peck of pickled peppers

Presenting the 2nd variety of fridge pickles: pepper
(previous version was the carrots)

Some years ago I stopped liking to eat bell peppers. Now I'm slowly warming up to them again, though only in roasted or pickled form. This batch is incredibly crunchy and ...cheerful. A wonderful pairing with the huge pot of curry that's the star of this week's menu.

...

I also finally admit that I enjoy my wuyi teas more when brewed nice and slow versus flash steeps, which is the tea equivalent of saying you like individually wrapped plastic cheese instead of the ...I don't know enough about fancy cheese to make a good comparison opps. Though it's less severe than saying you like a steak well done.

Conventional wisdom for brewing wuyi is cram the pot full of leaves and brew it hot and fast. Today I grandpa'd a cup with very low leaf ratio and it taste great. Zen Tea brews them western style, and it taste great too.

The silver lining is that it's much much cheaper to drink wuyi this way.


PS. finally made my way to the Bei Dou from last Christmas' Tao Tea Leaf haul. This is my favourite out of the three.

fade into one more today

Preliminary words of excitement: Wolf's Rain is so goooood. It's everything I had hoped Ergo Proxy to be. Yoko Kanno is a god at anime soundtracks.

I accidentally spoiled the story for myself, thus saving the second half of the series for later in the week when I can curl up in bed for extended periods of time to process the feels.

Here's the ED, which I like for the exact same reasons as Champloo's ED. Except I like this animation sequence better, for the same reason as Katanagatari since it adapts to each episode. Oh the episode title screen is also reminiscent of Bebop, hnnnnng.
^that's a lot of praise.

PS. the lyrics remind me me this passage in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which unfortunately I have not reread beyond the first 3 chapters after buying the book:

If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

PPS. a great joy of reading manga is finding an image that works beautifully as a wallpaper. This one is from Angel Densetsu, which I did not find particularly great. Each volume follows pretty much the same plot and the main character barely shows any growth over the entire series.

pigment

Memebox goodies:

Justification for this order:

• Air puffs: the sole reason why I wear base make-up is because how easy it is to out it on with these puffs. Memebox ones are cheap and convenient.
• Pony x Memebox lipstick: to fill the hole in my heart where the Burberry redwood lip velvet should be, and because I got sucked in by the outer box design. 

I've assembled a formidable stash of make-up and skincare items now, perhaps most accurately described as a wardrobe of options. Will now be on a no-buy (of any non essential everyday household items) until I land in New York this winter.

Shampoo Planet

I picked up this book because Ivy was posting really good quotations from it on Tumblr. True to my expectations, I did find a couple of gems. Though Douglas Coupland's fiction style is not entirely to my liking, it feels too real haha.

Without further ado:

I have this feeling no room is ever really quiet; this feeling that even in the quietest, emptiest and most uneventful of rooms there is always an event of profound importance occurring. This event is Time itself, foaming, raging, and boiling like a river, roaring through this room and through all rooms [...] and Time, with its grand, unfightable sweep, taking me along with it.

I think about how I think I know a person the poof! I discover I only knew a cartoon version. Suddenly there's this fleshy, demanding, noisy creature in front of me, unknowledgeable and just as lost as I am, and equally unable to remember that every soul in the world is hurting, not just themselves.

I think of how people can betray me simply by not caring enough to hide the fact of how little they care.

In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as through we are spellcast. We speak in sentenced that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves.

Our achievements may make us interesting, Tyler, but our darkness makes us lovable. [...] Beauty and darkness are woven together, even Frankenstein gets lonely. [...] forgiveness is what we have no choice but to work towards, or else we are just animals. Dark animals. And that is too much to bear.

And I am fuelled by the awareness of all the badness in this world - badness I have tolerated because I had never chosen to see it for what it was. And I am fuelled by my embarrassment at my profoundly mistaken belief that simply living in freedom in itself guarantees the continuation of that freedom.

Yeah, "real" is a good word that summarizes the quotations above. 

The last quotation is something dear to me because I've acutely experienced this moment before. Twice before to be exact. In my case the relief did not come until long long after.

Once out on the sidewalk I had the distinct feeling that a point was being passed, a point after which, I might never again have the opportunity to say certain things to Anna-Louise with a certain level of intensity ever again. There was a sense of loss in this, but there was also relief.

怀念的勇气

Sick, ugh.

Here's a song instead:


有多久没见你 以为你在哪里
原来就住在我心底 陪伴着我的呼吸
有多远的距离 以为闻不到你气息
谁知道你背影这么长 回头就看到你

过去让它过去  来不及
从头喜欢你
白云缠绕着蓝天

如果不能够永远走在一起
也至少给我们 怀念的勇气 拥抱的权利
好让你明白 我心动的痕迹

总是想再见你 还试着打探你的消息
原来你就住在我的身体 守护我的回忆

Found via my high school mate's performance on 中国好声音

Tonya

I fawn over 2D characters a lot (like today's update for Tales of Felluah, had to pause because too much feels), occasionally for male celebrities (Jay Chou and JGL to date), and now I add to my list Antonina Vasylchenko, the most perfect looking woman.

I think I'm attracted to her girlish look. A weird but accurate analogy is like a particle in a high energy state and the potential it has.

Behold:

all images via tumblr, sorry I'm too lazy to give individual credits.

simmers

I am armed with my dutch oven and totally ready for the cooler weather 8D

Vegetable soup loosely based on my coworker's recipe.
I totally forgot to soak the beans, so I subbed for lentils. Also switched out cabbage for collards because that's what I had on hand. Overall a very handy and versatile recipe that will definitely make frequent appearances.

The dutch oven is also great to use, it's the beginning of my love affair with enameled cast iron.

...

Other food items from sometimes past:

Fridge pickles, sichuan style with numbing peppercorn and spicy chili. I just discovered how cheap carrots are, so I'll be making a ton of carrot pickles as a side dish.

The last bit of the previous soup, which will also be making frequent appearances because pork shoulder is also extremely cheap. But I want to switch to buying humanely raised meat, which means not much meat at all because a) difficult to judge, b) difficult to find and c) difficult to afford.
I have switched to buying organic/cage-free milk and eggs, thankfully I can finally start aligning my spending habits and beliefs. Although I don't notice a taste difference, which is to be expected since freshness has a bigger impact on taste, I noticed that organic milk taste longer and organic eggs are easier to peel. Nifty side benefits (y)