serakit

So because of what's sold out, my meat share will be including both beef and chicken heart this month. I try to keep my "cuts I don't know how to cook" to one at a time, but I need something that comes in reasonably-sized portions at a reasonable price per pound. And those both do that. At a very reasonable price per pound. If I can find good recipes I would not mind these becoming staples. (Given the advent of the bird flu, probably more likely in cow than chicken, but.)

Suggestions for recipes for these cuts? Ideally involving the instant pot?

Also while we're on the subject of the bird flu, I have begun considering what's necessary to build up my stores with a little more forethought this time-- "pandemic" =/= "very lengthy nor'easter" and should not be prepared for in the same way. (In particular, I do not need to be preparing for monthslong power outages, which is a thing I was very consciously preparing for last time.) KN-95s, for one, as a thing to stock up on. Castile soap. Sanitizer. Lysol wipes. (Flu viruses, unlike noroviruses, are susceptible to regular Lysol. Bleach wipes apparently do exist-- the thing I'm currently angsting about is norovirus season-- but they're hard to find and seem to be mostly marketed to hospitals.) Non-dairy milks.

Pantry staples of the flour-yeast-sugar-butter stripe. Instant food.

Honestly my greatest fear with supply chain interruptions is meds, because I don't have a good way to deal with that (I have more buffer with some meds than others), and I'm tempted to try to switch to the in-house pharmacy at my hospital chain, which being in-house will hopefully not be having the same issues CVS does while having reasonably functional hours. (And free home delivery, which has all kinds of potential for my sanity.)

Other things I should be stocking up on?

G's commentary on my new Instant Pot, intoned with a heavy dose of irony: "Don't you just love all these labor-saving devices?"

It must be said that this was after we had spent two and a half hours trying to pressure-cook a par-defrosted chicken. The original idea behind obtaining this was that it was a combination replacement for my misplaced rice cooker and broken slow cooker (with a metal and therefore dishwasher safe insert that cannot be broken by being dropped an inch into the sink while washing it the way the slow cooker was), but I decided that since I had a chicken that had not defrosted as thoroughly as intended (I put it to defrost on a Thursday and this was all going down on a Tuesday night and it is a CHICKEN, not a turkey), we were going to try the pressure cooker.

From which I can only conclude that the "programs" on the Instant Pot don't work and I should just use "Pressure Cook" and time units for everything, because we had a lot of trouble getting it to pressurize even after I spent time fiddling with the manual. Eventually we gave up on the "Poultry" button and just hit "Pressure Cook' and a timer. Thanks to all the fiddling the chicken came out kind of dry and suitable only for chicken salad and other such uses.

Our next attempt a week later at par-defrosted beef tongue (and I really need to check the temperature of my refrigerator) came out quite well, much better than I've ever managed to achieve with a traditional slow cooker, with a lovely texture.

Also the shape of the instant pot means I need to cut up most of these raw cuts of meat before setting the thing to cook just so they'll fit inside.

But so far it's functional. I've yet to try to use it for rice, though I'll get there eventually. Enough of it is dishwasher safe that cleanup is a lot easier than my slow cooker was.

Another Boskone is upon us, and while I was once again not at it, that does mean it's time for the annual state of the writer post.

One publication this year, no sales.

I did have some fairly significant writer-adjacent stuff happen. My first experience walking into a bookstore and seeing something I contributed to on display, for one-- while I've been in a number of anthologies prior to this, they're generally concentrated on the sort of things that are sold on tables at conventions. Walking into Porter Square Books to see Soul Jar on the endcap was unexpected and quite thrilling. (I did not mention this to anyone except the person shopping with me; it seemed a bit much like having an ego. But the person I was with thought it was pretty cool.)

I was interviewed for a podcast about my experiences with audiobooks; I discussed preferring natively-audio things like the Magnus Archives and the ways the storytelling feels different.

While I never got around to writing up a proper Arisia con report, I was on three panels there. My favorite was the mental health in science fiction and fantasy one, which is a wonderful example of things just working out, because I was almost not on it-- I got added in between the initial assignments and the finalized ones, then someone had a last-minute emergency on Friday night and our moderator volunteered to take a bit more of a panelist role so the show could go on. And then I missed every T connection, ran aboveground between lines rather than wait for one of said connections, and bolted in with about five minutes to spare. But you know those panels where everything clicks and you've got a bunch of people up there who know their subject, love it, and are clearly having a blast bouncing off each other? That was this one. (Well enough that someone came up to me while I was exploring the art show to tell me how good it was, which... okay, that was cool.) It was my first-ever time being on a convention panel and such a perfect introduction.

Convention panels were what I was after in the first place. The reason my publishing year is marked by Boskone is because that was what prompted me to start taking my writing career seriously: the finalists for the NESFA short story contest got to give a reading, and while I knew instantly that I was not going to win when I heard Mary Alexandra Agner read hers (and indeed she did win), I found I liked being up there and decided to take my writing career seriously in the hopes of becoming someone who would make sense to have on panels. Not process panels-- I think I knew even then that I was never going to be able to discuss my process in a way that's useful to anyone else-- but fandom culture and literature discussions, absolutely. I set my parameters for what made me a Real Writer based on that goal. I achieved Real Writerhood before this year, but this year I achieved the convention panels and I loved doing it. (I also achieved the desired laughter from the audience during the cancel culture panel when I announced myself with "I'm Kit and I'm from Tumblr" before going on to give a more thorough introduction.)

I've also written 155,000 words of Deep Space Nine fanfiction since April, and I've achieved an audience there. Has it followed me back to my original work? Not really, I don't think. DS9 is the wrong fandom to build that kind of audience-- if I had gone through with the HP epic that I am totally going to get back to someday, that would have done it. But that's not the point of the fanfiction. The point of the fanfiction is that I'm getting practice telling a much larger and more complex story than I have ever done successfully before, that my skills are improving by throwing out chapters so quickly, and that I'm building a commentariat. People like what I'm doing. I have an audience. It's very gratifying posting chapters and getting comments and telling this very elaborate story.

I've done some other fanfiction too-- an Enchanted Forest Chronicles story focusing on Telemain (and dealing with the question of Antorell's mother, because I really do wonder about who would procreate with Zemenar) and a pinch hit for the Soulmates Exchange that I can't talk about here because the exchange isn't revealed yet.
 
So if one counts the fanfiction I've really been quite prolific this last year. And it's not like I didn't write any original work. There are three original stories I wrote this year. Two are making the rounds of the markets; one needs further edits before it goes back out again. This has been a really rough year day-job wise. I'm hoping the new day job gives me enough stability to write more-- I'm not that far into it but I don't have low-grade panic going into work anymore, and that hasn't been true in years. So we'll see.

One last thing, a significant event of this past year, not per se part of my own state but one that bears mentioning nonetheless is the closure of Cossmass Infinities. Two of my three pro sales were to them, including that all-important third one. (This was out of three submissions to them, too.) They gave a home to two stories which I remain particularly proud of and pleased with and that I was delighted to sell and have out there in the world where people might find them. I got a strong confidence boost from my dealings with them, the proof that the first pro sale wasn't a fluke; that I was actually capable of writing at that level consistently. They will be missed.

The last year done, what do I want to achieve this year? Aside from more convention panels... I'd like to get more original stories written, more sales made. Continue to build a name. It's odd because so many of my writing goals were more lifestyle-based than anything, once I hit the definition of "Real Writer." I'm glad I laid out parameters for that because I still don't feel like a Real Writer. (Someday I would like to run into people with podcasting skills who wish to collaborate, because I have a series all concepted out, but I think that requires more of a name than I'm going to build in the next year.)

And I want to figure out how to get involved with making Arisia run; I'm told they need the younger generation to step up and here I am, part of the younger generation.

Hugo nomination data is out and there is controversy. Evidence, even, of rigging on the part of the organizers. I'm not going to get into the numbers, but here is a good breakdown, which also includes other links to further discussion at the bottom. (I will particularly point out Jason Sanford's Genre Grapevine post, which shows no hesitation in calling out the shenanigans.)

This is the latest in a long line of controversy surrounding the Chengdu Worldcon, and it highlights a significant flaw in the organizing process as a whole: Worldcon insists that it has no central organization and every Worldcon is a separate organization that is merely licensing the trademark. There are provisions for keeping the chain of succession intact if one of these fails entirely, but Worldcon has no control whatsoever, it's all in the hands of the voters.

Which means, among other things, that any dictatorship government with a sufficiency of money and organization can send in enough ballots to get the Worldcon. There was some concern about this in the voting stage, that there were a number of ballots that were fake, but speculations along these lines were put down to racism on the part of people who didn't want to have it in China. In fact, most objections to the Chengdu Worldcon were put down to racism despite... everything about the Chinese government. Sometimes not wanting to have it in a country that hasn't got civil rights is about not wanting to have it in a country that hasn't got civil rights! (I mean... I would also have objected to having it in Poland before their most recent election.)

The problem was, the attempts at preventing it by necessity involved an attempt at subverting the Worldcon rules and engaging in backroom dealing that was very much not in the spirit of the thing, because WSFS refuses to grow up and admit that they are responsible for the damn con and change the bylaws to work in the modern world. Kevin Standlee is particularly disingenuous about it-- not that that's anything new for him; he's been disingenuous for as long as I've been following Worldcon politics--by casting himself as the noble one who sounded the alarm and attempted to stop it by leading that charge to subvert the rules... which entirely ignores the fact that he's been one of the leading voices insisting that WSFS is not and can never be responsible for the con and has actively worked to prevent rules from changing to prevent something like this from happening before the only way to stop it was underhanded shenanigans that absolutely did not have any place in Worldcon. He did everything possible to prevent discussion of how to change things until it became unmistakable that change was necessary, and then he tried to break those rules he so worships, and now he hails himself as a heroic Cassandra.

The thing is, I do believe he is accurately stating the way the con works. It's just that I don't take that as absolving WSFS of responsibility.

I take it as a sign it's time to change the governing documents of the WSFS. For the WSFS to stand up and admit they are responsible for the name, for the buck to stop there, for the Business Meeting to pass a rule creating a permanent Hugo administration committee and some sort of guardrails on site selection to prevent the con from going to a country with a dictatorship. At least, they do if they want any of us younger fans to take them seriously.

Then again, we all saw during the AO3 Hugo how much they care about having the younger fans take them seriously, so I don't hold out much hope.

(And if you're about to rant at me about how I should get involved then, I have my own con to deal with-- much noise was made this year about Arisia needing the younger generation to stand up and get involved; I have every intention of involving myself with that as soon as I've settled in at the new day job.)

Am I the only person who sees how dangerous allowing Secretaries of State to unilaterally remove candidates from the ballot is? Am I the only person who sees how this is going to end in Republicans removing Biden from the ballot on the flimsiest of pretexts? There is no win condition here. Either the Supreme Court rules that they can do this and suddenly everything a Democratic presidential candidate does is an insurrection or the Supreme Court rules that they can't do this and Democrats are suddenly the people who were trying to extrajudicially remove Trump and his followers are galvanized!

You do not ever give the government any power you aren't okay with the other side having! There are NO EXCEPTIONS to that!

I keep hearing "Well no Democrats have engaged in an insurrection."

You think that matters? It's like when you're talking to TERFs. "We want to protect women!" sounds fine and lovely until you realize they're not defining "protection" or "women" the same way you are. As long as they have a flimsy pretext, as long as they have something they can call an insurrection, they won't care. The thing the courts are being asked to rule on is not "Did Trump commit insurrection;" it's "does the Secretary of State have the authority to declare that unilaterally without any kind of court proceeding."

Due process is due process even when it is people we hate. Especially when it is people we hate. Trump is evil; the Secretary of State still should not have the authority to unilaterally declare him invalid. Republican Secretaries of State will take this as a chance to remove Biden. It will become like how impeachment is now a thing we just do whenever the House and Presidency are controlled by different people-- the difference being there are enough guardrails on impeachment that doing it doesn't change who is in power without compounding factors. There are no guardrails on this. The entire point is that there are no guardrails on this.

We are taking another step away from democracy and towards autocratic control, and Democrats are rejoicing because it is their autocracy. I have news for you: Republicans are better at it than we are. They've been playing the game a lot longer, they're a lot more focused, and they have a lot more power in the enforcement mechanisms of the government. If we encourage the country towards autocracy, they will win, and you should be concerned about steps towards autocracy even when it's people you like becoming the autocrats.

But everyone is like "Yay, the dominoes are falling!"

They are falling. But they're not falling in the direction you think they are, and there will be no controlling the avalanche they trigger.

I bought The Southern Baking Book more or less on a whim: the bakery down the street was closing, the books were 20% off, and there was a recipe for cinnamon rolls that took less than a day. (And, I discovered, makes quite a bit; I offloaded several of them on other people.)

Today the bananas I insisted to G. that I was going to eat before they got brown and that weren't going to wind up becoming banana bread... became banana bread. We were lacking some ingredients for the recipe I would normally have used for that but you would think this wouldn't be a problem. I have a massive cookbook wall. Banana bread is a fairly common recipe. This should be fine.

Except everything calls for either whole-wheat flour or wheat germ. (Why is this a thing, Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library Muffins and Quick Breads? Why do you require me to have wheat germ for this? Banana bread is supposed to be soft and moist!)

So I finally pulled out The Southern Baking Book to see what they had. I used whole cranberries instead of halved blueberries and cinnamon instead of lavender, but it's amazing. Soft and moist without being heavy or close, not too sweet, nice tartness from the cranberries... I think this is my new recipe. I think I will likely purchase bananas with the specific intent of making this in the future. (I do not normally do that; it's normally a side effect of failing to eat bananas purchased for consumption.)

We're two for two on runaway successes with this one; I have high hopes for it becoming a staple book.

(Which amuses me, since I only looked twice at it because of G's rule that I have to at least skim through to see if there are recipes I can/want to eat in it before I purchase a new cookbook. The pie book that was so pretty and eye-catching was pretty much all fruit pies I couldn't eat, so I turned my eyes to the rest of what was on the shelf and here we are.)

A fitting send-off, since G. is about to be away for the entire month of December.

A song for Veterans' Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dbyP0PDX28

Mary Gauthier's "Bullet Holes in the Sky," which comes from "Rifles and Rosary Beads," an album she co-wrote with various US veterans. "Bullet Holes in the Sky" is the one that takes place on Veterans' Day. It's got a much more nuanced look at being a veteran than a lot of honor-the-soldiers stuff, very much worth listening to.

I submitted Yuletide nominations, which I suppose means I'm at least attempting to participate this year, assuming there are nominated canons other than the ones I submitted that I'm familiar enough with to write for. (The lengths I will go to get my hands on Melinda Gordon/Rick Payne fic...)

I've never actually done a fanwork exchange. Of course, I haven't really been writing fanfic that long, and the fic I have written has very much not been for canons that are Yuletide-eligible. So we'll see how this goes.

Me, talking to one of the new roommates (very brightly): "Oh, I own that I'm a commercial hack!"