to lose a table. I knew I’d be buying something to display it on, and I figured that might as well also be useful for other things both while displaying the Olympic AND after the Olympic exited my life to go make some other Brickhead happy. I ordered a sofa table on Etsy with a lower shelf for displaying the boat, leaving the regular surface available for whatever. Which, in the event, is actually more Lego. Also, it’s really nice.
When I bought the Eiffel Tower, I did not check the dimensions, but realized as I was building the base that I had a very real problem. I halted the build, ordered a matching table from the same shop on Etsy, negotiated with my husband to make sure that it had a post-Eiffel Tower use as an end table (he requested a slightly lower height to go with the chair it would be next to). I also identified friends who would accept the Eiffel Tower after I had built it and admired it for a few months, and a time frame to get it to the first recipient.
Recently, I had a meeting at my house with someone who I often will prepare a baked goodie for. It’s not a social call; it is fundraising for a 501(c)3 call (I’m the donor in this context). However, I overslept. No baked goodie. But I did incorporate her in the morning’s plans: the usual english muffin with homemade marmalade. The muffin comes straight out of the sourdough crock into a ring greased with bacon fat and sits on a rectangular baking tray greased with the bacon fat. The marmalade is the result of taking all the mandarin peels from mandarins (clementines, whatever) consumed in the house, slicing them up finely with a knife, putting them in the freezer until the container is full, and then making them into marmalade.
All of these stories — and a lot more! — are Bits and Pieces stories. The english muffins are very easy to make. Twice a day, I put some grain in the mill, grind it into a bowl, dump it into the crock, add a bit of water and stir. In the morning, I scoop it out into a ring and bake it, take it out, split it, toast it, add toppings and eat it. The total time from start to finish is long, but the amount of active time dedicated to it is very, very minimal. Bits and pieces of time and effort, scattered through the day. I’m guaranteed to be in the kitchen in the morning making tea when I make the muffin and feed it in the morning, and again in the evening when I run the dishwasher and feed it. If I were in a rush to get out the door, the 15 minutes baking time would be an issue, but I’m not, and smelling fresh bread _every_ _single_ _morning_ is deeply satisfying and source of ongoing joy.
Let’s just acknowledge all the privilege here.
And let’s also acknowledge that the Bits and Pieces can only be collected and polished and enjoyed for their shiny brightness _after_ the larger, more important tasks have been accomplished. We are already getting sleep and exercise. The kids are already in school. We are both retired. We are not just launched. Our last rocket stage has gone quiet and we are on the path that we are on.
OK: list created, stories told, acknowledgements of wealth and privilege have been included. I have some questions and comments.
First, over and over and over again, every single one of these things is something that the internet has helped me do _primarily by showing me everyone else who claims to have done it in a much more complicated and difficult way_. In the deeper past, I bought (or got from the library, or borrowed or whatever) books and articles that gave similar advice _often_ similarly complicated. To use cooking as an example, back then, I would often work my way back through the deep ancestry of recipes and dishes and cooking techniques, on the theory that what I wanted to make was often a very old dish, and I figured that there was no way in hell it used to involve all that complexity. True enough, but also, the oldest cookbooks not only don’t have good descriptions of technique (as ably depicted by Dylan Hollis’ entertaining YouTube and TikTok productions), they frequently don’t even include measurements or relative proportions.
Second BUT ALSO the internet has shown me pictures and sometimes videos that capture technique that is hard to get into words and what the product is that I’m aiming at. The sheer volume of material online means it is possible to quite rapidly understand the range of the dish that is recognizable as the dish — versus, say, going through a dozen cookbooks or asking all your aging relatives, or ordering it at several bakeries or restaurants, yes, all of which I have done in the past.
For my computer science-y types: I refactor the complex directions to extract the essentials. But only in an 80/20 sort of way.
For everyone else: I look for what is in common across the many examples, find what is shared broadly, give up everything fiddly and time consuming, adjust it for my own constraints, and then make or do whatever is left.
(And then write something about the whole process.)
While that exercise surfaced connections between the things I have been thinking about, what are lines of various sorts on the page are processes in real life. I’m going to list a few of the processes I’ve been engaging with recently (you’ll recognize them!) and then make some observations.
Shop my closet
Cook what I already have
Take the output of one thing and make it the input of another
Identify the next user before acquisition
Identify future uses before creation
Look at the things that you’ve had for a long time, and don’t use
Store where used
Only replace things that you are sure you want to keep using
Repair (of broken things)
Alteration (of things that are not quite right)
Bacon fat
Cooking a whole bird
Gravy
Stale bread
Wear what you don’t like until you know exactly why
Eat what you don’t (like) until you know exactly why
Working backwards from the last two, the general principle of those is that if you have something you really don’t like, and you cannot identify _why_ you don’t like it, you have a very real future acquisition mistake problem. You acquired this thing _for some reason_, and you are getting rid of it _for a different but not identifiable reason_. You could do this forever. Might as well learn how to identify the negative, so you can permanently get off this treadmill.
Eat what you don’t (like) is related, but a little different, because I have had foods around that I actually like, but don’t eat. Sometimes, there were foods I _loved_ and didn’t buy or eat. Then I started buying them and not eating them. I have since learned that if I love a food but don’t buy and/or eat it, it’s probably because I’m allergic to it. But I really should try to nail that down, so that I also don’t order it when I’m at a restaurant, because when I’m looking at a menu with interesting things, I’ll go, oh! I like that, and I never buy that, and I never eat that so I’ll get it here. Bad idea. I don’t need aversion training on eating at restaurants (any more), so even that silver lining has tarnished.
Bread honestly doesn’t stale around here typically, but when it does, I have a really detailed use path. End slices from my daughter’s store bought bread (we’re partway through the conversion to homemade bread — I just am not consistent enough on keeping up) go into the freezer. When they build up, they become bread crumbs, croutons, french toast, panzanella, bread stuffing. Staling is even more rare with homemade bread; generally, that is softened in the microwave with a little water to make steam and consumed before it rehardens. Every two weeks, there is a loaf of Izzy’s, and I’m not sure that has ever made it to stale. I was chatting with my sister recently, who has a long history with keto diets, and she recently has been running her yogurt maker and bread maker, but throwing out loaves of bread that go stale. She had completely forgotten the stale bread use path (actually, she only knew french toast anyway, and either never knew or forgot the microwave trick and didn’t want to hurt herself cutting hard bread, and was thus unable to use the full path with homemade bread).
During the early part of the pandemic lockdown, I wanted some bacon fat for some purpose, and didn’t have a jar going so I scavenged some from the bottom of the pre-cooked bacon container in the fridge. I felt a little weird about it, but after that I researched current nutritionist thinking on bacon fat (they are now fine with it, mostly) and started keeping a jar by the stove again. (The full story here is far more complicated, but I’m not going to get into it.) It turns out that even cooking a lot of vegetables with bacon fat, it is impossible to keep up with the amount generated by _one_ person in the house eating _one_ slice of bacon per day. So, I started trying to figure out what else I could use the bacon fat for, that I was currently using other fats or oils for. I haven’t reached the bacon-fat-on-toast stage (altho that is now visible on the horizon, whereas previously, it had been unimaginable), but I don’t pour oil into a pan hardly ever any more (if I’m cooking for a vegetarian, obviously I will).
When we signed up with Lilac Hedge so we could have things like lamb and bison again (we’d been missing them), I ordered a goose. I had cooked duck before, so I made a plan ahead of time to not have an oven fire AND to keep the goose fat. The goose fat was so amazing, that led to biscuit experimentation and making gravy with goose fat, which was of course, incredible. They sell jars of goose fat. It truly is a magic ingredient.
Like the goose fat got me thinking about pan sauces again, so when I cooked a chicken I made some gravy. The first time post-goose that I did that, it turned out fine, but I didn’t use it up. The second time, it occurred to me to make a vegetable and chicken stew and use the gravy in that (basically, like eating the filling from a shepherd’s pie or chicken pot pie or whatever). Gravy gone.
Roland got out the sewing machine recently to do a few projects that my daughter requested after I suggested them. She has been going through her dresser and creating new outfits every day for the next day. When she runs across something that does not fit, she’ll donate it, and sometimes but not always request a replacement. When she has something that has pilled, she’ll give it to me and I’ll razor off the pills. But recently, she tried some 3/4 length sleeve shirts and absolutely loathed them. She really liked the shirt, but those sleeves. I said, you know, I am pretty sure even I could fix that, but your dad could probably do a neater job. He recently made the alterations (trim, rehem).
When I bought the Lego Titanic (I bought extra letters and labeled it the Olympic. For reasons. But I did not mod the build because I’m lazy), I could immediately see it was going to take over a full table. I didn’t want to lose a table. I knew I’d be buying something to display it on, and I figured that might as well also be useful for other things both while displaying the Olympic AND after the Olympic exited my life to go make some other Brickhead happy. I ordered a sofa table on Etsy with a lower shelf for displaying the boat, leaving the regular surface available for whatever. Which, in the event, is actually more Lego. Also, it’s really nice.
When I bought the Eiffel Tower, I did not check the dimensions, but realized as I was building the base that I had a very real problem. I halted the build, ordered a matching table from the same shop on Etsy, negotiated with my husband to make sure that it had a post-Eiffel Tower use as an end table (he requested a slightly lower height to go with the chair it would be next to). I also identified friends who would accept the Eiffel Tower after I had built it and admired it for a few months, and a time frame to get it to the first recipient.
Recently, I had a meeting at my house with someone who I often will prepare a baked goodie for. It’s not a social call; it is fundraising for a 501(c)3 call (I’m the donor in this context). However, I overslept. No baked goodie. But I did incorporate her in the morning’s plans: the usual english muffin with homemade marmalade. The muffin comes straight out of the sourdough crock into a ring greased with bacon fat and sits on a rectangular baking tray greased with the bacon fat. The marmalade is the result of taking all the mandarin peels from mandarins (clementines, whatever) consumed in the house, slicing them up finely with a knife, putting them in the freezer until the container is full, and then making them into marmalade.
All of these stories — and a lot more! — are Bits and Pieces stories. The english muffins are very easy to make. Twice a day, I put some grain in the mill, grind it into a bowl, dump it into the crock, add a bit of water and stir. In the morning, I scoop it out into a ring and bake it, take it out, split it, toast it, add toppings and eat it. The total time from start to finish is long, but the amount of active time dedicated to it is very, very minimal. Bits and pieces of time and effort, scattered through the day. I’m guaranteed to be in the kitchen in the morning making tea when I make the muffin and feed it in the morning, and again in the evening when I run the dishwasher and feed it. If I were in a rush to get out the door, the 15 minutes baking time would be an issue, but I’m not, and smelling fresh bread _every_ _single_ _morning_ is deeply satisfying and source of ongoing joy.
Let’s just acknowledge all the privilege here.
And let’s also acknowledge that the Bits and Pieces can only be collected and polished and enjoyed for their shiny brightness _after_ the larger, more important tasks have been accomplished. We are already getting sleep and exercise. The kids are already in school. We are both retired. We are not just launched. Our last rocket stage has gone quiet and we are on the path that we are on.
OK: list created, stories told, acknowledgements of wealth and privilege have been included. I have some questions and comments.
First, over and over and over again, every single one of these things is something that the internet has helped me do _primarily by showing me everyone else who claims to have done it in a much more complicated and difficult way_. In the deeper past, I bought (or got from the library, or borrowed or whatever) books and articles that gave similar advice _often_ similarly complicated. To use cooking as an example, back then, I would often work my way back through the deep ancestry of recipes and dishes and cooking techniques, on the theory that what I wanted to make was often a very old dish, and I figured that there was no way in hell it used to involve all that complexity. True enough, but also, the oldest cookbooks not only don’t have good descriptions of technique (as ably depicted by Dylan Hollis’ entertaining YouTube and TikTok productions), they frequently don’t even include measurements or relative proportions.
Second BUT ALSO the internet has shown me pictures and sometimes videos that capture technique that is hard to get into words and what the product is that I’m aiming at. The sheer volume of material online means it is possible to quite rapidly understand the range of the dish that is recognizable as the dish — versus, say, going through a dozen cookbooks or asking all your aging relatives, or ordering it at several bakeries or restaurants, yes, all of which I have done in the past.
For my computer science-y types: I refactor the complex directions to extract the essentials. But only in an 80/20 sort of way.
For everyone else: I look for what is in common across the many examples, find what is shared broadly, give up everything fiddly and time consuming, adjust it for my own constraints, and then make or do whatever is left.
(And then write something about the whole process.)