Original variation by David Dyer-Bennet of traditional Chineese recipe. If particularly large quantities of pork and fungus are used relative to the amount of broth, this recipe is sometimes known as Basian pepper stew. Ingredients 1 qt chicken broth 4 oz pork; remove most fat and shred 2T cornstarch; dissolve in 1/4c cold water 1 Continue reading Hot and Sour Soup
Or something a little like it. Not sure I ve ever had tagine; if so it was decades ago, in Boulder or Denver. For a weird coincidence of reasons, I got interest in making something of that sort. One reason was that, from reading about it (the essence being the clay cooking pot with the peaked Continue reading Tagine
Well, not unexpected if you ever did it, or know anybody who did it. But quick searches don t find any discussion of it online, including in modern blogs by people who say they shoot weddings on film all the time. I m sure the exact details varied by photographer; in fact they would have had to, Continue reading Unexpected Complexity of Using Film for Wedding Photos
I would occasionally, back in the day, require extremely fast film. I encountered a recommendation for processing TRI-X exposed at EI 4000, tried it, and found that it produced very useful results. (Contrast was high, shadow-detail was low, but grain was startling small, and if properly exposed it lead to a very satisfying rendition of Continue reading Useless Film Developing Trivia
Photography has been around for quite a while at this point, since perhaps 1835 (images had been recorded photo-chemically before that). Recently, we ve undergone major upheavals as the commonly-used photographic technology changed from chemical to digital. The accumulated terminology from this time, and from related fields, ends up being something of a mess. Edit When Continue reading A Few…
There s an interesting worldbuilding detail in Edward E. Doc Smith s Lensman series. They ve got this technology of inertialessness , which is what allows them to go faster than light, but it also has domestic uses—elevators have been replaced by open drop shafts that you fall down, inertialess, very quickly and completely safely (because inertialess collisions cannot Continue reading Lensman…
Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer (a site I ve followed for years) has lately acquired a side gig writing occasional articles about photography for The New Yorker. The latest one, The Secret Art of the Family Photo, has sparked interesting conversation both at TOP and at Ann Althouse s blog. The questions of what a good Continue reading Regretting Photographs not Taken
Just read Keith Alan Deutsch s introduction to The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (which I got from the library because it s the only thing they had with a story by Carroll John Daly, who was name-checked next to Dashiel Hammett in Lloyd Arthur Eshbach s introduction to Doc Smith s Have Trenchcoat Will Travel (Advent Continue reading Pulp Magazines
My mother made a great meatloaf. Later, when needing a recipe, we found a good one in one of our cookbooks, which wasn t that much like my mother s. Since then, I ve been playing around. Made my latest iteration last night; this seems to capture most of the virtues of both of its ancestors (including being Continue reading Meatloaf
Couple of years late, but finding things on Facebook is horribly unreliable, so I thought I d better put it here. Made with stuff from Trader Joe s. Combine equal parts by weight of Thai chili lime almonds, roasted salted pumpkin seeds, pistachio nutmeats, and dried cranberries. Add half that weight of oat bran sesame sticks (those Continue reading Snack Mix