Alex Gordon's Blog, page 7

Kickstarter News

For the last 10 years, late summer has meant a Zombies Need Brains Kickstarter for the purpose of funding themed anthologies. I’ve contributed to a couple; “West Side Ghost Story” appeared in Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar, and then “Symbiote” appeared in Derelict. In addition, “Continuing Education” appeared in Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity (yes, it’s a DAW anthology, but Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray edited it, so it kinda counts).

So it’s that time of year again, and another Kickstarter is underway. This time, ZNB is seeking to fund four anthologies: Dragonesque (SFF tales from the dragon’s point of view), Game On! (SFF tales about games, game-playing, and games in culture), Solar Flare (solarpunk/visions of a hopeful tomorrow), and Artifice & Craft (tales of works of art that have been enchanted, hexed, charmed, or cursed). We just crossed the funding halfway point, but there’s still a ways to go and if the project isn’t funded, I won’t get to write my story for Solar Flare. I have a tentative title and the bones of a premise. The plot is still in egg stage. Solarpunk would be a new subgenre for me, so there’s that challenge. Challenges are good. I enjoy stretching my still-developing short story muscles by writing for these anthologies.

All donations are accepted. Please consider contributing. I will close with the image of the cover illustration for Solar Flare by Justin Adams of Varia Studios. I like it lots–it looks like a place in which I’d like to live, a feeling that to me is what solarpunk is all about.

“Solar Flare” Cover Art by Justin Adams of Varia Studios

Sicilian-Style Gelato

So for Reasons, I can’t eat high-fat foods like super-premium ice cream, frozen custard, or anything made with too much animal fat or vegetable fat like coconut oil. Gelato was a great discovery since it’s made primarily with milk, but some brands contain a high proportion of cream, which means nope. I thought I could overcome any and all problems by making my own, so a few years ago I bought an ice cream maker and christened it with a really lovely recipe for espresso gelato. I thought because the milk:cream ratio was 2:1 that it would be okay. But eggs were used as the stabilizer and between that and the cream, more nope. So I stuck with grocery store brands and even some nut and oat milk frozen desserts. Overall, they were okay, but I always wondered if I could make something better. I knew there had to be all-milk recipes out there in the internet void. I also had vague memories of Sicilian gelato, which used corn starch instead of eggs as the stabilizer. But for some reason I thought it was non-dairy, like a thickened fruit purée or sorbet, which didn’t interest me.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I ran my search for recipes, and again found mentions of egg-free gelatos that used corn starch as the stabilizer. I decided to try this recipe for Sicilian Gelato-Style Ice Cream because it contained only five ingredients and looked pretty simple. I’ve used corn starch to thicken sauces and gravies, and knew it could be tricky because it loves to lump up. But with an egg recipe you run the risk of winding up with sweet scrambled eggs, so. Risk is risk–tie on the apron and get on with it.

The ingredients:

700 ml (about 3 cups whole milk)
125 ml (a full 1/2 cup) sugar
3-4 tablespoons of corn starch (I split the diff and went with 3 1/2)
pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean split lengthwise

My only problem was a lack of vanilla beans. I solved that crisis by digging some of the pod pieces out of an older bottle of vanilla extract–I scraped out the seeds and added those to the milk mixture.

There were more seeds than I thought:

Heating things up

 

It took a while for things to heat up. I never saw the steaming described in the recipe, so I looked up the temperature at which corn starch cooks and found it: 203F. I whisked and whisked and checked the temp–even in the 180s/190s, I saw some thickening. Then, finally, I saw the occasional glub (think bubbling lava but without the bubble bursts) that indicated the mix was beginning to boil at, hey, 203F. It actually hung at that temperature for a couple of minutes before starting to rise again. Overall, I let it thicken and glub for 5-6 minutes.

Starting to thicken

I let the mixture cool atop the stove, then stuck it in the fridge for a few hours. When I took it out, it was semi-solid and smooth. I tasted it–the flavor reminded me of tapioca or vanilla pudding. Then I set up the ice cream maker and let ‘er rip.

Overall, it took maybe 10 minutes to churn a little over three cups of gelato.

It was a challenge to scrape out of the freezer bowl, but that just gave me an excuse to sample the result. Rich-tasting–even my old vanilla beans imparted more flavor than I’ve found in any store brand vanilla gelato. Very creamy, like thick pudding. I looked up frozen custard, and found that it’s churned so that it incorporates less air and remains dense and creamy. That pretty much describes this gelato. Shiny, smooth–the rough patch in the photo below are the scrapings from the inside of the freezer bowl.

Ready for the freezer

Next time, I may cut back on the corn starch, or even try a different starch like arrowroot as the thickener. Overall, I’m surprised at how well this worked and I’m looking forward to making more. Chocolate! Butter pecan! Cherry almond!

 

 

Nature red etc etc

I swear I am never getting excited about any baby critters on my property ever again.

Current batting average: .000. 0 for 3. First the crows nailed the house finch nest. Then the 5+ monarch butterfly caterpillars that hatched on my common milkweed and that I posted about on the 4th didn’t make it. A week or so later, another monarch flitted by, and later I found one egg that hatched and even saw the little caterpillar. Checked next day and nothing.

This morning, yet another monarch came calling. I’m afraid to look.

The phrase that runs through my head when things like this happen is “Nature red in tooth and claw.” I decided to look up where it came from and learned it’s a line from Canto 56, a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It’s part of a long series entitled In Memoriam, which he wrote as he sought to come to grips with a good friend’s death. It reads in part:

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law-
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed-

I dug a little deeper and found that Tennyson was influenced by theories of evolution that preceded Darwin such as transmutation of species and pondered the conflicts between science and religion and the impersonal hand of Nature.  These stanzas from Canto 55 reflect this:

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

So that’s what I’ve been seeing so far this summer. Careless treatments of a single life–an egg, a caterpillar. I guess this is kind of a downer post. Oh well. I have to tell myself that I still see house finches and monarchs, so some do make it.

I’ll probably check for monarch eggs tomorrow. But I won’t get my hopes up.

Well. Maybe a little.

 

 

 

Monarch Summer

A couple of years ago, I planted some common milkweed seeds in a sheltered area by my deck. Last year, a single plant sprouted, but it only grew to a foot, foot and a half. Didn’t flower. Finally succumbed to the drought.

This year, two plants sprouted in the same spot. We had decent rains this spring as well as cooler temps, and the plants grew and grew. They’re now maybe three feet tall? No flowers yet, but lots of nice, big leaves. Last week, I spotted a Monarch butterfly flitting about them–it would rest for a moment, fly off, then return. It did this several times. A couple of days later, I checked the undersides of leaves and found five of these:

Whaddya know?

 

Some online research followed, during which I learned that the eggs hatch after only 4-5 days. Sure enough, on July 2, I counted five little widgets:

So tiny!

 

The next day, I didn’t have to look under the leaves to spot them because I could see the blemishes and holes on the topsides. I also found holes with no visible caterpillars. I don’t know how mobile they are, and if they could crawl or fall through the holes and wind up on other leaves. There’s also the possibility that there were more than five caterpillars and some have already been lost. According to one article I read, only 2-10% of hatchlings in the wild make it to adulthood.

It’s a sign!

 

As of this morning, I could still find five caterpillars. That said, I’m not sure if they’re the same ones I spotted initially since as I said some are on different leaves and one rebel is on the topmost leaves of one of the plants. They look about twice the size they were on the 2nd, and the dark bands are visible now.

The brave little caterpillar

My concern was that a single caterpillar can strip a milkweed in the two weeks or so that it spends at the various caterpillar growth stages, and I only had two plants. Luckily, a friend let me dig up a half dozen of their milkweeds. I planted them as soon as I got home and watered them thoroughly, but milkweed can be hard to transplant–all 6 have wilted and may drop their foliage. But I’m hoping that the leaves remain monarch-sustaining long enough to see the little bits through this stage of their development.

Several Things Make a Post

Sprouts verdict: The little bit I was able to harvest had a surprisingly strong herbal taste that I really liked, but I was disappointed in the sparse crop. I haven’t tried a repeat, but if I do I will double or triple the planting. One teaspoon of seeds isn’t very much.

 

I’ve seen two chipmunks around the property. One lives under the backyard deck; the other has taken up residence…or at least stashes its food supply–in the front yard planter. I don’t know if they’re returnees or new tenants. Eastern chipmunks live three years in the wild on average, and given that I live a stone’s throw from a wooded preserve inhabited by coyotes, foxes, and feral cats, I doubt many chippers live that long around here.

 

 

Gaby is holding steady. She’s slowed down because Old Girl + Summer Heat. Our morning walks have been put on hold because of the heat, but every so often she chases a rabbit or chipmunk and it’s almost like younger days.

I’ve just been through some allergy testing and learned I’m allergic to a few types of wasp. I’m an epi-injector person now! Yea? There are likely going to be be shots in my future–I work outside a lot, wasps are everywhere, and I really don’t want to have to worry about being stung.

In technical news, life without cable is going more smoothly than I thought it would. I’ve replaced my old favorite ambient music channel with  artists old and new-to-me–Delerium, Erik Wøllo, Ivy–and boy am I glad I never got rid of my CDs. I also bought decent speakers for the Ion turntable and dug out the vinyl that has spent the last 30+ years in my basement. Some of the inner sleeves needed to be replaced and jackets wiped down and set out in the sun because mildew, but the LPs themselves were easy to clean with some stuff from Groovewasher and wow but it’s been great to listen to my Bowie albums again. I know the Ion isn’t the most deluxe turntable in the world. I originally bought it to convert my vinyl to digital audio, but decided Why Bother when I could just play the records. Yes, they do sound better. I’m looking forward to sorting through the collection and rehabbing jackets as needed…and probably buying more records.

CDs. Vinyl. I feel so retro.

Till next time…

 

Sprouts Progress

They’re growing. The beds aren’t as densely forested as the one on the front of the carton, I assume because more than a teaspoon of seeds was added to the latter. Next time, I’ll double the seeds.

Sprouts are ready to harvest when they reach 2-3″ in height. Some are past that, but most have a little ways to go.

Still a few days to go.

On Trend is My Middle Name…

…or not.

In December 2020, I ordered a microgreens growing kit–I like fresh greens, but sprouts of all sorts weren’t that easy to find and it wasn’t the time to troll one grocery store after another anyway.

So the kit arrived, and I…ignored it. Shoved it off to one side and did other things. Baked a lot of muffins. Made a lot of soups and stews. Roasted bushels of vegetables. Ate salads free of microgreens. More recently, I also cleaned out my office, which left me with boxes of peripherals and other detritus to add to the other boxes I had lying around. I sorted a little, set up a turntable, excavated vinyl from the basement, bought a spiffy record-cleaning kit and a set of speakers and listened to Bowie’s “Station To Station” for the first time since the mid-80’s.

None of which has anything to do with microgreens.

Anyway, in the interest of ridding myself of another box, I opened the kit and started set-up. The seeds were labeled for use in 2021, but there are a lot of them and I’m hoping that at least some are still viable. I decided to try a blend with lentils, kamut, and adzuki beans and another with lentils, peas, and chickpeas. The seeds are soaking overnight. Tomorrow, I plant. If anything sprouts, I’ll post photos.

For the record, I never baked any yeast bread, either. I do have a packet of sourdough starter somewhere.

Back Online with a Snippet

Earlier this month, I was in the middle of writing a post when I took a break, visited another website, and watched helplessly as my 9 yo Air locked up. No keyboard response. Finally got it to shut down, started it up in Safe Mode, but then couldn’t find my hard drive. Managed to get an appointment at an Apple Store Genius Bar. Technician could see hard drive, but couldn’t access it. Laptop was kaput.

So I ordered another Air, an M1 with 1TB storage and 16GB RAM. It arrived a couple of days ago–I needed to get an adapter to connect to my external HD so I could load the last back-up. Now everything is ported over and I’m enjoying a speedy laptop with actual battery life. I wonder if it will last as long as my old Air did?

Besides that, it’s been a week. I cut the cord and quit cable and got a new internet provider. Worked in the yard in between swings of our slingshot weather, sunny 70s one day, rainy 50s the next. Baked muffins.

I’ll close this hurry-up State of the Kris post with a snippet from early in Echoes. Jani, in a tense meeting with ná Feyó, who of late hasn’t been allowing her very much room to maneuver.

******

Jani reported her progress in the design and development of a hybrid paper system, one of the many stumbling blocks on the way to a blending of two conflicting modes of commerce and communication. “Haárin enjoy the freedom they have gained from doing business with humanish, but when it comes to the concept of payment, most haven’t moved past the idomeni barter system. The dock owners and traders are building up Commonwealth currency reserves they don’t know what to do with, and the financial sharks smell blood.” She caught the tilt of Feyó’s head, a posture that signaled puzzlement. “Commonwealth financial dominants would trick them. They would pretend to help them so that they could take their money.”

Feyó gestured understanding tinged with anger. “Humanish being humanish.” 

A reflexive protest sprang to Jani’s lips, then stalled because really, what could she say? She gestured agreement, then paused for a beat before resuming. “I would like to go to Samvasta. Because of the huge influx of Vynshà, it is by far the largest Haárin colony, and therefore the most vulnerable. I could speak to the Trade Association dominants, ask their advice on moving forward.“

“Let our trade dominants speak to them.” Feyó sat back, tented fingers so long and spindly they looked like they had extra knuckles. “I most believe you should not travel for a time.” 

 

 

Another Sign of Spring

A few years ago, robins built their nest in the space between one of the garage lights and the frame. The lights are lantern-style with curved tops, which form a decent enough support. The pair didn’t seem to mind my comings and goings. They raised their brood and moved on, and I removed the nest after their departure.

Since then, things were uneventful in the nest department…until last week, when I spotted a house finch pair hanging around the other garage light. They landed on it, then flew back a forth a bit between it and my neighbor’s apple tree. Later, I noticed a few straws or twigs stuck between the light and the frame. Then, not long after, I saw this:

A brand new nest

 

[image error]

All set for little baby finches

 

 

I waited until I saw the pair in their observation post in the neighbor’s apple tree. Then I brought out the step ladder and checked for eggs. Nothing yet at that point, but they’re definitely ready.

 

 

 

 

There she is!

 

 

I didn’t see any activity for a few days, which of course didn’t mean there wasn’t any. Then yesterday morning, I spotted Mom’s tail–you can just see it poking out the left side of the nest.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure if I will try to get a look at eggs or hatchlings. I’ll play it by ear.

Woodland Life

Photos taken over the last couple of months during walks to the state park and along the bike trails. I’m usually keeping an eye on Gaby to make sure she doesn’t scarf up goose poop–Life With Dogs–but I try to keep an eye out for the usual and unusual sightings.

Morning confab

 

 

 

Canada geese live here the year ’round–there’s plenty of food in the local ponds and yup, some folks feed them.

 

 

 

 

Watchful

 

 

I didn’t see much of the local deer over the winter, but at least one stopped by to chomp one of my shrubs to bits. I saw this watchful gazer along one of the bike trails.

 

 

 

 

Winter guests

 

 

Pretty sure these are black ducks, which weren’t supposed to be in this area at this time of year. But they sometimes settle in with mallards, which also occupy local ponds through the winter. They’re about the same size, and occasionally interbreed. The pair I saw stayed in the water or on the ground, so I didn’t get a chance to see the purplish secondary feathers on the wings. What a lovely color.

 

 

 

 

A welcome sign of spring

 

The bloodroot are finally opening along the wooded trails. They’re a few weeks later than last year thanks to the chill. One of my favorite woodland flowers.