rind

I've also not felt inspired to wear perfumes during the quarantine, but the last couple of days I've been wearing Parfum d'Empires azemore les oranges. There's an intial juicy pop of orange which is nicely uplifting, then the focus shifts towards more green, woody and slightly spicy notes. This is a rare occasion where my initial impression still rings true. The only downside is swiping it onto my neck doesn't generate the greatest projection, as in I barely smell myself. Though on the other hand, I've felt that one spray from a full size bottle of my other perfumes is actually too overwhelming.

angle

It's been a while since I felt "inspired" to take photos, or another way to out it, manage to notice good light. But today is a fruitful day!

This might be my favourite photo...in at least the past half a year. Favourite photos from travel aside, I always tend to favourite some still life photos taken in lower lighting, there's a...calming quality to them? There's been a few other moments (usually in the morning when I'm eating breakfast) that I notice the light in the kitchen is super good, and with a variety of objects (with its variety of surface characteristics) that make for a good photo.

I'd also totally take a square crop of the middle area and make it an album cover. I guess the whole image works as a book cover too.

...

I also haven't taken a skyline photo in a while, but today had a perfect moment when the heavy clouds were just starting to clear and the CN Tower caught some direct side light.

walk

Felt more motivated than usual to cook this past week, made a few recipes from The Woks of Life and elsewhere.

Hunan pork and tofu - taste pretty similar Sichuan food, which is unsurprising since the provinces are quite close to each other. Pan fried tofu is kinda a pain to prepare but taste so damn good. Points to me for adding some black wood-ear mushroom, always a tasty thing to stir fry.

Also made stir-fried bok choy with tofu skin as a side to a different meal. A good add-in to a veggie dish.

Probably maple glazed salmon. We made a giant seafood order last week as many wholesale vendors are now selling retail at similar prices. We added a couple of marinades with our order, thinking that it would come smothered on the fish (since you specify the marinade on the same line as other instructions for the fish such as filleting). But it turns out that they come separately -_- and unlabeled so I can only guess this is a maple one. Regardless it tasted delicious, especially with some sweet potato wedges to mop up the extra sauce.

Tofu with black bean sauce, and soy-glazed eggplant. Redux of pan-fried tofu in a different sauce. Since I was frying tofu, I decided to double-down and fry some eggplant too, which is even more annoying. But the results are soooo 下饭.

seam

and now for things I didn't buy but really wanted to from the Nordstrom sale:

Both these items evoke cool to me, the directional sheen of the dress' fabric and the pattern of the sweater (it carries through to the inside!). As for why I didn't buy them, aside from the cost, is that Jeff described the first dress as reminiscent of an oil spill 😅, and I would've preferred the sweater in a jacket or coat form.

breeze

Second addition to my jewelry collection this year: morse code bracelet from Everlijewelry featuring my favourite (and actually only) line of poem.

sizing

A few weeks ago, there was a thread on /r/ffa about free fashion related online courses. I enrolled in the Fashion and Sustainability course created by London College of Fashion and Kering, and have been reading through it. In the course, they linked to a fantastic collection of resources by the CFDA. My favourite of which is the Material Index, which although is a little sparse on the common fabrics, provides quite detailed information (silk is worse than I thought 😭) on what they have and includes a lot of innovative materials.

Based on what I've learned there, and in efforts to even more selective of what new clothing I buy, I've decided to focus on alpaca for knitwear and linen/hemp for woven.

Of course the source of each materials matters tremendously, and the current market seems to be a choose 2 of 3 between: reliable/certified source, price, and design. As an example, Everlane is price and design for alpaca sweaters, and Patagonia is reliable and price for hemp shirts. I'm even willing to relent on price, but it seems that reliable and design is the rarest of combinations. So far I found IOAN alpaca sweater as a good candidate, but I'm holding off until the far future when I can again travel to New York to try it on in person since the sizing is unisex.
(my list of shops to visit in-person in NYC is astoundingly long now...good thing a trip is not in the near future as my wallet needs some fattening up in preparation).

Hemp is even harder to find good designs for. All I can find is catered towards outdoors-use, which is not my preference. Seriously why isn't hemp more widely used? Canada is even a top producer of the plant! I'll have to resort to linen, which isn't too much of a downgrade in terms of sustainability (the only difference is that hemp is more productive per land area), but I haven't found any brand with certified organic linen. For now I'll likely continue buying from the Off/On, the Lithuania-based Etsy shops that I previously bought a dress from, which is at least a plus for supporting small businesses.

eight

Some of the new things I've made recently:

Polpetto polpette from their cookbook, with some slight modifications due to ingredient availability. Swapped the ratio of ground beef to pork, changed parsley to fennel and oregano, and fresh garlic for garlic powder (fine the last one is due to laziness). Turned out great!

Pesto baked chicken legs with charred bok choy and potato wedges (not pictured). I've not been a huge fan of those sheet pan meals, mostly because its a pain to wash sheet pans, but this one is really great. The potatoes taste insanely good bath in chicken oil & juices.

Other things without photos:

• 红烧style pork shoulder in instant pot: soooo good with some preserved 雪菜. Jeff thinks it taste kinda fusion-y due to the lack of spices. Will add spices back in next time.
• Golden coconut lentil soup: been trying to eat more turmeric and this was an easy way to achieve that. A bowl lentil soup is always good.