Tarzan is a complete moron

derrr...

 

What the hell is a badass chick like Jane doing with that special ed. monkey-wannabee jerk? In Beasts of Tarzan the evil nemesis plots this stupid scheme to abduct Tarzan, who totally falls for it. Walks right onto the boat, doesn't even notice that the damn thing is running full steam ready to weigh anchor at any second. Mind you, Jane figures it out in like 30 seconds, and runs off after her mentally challenged spouse to warn him. It takes a knockout blow to the head to get Jane on board.

Doop-e-doo...

So then they're kidnapped. Jane spends the time being polite to the only crewmember she ever sees, who turns out to be a decentish sort of fella after all, and since she's been so polite, he helps her escape once they get to Africa. Meanwhile, Tarzan seems to have spent the entire voyage in a sulk.

Once they're both off the boat, what do they do? Well Tarzan spends some time being morose and thinking that he'll just resign himself to his fate for  a while, and then he postures around for a bunch of gorillas. On the other hand, Jane and the crewman hack their way through the jungle trying to escape the villain. When it's obvious that they're going to get caught, the crewman goes all noble and says he'll go back and tell the villain that Jane died. Jane knows he'll get slaughtered and is apalled. But she picks her ass up and forges ahead by herself. Meanwhile, Tarzan is flexing his naked thews for the gorillas and killing a lion for the hell of it.

When Jane gets caught by the villain, rather than weep and despond, she fakes out her nemesis, disarms him, pistol whips him into unconsciouness with his own weapon, and has the sense to realize that shooting him will make a ruckus. So she claws her way out into the jungle with her bare hands, remembers where her hapless would-be rescuer left a rifle and some ammo, picks the stuff up and runs off to steal a canoe. Tarzan gets to the enemy camp right after she and the villain have skeedaddled, and immediately comes to the conclusion that both of them have gone off to hang out with this other villain. So he doesn't even bother to look for his wife, he just toddles on back to the place he just escaped from. Did I mention that he keeps getting captured by cannibals? By falling asleep in hostile villages? Knowingly? When he could just as easily sleep in a tree?

By the time Tarzan figures out that oops, yup, he should have actually looked around first before charging about in circles, Jane has piloted her stolen war canoe all the way back to the kidnappers ship, sneaked aboard carrying an elephant gun and a bandolier, hijacked and incarcerated the crew all by herself, and started shooting down some bad guys attempting to board and re-take the boat.

eeek! my thews, my mighty thews!

Oh, and Tarzan went skinnydipping and got his mighty thews nibbled on by a crocodile. The whole book is like that, swear to god. Tarzan blunders into a mess, Jane gets caught up in it, saves herself, then waits around for her dumbass ape man to catch up. I would never in a million years have thought that Edgar Rice Burroughs could be read as a proto-feminist.

I would never in slightly less than a million years have read a Tarzan book in the first place, except that I got a knock-off Nook for christmas as my corporate gift this past year. It's pretty good for downloading ridiculous crap that you wouldn't bother to read unless it was a) free, and b) able to be acquired without getting off the couch. Other than that, it's a little slow and clunky. If I'd paid money for it, I'd be pissed. The thing is nowhere near as cool as an ipad or even a kindle, but hey, it was free! Definitely lower on the utility scale than my last company christmas present, but rather higher in terms of instant gratification.

But really, is Jane cock-whipped or what? Fucking Christ.

What Nerds Worry About

My brother's daughter wanted to be Ahsoka Tano for Halloween. She asked for help, of course I said yes, I had no idea what I was getting into. A week later I ask her about it again, and she shows me this lego mini figure. I think, oh, shit. It has a blue and white head and 3 tentacles, and horn-things to boot.

So I decide that I need some pictures to work from. The search results are pretty predictable. Lotsa pictures from the Clone Wars animated series, lots of fan art. LOTS of internet rule #34 fan art. It isn't that naked lady pictures bother me, I enjoy them, as a matter of fact. I had a discussion with somebody about naked lady pictures a while ago, and the fact that even straight girls like to look at naked lady pictures. Why wouldn't we? Women are inherently better looking than men. Face it guys, the truth is that in the birthday suits department, most of you are just kinda meh. We, on the other hand, are usually worth at least a second look. Plus, dudes without their clothes on are just silly. Women are beautiful. Anecdotal proof? Number of pages before you find a rule 34 pic of Ahsoka: one. Number of pages you have to scroll through before you find a picture of Obi-Wan with his pootiepows flapping in the interstellar breeze? Well, I didn't find any. Not sure I want to. Even if it is Ewan MacGregor.

However, there is something going on here that troubles me. Partly it is the fact that, as I understand it, the character as written is an adolescent. There's something creepy about having a teen (pre-teen?) character depicted in / fan art with Obi-Wan, who has gotta be at least in his late thirties in this cartoon series. And partly because it was so dang hard to find this one image:

Art by This guy

I do realize that the internet is the home of the lowest common denominator, but is it really that hard to imagine a character that is written as a badass growing up to be still a badass? Without having to show ginormous gazongas? Whatinhell do gazongas have to do with badassery anyway? I do love me some gazongas, but the equation of Badass + Female = Gazongas doesn't add up to me. These things are not related.

Now, there are plenty of pictures of Ahsoka kicking ass, and plenty of her depicted as an adult, but they've all got her wearing this silly bandeau top and a mini skirt. Some of them have her wearing rather less. Which admittedly would be more practical for waving a lightsaber around in than a monk suit, but hell, Obi-Wan doesn't wear a speedo and a wife beater does he? Nooooo, he's a jedi, and jedi knights wear a monk suit. This is the only picture I could find where Ahsoka is depicted as an adult, as a jedi knight, wearing jedi robes. And that's not all, because to my eyes, this is clearly a picture of a beautiful woman who is totally ready to kick your ass if you're one of the bad guys.

By this point, I've managed to get a bit heated under the collar of my monk suit over my niece's Halloween costume. And, because Sophia has still got a few years to go before she's 10 years old yet, I'm telling you all about it, because my niece deserves to have a whale of a time being her own badass kid jedi self as long as the world lets her. When Sophia (Or Tesla, or Daille, Dorothy, Agatha, Hyacinth, or tiny little Beatrice) grows up, and asks me for a ridiculous tube top or a metal bikini for Halloween, I will probably make her one. But I swear I will weep with pride if any one of them comes to me and says 'Aunt Buzz, I need a real, badass jedi robe. And maybe some body armor. Can you help me out with that?'

Some things are alright

Riding MAX every day is usually an eye opener of one kind or another. I believe it is a salutary experience, but not always enjoyable. I have a grim determination to believe that human nature is basically neutral, if not good. Sometimes I have to fall back on statistics to convince myself of this. I think something like "Look at this train full of people. I find some of them obnoxious, or repulsive, or think they smell bad, but look at them: none of them are biting each other, threatening each other with death or bodily harm, and none of them know each other. If this was a room full of strange baboons, the carnage would be indescribable. Humans really are pretty nice, for primates."

So there I was on the Red Line from downtown. Usual assortment of people, usual assortment of critical-overshare types of converations buzzing around. At Lloyd Center, a little black girl, about seven, gets on the train with a white lady who is clearly kin to her, but it isn't clear in what relationship. The lady is totally unremarkable, and since I'm not at all motherly, the girl is pretty uninteresting too, except that she's wearing a plaid skirt I kind of like, and looks cleaner than most children that age do by 6:30 pm. They take a seat, facing this sullen looking late thirties-ish white dude with his black T-shirt, messenger bag, head and chin shaved to an identical stubble, 1-inch ear plugs and giant lip ring. He's reading a book.

The train starts moving, and I overhear the little girl say "Want to see my new earrings?" A man says "I would, please!" I look around, and it's Earplugs dude, who has happily put his book down, and is watching her pull several cards of cheap earrings out of a plastic bag. The train is noisy, so I don't hear everything they say, but I got the impression that she'd just had her ears pierced. He is clearly a guy who likes kids, and hangs out with them a lot. They compare the size of her dangley earbobs with the size of his earplugs, I hear her say "We were shopping at Claire's, and they were buy 2 get one free!" and he says "Claire's is good- I've bought earrings there too. Not in a long time, but, I have."  I decided not to stare at them, because I was grinning like an idiot, and then it was time to get off the train. They were talking about how how far it was to Gresham when I left.

There are so many things right about those 2 minutes on the train that it's hard to even think them all out.  But yes, it seems to be true that humans are really pretty nice, for primates.

I've been pre-occupied

I have not been cooking anything photogenic. Potato Leek Soup is still just a bowl of grayish goop, no matter how tasty it is.

Sunchoke chips are pretty yummy too, but they look just like potato chips, in any case, they didn't sit around long enough to get a picture. It's the weather. It has been so lovely out, and my plants are doing lots of interesting things.















I have figured out a couple things since last year:








Mustard grows very quickly, but is no fun to eat. Radishes are at least as fun to grow, and the eating part is much more satisfying.


These were the sweetest, tenderest radishes I can remember ever having eaten.



Cilantro starts slowly. Very slowly. But you better give it its own pot, because it gets enormous.

Does anybody know what is making my spinach do this? The ones on the right are looking strangely anemic. Spinach is also very satisfying to grow; it starts early and grows vigorously. Hopefully, I will like to eat it more than mustard.












Speaking of vigorous growers, here are my borage plants. I read that "you won't need more than one" and boy, they were right. On the left, you see that in an optimistic spirit, I planted five.

Five. Seeds. The lefthand picture is from the 18th, the righthand picture, from the 26th. I had to pull out 2 of them, I'm calling the lettuce in the same pot a loss. Borage is very spiny, we had a windstorm and the prickers on the borage leaves savaged the lettuce while flapping around in the breeze.


But that's all right, because lettuce is another of the things I realized that I don't care enough about to bother growing. Some people say that you should grow things that are unusual or that would be expensive to buy. To some extent, this is true, but I think that one should grow the things that one is likely to eat. Yes I could buy spinach, and radishes, but it's also true that I actually do buy them sometimes. Which means that I like eating them enough to go the effort of growing them.  I never buy lettuce.

And this is my tea plant. I don't guess that I will ever be able to harvest any amount of tea from it. But I like the idea.

'Stolen' Apple Pancakes

Which is what the handwritten recipe in my mom's recipe notebook says.

I associate a childhood trip to chicago with this recipe. There was a pancake restaurant. I think I was in first grade, and I did not appreciate it. I have never been a good traveler, nor a person who enjoys meeting strangers. Going to Chicago was something I wanted to do not because I actually enjoyed the experience, but because like all children, I didn't want to miss out on anything that might be fun. How was I to know at that age that I was destined to be a curmudgeon? I was six.

The pancake restaurant was noisy, crowded, I was at a table with many strangers, and I don't remember what I ordered. Waffles, maybe. With strawberries, because we never had such exotic things at home, but I don't think they lived up to the expectations I had of them. Somebody else ordered the apple pancakes. I don't know if that was when dad first had them or what, but evidently they made a great impression on him, because this recipe showed up in mom's cookbook. 'Stolen' I assume because dad had to approximate the originals on his own.

On the other hand, while thinking about this recipe brings up memories of some very uncomfortable family excursions, the pancakes themselves, and the making of them, impart a feeling of great wellbeing. Even, I hate to admit it, of nostalgia! This was a special occasion breakfast to begin with, and later on, Dad would just decide that he wanted apple pancakes from time to time. Sometimes the tai chi group would come over, Dad would make a bunch of these things, and the house would smell like hot cooking oil and sugar all day.

The pictures are not that great, but I plead ravenous impatience to eat breakfast.

1 large apple, 2 would have been better
1 or 2 T cooking oil, canola or like that, not olive.
a teensy pinch of salt

a generous handful of brown sugar
punkin pie spice or cinnamon, if you like

I have no idea what the pancake recipe was on that card. I know that it used only white flour. It had a bunch of eggs in it. I was feeling lazy, and just used pancake mix: TJ's multigrain. It makes a fluffier, lighter dough than the ones Dad made, but I like things to be less heavy than he did. Also, do not attempt to make this in a flimsy pan or one with a non-stick coating.

1 1/2 c pancake mix
1 egg
1 cup water
a dab of oil

Pre-heat the oven to 475.

Peel and slice the apple into 1/4 inch pieces or so. Get the oil pretty hot in a well seasoned all metal skillet and throw in the apples and a sprinkle of salt. The salt is very important, it makes the apples sweat, and keeps them from being one dimensionally sweet. When the apples are a teensy bit brown, turn them once and sprinkle the brown sugar and spice over them. The sugar will begin to caramelize very rapidly.

Mix up the batter ingredients up really fast, and don't worry about a few lumps. You will actually only need to use about 2/3 of the batter. Pour the batter over the apples and cover for a few seconds. When the caramel begins to ooze up around the edges and through any little holes, remove the cover and put the skillet in the oven to finish cooking.

When the pancake is just barely done and is starting to brown at the edges, take it out, cover it and let it sit for about 3 minutes. This lets the pancake finish cooking, and allows the apples to steam loose from the pan a bit. Turn the pancake out onto a plate and poke any apple bits back into it that have got stuck in the pan. Eat with scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese.

Definitely, this is for eating with company. It will taste just as delicious by yourself, but it would be a terrible pity to have nobody to enjoy it with.

Avocado Tomato Scramble with Pepper Jack

People come in 2 sorts. Not male and female, not type a and type b, not even smart people and stupid people. Not Replublicrats and Demoplicans. All of these things diminish next to the true, essential divide.

There are Breakfast People and there is everybody else.

I don't mean people who do eat breakfast and people who do not- there are individuals who, in their heart of hearts, are indeed breakfast people but through misfortune or personal disorganization do not get to enjoy it very often. And then there are those strange beings who are aware of the need for fueling their bodies before the rigors of the day, and thus virtuously but indifferently consume food first thing in the morning.

True Breakfast People know that breakfast is the essential meal. We allow extra time in the mornings, not to shower or do our hair and makeup, but to have breakfast. Indeed, grooming habits will be discarded long before breakfast will be skipped. Breakfast is an end unto itself, a thing that nourishes the body and enlightens the soul, it is not merely a tool in the quest to prevent the spiritual and corporeal selves from parting company.

Breakfast people understand the fundamental connection between good meals and personal wellbeing. The substance of each breakfast is highly variable, but the purpose is unchanging: Breakfast is the first hopeful act of the day. Getting out of bed is frequently thankless enough, and getting dressed, especially for those of us who must wear an imbecillic corporate logo emblazoned on our person, is a trial to the spirit. How anyone can then face a commute to work in adverse weather without a short period of self-determination and composed enjoyment surpasses my understanding.

Beyond simple, gustatory pleasure, (which should never be discounted) food is many things. It is social glue, it is love, and commerce, it is personal liberty and creative expression. But beyond all those high minded niceties, we Breakfast People eat in the morning simply because a proper breakfast changes our state of being. In its most basic application, breakfast transforms me from a nihilistic grump into a more rational, serene, version of myself. More complex breakfast experiences will cause me to regain my enthusiasm and curiosity about the world in general, and this can only be a good thing. I'm sure the functional eaters out there would pooh-pooh and say "it's just yer glucose level shooting up, ya big sap!" and I'm sure they're right. But if a difference in my blood glucose level can so alter my sense of self and my ability to interact with my species, then I say that the meal that facilitates that change is worthy of the highest respect.

I have no recipe to share today, the picture and the title are it. And thank you very much to the nice man at the Kettleman Bagels downtown for the sack of free day-old bagels. You have saved me the trouble of making bread for a whole week.

Eating Like an American

...or Dude! What is going on here?!?


It's a rhetorical question, yah, got it.

Here's what got me going: a $50 gift certificate to any of the Darden SV Inc. restaurants nationwide. Which, really, is a damn generous company holiday gift. It really is. And I know why they did it too- there aren't that many things that you can give the same thing to 300-some-odd people and have it be even vaguely appropriate. So, restaurant gift cards= free food an booze= cool.

Ok, so what restaurants are those? In Portland, those would be Red Lobster, and Olive Garden. Neither of which actually have locations in Portland. Well, I lie, there's an Olive Garden in Mall 205. And from where I live, it's just as far to Vancouver to get to Red Lobster, but probably more of a pain in the neck.

But that's totally irrellevant! In the process of locating a venue for spending my lucre, of course I looked at the menus on the websites, and of course I opened the link to the...dun-dun...nutrition facts.

They still use 2000 calories per day as a benchmark for calculating a person's nutritional
needs. I probably do all right on about that, maybe less, say about 1800 on a slothful Saturday. I'm 35, I'm female and not built on heroic lines. I don't work out, but on the other hand, I spend a lot of time riding Shank's Mare. Super fit I am not. Where am I going with this...

Oh, the Nutrition Facts! Yay for hyperlinks. How often do people eat at restaurants? Hopefully, not often. When I was 22, I could eat an entree of chicken alfredo without batting an eye. Or maybe some Calamari?
How many grams of saturated fat are you supposed to stay under in a day? We haven't even got to the desserts yet, I think that would just get depressing. I love dessert, it's supposed to be chock full of saturated fats.

So why does the menu at Olive garden bug me? Well, for one thing, all the portions are in these feasting-for-a-special-occasion sizes, and for another, because everything on it looks the same. It's all the same cream sauce, all the same noodles, all the same piece of chicken meat, all the same piece of cow parts. Don't even get me started on the fact that vegetables are only mentioned in a roundabout way. Red Lobster too. You can have broccoli or asparagus. Asparagus only sometimes, and broccoli you have to ask for especially. I like my broccoli, but sheesh...is that it? Mountains of food, all the same. You could close your eyes and point 3 or 4 different times and get exactly the same meal, but with some rather irrational price differences. They have taken the natural human joy of feasting and turned it into a process for maximizing calories per dollar. All the things that make food more than just consumption have been jettisoned, and the only index of value is how much stuff you get. Evidently, lots of people agree with them. You don't get chain restaurants by having complex criteria for what you want to serve. You get hot cart pods.

So, am I gonna use my gift certificate? Yeah, sure.There was a short period a few years back when I ate at restaurants regularly. I gained weight, duh. But the thing that in retrospect seems particularly sad to me is how boring it was. I could have spent less time, eaten better, and enjoyed myself more if I had been cooking. It would have cost less too, by a long shot. But there was the convenience of a predictable restaurant. Sometimes it is nice just to have someone else clear up the stupid dishes. Sometimes I do want a cocktail, and not being the kind of gal who keeps a full bar (or even an empty one) at home, a drink at a restaurant is always kinda nice. It's the middle of the winter, and going somewhere warm, that is not my house, where I can have my peck and booze and neither I nor my friends have to clear away the debris after dinner, is pleasant. The food will not be special, but since my employer has already paid for it, it would be silly not to use the certificate.

Here's the thing though: eating at a restaurant should be a treat. It should be indulgent, and you should be able to get things you don't get at home, and they should be tasty and interesting, and sometimes even remarkable, to eat. And dangit, there should be dessert. And on special occasions, sure, maybe that dessert could have enough calories in it to last you a whole day. But the quantity, and the calories, and the fat or sodium or whatever should be secondary. Eat things than make you go 'Hm. I'll be darned.' Eat things that make you feel giddy with excitement. Eat things made by people you love, eat in the company of people who care about you. Feed your friends things they won't cook for themselves, things that are crunchy, or spicy, or bitter, or fishy, or just anything interesting. It's December, the weather is crap, and if ever there is a time of year when we need food to be more than just calories, this is it.

Paean to Eggs

I eat lots of eggs. They are magical, I am convinced. They go in sweets and in main dishes, they enable the existence of cake, and custard, and pudding, and quiche. And breakfast wouldn't be breakfast without them. Pancakes, waffles, omelettes, french toast, scrambled eggs, plain and fancy, eggs Benedict, over-easy, poached or fried. Eggs at easter. Eggs go in every kind of traditional cooking that I know of. Egg-drop soup. Pickled eggs, millions of kinds. Well maybe not millions, my hyperbole is getting away with me.

I know I've had plenty of entries about breakfast, but I do worship at the temple of the first meal of the day. There was my brussels sprout scramble recently, there was the spinach stew with poached eggs a while back, a generic breakfast entry in august, and then, because breakfast at breakfast time is not enough, there was breakfast for dinner, and then pesto on pancakes for regular breakfast. Eggs are a good start for everything.

So here are a few pictures to share my love of all things egg, and in particular, Breakfast.







Fried eggs on toast. Can't beat it. Lotsa butter on home made bread, salt, pepper. Don't ask me why the picture keeps loading up sideways. It's really bugging me.




Breakfast BLT. The traditional, plus a fried egg.











Hard-boiled.







And the one I'm most fond of, breakfast by the seat of the pants. I forgot to eat my PBJ one afternoon; I thought it had a reproachful look the next morning. Kinda like "Hey dummy. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle."


PBJ French toast.

1 stale PBJ

1 egg
1/4 cup vanilla soy milk
1 tsp brown sugar
teensy pinch salt
dash of vanilla
pinch of pumkin pie spice

Mix all the batter ingredients well and soak the PBJ until it's good and soggy. Fry at medium low until it had developed a golden color, flop, continue to cook until it had poofed up slightly in the center. If you like it pretty moist and custardy,(I do) take it out immediately. If you gotta have it done through, turn off the heat and leave it in the pan a minute longer. I ate mine with extra jam, a pear, and a scoop of yogurt.

Yeah, so, I set the smoke alarm off...

Ever see a smoke alarm in a chinese person's kitchen? Me either. Authentic stir fry is dangerous. Not that this is all that authentic, but I wish I had pictures of the grease flash that caused the smoke alarm thing...

Beet Greens & Tofu in Spicy Oyster Sauce

1 large bunch of beet greens
1 onion
1 block firm tofu
oil for frying
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 T black bean garlic sauce
1/2 tsp crushed chili paste
1/3 c oyster sauce
a pinch or 2 of salt

I had been avoiding buying beets at market for a while because I couldn't think of what to do with the greens. I like them southern style, but that makes them up as kind of a side dish and even a small bunch of beets comes with a large mess of greens. Then they kick around in my fridge until they die. Hence, the chinkabilly stir-fry.

Wash the greens well, separate the stems from the leaves and chop each, keeping them separate.
Chop the onions & add to the pile of stems. Drain & cube the tofu. Big cubes is good. Mix the seasonings in a little bowl.

I guess a wok would be good, but I used my cast iron frying pan. Put a tablespoon or so of oil in the pan and over pretty high heat. The oil should be shimmering and smoking in the pan. Sprinkle a little bit of salt in the pan and put in the stems & onions. Fry uncovered, stirring enough to keep from burning them, for about 3-5 minutes, or until the vegetables have begun to caramelize. Pour them into a dish and reserve. Rinse the pan out, then repeat the process with the leaves, rinse again and put a slightly larger amount of oil in and get it good and hot before putting in the tofu. Wait until the bottoms of the tofu bits have developed a good crust before turning them over, brown on all sides before putting the vegetables back in the pan with the seasonings. Heat everything through, mixing well. Serve with rice. Fried noodles would be good too.

Now, here's the thing: you can use roughly this process with everything, but the 2 key steps are to get the pan hot and keep it that way, and to add a pinch of salt to the pan before the vegetables. Salting the pan draws the water out of the veggies, and the high temperature does 2 things: 1) it caramelizes any starches that come out of the vegetables really fast, so that you have both the fresh veggie taste and a hint of maillard compounds. 2) the heat causes some of the cooking oils to oxidize and polymerize which is what that magic "stir fry" taste is.

Of course, high heat also causes oil to vaporize. And throwing a bunch of wet tofu into a puddle of hot oil causes steam. Which creates a rapidly expanding cloud of tiny oil droplets mixed with the ideal ratio of oxygen packed in little water molecules to make for a very exciting wooHOO! moment when it hits a red-hot burner. As a child this was a regular, but always alarming occurrence at my house. Nowadays I just run around cursing and flapping a towel at the ceiling, I swear I'm gonna pull the battery out of that wretched thing.

I'm Asian! What D'you Want!?!

"If you want to be Chinese, you have to eat the nasty stuff."
So says Chow Yun Fat's character to the neophyte, in the movie The Corruptor. Well, in that case Mr. Chow, I got my bona-fides right here. The thing that divides the white from the yellow is not a line, it's a preserved duck egg. One of these stinky little green and brown babies and you'll have enough gosh-darned authentic chinese kung-fu to whoop the ass out of a whole reel full of John Woo villains. No hair on the chest though. Chinese guys don't do that. I guess we're more closely related to whales and manatees than everyone else.

Moving on.


Sushi rice rolls with some fishy seasoning mix I got at Fubonn, served with fresh young coconut and preserved duck egg, aka "peedan." I do wish I'd had some pickled ginger though.

Take a cup of sushi rice and rinse it well. Drain, add about 1 3/4 c. water back to the pot and cook as you would ordinary rice. When it's done, mix 2 T cider or rice vinegar with a dash of salt and a heaping teaspoon of brown sugar, then toss it gently into the rice using a fork so you don't make the rice grains just turn into mush. Let it cool enough to handle, and roll about a cup in a sheet of toasted nori. Slice the roll with a wet knife (keeps the blade from sticking) and dunk the ends of the rolls in the seasoning mix.

Here's what I used. It's crunchy, fishy, sweet and salty. I am having a hard time not eating it straight out of the can.

Thats about it. I had a hangover yesterday, so I got a young coconut at the grocery store- coconut water has lots of potassium in it. The texture of the coconut meat is kinda weird, a little fleshy or something, but it's got nothing on peedan. I think the ones I got were a bit dehydrated, the yolks should be runny.

But what do they taste like? Um...sulphur? Rubber? Like something somebody dared you to eat? They're chemically cooked in lye... And the package declares, not at all reassuringly, that they are "lead free"- Gosh, I hope so.


And one last reason to love the preserved duck egg: 110% of your daily cholesterol intake.

Um, yes. I know, it's not a John Woo movie. Stupid joke. Sigh.