Author Archives: Samantha

Addicted to Story

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I am addicted to story.
Poetic and dreamy as that sounds, the reality is not so rosy.
My first thought was actually “I am addicted to Netflix.” It was only after I’d given the matter more thought that I realized the problem goes much deeper.
This past year I spent a lot of time watching mysteries and detective shows via Netflix. This was partly due to having first one shoulder, then the other, freeze. Frozen shoulder meant that there were some months when my shoulder ached a lot and carrying out everyday tasks, like moving laundry out of the machine or putting away dishes, could get quite painful (especially if I knocked something over and tried to catch it with the wrong arm!). So I spent a significant amount of time distracting myself with Netflix. Sometimes I checked out audiobooks from our library. It would have been nice to spend the time catching up on reading, but repetitively turning or flicking pages seemed to result in worse pain later.
As I improved and could do more, I kept watching shows on Netflix. Sometimes it was sociable—I watched with my daughter. She knit or drew; I cooked or put dishes away. Or at least, I tried to.
Because that’s the point, the reason for this post. I cannot watch a mystery and follow a recipe without missing parts of the plot and, too often, missing parts of the recipe as well. It isn’t just the problem of turning away from the television either, though obviously that makes it easy to miss a crucial clue or facial expression. I’ve tried to clean while listening to audiobooks. There isn’t anything to look at while listening to an audiobook, but my cleaning still suffers noticeably.
The problem is that my mind cannot successfully follow a story and make decisions at the same time. If I am listening to find out whether the body in the coffin really belongs to the missing lawyer, I am not simultaneously deciding whether I ought to degrease the stovetop, or whether it would be more productive to clear the papers off the table. To decide that, I have to tear my mind away from the story—and while I do so, I miss part of the story. The story experience is weakened, and the cleaning takes much longer than it should.
The same applies to any task that requires attention. I had started a simple sweater that required nothing but knitting around and around for ages. That I could knit while watching a show.  Then I started a shawl in its place, because it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to pull a sweater over my head for months, but I could still drape a shawl over my shoulders. (Eventually I had to stop work on the shawl, too, because the repetitive motion of knitting resulted in increased pain.)
But even though the shawl pattern was very simple and repeated only four rows, most of which were either straight knitting or straight purling, the shawl suffered from being worked on while watching Netflix. I kept having to rip back stitches because I’d missed the occasional yarn-over, or because I’d mistakenly been purling in a knit row.
So I know, from repeated and varied experience, that I cannot watch a movie (or listen to an audiobook) and simultaneously follow any but the simplest recipe or knitting pattern, or do any but the most straightforward cleaning (drying dishes, e.g.). I know this.
And yet, as I start wiping counters or pull out a soup recipe, I find I am filled with the urge to turn on the television and see if there is anything good on Netflix that I haven’t watched yet. Or maybe just watch a Poirot episode for the umpteenth time—after all, I can’t miss as much if I already know who did it. I really, really, really want to watch something! The idea of just cleaning or cooking, without the accompaniment of story, seems so… bland.
It wasn’t always this way.
Still, why am I calling this an addiction? It isn’t really, and the term gets thrown around much too casually already. I won’t suffer physiological withdrawal from leaving the television off. The urge to watch Netflix isn’t alienating me from my family—they like watching it, too. It isn’t interfering in my daily life… well, not much. Not unless you consider the number of hours I spent watching Midsomer Murders, all 116 episodes, even though it isn’t nearly as good as  Death In Paradise.
I’m saying “I’m addicted” because even though I know I can’t successfully combine watching shows with other tasks, I’m having a hard time keeping myself from trying to do so—over and over again. The lure is just too great.
Further, I’m saying I’m addicted to story because it doesn’t actually matter if the story comes in the form of video, audiobook, or paperback. Books tend to be less of a problem because I really can’t do anything else while reading a book, so I don’t try. (If it is an ebook, I can walk on the treadmill while reading it, but walking is automatic enough that I can do both successfully.)
Having said that, there are some situations where my absorption in a book does pose a problem.  If I start a book in the evening, I often don’t want to stop reading to go to bed. I stay up too late and don’t get enough sleep. That has happened many times.
Also, I tend not to be very responsive to my family when I am in the midst of a good book. My daughter will not let me forget one evening when she was young and I wouldn’t put down my book long enough to read her a bedtime story. I suspect I asked my husband to take over that one night so I could keep reading—I almost always did read to her—but that isn’t the way she saw it. That night, she and the book were in competition for my attention—and the book won.
Now we’ve reached the part of the post where, having outlined the problem, I propose a solution.
Umm, willpower?
Disconnecting the router?
A resolution not to watch/read/listen to any story that isn’t truly worthwhile, and to give my undivided attention to those that are?
Well, I’m still working on it. I would be pleased to hear from anyone else with a similar problem, especially if they have found a solution that works for them.
Till next post.
The much-abused pink shawl in progress.
P.S. In case you were wondering, that total is 174 hours of Midsomer Mysteries, or about a month’s worth of forty-hour work-weeks. And it wasn’t the only thing I watched.

Chocolate Tofu Mousse–a foamy chocolate tofu for you

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Today I’m going to give you a recipe for Chocolate Tofu Mousse.
Six bowls of Chocolate Tofu Mousse
Why would you want a recipe for Chocolate Tofu Mousse? Good question. There are plenty of delicious recipes for chocolate mousse that use wonderful rich cream instead of tofu. There are even recipes that don’t use any dairy at all, without using tofu. And I’m not going to tell you that you won’t taste the tofu. My daughter claims not to be able to taste it, but she likes tofu so much that she eats silken tofu right out of the package. Unless you like tofu as much as she does, you’re going to notice a slight tofu taste. It takes a little getting used to.
One possibility is that you are looking for a dessert with protein. Between the egg white and the tofu, this mousse does have some protein. But beware! This is not a health food. It has sugar and chocolate. It contains no vegetables, and probably has negligible fiber. If you want something really nutritious, make a fried tofu dish with lots of veggies, or a veggie-filled omelet! Those can be tasty, too.
It is possible that you are looking for a dairy-free mousse. Sorry, I use milk chocolate in this (although you don’t have to—the original recipe uses three ounces of bittersweet chocolate.) Alice Medrich has a dairy-free mousse in Bittersweet (I had the wrong title earlier) Chocolate and the Art of Low-fat Desserts, and I even made it once, though that was twelve years ago. I remember it as being tasty, if rather intense.
You might be looking for a dessert that will boost your calcium intake. I am still checking to see if there is a silken tofu that is high in calcium. The brand I used for this recipe turns out to use a different coagulant, apparently, and so has little calcium. I don’t know if that’s a feature of silken tofu more generally, as compared to the non-silken type used for frying.
It’s probably pretty safe to say that it has less fat than more typical versions of mousse involving heavy cream. It doesn’t taste as rich either—you wouldn’t want to serve a cream-based mousse in the portions I show here. You’d get indigestion. I’m not sure whether “can be eaten in larger quantities” is actually a selling point, but there you are. A foamy chocolate dessert that is lighter than a cream-based mousse.
Chocolate Tofu Mousse (6 generous servings or 9 discreet ones)
12.5 oz silken tofu (the kind in aseptic packaging is unrefrigerated till opened)
3/8 cup Dutch-process cocoa
2 oz milk chocolate, chopped
1 ½ oz semi-sweet chocolate chips (about ¼ cup)
3/8 cup boiling water
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
9 tablespoons liquid pasteurized egg white
½ cup sugar
Bring measured pasteurized egg whites to room temp or thereabouts if possible. They will not whip as well as regular egg whites, so give them every advantage. Also be sure that the measuring cup, mixing bowl, and whisk are all free of oil or grease. (Note: you want to whip egg whites around room temp, whereas you whip cream when it is good and cold.)
Ingredients
Puree the tofu in a food processor until it is velvety-smooth, perhaps 2 minutes.
Velvety smooth silken tofu
Combine cocoa and chopped chocolates with boiling water in medium bowl. Stir till smooth. Then I like to add the chocolate to the food processor, along with the vanilla, and really mix it into the tofu. But you could also put the pureed tofu in the bowl and stir there, I expect.
Rinse bowl (if you did as I do) and then scoop all the chocolate mix back into it.
Chocolate mixture blended with silken tofu
Be sure to wash or at least thoroughly rinse all parts of the food processor before the tofu dries on it.
Now whip those eggs whites. Start in stand mixer (if you have one) with a whisk on medium. After they get a bit frothy, start adding the sugar. Increase the speed to high. It takes a while, maybe ten minutes, to get soft droopy peaks. Maybe if you continued, you could get it stiffer—I chicken out at this point since I’m not confident pasteurized egg white can whip that stiffly. Soft peaks still works for this mousse.
Whipped egg whites
Gently fold about a quarter of the whipped egg white into the chocolate mix to lighten it. Then add the lightened chocolate mix to the bowl of egg whites and fold till just blended. Spoon or pour mixture into dessert cups. Cover with plastic wrap (plastic should not touch mousse) and refrigerate three hours or more before serving.
 
The original recipe for this (from Weight Watchers Magazine) was for a mint-chocolate tofu mousse that used only bittersweet chocolate and cocoa, and added 3/8 tsp peppermint extract. You can use 3 oz bittersweet chocolate instead of the mix of milk and semi-sweet, for a more intense chocolate flavor. I would not recommend more than 1/8 tsp peppermint, though.
You can use powdered egg white and water instead of liquid egg whites. It would probably whip better. I just don’t like the extra step of hydrating the egg.
Till next post.

Sun and suncatchers–rainbows in my room

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In winter, the sun shines into my study.
Chunky faceted crystal suncatcher in front of window screenIn my dreams, it shines on a room that is serenely uncluttered, where ferns and houseplants flourish, and where crystal prisms in each window cast drops of rainbow on the walls and floor.
In my dreams.
In fact, my study is so cluttered that I’m having trouble finding papers when I need them, and my houseplants are surviving tenuously on intermittent waterings. But I do have suncatchers in almost every window, and when the sun’s angle is right, my study is filled with tiny rainbows.
A glass ornament hung on a ribbon or plastic line isn’t going to stay perfectly still, and so the rainbows drift, lazily, around the room. If I nudge the prism, the rainbows jitter madly about for a moment, then race across the room, gradually slowing to near-stillness.
There’s a reason rainbows are associated with unicorns and fairies and other magical creatures. They are nearly magical themselves—sunlight split into colors. Sometimes, when I glance at a suncatcher from just the right angle, it lights up in a momentary blaze of color—green, maybe, or violet. I imagine that someone watching would see a tiny rainbow drifting over my face at that time, entrancing me.
The whole idea of rainbows brings out my whimsical side. Years ago, I lived in an apartment where I hung a suncatcher in the kitchen window. Mornings, I held my cereal bowl out so I could pretend I was flavoring my breakfast with rainbow. I still like the idea of rainbow-flavored cereal.
On the practical side of things, there are some difficulties in hanging chunky glass crystals (the best kind for rainbows) in a window. As I mentioned, they can swing if accidentally bumped into, and while I don’t know who would win in a contest between crystal glass and window glass, I’m sure it wouldn’t be good for either. A suncatcher on a shorter cord would be less likely to swing into the window, but it would also catch the sun less often. So most of my suncatchers hang in windows that have interior screens. The crystals would look better in windows without screens, but the screens provide extra safety for the windows.
The sun only comes through the crystals at certain times of day and only when it traces a more southerly path through the sky. But when I think about it, maybe that’s a good thing. If I had rainbows every day, all day, they wouldn’t seem as special.
Till next post.