Now the rain like gravel on an old tin roof

[sovay]

elisem has asked that people link to her current sale and talk a little about a piece of jewelry that inspired or otherwise meant something to them, so here is a list of Elise's shinies and their impact on my writing life.

At Wiscon in 2005, I wrote a haiku for an earring named "Eating the Dreamflower." I don't have a copy myself, but Elise was collecting them, so maybe someday I'll find out what I wrote. I remember a blue moon's rind and, unsurprisingly in retrospect, ghosts.

It took two years, but the necklace "Remember What You Say in Dreams #4"—silver wire and driftglass, pearl and labradorite and silverleaf jasper, blue and black and water-clear glass and a green-glazed iridescent shell; it doubles as a coronet and I was married in it in December 2013—became the foundation of my novella "The Salt House" (Sirenia Digest #22, September 2007). It is still one of my favorites of everything I have written. In some ways, it bookends with "The Boatman's Cure."

In October 2009, based on this photograph taken on the set of This Happy Breed (1944), I said David Lean looked like a very ascetic faun. asakiyume asked me to write his poem. I ran across these earrings and wrote a completely different poem instead: "Idle Thoughts While Watching a Faun" (Strange Horizons, March 2010).

The title of "Domovoi, I Came Back!" (Stone Telling #1, September 2010) came from the pendant of the same name. The voice came very suddenly and entirely out of nowhere; I was reading Victor Serge at the time, but I don't think that explains all of it. It found the right home.

"Cuneiform Toast" (Mythic Delirium 0.1, July 2013) is the direct result of misreading the meaning of a pair of earrings. I regret nothing. It is my most successful engagement with a mythological figure I feel unreasonably affectionate toward.

"Antique Water Magic" (forthcoming from inkscrawl) takes its name from the earrings and its mood from a combination of insomnia and Denis Forkas.

I believe the major achievement of today was the making of chicken coconut curry rice for dinner, occasioned by the realization that the time it takes for chicken to cook in coconut milk is equivalent to the time it takes rice to cook in coconut milk, so why not run both of these processes simultaneously? We had intended to use the red curry paste in our pantry, but derspatchel spotted a tin of massaman curry paste while we were grocery-shopping at Fresh Pond (we walked there in the light snow before it turned to rain; the bike path by snow and streetlight looks a lot like the run-up to Narnia), so we ran with that instead. I browned a package of cut-up chicken thighs in olive oil, removed them to a plate and sautéed a tablespoon of minced ginger and a tablespoon of minced galangal with two finely diced garlic cloves in the remaining oil and chicken fat, added about two tablespoons of curry paste, then dumped in an entire can of coconut milk and a cup and a third of water, which provided the necessary liquid for a cup and a quarter of arborio rice to cook in. The chicken went back in with some makrut lime leaves and the whole thing simmered for about twenty minutes, stirring frequently to keep the rice from gluing itself to the bottom of the pot; the results were incredibly creamy, fragrant, spicy, and a lot more like a savory rice pudding than either of us had been expecting. No complaints. There are leftovers, but not that many. We watched Key Largo (1948) after dinner, interrupted briefly in the second act by the ship-breaking sound of heavy icicles sliding off the side of our roof. Since the ice dams extend fully along the south side of the house, it is my hope that they just melt off in the rain rather than backing up into our eaves and bedroom. I am really not up for a house flood tonight. I don't suppose most people are.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Speaking of galangal -- I just noticed a local store has a line of spices that includes powdered galangal, and was wondering if it might be any good in gingerbread or something. I know there are various baked goods that include black pepper alongside ginger and what not, and it occurred to me that perhaps galangal might add a similar complex note. Or is it the kind of thing that goes to dust and cardboard when powdered? (They have fresh galangal as well, which is actually easier to find than the powdered around here.) I know powdered isn't recommended for soups and so on, but then neither is powdered ginger, which doesn't make powdered ginger useless.

Anyway, I think I might try it, but it occurred to me that some of you more adventurous bakers may already have done so.

[sovay]

Speaking of galangal -- I just noticed a local store has a line of spices that includes powdered galangal, and was wondering if it might be any good in gingerbread or something.

I've never cooked with powdered galangal, so I should warn you that I have no idea how the flavor differs from fresh. In the past I've bought the root from grocery stores and sliced it myself in the same way as fresh ginger; at the moment I have jars of both minced ginger and minced galangal in my refrigerator. (There are multiple kinds of galangal, so I've just checked: the kind I've been cooking with is greater galangal, ข่า (kha) in Thai.) I don't consider them interchangeable in flavor. Galangal is much sweeter; it has sort of flowery top notes over a surprisingly earthy pungency, almost more like horseradish than ginger. I would definitely try throwing some into gingerbread and seeing what happened, however! I'd use the finely grated fresh root. I don't think the results could fail to be interesting.