Maureen F. McHugh's Blog: McQ to You
March 26, 2015
Strange children, complicated lives. Possible stories.
MCQ to You
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Reading About
The title story to Dan Chaon's collection, "Stay Awake" is a haunting story. (Horror movies are almost unbearable for me but Dan's fiction is the only fiction that I've ever been afraid to turn the page.)
I was so delighted when I found out that he and I both watch some of the same shows on cable. I get obsessed with primordial dwarfism or a serial killer. Sometimes that ends up--changed and reworked--in a story.
These are the kind of stories that might be the piece of grit that is the origin of the pearl.
Boredom on Mars
Trying to imagine life on another planet. Laurie Anderson once compared traveling to Mars to spending eight months in a station wagon with three people you aren't related to. I don't camp. I don't like to stay in a hotel that doesn't have room service (even though I'm too cheap to ever order room service.)
The Silent Twins
I suspect twins get quite tired of being treated as strange, mysterious, and telepathic. But as long as the occasional set of multiples will continue to invent twin languages and the rest of us will envy their bond, we're going to be fascinated by them.
There's a story here. (This makes me wish someone would reprint Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by Raphael Carter.)
How One Stupid Tweet Blew up Jusine Sacco's Life
A cautionary tale. A social media horror story. Why am I even sending out this newsletter?
Vanishing Act
A child prodigy who wrote about running away in a novel she published at 12, disappeared herself at 29.
Doing
Sensory Deprivation Tank
For complicated reasons I can't explain (I live in LA) I ended up scheduling a 90 minute session in a sensory deprivation tank. It turned out to be an entry into a state of deep meditation. Normally, sitting and meditating for ten minutes is an exercise in thinking about how my nose itches, my back hurts, and all the things I'm supposed to be doing. I'm too distracted to practice sitting enough to get past that.
I loved it and I've scheduled a second session.
I did not, I hasten to add, take hallucinogens.
“Anything related to psychological stress,” says Suedfeld, “whether it’s chronic tension headaches, insomnia, things with no known physical cause … after several floats, they really seem to improve.”
Writing Advice
Jeffrey Eugenides on Writing Poshumously
Write as if you were dead.
Cooking
Roasted Vegetables
Vegetables. Boiled, steamed, or in a casserole. About twenty years ago, I started seeing references to roasted. I lived in Ohio, didn't have the money for travel or high end restaurants. 'Roasting' said the food magazines, 'intensifies the flavors and and brings out the sweetness of vegetables.'
Guess what, it really does.
Roasted green beans
1 lb fresh green beans
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil*
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (225 C)
Snap off the tips of the beans (I snapped them into short lengths once and they tasted different, not as good, so leave them long.) Toss them with the oil and salt. Spread them out on a cookie sheet.
Roast for 20 minutes or until the beans start to brown.
*I used to use olive oil but the temperature in the oven will make the olive oil lose that particular olive taste and it will end up just tasting like vegetable oil so don't spend the money.
Duck Fat Potatoes
8 oz duck fat
5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes
2 Tablespoons semonlina (optional)
This is a special occasion dish because who can buy duck fat at the local Safeway? But it's so incredible.
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F (250 degrees C).
Put the duck fat in a roasting pan and shove it in the oven and let it heat up with the oven. It should get hot. Super hot. Napalm hot.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into thirds. I cut them do they're kind of chunky wedge/triangles.
Put a pot of water on the stove, big enough to add the potatoes. Put the potatoes in the cold water and bring it to a boil and boil for three minutes, then drain.
Sprinkle them with semolina, put a lid on the pot and then shake the pot hard to coat the potatoes a bit and knock off the edges. (If I don't have semolina, which I often don't, I just do the shake the pot bit. The potatoes still turn out great.)
Take out the roasting pan with the super hot, napalm duck fat, being careful not to spill or get it on you because, did I mention, superhot? Pour the potatoes in and use a spatula to get them all in one layer.
Roast them in the oven, turn them over at about 20 minutes and then watch them. In 40 minutes to an hour, they're done.
Sign up to get this newsletter.
Reading About
The title story to Dan Chaon's collection, "Stay Awake" is a haunting story. (Horror movies are almost unbearable for me but Dan's fiction is the only fiction that I've ever been afraid to turn the page.)
I was so delighted when I found out that he and I both watch some of the same shows on cable. I get obsessed with primordial dwarfism or a serial killer. Sometimes that ends up--changed and reworked--in a story.
These are the kind of stories that might be the piece of grit that is the origin of the pearl.
Boredom on Mars
Trying to imagine life on another planet. Laurie Anderson once compared traveling to Mars to spending eight months in a station wagon with three people you aren't related to. I don't camp. I don't like to stay in a hotel that doesn't have room service (even though I'm too cheap to ever order room service.)
The Silent Twins
I suspect twins get quite tired of being treated as strange, mysterious, and telepathic. But as long as the occasional set of multiples will continue to invent twin languages and the rest of us will envy their bond, we're going to be fascinated by them.
There's a story here. (This makes me wish someone would reprint Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by Raphael Carter.)
How One Stupid Tweet Blew up Jusine Sacco's Life
A cautionary tale. A social media horror story. Why am I even sending out this newsletter?
Vanishing Act
A child prodigy who wrote about running away in a novel she published at 12, disappeared herself at 29.
Doing
Sensory Deprivation Tank
For complicated reasons I can't explain (I live in LA) I ended up scheduling a 90 minute session in a sensory deprivation tank. It turned out to be an entry into a state of deep meditation. Normally, sitting and meditating for ten minutes is an exercise in thinking about how my nose itches, my back hurts, and all the things I'm supposed to be doing. I'm too distracted to practice sitting enough to get past that.
I loved it and I've scheduled a second session.
I did not, I hasten to add, take hallucinogens.
“Anything related to psychological stress,” says Suedfeld, “whether it’s chronic tension headaches, insomnia, things with no known physical cause … after several floats, they really seem to improve.”
Writing Advice
Jeffrey Eugenides on Writing Poshumously
Write as if you were dead.
Cooking
Roasted Vegetables
Vegetables. Boiled, steamed, or in a casserole. About twenty years ago, I started seeing references to roasted. I lived in Ohio, didn't have the money for travel or high end restaurants. 'Roasting' said the food magazines, 'intensifies the flavors and and brings out the sweetness of vegetables.'
Guess what, it really does.
Roasted green beans
1 lb fresh green beans
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil*
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (225 C)
Snap off the tips of the beans (I snapped them into short lengths once and they tasted different, not as good, so leave them long.) Toss them with the oil and salt. Spread them out on a cookie sheet.
Roast for 20 minutes or until the beans start to brown.
*I used to use olive oil but the temperature in the oven will make the olive oil lose that particular olive taste and it will end up just tasting like vegetable oil so don't spend the money.
Duck Fat Potatoes
8 oz duck fat
5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes
2 Tablespoons semonlina (optional)
This is a special occasion dish because who can buy duck fat at the local Safeway? But it's so incredible.
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F (250 degrees C).
Put the duck fat in a roasting pan and shove it in the oven and let it heat up with the oven. It should get hot. Super hot. Napalm hot.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into thirds. I cut them do they're kind of chunky wedge/triangles.
Put a pot of water on the stove, big enough to add the potatoes. Put the potatoes in the cold water and bring it to a boil and boil for three minutes, then drain.
Sprinkle them with semolina, put a lid on the pot and then shake the pot hard to coat the potatoes a bit and knock off the edges. (If I don't have semolina, which I often don't, I just do the shake the pot bit. The potatoes still turn out great.)
Take out the roasting pan with the super hot, napalm duck fat, being careful not to spill or get it on you because, did I mention, superhot? Pour the potatoes in and use a spatula to get them all in one layer.
Roast them in the oven, turn them over at about 20 minutes and then watch them. In 40 minutes to an hour, they're done.
March 6, 2015
McQ to You Dec 14
Reading About
My mother died in 2007 after fifteen years of dementia. 30% of all Medicare expenditures are spent on the last year of life and a lot of it is spent as if we were trying to save life instead of make people as comfortable as possible. I don't want that for me or my family.
We Need to Talk About Death
Death and money, the two great taboos. We don't tell anyone our salaries and we hide from death.
How Doctors Die
Most of them don't die like the rest of us.
Why I hope I Die at Seventy-Five
I don't hope I die at seventy-five, but it's an interesting argument. Then again, Mick Jagger originally hoped not to live past thirty.
Brittany Maynard's Assisted Suicide
I recently read The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, where Andrew Solomon describes his mother's assisted suicide as a precipitating event in his first bout of major depression. Here is another view, from a man who wishes his wife had had the option.
The Secret Life of a Crime Scene Cleaner
An upbeat article about a transwoman from Australia who found her niche cleaning up after the catastrophic.
Dementia, Alzheimers, and the Conumdrum of Dementia Driven Wandering
This article is going to have me watching the streets for signs that someone is lost.
Funny Tombstones
What's Cooking
Mapo Tofu
Really spicy and really good. China has a long tradition of vegetarianism (think Buddhism) but they don't particularly think of tofu as 'vegetarian' and they often combine it with meat (the way we will combine potatoes with meat.)
If you've never had mapo tofu I might suggest trying it at an authentic Chinese restaurant before going through the hassle of finding the ingredients. I use Lee Kum Chee's Chili Bean Sauce for my doubanjiang.
The most important ingredient to me is the Sichuan peppercorns.
There are a two major ways we experience 'hot' in cooking. One is the hot chilies which is from capsicum. There's no actual physical damage from capsicum, it creates a burning sensation but there's no real burn. Horseradish and wasabi is a different kind of 'hot' and it does actually create a microscopic abrasive, a kind of vapor sandpaper, that mildly damages tissues.
Sichuan peppercorns use hydroxy alpha sanshool to create a mild tingly numbness some people describe as like a mild electrical current. I stir fry the whole peppercorns.
Bob, my husband, asks for this once a week. The ingredients are exotic but the dish comes together in about fifteen minutes or less.
My mother died in 2007 after fifteen years of dementia. 30% of all Medicare expenditures are spent on the last year of life and a lot of it is spent as if we were trying to save life instead of make people as comfortable as possible. I don't want that for me or my family.
We Need to Talk About Death
Death and money, the two great taboos. We don't tell anyone our salaries and we hide from death.
How Doctors Die
Most of them don't die like the rest of us.
Why I hope I Die at Seventy-Five
I don't hope I die at seventy-five, but it's an interesting argument. Then again, Mick Jagger originally hoped not to live past thirty.
Brittany Maynard's Assisted Suicide
I recently read The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, where Andrew Solomon describes his mother's assisted suicide as a precipitating event in his first bout of major depression. Here is another view, from a man who wishes his wife had had the option.
The Secret Life of a Crime Scene Cleaner
An upbeat article about a transwoman from Australia who found her niche cleaning up after the catastrophic.
Dementia, Alzheimers, and the Conumdrum of Dementia Driven Wandering
This article is going to have me watching the streets for signs that someone is lost.
Funny Tombstones
What's Cooking
Mapo Tofu
Really spicy and really good. China has a long tradition of vegetarianism (think Buddhism) but they don't particularly think of tofu as 'vegetarian' and they often combine it with meat (the way we will combine potatoes with meat.)
If you've never had mapo tofu I might suggest trying it at an authentic Chinese restaurant before going through the hassle of finding the ingredients. I use Lee Kum Chee's Chili Bean Sauce for my doubanjiang.
The most important ingredient to me is the Sichuan peppercorns.
There are a two major ways we experience 'hot' in cooking. One is the hot chilies which is from capsicum. There's no actual physical damage from capsicum, it creates a burning sensation but there's no real burn. Horseradish and wasabi is a different kind of 'hot' and it does actually create a microscopic abrasive, a kind of vapor sandpaper, that mildly damages tissues.
Sichuan peppercorns use hydroxy alpha sanshool to create a mild tingly numbness some people describe as like a mild electrical current. I stir fry the whole peppercorns.
Bob, my husband, asks for this once a week. The ingredients are exotic but the dish comes together in about fifteen minutes or less.
McQ to You
McQ to You is a newsletter mailed weekly. It doesn't actually have any news. It has a handful of links and some commentary on articles I like. It has something about cooking.
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