Beauty break, and reading

Here's a quilted piece I'm showing you with the permission of the maker, on Spoutible,  because it's a great handling of color and color progression

Just enjoy it! I could talk color theory but let's not. Just let it work on you. She's a gifted artist in quilting, and I thank her for permission to show you.

Friday morning I spent more time than I expected to on the Yeung Man Cooking recipe, 30 minute curried lentils.

 Here's the cast of characters, with substitutions. No red chili oil, so I used the same quantity of that fiery Indian condiment Gary's neighbor sent recently, no coconut cream, so I used Greek yogurt. No spinach so I omitted it. No basmati rice so I used brown.

No red lentils, so I used brown. None of it mattered, because it's strongly seasoned and  came out well.

It's a great meal but you really have to be in the mood for all the stages. Even I, usually dauntless, was a bit daunted once under way with baking the tofu, rinsing and cooking the rice, rinsing the lentils, dicing onions and mincing the garlic and hot pepper, and toasting the seeds.  Yes, did I mention crushing the cardamom pods..

I also served it differently, with the curried mixture over the rice instead of beside it.

I definitely like his idea of adding crushed cardamom pods to the rice. Very aromatic,and they come to the surface, so you can easily find and remove them.

Anyway this was good, despite many stages, and I'll do it again. Meanwhile this is enough for several meals. I like knowing I have dinner ready before I even get up in the morning.

I'm reading several books at once now and this one has eclipsed the others

It's a wonderfully written journey, head to toe, of the landscape of the human body, by a medical practitioner in several fields who is also conversant with the history of medical practice.

When I was studying life drawing I often thought that the human body was like a landscape, with hills, valleys, folds and intersections. This book reminds me very much of that experience. He's respectful of patients as well as of the mechanisms of the organs.  

One of his most stunning chapters is about the eye and how it processes light traveling across the universe in nano seconds to illuminate what we're reading.

Pretty good, but less exciting, is

A recommendation from Susan Hill as being in the style of Barbara Pym. Older widowed woman, living in a hotel happily, helping sort out, or interfere in, the lives of younger family members and a former lover. 

 It's okay, mild enough, but no resemblance to the piercing intelligence of Pym.  I don't think Hill has grasped the point of Pym. I shouldn't be surprised, since she doesn't get Austen either. 

She seems to read to find out what happens, when that's the least of your concerns with Austen or Pym. She does grasp Anita Brookner, but then Brookner's more evident, a wonderful writer, painting a clearer image of a world, and without the irony I love in Pym and Austen.

I don't think Pym and Austen are alike, just that they provoke work from the reader, as a participant, not as a passenger.

I just finished yet another reading of 

the first Heyer I ever read, as a teen, recommended by our history teacher! She was interested in the eighteenth century historical accuracy of Heyer's depiction of  France and England, and we were interested in the romance angle.

Waiting at the library are 

and 

Both are Hill recommendations or at least mentioned warmly in her year of reading book. The second is a volume of the Cazalet Chronicles which I read and loved years ago online and I think I'd like to revisit it as a paper book.

Susan Hill gave me a few good ideas, despite my carping.

Friday morning I Signed The Heatpump Contract. The Rubicon is firmly behind me, along with the contents of my wallet.

Happy day, everyone, and remember, when you're sighing about floating apostrophes, "would of" and damages being mixed up with damage