The humble but mighty soybean

 

Hi Natty!  How are you today, my darling?  I hope you are being vigilant about guarding your health and safety during these pandemic times.  I've been suffering eye strain lately.  I love computer work, but my eyes can't seem to keep up with the workload.  But I discovered recently that if I were to take a nap after I post this letter everyday (usually after the sunset prayer), I can work the rest of the night without my eyes having any trouble, or needing any of that eye ointment.  It seems to be working for me, I don't know if would help anyone else, especially those who stay glued to the monitor without eating, sleeping, taking a shower or a dump.  You have to take breaks, and give your computer a break too.

I'm not good with soybeans.  My last attempts at making tofu and soy sauce were miserable failures.  But I'm determined to master the soybean somehow, someway.  Soybeans are almost as cheap as lentils here, so I went ahead and bought a kilo.  Soybeans, being beans, are time consuming.  First you have to soak them, only then can you cook them.  And being beans, you have to slow cook them to death like chili.  I didn't do that today, I just cooked them until they lost their snap, making them slightly easier to eat.  I ate them with some of that slow cooked steak I made the other day, some dried onions and salt.  The rest of the beans that I cooked, I salted them and put them in jars to ferment a little.  This is going to take a while.  I'm not good with soybeans, but I'm determined to get better.

Friday

 Hi Natty!  How's life in sunny California?  I hope you are keeping healthy and safe.  Not much going on here for me, other than the usual.  It's past sunset right now, and I'm still eating my dinner.  Curry pups.  I was going to cut the grass over at my grandparents' grave, but the sky was so dark I gave that up.  It rained only a little, though.  Nothing special on the menu today either.  Just curry pups.  I'm going to finish my dinner now.  I love you!

In lieu of greens

 Hi Natty!  How are you today, my love?  I pray that all is well with you, that you are healthy and having a wonderful time.  Oh!  I'm a bit tired right now.  I had to cut the grass by the side of the road this evening.  I had between 4:45 and 7 pm to clean my mother's kitchen, take out the trash, cut the grass, cook and eat my dinner, and shower.  I managed to get all of that done with 6 minutes to spare before they called the sunset prayer.  Good thing dinner was steak and egg tacos.  If I had cooked rice, I would still have been eating when they called the prayer.  It's pretty simple.  I had the mini dough balls ready for the soft tacos, I just had to shape and stretch them out to cook on a hot plate.  The steak was already cooked, I just had to slice it up, heat it up in some grease, then crack a couple of eggs on top of it and sprinkle some salt and pepper.  I didn't have any lettuce, though.  The options growing in my yard were mint, basil, green hot peppers and young cashew leaves.  Perhaps the mint would have tasted good, but I went with the young cashew leaves.  It tasted OK.  I'm full, alhamdulillah.  Want some?

Practice, practice, practice

 Hi Natty!  How's it going?  I hope you are keeping healthy and safe.  How's your cooking coming along?  Oh, don't be discouraged, my love.  Everybody fails, what matters is that you practice, practice, practice.  Eventually inshaAllah, you will be feeding your family, and the most annoying feeling in the world is having your family refuse to eat your cooking.  Start with the things you like to eat, and perfect them.  Please your stomach first, then please your taste buds.  Just don't give up OK?

Everything is curry for me today.  I bought a whole lot of curry yesterday to steam my fish head, then to slow cook a kilo of cheap cut beef.  Which left me a lot of curry left over, so I had curry noodles for lunch.  I also made lentil fritters which has curry spices in it (I'm becoming hooked on the stuff.  It's best when hot, but it's still a great snack to nibble on 8 hours later while I'm doing wardrobe with Mary Unknown7), plus curry pups for dinner.  I used steak instead of ground beef for the curry pups and boy, they are heavenly.  Yeah I do get tired of curry, but not yet.  Maybe tomorrow.  It's not as if everything is seasoned up to 11 with curry, sometimes the effect is very mild.

My theory of curry is curry spices seasoning a fond (sauce) then expanded with a fatty milky broth.  Some people argue that you need a different curry blend for fish over meat, but I don't see it that way.  I just use my favorite curry powder for all my curry recipes.  What makes the difference is the quality of fish or meat that you use.  For example, the cheap beef I bought was buffalo meat from India.  It produced a great steak, but the curry left over had a distinct aftertaste.  It tasted like... India.  I've never been to India, and I don't have the desire to go there either.  All I need for my India fix is a good curry.

Ah! My first online order arrived

 Hi Natty!  How are you?  I hope you are keeping healthy and safe.  Study hard!  I finally received my first online order today, right in the middle of Mary Unknown7's vocal session.  Well technically, it's not my first mail order.  I used to order lots of stuff from Musician's Friend back in the States, but it was from a paper catalog.  The online sales process (and delivery time) is the same, just paperless.  But it was a USB condenser microphone for Mary.  Dang!  I forgot to check if it had a monitor out!  Looks like I'll have to buy another one with a monitor out, and it looks like I won't be exchanging Mary's presidential microphone (it's a Shure SM57) any time soon.  She prefers that microphone anyway, but large diaphragm condenser mics have a wider range, and I'm sure the world wants to hear all the rasp and gargle.  I'll see what I can do with this one first.  I haven't tested it yet.  I just barely opened the box at sunset.  It's a "Rofeer", and it came straight from mainland China!  I guess the Chinese don't bother with hijacking US brand names anymore nowadays.  It's all the same old shit anyway.  It's nice and heavy, and the hardware is all metal too.  It's probably made from dried up bat's blood.  Just kidding!  I had a lot to do today.  I had to pick up my parents' meds in the morning after I blew the dust out of my house, then I went to the supermarket, and I ate out for lunch.  I bought some fish heads at the supermarket, so that's what I had for dinner, with white rice and hot sauce I made yesterday.  I love fish heads!  I also bought a chunk of meat which I cooked to death in the leftover broth from steaming the fish heads. With cheap cuts of meat folks, it doesn't matter if it mostly gristle and fat, it all melts nice and soft if you cook it long enough.  But use a small fire!

Linden Labs has been messing around with its viewer updates lately, so much that it's becoming unusable.  I am sure they'll fix the problems, but I had to switch to Firestorm today, which is the choice of most SL veterans.  Firestorm does seem to have more options for photography that doesn't break my meager computer, so I'm sure you folks will notice the difference beginning tomorrow.

A gang of beautiful cats

 Hi Natty!  How are you?  How's your daily life?  Please be vigilant about guarding your health and safety.  How are your brothers doing, by the way?  I don't look them up, so I ask you if they're OK or not.  You can't tell a grown man what to do, or even warn him about anything.  He's going to do whatever he's going to do.  But just because you're strong, doesn't make you invulnerable.  I suppose you and your brothers live in close proximity to each other.  You and your family are like a gang of beautiful cats.  Just looking at you all makes people jealous and angry, unless they happen to be cat lovers.

I've been trying to perfect my lentil fritters recipe lately.  They are known as "masalode", not to be confused with "pakoda", which has no lentils in it.  I'm basically following my mother's recipe, but I'm making them crunchier and hotter.  Sometimes I let the dough sit in the cooler for a few days, so it becomes sour.  I like lentil fritters.  Like I told my Mom, they're cheap, filling and taste good.  I think you would like these too, I'm sure you have tried Indian food before.  You should try to make some of your own.  You will need a blender.

Congratulations

 I don't normally click on your tagged photos, Natty.  I guess that would be obtuse of me, but it's not as if I never do so.  So I looked at them today, and behold: "Oh, she's doing her masters at USC!  That's why she's in Venice Beach!"  I'm very unhappy that you chose to risk your life pursuing your masters at the global epicenter of a pandemic when you could have done the same in Vancouver.  From a spiritual perspective, it doesn't really matter where you are, if God sticks you with the disease then it's going to happen.  So all that aside, congratulations on furthering your education.  You are doing something I could never have dreamed of doing, due to the path I have taken in life.  I am sure you will be excellent, so please make us prouder of you than we already are, study hard and get the best results.