Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I looked down at the pot of burbling stuff on the stove as I stirred it, and thought, "it looks wrong and it still smells wrong ... why?" Then it dawned on me: I forgot the garlic. I forgot garlic? I must be less awake than I'd thought, and I was already aware of being not quite all here.

So I pried a clove off the garlic bulb, but then I thought, "Wait, I bought this how many days ago, and this is only the second clove I've used? Is the reason I've felt headachy and dizzy so much of the past few days just a garlic deficiency?" Come to think of it, could that have anything to do with the recent pattern of: feel hungry, get an idea for something to cook, cook it, sit down, look at it, wonder why I don't feel like eating?

While I'm making random observations: my cat seems to like canned veggies. Well really just the liquid they're packed in. If I open a can, she wants a sniff. She may accept and appear to enjoy a small piece of whatever vegetable is inside, though not a second one. What she really wants is to taste that slightly salty, vegetable-flavoured water, and in some cases to take a good long drink of it. Today she enjoyed a fair dollop of that thick fluid from a can of kidney beans. This after she'd already eaten as much of her own food as she eats in one sitting.

Today's breakfa ... ah, really late brunch? ... is one of those things that'll probably sound terribly odd but actually works pretty well -- the results of a dizzy, 3/4 awake werecatfish reacting to the first ingredients to cross my field of view and trying to decide what else I was in the mood to combine with those. It started with about a quarter of an onion chopped into slivers and tossed into a pot with a little olive oil in the bottom along with just the skinny part of a parsnip chopped into tiny tiny chunks, then a few of those bland American generic black olives, quartered, dumped on top to see what the hot oil would do to them. When the onions looked all cookified, I dumped in 2/3 of a can of kidney beans (incompletely drained), a bit (uh ... uh ... half a teaspoon?) of Tandoori paste (a spur-of-the-moment whimsy, but as it turns out, a fortunate one), some basil, black pepper, chili powder, cinnamon, not quite a teaspoon of natural-style peanut butter (part of the plan all along, honestly), and a vague dollop (2-3 tablespoons maybe, but I wasn't looking closeley) of store-bought spaghetti sauce. I let that simmer and some of the liquid steam off, stirring occasionally, noticed the lack of garlic and added it late (so it's not quite cooked into the other flavours, oh well) -- actually the chili powder and cinnamon were late additions as well -- and when the colour and texture seemed like what I'd had in my head, I poured it over toaster-hash-browns. And now you know why I don't usually tell people how I made things until after they've tasted them and told me how good they are. Other than the garlic needing to go in earlier, all it really needs is sharper olives. And maybe -- maybe -- a very small pinch of instant-coffee crystals, which I would have used today if I'd had any handy.

(Thinking back to various conversations with various people over the years, along the lines of, "You're combining what with what? Are you mad?" "Trust me, it'll work." "Hey, you're right, this is good. How did you know to do that?" "I don't know how I knew, I just knew." And for the record, the trick to the coffee when I use it is (usually) to use too little for anyone to detect coffee-flavour, but enough to alter how other flavours interact with each other. You can use maple in people-look-at-you-funny ways similarly, causing "how did you do that?" changes to the ways other flavours balance one another.)

Anyhow ... frustrated with pain/dizziness/fatigue 'cause despite a few productive days last week and managing to chase a few delayed LJ entries out of my head and onto the screen, I'm not managing to do a lot of what I need or want to be doing. Thanksgiving is almost here (I just got word on the family plans for that -- they're what I expected and now I have details), and Darkover (I'm not quite prepared and need to get that taken care of), and an unspecified possibly-dinner with an out-of-town friend who'll be in Maryland for about two days, and I'm suddenly noticing just how late in the calendar it is and I haven't gotten out to visit anniemal in far longer than I'd like.

So with my body being a bit wonky, my current approach is to handle whatever I feel I can handle at any given time and just hope that by the time everything needs to be done I will have gotten to it, because I'm afraid that if I try to do everything in order of urgency, I'll just wipe myself out and not manage to do any of it. I'm trying to pace myself, but having trouble letting go of worrying about the pace.

Progress where I can manage it, I guess. Putting a computer in the green bedroom actually helps.