Books read in October 2023

 1. Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim

How to respond to recipe requests when you don't use recipes

Dear Miss Manners: Cooking is one of my passions, and I love to share my food with others. And while I love positive feedback, I am sometimes taken aback by the automatic request for a recipe as soon as someone compliments something I’ve made. Unfortunately, I do not use recipes. I am an intuitive cook, who many times throws things together. I have explained several times to these people that I do not use recipes, but continue to get asked.

I am not a curmudgeon, and not trying to keep my creations’ ingredients secret; I just don’t have the time, energy or memory to remember everything that went into a dish. What would be a good response to the constant, “This is delicious. Recipe, please!”?

You could easily shut down these requests for recipes by describing the preparation method in a way that works for yourself, in your capacity as an intuitive cook, despite the fact that you know this won't be informative for people who need a recipe to make this kind of food.

 

For example: "Grab some flour and an egg or two, mix it up until it looks good, shape it into the right shape, and bake it until it's done. Then you can add your fillings or your toppings or whatever you want and customize to your heart's content!"

Is this useful to someone who would ask for a recipe? Of course not! And also, it's all the information you have about the process you followed to make the food. 

A couple of rounds of this kind of answer will be far more dissuasive than actually telling them you don't have a recipe.

(Source: I come from a long line of intuitive cooks and have no cooking intuition myself.)

How to get a wax cork out of a winged corkscrew

A while back, I had a bottle of wine (I forget the brand) with a wax cork.

The internet told me to open it with a corkscrew just like I would a regular cork, which worked nicely.

Problem: the wax cork got kind of smushed and misshappen and stuck in my winged corkscrew, and the internet had no useful advice on how to remove it.

So, for future googlers, here's the solution: hot water.

I boiled some water in the kettle, put the corkscrew with the stuck cork in a glass measuring cup that I knew could handle boiling water, and poured the water over it. This softened the wax cork enough that I could easily manipulate the shape and get it off the corkscrew. 

 

You might be able to do this with your hands or you might need whatever tools you have around to grab/pull/cut/manipulate, but in either case make sure you wear oven mitts or something similarly heat proof on your hands, since metal corkscrews and metal tools conduct the heat from the boiling water.

Crucial questions to answer in your Zoom meeting invitation

1. How interactive is the meeting?

 

Are attendees just listening? Or are they expected to participate interactively? Or are they permitted to ask questions etc., but can also sit there listening quietly? Should attendees expect to be asked to move/second/vote on things?

 

2. What's the camera etiquette?

 

Is this the kind of meeting where the norm is to have your camera on? Or is this the kind of meeting where they forcibly turn off attendees' cameras and mute their mics? Or do people turn their cameras on to talk but turn them off the rest of the time to save bandwidth? Or do people genuinely not care?

For me, the difference between a meeting where I have to be on camera and interacting (and, therefore, do enough beauty labour to avoid hindering my credibility) and a meeting where I can be off-camera and multi-tasking with vision therapy changes the logistics of literally my entire day. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

If you calibrate expectations and make sure everyone's on the same page, you'll have a better meeting for everyone.

"And also" is the key to appreciating the little things in life

I blogged previously about the idea of "and also", which helps reconcile the fact that we live in a complex and imperfect world. 

 

I'm also finding lately that "and also" makes the idea of living in the moment/looking on the bright side/appreciating the little things in life more palatable.

 

For most of my life, the conventional wisdom I've received has been "Yeah, the world is on fire. But look on the bright side - we have delicious peaches!"

Which makes no sense whatsoever! The fact that it's peach season cannot possibly mitigate the fact that the world is on fire!

But consider: "The world is on fire. And also, we have delicious peaches."

Clearly, the sensible thing to do is eat and savour the peaches!

It doesn't claim to fix, mitigate, or outweigh the problem. It is simply another thing, separate from the problem, that comes with a logical course of action.

 

Some days, that makes it easier to get through the day.