Word Press just reminded me how lazy I am
When I started this blog just over a year ago I created an overview of posts and topics I wanted to cover and scheduled them to automatically publish to motivate me though them. The are/were largely unfinished recipes without photos,and that first batch just automatically published. So I’m at my desk conniving ways to avoid the gym when my phone starts to send me alerts to WordPress. It took me a few minutes to work out what happened — and, in a panic, work out how to undo everything. Well, I’m feeling… Read More
Chinatown
I’m going on holiday from Friday. I will get on the shinkansen Friday sometime before five and head south. I have no firm plan on where to go or what to do — and that’s the way I like to vacation. Who isn’t bound by schedules? It’s nice to take a month off an get on without one. With the iPad hotel reservations are a snap. I’ve been traveling this way since I was in my early twenties and only three times have I ever not found accommodation: The first time in… Read More
Hing: A story ending in divorce
This is a story about a spice widely used in the near East, a bird, and a divorce. One day many summers ago I was sitting in the courtyard of my neighborhood department store. Frantically going nowhere was a pigeon. People were busying by, which should have made this bird fly the coop, but it stuck close to a tree round and round and round. Curious, I went up to it. It ran away — it couldn’t fly! I reached down to pick it up and saw that something had taken a… Read More
Advice from fellow bloggers, please
I’m 90% done with my blog re-do. I need to adjust the tags and add featured photos and I’m done, though I might add a page of my personal favorite posts. At the top of the right sidebar are two pics. Click either and you go to a page which lists all of my posts with clickable links (further broken down by subject on that page) and a page of just my photographic posts. (When I start writing recipes again I’ll add a third clickable box for just recipes.) Questions: 1) In… Read More
I interrupt this blog to bring you an import announcement
I’ve changed themes. I’m can’t find my own content within my own blog. It’s time for an overhaul. I have no idea how long this will take. Things might be wonky for a while. If you things come up strange on your end, please let me know. Thanks, ct
Nobody knows
I’ve been thinking about a kitten. The other day in the middle of the two lane road I walk down to work I saw an animal, white and red fur. As I walked it came into view. A kitten just large enough to cup in my hand. Its face turned away, one shoulder mashed into the pavement, the other twitching and unnaturally bright red. It made no sound. The kitten’s shoulder and grey tipped tail only shuddered. I thought to go into the road to break its neck, but I walked past…. Read More
Eat That Frog! (don’t worry, it’s not a recipe)
I’ve had a great weekend. Toy Show, Festivals, a party, dinner out, dinner in, and movies. Oh, and fresh veggies. I love my farmer’s market! Twice a year I reassess my goals and plan my steps accordingly. I’ve been managing my time for over a decade with David Allen’s GTD (Getting Things Done) techniques and have never missed a deadline, never swung way off plan. I started this blog after writing my goals for the first half of 2014; photography, as you all know, quickly followed. I couldn’t have budgeted for them… Read More
Godzilla (1954) in Tokyo
The 1954 Godzilla was remastered, reprinted, and released in Tokyo today. The matinee screening I attended happened to have a Q and A with Akira Takarada, the lead actor. He told a few behind the scene stories and explained that the director and cinematographer had shot in a “Rembrandt” style of contrasting lights and darks, which we should be aware of while watching. He also underscored the usual reading of the film as the nuclear strike against Japan. He said we should try to place ourselves in the mindset of 1954 audience while… Read More
An aside — and then I come back
Apologies for the unexpected hiatus. I filter my photos on the computer. To fill the quiet I put DVDs for Arrow on in the background. By episode six I lay down in front of the tele with a plate of snacks and binge watched both seasons. Then another show. And another. Then another. I was avoiding my blog. It took me a while to figure out why. I started blogging to make friends, to talk about food, to give my cooking a new direction and purpose — and you have all been wonderful…. Read More
Vegetable Curry, a book and recipe
(recipe follows) Several years ago the love of my life, Hiro, gave me an unexpected birthday present: A curry cookbook written in both Japanese and English. Until then I had never made Indian food — curry had just never occurred to me. He didn’t know me that well at the time but mine is the personality that when I do something, I devote myself to it and so I bought every single ingredient in the index from Asafoetida to Yogurt and went to work page by page, which created some friction in our… Read More
