Links: 9-8-2012

Science: Dark Galaxies of the Early Universe Spotted For the First Time: Galaxies from before stars -- how awesome is that?

Life: Stop Aging

Life: 10 Questions To Help You Stop Thinking and Start DOING

Food: Vintage Food Posters over on Two Men and a Little Farm -- ones that apply really well today, too!

Happiness: Gretchen Rubin's Happier At Home book giveaway!

Life: Should you combine your many passions or choose one? -- I love the decision-making help she gives here; I'm still on the fence whenever someone tells me not to combine, though she does say focus-and-then-add, which most of the other business advice doesn't say.

Happiness: A French Weekend -- David Liebovitz always makes me want to visit France.

Organization: Stop procrastinating with Unscheduling

Happiness: Find 'comfort foods' for your mind

Happiness: We Are What We Remember

Life: Cultivate A Shrine

I made soup today

It wasn't really anything like the Minorcan Clam Chowder recipe I based it on, but it was good, and it went like this:
3 sandwich-sized bags of frozen turkey broth from the Thanksgiving turkey
1 can of Italian-style chopped tomatoes
1 can of red beans and their sauce / juice
1 can of baby potatoes, chopped
about a cup each of frozen peas and frozen corn
2 big scoops of Sofrito
a palmfull of fried garlic (the kind in the jar from the asian market)
maybe two palmfulls of fried onions (also from the asian market)
some thyme, red pepper, oregano, salt, pepper
2 bay leaves
a teaspoon or so of sugar

Cook all this until it's boiling
Throw in enough chicken for everyone who's eating-- I just dropped the chicken breasts in whole and let the poach
Throw in a third cup or two of rice
Let the whole thing simmer until the rice gets that split look that rice in soup is supposed to have
Nom nom.


I'd like to add more veggies next time, and probably some fat of some sort-- cream or butter in at the end of the cooking. Maybe some cheese. But it was good like this, and a keeper as far as half-thought-out recipes go. Not bad for a house with basically no food in it.

things you should know if we ever get married for your greencard: personal saints

I'm not Catholic. I'm about as far from Catholic as someone can get, being of the general polytheistic heathen persuasion, in a really non-religious and barely-practicing sort of way, but I do believe that when someone does something special for the greater good of the species, that something should be rewarded in some way, and so for the last few years, I've been collecting up a list of what I call Personal Saints.

And most of them are food-based because that's how I roll / that's what's important to me.

Currently, the list stands like this:

Saint Whoever First Burned Sugar and Convinced People To Eat It (patron saint of caramel, toffee, caramelization, hard candies, creme brulee and butterscotch)

Saint Ancient Chinese Emperor Who First Made Tea (patron saint of tea in all it's forms)

Saint First Chick To Make Bread (matron of all breads, yeasts, doughs, baked goods and baking)

Saint Whoever First Though Bad Milk Might Be Good For Something (patron saint of milk, milking, cheese, yogurt, kefir, butter, sour cream, and lacto-fermentation)

Saint Aztec Guy Who First Tried Chocolate and Brought It Back To Town (patron saint of chocolate, chocolate-making, enrobing, moxing weird things in chocolate, Cadbury's, Kinder, Ritter Sport, and cultural misappropriation)

Saint First Person To Eat That Weird Thing And Not Die (patron saint of pineapple, durian, catfish, rambutan, sea urchin, taro, and anything else where you just go "How did anyone even think to eat this?")

Saint Whoever First Thought It Might Be A Good Idea To Drink Things That Had Been Sitting Around For A While (patron saint of fermentation, wine, cider, perry, beer, pickel-making, saurkraut, kimchee, and anything else that doesn't start as milk)

Saint Inventor of Custards (patron saint of flan, cheesecake, Byrd's, pudding, half the ice creams, and several sauces)

Saint Hey We Can Preserve That In Sugar (patron saint of jams, jellies, preserves, sugar-sauces, syrups, Aunt Jemima, chutneys, pate de fruits, turkish delight, sugared-fruits and flowers, candied fruits and peels, and anything else saved in sugar, including when it's used to disinfect wounds and save lives)

rules of acquisition: chinese honeys

Tea Habitat has a lovely assortment of honeys I haven't had before that I want terribly:

Longan flower, lychee flower and what they're calling 'winter honey'-- longans are pretty wonderful, lychees are my favorite fruit, and it's almost fall, so I really should be looking for a winter-seasonal honey anyway. And best of all, it's only 20$. Awesome. I want it bad, and if I manage to get it on my next payday or so, I'll review it for you on the food blog.

linky list

Okay, so I'm not good at resolutions, but I'm determined to use this blog for things pertaining to my improvement of my life, and I consider random knowledge an improvement, so here's today's fun new links:

Medicine Chest: a public record of traditional medicine.

Rockabye Baby turns Queen into Lullabyes.

Remeber Jaime Oliver? Now he's taking on how Americans eat!

Mark Kurlansky has compiled a book on how Americans ate before the Interstates and the Fast Food Revolution called Food of a Younger Land.

A whole (very detailed) article about the history of Star Trek reboots. Including a really great Guide to Reboots at the end.

What do kids eat in school lunches in outher countries? Stuff way better, tastier and healthier than we're feeding our kids, apparently.

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but it sounds fun: "Does the Emperor not foreseeing that Darth Vader would kill him mean that all Jedi have lost this force ability and that midichlorians leave the body after death and have evolved as they drifted with innumerable species by finding an athletic host who would benefit from incredible power?"