Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 22

pine needle soda

The Nando story is all ready to go, but I have one outstanding question for him, so while I wait for that, here's something fun: pine needle soda! The ninja girl saw a Youtube video about lightly fermenting pine needles to make a tangy soda, and I was intrigued. She said her video didn't give proportions, so I found this blog post , which does.

Supposedly white pine needles are the most delicious, and white pines grow everywhere around here. I took a few needles from bunches and bunches of weedy ...

Coming Soon: "Mauko Meets a Monkey"

I've finally finished translating the next story that my friend Nando (Fernando da Costa Pires) sent me back in July last year. From its title, this one might sound like the last one, only this time our protagonist is meeting a monkey instead of an eel. But it's actually very different: for one thing, the hero, Mauko, is disabled, and the story has a lot to say about how disabled people have been regarded in Timor-Leste. It has some magical elements like the last story, but every detail strikes ...

Jambato negro

"We thought that the jambato toad was gone forever until one morning in Angamarca, Ecuador, a boy found one in the grass by his house."

This beautiful song by the group (family, actually) Jacana Jacana is about Atelopus ignescens, a little black toad with a golden belly: he carries his own sunshine with him. It was believed that this frog went extinct in the 1980s, until 2016, when, as the quote says, a boy discovered one by his house.

Near the end of the song, the chorus is sung in Kichwa (Quechu...

Work Harder

Today was my weekly trip to my dad's in upstate NY, and I stopped at a small supermarket to pick up some things for lunch.

The guy ahead of me in the checkout line--tall, bearded, father of a young-teen daughter who was bagging for him--had a tattoo on his skull, curving around his left ear, that said "WORK HARDER."

What the--? Is it an admonition for the rest of us? A reminder or motivation for himself ... that he can only see if he looks in a mirror? In the alternate reality I conjured up to e...

Laundromat

I like laundromats; I always have. Even having my own washing machine, there are times when I've needed to use a laundromat. Last weekend my dad and I had to use the laundromat in his town because his ancient (dating to my childhood) washing machine had finally given up the ghost.

The laundromat in his town--well, one of them; a woman I talked to in it said there was at least one other--is very cute. Behold: device to help you get into bleach containers. (We didn't need this as we brought our ow...

Pa' dónde se fue?

On December 14 wakanomori shared a Guardian article with me about Joaquim Melo, the 64-year-old owner of a remarkable bookstore in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon. The bookstore, Banca do Largo,

serves as a refuge for Amazonian writers and activists alike, pushing to protect the region from exploitation.​ By promoting local literature, particularly works by Indigenous writers, Melo believes he can help spread new ideas about societal organisation and the environment that are different f...

Cassava bread

Cassava bread is grated cassava from which you squeeze out all the extra moisture and then press into a hot skillet. Remarkably, it holds together as if it had egg or something in it, and then you can turn it over. Also, as it cooks, it smells like fariña... because that's basically also how you make fariña, only instead of cooking it all mashed together, you cook it slowly, slowly, slowly, turning it and turning it, so it gets all dry and crumbly.

I made cassava bread the other day and documente...

gingerbread photos

So I didn't end up wrecking all the gingerbread when I tried icing them. I did wreck a few though. But here are some successes:

The bees! I like the bees. Here are two photos, one with flowers:





And in the end I was able to add touches to the snowmobile and the microscope:





And here are some Pokemon (and a squirrel):







They look very festive all together:



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Resolutions and gingerbread

I haven't made New Year's resolutions in quite a few years--like, since even before the pandemic--but this year I have a couple! I am sharing them. Accountability!

One is to try making croissants. It seems impossibly hard. But so rewarding!

The other is to make a more consistent and frequent effort with my writing. I have the Tales of the Polity novel that I'm working on, but for the past year or so, I've only been sitting down to work on it once a week, with rare exceptions. And/But also, I thin...

"just passing through ... hey, what's this?"

A friend who has ties to Honduras told me it was okay to post and share this compilation video from trail cams set up in the rainforests there to take a wildlife census. The organization paying for it is Bosques del Mundo --apparently until now there's been no study, to speak of, of wildlife in Honduras.

The video is delightful, especially the animals that investigate the camera (especially the ocelot near the end), and the baby peccary that turns to face down someone coming up behind him. Enjoy!



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