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lots of oil and simmering
Monday, December 23 2024
[REDACTED]
I drink kratom tea on most days I am not fasting from all drugs (something I do at least one day a week). Usually I just leave the kratom sludge in the mug after a day of drinking it so I don't have to add as much kratom the next day. One thing I've noticed, though, is that the day I am fasting from kratom, the mug with kratom sludge in it can go off from whatever biology it supports. This happens faster in the summer, but it can also happen in a heated house in the winter. So I've been putting the sludge mug out on the laboratory deck at night. Sometimes the sludge freezes a bit and turns into a slush, but this didn't seem to be threatening the mug. Last night, though, the sludge froze into a solid cyllinder and split my coffee mug in half (it's the Van Gogh mug with the bandage that turns into an ear when it is hot; Powerful gave it to me as a gift back when he lived with us). Fortunately, it was a relatively easy break to fix with superglue (though initially my repair leaked).
At the usual time this afternoon, I took Charlotte for a counterclockwise walk starting on the Farm Road and ending on the Woodshed Path, but it was so cold that I took one of the shorter variants of that loop.
Gretchen had thawed out a frozen bag of injera, which we stock up on whenever we visit Washington, DC (as there are no disapora Ethiopian communities in the Hudson Valley). She'd also made a lentil-based wot, but of course one never wants to eat injera with just one wot. So I told Gretchen I'd attempt to make another wot while she was working at the bookstore. Using a vegan Ethiopian cookbook called Teff Love, I mentally modified a recipe for ye'atakilt wot, a stew comprised mostly of cauliflower, potato, carrot, and tomato. We didn't have any cauliflower, so I substituted in celery and canned green beans.
I might've attempted to make a wot in the past, though this was the first time I paid attention to a recipe and thus was successful. (This was also the first time I'd ever cooked with potatoes.) The key seems to be using a lot of oil and simmering everything for a very long time. We didn't have all the spices I needed (such as berbere paste and ye'wot quimem), though we had coriander, turmeric, and cloves. I also added a hot sauce rich in umami and some black pepper, both of which contain flavors present in the spices I didn't have. After much stirring and simmering, I had a convincing-looking wot that tasted amazing.
When Gretchen got back from her day at the bookstore (where sales had been a near-record-breaking $7000), she prepared a salad and started microwaving the injera. Unfortunately the wot she'd made contained very old dry lentils, and they had a flavor that was off enough that we ended up giving most of it to the dogs. We ended up watching not just an episode of Jeopardy! but also one of Shark Tank, one where, perhaps for the first time, all the ideas for businesses were good ones and nobody was irritating. (Especially the one for Y'all Sweet Tea.)
Later I took a bath, though I had to turn the flow rate down to a trickle so that the just-in-time electric hot water heater could get the water up to a temperature suitable for bathing.
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