Technical wins and a accidental cooking

 So, last evening I got the DVD player hooked up to the ancient little TV upstairs. Ages since I'd used it, found I'd started up a videocassette which was lurking in there. Then did all kinds of plugging and tracing cables back to their source, the printer and scanner cables complicating the process.

Finally got the DVD player and the TV on at the same time. Then ensued a lot of juggling with two remotes, one does one kind of channel, one the other, one does volume, finally got the channel changed to the one designed to transmit DVD signal. 

Then spent a nice evening learning how to sit and watch TV. And to figure out what the people are saying, not knowing a lot of the references.

Today, technical triumph numero duo, got the outside faucet drained and shut off. Usual trips up and down stairs. The last person to adjust the valve was the plumber who said he'd tightened it so the leaking would stop. It did.

 But it was not easy to switch the valve back off now that it was tightly fastened by a burly guy. Water on the patio everywhere. Two trips up to try switching it off further. Rubber glove for traction. Finally it stopped. The line is now empty, the faucet open for the winter, the valve upstairs shut. 

Today I had no intention of doing anything about food, in fact I was looking for something different on YouTube. Famous last words.

I found this cook, he's vegan, I'm not, but some of this is really good to try. This dish comes in later, read on..

I first got an alert about vegan cheese, hm.

But first..

I've been thinking about some soft cheese, paneer or labneh, but don't have the doings in the house.

Then when I saw this great vegan cheese idea, food started to happen. I do have cashews, so I did this paneer kind of thing, added lemon juice to curdle it.

 I didn't see curds, but I went ahead and gently squeezed the bag of cream, as per instructions, like paneer,  and now it's draining, like labneh, overnight.

That's a yogurt container full of water to weight it for steady draining.

 I'll show you tomorrow if it worked.

I didn't have the cashew milk he used, so it was one of those but first times again.

I made cashew cream from just nuts and water, blended and left standing couple of hours, while I made another dish from his channel.

 I used four parts water to one part nuts by volume. He did eight to one but that looked a bit thin to me. He made cashew milk, I went for the cream, figuring the more fat from the cashews, the more cheese would result. We'll see. If it does I'll make crackers to celebrate.

Then suddenly Chickpea Masala happened

Look at that list of ingredients

And all the stages

Except I didn't have chickpeas, used cannellini beans and chucked in that little can of mushrooms I had tried, and decided better in a complicated dish, thinking it would add nicely to texture without being obvious. I did have most of the spices, though, including the pink salt and cardamom pods.

Since I'm not vegan, added in a little can of chicken breast. And subbed curry leaves for bay leaves. And cayenne for paprika. Otherwise it was exactly the same..yeah.

It made three meals. I might serve it over rice. And noodles. But today I ate it as it came.

And wondered again about the nonlinear shape of my days.

In the middle of this, I stopped to watch an online event from Princeton art museum, which is closed, but anyway closed long before the pandemic, being totally rebuilt much bigger. For years it's been a favorite Sunday afternoon destination.

 Sir David Adjaye is the principal architect and today's lecturer with all sorts of slides explaining his intent with all the design features. You can't help but learn from him, and he's careful to talk in terms that people can follow without being architects.

 They record these events, and I expect you can find this and a lot more on their website. Princeton is making a serious effort at inclusion in how they're designing this place, not favoring european and us art over the rest of the world, opening to women and minorities much more effectively. Bit by bit.