aaaaahhhhhhh!

Well, I made my Pot-au-feu and am now reminded why a friend calls it "pot o' food." My god, even with the vastly reduced quantities I used, I still have huge amounts of food. I got smart, though, and packed up a bunch of single servings and stuck them in the freezer. I think the variety of all the meats and veggies is what makes it so good; I don't think the original version as posted online with just beef sounds interesting at all. Julia's description said the name means "pot on the fire"; the pot was put on the fire and whatever was handy was thrown in and was left to cook slowly all day. I have no idea why I got such a strong urge to make this, unless the relatively simple holiday meals left me feeling atavistic. Weird, but I am now well supped. VERY well supped.

I am also enjoying the music site that nomadicmedic posted a few days ago. It doesn't have "alternative" setting, but has certainly provided a suitable variety of music tonight. It shows what's going to play next, which is handy, especially since it doesn't have a setting for "for god's sake, NO BOB DYLAN!!" Ahem.

I read an interesting mystery yesterday and am still trying to figure out how I feel about it. I mean, I liked it well enough to seek out the next book in the series, but it's damned strange. The book is Eight of Swords and the protagonist is a '60s radical who's been hiding for 30 years because of something he did back in the day. The author is playing coy about exactly what it is, but there's no statute of limitations, so I'm assuming somebody died, probably in the explosion that supposedly killed our protagonist. I liked the character. At the end of the book, though, he goes to a meet with the knowledge that he's going to kill a man, and he does. The guy has a gun and was going to kill HIM, but our man gets the drop on him. He does think "I'm going to have to live with this the rest of my life" and in the interest of fair play, speaks to give the hit man a chance to surrender. Then when he swings around with his gun, bam. I think it bothers me that I identified with him, a lot, at least till we got to the shooting-in-semi-cold-blood part. All the killing in Pulp Fiction didn't bother me as much as this did; that whole thing was so far removed from any reality I know that I didn't identify with anybody.

My cat, however, brings me back to my reality-- my purpose in life is not to kill bad guys, or even worry about the ethics or morals thereof, but to provide her a lap to flomp in, and scratch her belly when it's presented to me. Which it is. She's most undignified, and I love it.