Eggs

 Hi Natty!  How are you, my darling?  How's the food?  Lots of turkey left over?  Turkey sandwich?

Making poached eggs made me realize that I haven't cooked that many eggs in my life.  Sure I've cracked countless thousands of eggs to put in dough or batter, but I never had to cook eggs on a per order basis.  Here I found a really nice video about cooking eggs, a knowledge everyone should learn, especially potential mothers:

I found some hieroglyphs that made excellent backdrops for Mary Unknown7's photo shoot.  I took care not to choose anything that depicted anthropoid figures.

Poached eggs

 Hi Natty!  How are you?  How's your health?  Many people get lonely and depressed during the holidays, and it affects their health.  I don't really celebrate public holidays because I have to work everyday, so it's all the same old day to me.  I hope you are healthy and happy.  I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart, and I will marry you inshaAllah.  Don't you worry about a thing, everything will work out just awesome for us inshaAllah.  You are so beautiful.

It occurred to me last night that I have never cooked poached eggs, so I decided to try making some for dinner today.  So I looked at YouTube, and followed the video above to poach 3 eggs to go with my fry bread.  My first attempt failed, but I managed to get the other two correct.  So I had a couple of poached eggs and one somewhat poached egg swimming in curry with fry bread for dinner.  Would you like some poached eggs, my love?

Sundays are supposed to be black but I forgot, so Mary wore gold instead.

Adventures in fake beef

 Hi Natty!  Did you enjoy your Christmas?  You have a beautiful family.  And that is a beautiful ugly sweater.  I didn't see your sister there though.  Was she the one with you in the bathroom?  That can't be...

Allah gave me the evening off, so I used the time to make soy meat again.  This time I added mushrooms with the blended soybeans.  The mushrooms didn't make much of a difference, though.  What made a difference was limiting my use of flour.  I used brown gravy mix to get the flavor of beef.  Technically, brown gravy mix isn't vegetarian because it has beef fat in it, but I am not a vegetarian.  I just happen to have a lot of soybeans right now.  The soy burgers were a success, but I couldn't get all of the whiteness of the soybeans to go away.  It was inside the burger, so you can't tell from the stock photo above.  But definitely, soybeans are better than tofu at making burgers.  My next attempt will be to make soy steak.

This was supposed to be a red and white outfit, but it turned out pink and white.

Merry Christmas, Natty

 I hope you have a fabulous day.  I love you!

I can't stop raving about these girls!  They are so adorable that I have to give them a good solid plug.  It's a brilliant concept: they look so everyday in their faces and bodies, but have so much charisma and energy.  You have to see their entire presentation "Live on Thumva" to appreciate the ridiculous amount of energy these girls have.  I can see it in their eyes that they are genuinely thrilled to be there doing what they do.  And I can't take my eyes off Suzuka!  She's a marvelous frontwoman.  Her glasses eventually fell off almost towards the end of their set.  She threw it to the side of the stage, and I couldn't help but look for them.  It's a miracle those glasses stayed on that long with her bouncing around like a jackhammer for half an hour.  I don't agree with the prostration to a mountain, but that's Japanese tradition for you.  I doubt the music will get past Japan, but I'm sure the music team will do better.  Plus you need to sing in English to be international, and that's probably not going to happen.  One has to grow up speaking English to sing properly in English but you never know, it might happen.  I wish these girls happiness with their lives, and I hope they stick together because I want to see more of them!

No disciples

 Hi Natty!  Are you enjoying yourself over there?  Keep nice and warm and cozy!  Oh my love, there's not much going on over here.  I cut the grass in the evening, then had takeout rice for dinner.  Nothing special for lunch  either, just noodles in soup.  That's the perfect lunch for me, I could eat that everyday.  Anyway, I'm going to rest a bit before doing Mary's wardrobe.  You have a nice peaceful holidays!

Guru

 Oh skiing!  How fun!  Aren't you supposed to ski downhill?  I've never skied in my life, even though I spent many years in Utah.  I probably never will.  You're not going to find ski boots in my size, I'm at least a size 11.  Yeah, my feet are permanently messed up.  I'm a casualty of the food business.  I tried making fake beef tonight from blended soybeans, flour and brown gravy mix.  I saw the vegetarians use tofu, but why bother with tofu when I can just use soybeans?  The flavor was correct, but the texture was wrong.  Maybe I need to study more.  Maybe I do need to use tofu.  I think I need to deep fry the fake beef strips until almost crispy before I use them for pepper beef and onions.  By the way, are you still a yoga guru?  Why not?  Why don't try doing classes online, use YouTube or something?  I would watch that.  Eye candy!

Aren't these girls terrific?  The name of the group is Atarashii Gakko!  They certainly didn't learn those dance moves by themselves: they had professional training in dance and singing.  Do you agree that the girl with glasses is just great?  The whole team is fantastic, I sure hope they stick together.  But when they grow up, they're going to run out of energy!  Maybe not.  If you saw their TikTok videos, you would see them dance with a woman who is obviously their guru.  She had lots of energy.

Mary wants to join a band: Episode 4

 Hi Natty!  How's your Christmas coming along?  I hope you are spending some lovely time with your family.  I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart.  Please don't you worry about a thing, because everything is going to work out just great for us InshaAllah.

One major problem with live music over the Internet is latency.  Latency is where you would speak into the microphone and it would come out seconds or longer later on the other side of the line.  When one is performing alone like Mary Unknown7 does everyday then latency is irrelevant, but when there is more than one musician then latency is an issue because it creates time distortion, which compromises the music.  But people speak over the phone across the world all the time!  Yes there are solutions to latency that some professionals use but alas, I don't have any of them because I can't afford them.  As it is, I am the only human who recognizes that this music is from Allah that I openly invest in it.  Perhaps there is a solution available to me that I am not aware of but with what I have, I can see only 2.

1.  Follow the singer.  If the band were to follow the singer, then there would be no latency at their end, and that would be what the listener hears.  The singer unfortunately would not be able to hear the band until later, and if that were the case then the singer might as well not hear the band at all so as to not get distracted.

2.  Follow the band.  If the singer were to follow the band, then there would be no latency at the point of the singer, and that would be what the listener hears.  Unfortunately this would put the mix at the mercy of the singer, who sends it over the Internet back to where the band is playing.  If the band played softly then people at the venue would not hear the time difference, but how practical is that?  The band is usually loud.  And if the band heard the mix coming out of the venue speakers, then the band would be thrown off by the latency, and everything would sound awful.