Popcorn grits, fried egg









* 1/4 cup popcorn
* 1 cup water
* 1 tablespoon butter
* big fat pinch of salt

Microwaved for 2.5 minutes stirring in intervals because the powder soaks up water amazingly and tends to clump.

* other stuff

Tenderloin steak, rice



Originally this was $20.00 a pound. What does it think it is, Wagyu? 

Let me tell you, it's not that great. It has all these stringy gross bits in it. 





Желе


Желе = zhele
jele
jelly
Jell-O

That there's whatchacall cognitive. 



I can eat both of these at once. 

And then my fingernails and toenails and hair will all grow long very quickly and I'll be all, snip, snip, snip, "Oh man, I did this just one week ago." 

My fingernails are real strong because I ate a box of processed horse hooves. And not just any regular  horse hooves, no, these are Russian horse hooves. 

I have an appointment for a haircut tomorrow at 11:30. My hair is very bushy. I look like a teenager with hair sticking out all over the place.  

That's how we do it nowadays, make an appointment a week in advance. 

That's going to be a trip. 

I break the rules somewhat and nobody knows what to do with me. 

A nearby shop had all the chairs in the lobby overturned and leaning against the wall. I said, "These chairs disinvite sitting." 

     "Yeah."

I knew someone did that on purpose to constrict the movement of people temporarily for a few months but for some reason that didn't matter. I returned one of the chairs to proper position and sat on it. Nobody said jack to me. The workers, the owner engaged me. They each assumed that my walking handicap forced me to sit down. Are you going to tell a guy walking around with two canes to stand up? Why bother? The whole thing will be gone in a few minutes anyway. Later, I realized, wow, that was a huge giant hint for me to wait outside. And I just ignored it.

Drop a house on me next time whydontcha? 

Same thing tomorrow. Their website says, come on time but wait outside. 

One place put a row of orange traffic cones in front of their display case with the cash registers. The cases formed a half wall behind which they conduct business. Now that half-wall has it's own orange fence in front of it. 

The cones are spaced tightly right next to each other forming a short pointed orange wall. 

I stayed on my side of the orange cones, I doubled the space that the cones allotted, and behaved as if it is perfectly normal to interact with that much distance between us. The clerk came all around the case to my side of the room to take my money and make the exchange. It was weird af. 

Then I saw three pennies on the floor on his side of the orange cones but on my side of the case. Then I saw a quarter. Then I saw a dime. Then I saw three more pennies closest to the edge. "Jesus Christ, you got 41¢ sprinkled all over your floor. It's like when the clubs close and the lights go on and there is money all over the place. What, is everyone drunk?" 

No. There would be wadded bills on the floor, not coins. 

Fettuccine and salmon


Did you make those noodles or buy them?

Red Ginger restaurant






They're six blocks south on Broadway.

What you have here is a dinner of hibachi beef with a few selections of sushi. There is also a heavy box of rice but I don't care about that right now.

And they take for-ev-er.

I placed the order then doddered around, went downstairs to the bottle shop and got a 12-pack of Cokes, talked it up with Lurch and hung out awhile, walked back to the lobby to wait and while there the fire department arrived. Then an ambulance. Two sets of EMTs.

Eventually the ambulance people took out a fat old white guy who looked like H-E-Double IV stands.

And I thought as they loaded him up, "Always a good day when it's not me."

And then I thought, "Retire that joke. It isn't funny anymore."

Philadelphia steak sandwich with mushrooms and white American cheese



From Taste of Philly located across the street. 

A very broad street.

One-way street out of the city going south. Drivers in this out-of-city frame of mind are quite mad. 

Oh dear, I've mischaracterized them. 

Allow me to atone and describe an incident to the contrary. 

It was a hot windy late summer day. Work was out. The broad street was filled with automobiles each rushing in one direction inhibited by clustering and traffic lights on each block. 

I was walking two blocks south to Tony's, a specialty market that is no longer there. Stopped at the corner I was waiting for the light to change to make it safe for me to cross. It's a long light. I was walking along using two canes but stopped a long time for the light and for some reason I was looking at the ground and twirling around a few times. I don't know why. But apparently I had the appearance of a total spaz having some kind of incident at the corner. 

A young man in a small new convertible car turned the corner and parked. A smallish well-dressed man got out of the car and approached me with some urgency asked me if I am okay. 

"I'm fine." 

     "You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. Thank you for asking. Thank you for stopping." I was actually thinking, "wtf?" 

     "You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

     "You sure you're sure?" 

"Yes, I am certainly sure. Thank you for asking." 

     "Okay then."

He hopped back to his car, spun it around, turned back onto the very broad street and was gone. 

Then I thought, "Oh crap, man, I could have asked him to drive me to Tony's half a block away on the other side of the street. It could have been fun. He could have been a real humanitarian. I could have invited him inside for a sandwich from the deli, whatever, I missed another opportunity to take some random contact a little bit further. He already showed that he was willing to stop. He must have thought I was having a seizure. My instinct was to assuage his apprehension, not how I could stretch out a contact. Plus I was busy. My aim was to buy a package of cilantro. That's where my mind was, "Is this Tony's place going to have my herb or what?" Turns out they had a ton of herbs right there at the very front over their impeccable vegetables, each specimen ideal, stacked perfectly in cases next to the front doors, cilantro right in my face, the very first thing that I see. 

I miss that place.

Haiga rice with fried egg, carrots and bacon



Less polished rice with the germ is nice.  Cooked the new way 10-10-10. 

What the heck does 10-10-10 mean? 

10 minutes soaking
10 minutes steaming
10 minutes just sitting there covered. 

It goes like this: 
You are a Japanese monk rinsing rice. You rinse it 7 times ritualistically. But that actually is the best number of times. The rice you are cooking is historic. It sloughs quite a lot of starch. If you are rinsing a newer American rice that rinses more quickly, then rinse it 7 times anyway just to keep the tradition. The timer is already set because rinsing is the same thing as soaking. So stand there and do it 7 times and what seems like such a long time is actually only 2 minutes so fill the pot with water and let the rice soak. Ding.  
Reset the timer and put a top burner on high. Dump out all the soaking water and replenish it with the same amount of water as rice. Put the pot on the burner and stand there and watch it come up to a boil. The moment it boils then put on the lid and turn the burner to low. Real low. Go do something else. Ding.  
Turn the heat off. Ding. 
Take the lid off. Toss the rice with a fork. Bow respectfully. You are no longer a Japanese monk. 
The carrots have butter and brown sugar, water and raisins. Cooked separately. 

Bacon is thick-cut and sweet. Cooked separately. 

It's mostly rice not showing on the bottom.

It tastes so fine I can't stand it. I see why egg on rice is a thing in Japan. But they blend a raw egg at room temperature into hot rice and that cooks it slightly. 

See, egg denatures at different temperatures and at different rates. It's fascinating. The albumen is two types and they denature separately, starting at 141℉. The yolk is last, denaturing at 160℉. 

Thereabout.

I just gave you numbers, but the whole thing is uncertain, because the actual numbers depend on the thermal history of the egg. You can heat an egg to 95℉ and if you wait long enough it will denature.

Every page that I've read gives different numbers.

Add any vegetable to that. 

Egg yolk is the sauce. That gets thicker by the heat of the rice. 

This is a little bit different. Imagine any vegetable with sauce. 

I'm going to try one with mushrooms.

Weird mushrooms. A few days ago I soaked a few dehydrated mushrooms in boiling water and used them that night. I put the leftovers in the refrigerator. The next day the mushrooms had changed overnight by 100%.  They were all much softer, more like mushrooms and less like mushrooms at the same time, they had absorbed the new flavor combined with their own flavor to a fascinating new flavor and texture. The new flavor had a few of the seven magical Asian ingredients. I think it had a few drops of fish sauce, sugar, sesame seed oil, rice vinegar and soy.

I want to do that again with just this type of mushroom.


Fettucinni in cream sauce with pecans




Oh Man, first I'm going to show ☑︎ how the noodles start with two egg yolks, then I'm gonna show ...

☐ The flour being added.
☐ The loose dough
☑︎ The dough formed into a ball
☐ The dough rolled out through the Atlas, and cut
☐ The finished noodles
☐ The fettucinni boiling.
☐ The cheese being grated
☐ The powered herbs put in a pan for heating
☐ The cream added to heated powders to create a sauce
☐ The mixture adjusted with starchy water from boiling the noodles
☑︎ The plated dish.

Three out of twelve isn't bad.

This is the first real meal in three days. And I wasn't hungry when I ate it. I'm slowing the weight crash. And I want to avoid an eating crisis at the end of it. I feel a lot better without food stuffing my body, the sense of emptiness is not uncomfortable, in fact it is more comfortable than the feeling of carrying around food that my body is processing.

Care to hear something strange?

The Book of Urantia is a thick big fat book that is heavy. Tissue thin pages with wall to wall words. Intense as the Bible. Maybe even a little bit more so. It's read as science fiction. One much more in depth than Dune, shot into ten thousand sparkling SF-threads each neatly tucked in and used throughout the book such that orders of beings make sense in the incredibly detailed story of Jesus. The last eight hundred pages are the story of Christ told with impressive intimacy from birth to death. It is not possible to read through it without crying like a baby. Readers are forced to compare their own life with His and it makes readers feel insignificant and grateful, having been spared His tribulations including the burden of raising Joseph's family, being head of Joseph's household, at age thirteen.

But before those eight hundred pages the story of the spiritual and physical universe is told and the story of spiritual and material Earth is told. Orders of celestial intelligences describe what they do.

In the discussion of the universe the book avers when you die you do not go straight to heaven because you are not sufficiently spiritual to exist there.

The book makes a big deal about Earth being a major shit hole in this local universe. The worst. The book explains why. Earth has suffered every universe management indignity. There are other inhabited worlds in our material universe that have not suffered these same indignities and they are each more spiritually advanced. The spiritual advancement of Earth is retarded in several critical ways. Spiritually, Earth is a basket case. So, that Jesus chose Earth from all possible worlds, all which are more advanced than Earth, where His message would not have been received so messed up, had the attention of the entire spiritual local universe. The master of the local universe chose the worst world in His universe to manifest as a physical being. His requirement to finalize his position. He had already manifested as a being within all the other orders of beings between us and Himself, now He is existing as the lowest, as us. And He chose the lowest planet to do it. There were many more easier possibilities where things would go smoothly. Imagine the shock to the universe of celestial beings.

For God so loved the worlds of his local universe that he chose to be one of us on the worst of His worlds to fulfill his requirement. And that caused shock and amazement to all celestial creatures of all orders within the local universe and ultimately to even greater love for Him. During this period the Master had the attention of the entire local universe. All universe attention was on Earth. The Master lived an amazing compacted heartbreaking lesson for the entire local universe of celestial beings and they watched with rapt attention.

Humans are ascendant beings.

That makes us rather unique.

Except for the fact there are so many of us. We are created in imperfection on the lowest of all possible spheres and we rise though celestial spheres re-keying to perfection.

We are the lowest of all creatures with eternity potential. Most of universe activity and local universe focus is geared for helping such lowly-bred creatures to perfection. Ultimately there will be no difference between our spirit's and our personality's will and the will of God. When that transformation of will is truly complete, ping, we're spiritual enough to exist in heaven.

But before that are several intermediary stages.

*Reader* "Get to the point!"

We're at the point. This is the point, right here.

After you die, you do not become a spirit immediately. Rather, you become recreated at an intermediary phase between the material worlds and spiritual existence that goes beyond the local universe to perfection.

We each have with us a fragment of God that is universal. My fragment is the exact same as your fragment. It is these universal God-fragments attached to us that make our order of being interesting. They cannot connect themselves to us until we show some trace of morality. Anything will do. They enter our lives at around age five when we make our first moral decision and they stay with us beyond death to the next worlds awaiting the moment we personally finally conclude to match wills with God. Permanently. Only then can the God-fragment fuse with us. The fragment is the only thing about us that is permanent. We are not permanently spiritual until the fragment can fuse with us. The fragment is perfect, we are not. Our spirit has personality, the fragment does not. When we make ourself sufficiently perfect to match wills with God then the fragment can fuse with us. We gain eternity, the fragment gains personality, our personality, perfection that's different from all other perfections. Only then will we become irreversibly eternal.

*Reader* "Get to the point!"

I'm at the point. Right here!

The next life is not fully spiritual for lack of fusion, and it's not material. In this material world we eat food, the body uses it to the extent that it can, and then we poop out a residual portion. Smelly business. In the next world we'll eat leaves from the Tree of Life when our energy needs replenishing and we will not poop out a residual portion. If we eat too many leaves, and a lot of people do, then you get sick and it puts you off overeating permanently. Overeating leaves from the Tree of Life is almost always a one-time thing.

It's such a minor way to keep energy going. There is no additional cultural glamor to eating leaves raw from a tree. There is no glamorizing it. No service ware. No table ware. No tablecloths, no napkins, no crystal. No centerpiece. No RSVP.  Just munch a few leaves.

That's what the book says.

If so, then old age on Earth is training for that.

I can get by on just a few crackers. And I feel much better all around when I under eat.

Did I say "a few crackers" just now?

I meant to say, "a few boxes" of crackers.

With cheese.

And preserves.

And a Coca Cola.

Beans and rice, chicken wings



New way to cook rice without a rice cooker.

Start timer.

1)  10 minutes. Rinse rice seven times like a Buddhist monk ritualistically and soak the rice in any amount of water.

2) Drain rice and add back the same amount of fresh water by the cup as you have rice. Bring to a boil, cut heat to low and steam for 10 minutes.

3) Turn off the heat and let the covered pot sit there for 10 minutes. 

Why no rice cooker?

No room on my counter and my kitchen storage cabinets are full of stuff like that and I make rice the way Sueko taught me at age ten in Tokyo. I don't want to lose that connection to Sueko even though she would use one too if she were alive today.

I am digging this Haiga rice ever since I got it. I make single portions and I've never cooked this small of amounts before. I think that I have a new comfort food. 

But these chicken wings are not fun. So much trouble for so little meat. I would rather do the same thing with chicken tenders. Whoever invented these wings thing was out of all other cuts. Any other cut would be better than wings.

The guy at the Chinese grocery chops up duck so randomly it can hardly be eaten. They don't do the same thing that we do. Some pieces come out very nice while most cuts are so off the wall that half the duck is like these chicken wings, you're picking around bones for threads of meat.

The second photo shows how far I got. 

My appetite is shot. 

I can kill my appetite with just a few crackers. 

I'll reach a point where I'm hungry and motivated to make something then when I get around to it and go through the process, the urgency changed and I am no longer hungry. It's weird. I was hungry then ate this when I was not hungry and my stomach kept telling me to 
KNOCK IT OFF.

Then the unease sets in. 

The new food creates pressure and moves previous food. That movement causes me great concern and forces me into the bathroom. Then nothing happens. Psych!

That happens again. 

And again. 

And I don't like that and it causes me to eat less. 

In the mirror I can see the extra body fat melting away that kidney failure put on. I haven't weighed myself yet but I'm expecting before this over I will have lost forty pounds. This is occurring above my belt. So it will be awhile before pants size changes again. 

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