my ukulele progress

My chutney with the added sweetness of apple and pineapple was a great success. The chicken wasn't so hot, literally. I have a bad habit of being too casual with meat and heat. Part of this emanates from the fact that I like my meat fairly close to raw and partly because I primarily cook plants which aren't so picky when it comes to heat and doneness. I already know the solution. I inherited a meat thermometer from my wife's mother some 30 years ago...but I just forget to use it.

Speaking of pineapple and apple, that reminds me of a strum pattern that I learned years ago. I believe it is one of those andalusian/flamenco strums and it has a very definitive stress pattern. It is eleven-beats (or just shy of a measure and a half in 8th notes). You just strum up and down...but when you strum you recite to yourself "pineapple pineapple pineapple apple" and you stress the stroke that is on the beginning of the word and de-emphasize the other strokes. Here's what i mean:


down: PINE (stress)
up: ap
down: ple
up: PINE (stress)
down: ap
up: ple
down: PINE (stress)
up: ap
down: ple
up: AP (stress)
down: ple

This strum pattern makes it possible to take something hackneyed like a blues progression or a jazz sequence and create something new with the 11/16 time signature. Sometimes I alter the pattern with a note in anacrusis between the final Apple and the beginning Pineapple. It kind of gives it a punchy triplet ending.

I had been playing a rumba strum just for some variety and serendipitously stumbled across a variation. It has some added percussion and right now it is difficult to wrap my head around it because it is totally screwing up my muscle memory (or as my students would say: "it is literally screwing up my muscle memory." They love dropping a literally into a sentence because they think it makes them sound smart but it literally makes no sense. After all how can a percussive beat literally screw something up; it has no hands or arms or any means by which to actualize a screwing motion).

Here are the 8 beats of the rumba variation:

downstroke (stress)
upstroke
mute/strike the strings with the medial phlanges of your loosely formed fist
fling fingers out (stress)
tap fingers onto treble side of soundboard
upstroke
downstroke (stress)
upstroke

You see, it isn't too difficult. What's difficult is playing it really fast and consistent so that you get that undulating rhythm.
 
Catching up on some studies. I read some scholarly works pertaining to the corpus of epistles I have been reading and I cannot believe how naive they are. For some odd reason the authors have some kind of vested interest in assuming that these letters are genuine. However most of the problems with this corpus vanishes if you allow that they are fictional.

I just read an article where it says that the letter to future emperor Tiberius which introduces a person into the emperor's inner circle must be genuine and must be true--otherwise it wouldn't have been included. However the letter preceding this one was addressed to the muse asking her to send good wishes to Horatius' friend. Are we to think that since the letter was included that the muse accomplished this feat? It is just too silly. These are fictional letters and the occasions they portray are just excuses for Horatius to be poetic and creative, and to be one of his "correspondents" would be an honor and it would give one the privilege of being in on it.

Anyway...I was practicing my 9 chords and I found a way of thinking about it that clarified much to me. I play my dim7 chords with a barre. And the 9 chord rooted on the C string is just that barre chord with the pinky plunked down on the C string above the barre chord. I was struggling to make that 9 chord shape...or at least struggling to make it quickly enough for music. Once I recognized it for what it is--a dim7 with an extra pinky--then it became easy as pie.
 
Sundays are always a bit squishy for me because I work a bit later but still have to get all my activities in.

To start with I had to make my wife's supper. It isn't one of my feeding days, so I don't have to worry about myself. I made some cod, not because it such a good fish but it was at the market and on sale. I made it with a ton of salt and garlic and even my wife, the maven of blandness found it rather bland. I supplemented it with some chard poached in butter and lime as well as some millet with black strap molasses and bouquet garni. I had suggested using my chutney but my wife vetoed that. I should have just done it without consulting her because it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Then I worked on playing around with the D super lokrian. Around the melody line I interlarded a progression that was more lattitude than attitude because I was rooting the chords based on their positions on the fretboard without worrying about intervals. Here is what I did:

From the D of the scale, move to D#9, then Eø, then Gm7, then I went back down the fretboard using Dm, F9, D13, Em11, and back to the melody.

Sometimes instead of descending back down the fretboard with chords, from the Gm7, I would go down a fret to F# and then arpeggiate thru the F#dim7 'til I attained the C on the G string and that's part of my scale so that I could then melodize back to the D on the 2nd fret.

Or Sometimes from that G on the 10th fret, I would just descend the D minor pentatonic but instead of making a terminal landing on the root on the 7th fret move to the root on the 2nd fret (they're the same note).
 
I had to kill a spider today. I try to abide by the principle that each of us has our own demesne. Spiders inhabit the bigas, the logs that serve as roof beams, and I live down below. I don't climb up to the ceiling and they shouldn't rappel down the walls. This morning a spider big enough to cast a shadow in the nascent diurnal light was running across the bricks. A big, bitey, poisonous bug was trespassing and committing a grave solecism of our living arrangement. It had to die.

Today I was playing around with scales as usual but I became obsessed with a pattern I saw in the super lokrian. On the A string the super lokrian goes as follows b6, go down a tone, b7, go down a tone, 1. A D+ is built off the b6, a half-diminished off the b7 and a half-diminished of the 1. And that pattern repeats all the way up to the 19th fret. It goes D+ (and it is always D+), two half-diminishes, and then another D+. I don't know what to do with this pattern, but it is cool.
 
I saw a resurrected thread about tenor vs. soprano. It is all but dead, so I'm not going to bother with it. If I were, I'd say for people not to form pre-conceived notions. Without any experience with ukuleles, I thought the soprano was ridiculous and just a toy. So I went for tenors and never looked back. Obviously I learned that I was wrong to a degree and in my mind I know the soprano isn't a toy but I cannot unthink what I thought and somewhere deep inside the soprano still makes me snicker. It is a shame to have such a bias and I would undo it if I could.

But since I cannot, I'll just play songs using the B on the 16th fret (sorry Soprano!).

Aside from playing along those largely mixolydian lines, I also thought about my favorite chord shape. It is 4434. It is my favorite shape because if you consider the A string the root, then it is a C#ø, if you consider the C string the root, then it is an Em6. If you consider the G string the root then it is A9. If you consider the E string the root, it is something weird. Shall we call it a G6sus4?

This shape is fun because it changes its qualities depending on the context around it.

That is all well and good but what is the context for a 6sus4 chord? I have been dropping the 6sus4 quality into established progressions to see where the sound fits. For example, I took the most vanilla progression there is, the I IV V in C and made the F an F6sus4. I'm not sure if I like it. Sometimes it sounds like a decent variation but sometimes it sounded inappropriate to me. I will to experiment further.
 
I played a minor 2-5-1 with one shape to someone who isnt a musician nor a ukulele enthusiast nor a jazz fan. Therefore no pre-conceived notions were present to be projected. With one shape I played an F#m7b5 (that's standard) then I went to a B6sus4 instead of an altered B7, then I went to an E9 (instead of something more normal like an Em or a minor major 7). One shape for all the chords of the progression. It was pretty cool.
 
I had a busy day because I did 3 things. If I had an appointment book it would have 365 pages for every day of the year and each page would have one line on it because I try to do only one thing per day. However today I did grocery shopping. then I went to the barber shop and received a hair cut. My main topic for discussion was: is it admissible to hook up with an ex- of a relative. I won't document my stance on the topic lest I offend either side of my readership. Then I went up to the Daskolos Center, which is an outdoor mall with a honey baked ham store, a vietnamese noodle restaurant, an office for the recruitment of all the armed services, a big box store, and a space devoted to housing the voting apparatus for our elections. I did my early voting for the upcoming election.

Among the items I bought at the grocery store, I bought 4 onions, two white and two yellow. I am going to make a batch of carmelized onions. However, instead of cooking the onion for a few hours before carmelizing them, I am going to try pressure cooking them for 5 minutes. Hopefully that will cook them without turning them to mush. Assuming they turn out satisfactorily, I will then fry them and add some cheap balsamic vinegar I bought at the market (I didn't have the gumption to actually drive downtown to my olive oil store where I could have obtained some 12 year old balsamic vinegar that is smooth as silk) and I will balance the vinegar with some brown sugar.

I was noticing that my market, being on the periphery of downtown, caters to two demographics: the upscale and the low-class. The market does have nice things like organic product, an olive bar, a sushi bar, a kitchen that makes fresh rotisserie chicken, enchiladas, burritos, and salchilicas. But it also caters to subsistence eaters. The woman checking out near me was buying soda pop and vienna sausages as her staples whereas I had the whole gamut of fresh vegetables, fresh fish, and some specialty items like an artichoke pesta which I will use with the spaghetti squash I bought since my wife has a phobia of acidic products such as tomato sauce.
 
I would love to take credit for it but it is just a gastrique sauce. I'm not a pro, but what I do is add as much vinegar as I want and then trickle in the sugar until a balance is created. With some vinegars, you do not need any sugar. But for crappy store-bought vinegar, which is only slightly less caustic than kerosene, it requires a few tablespoons of sugar to attain the equilibrium. I do have some cane syrup that I bought a few years ago when I was thinking of making fancy lad whisky drinks with bitters and added sugars. I just never really used it.
 
I would love to take credit for it but it is just a gastrique sauce. I'm not a pro, but what I do is add as much vinegar as I want and then trickle in the sugar until a balance is created. With some vinegars, you do not need any sugar. But for crappy store-bought vinegar, which is only slightly less caustic than kerosene, it requires a few tablespoons of sugar to attain the equilibrium. I do have some cane syrup that I bought a few years ago when I was thinking of making fancy lad whisky drinks with bitters and added sugars. I just never really used it.
Every summer, I collect nasturtium flowers & green seed pods and blender them up, then make an infusion in our home-made apple cider vinegar (it sits for a month or so, lolling in its flavours, then I decant off the solids). This is a magnificent vinegar that I use in a lot of stuff: it has a bit of a floral character, some spicy (not much), plus it's a lovely amber colour.

One of our favourite "finishing touches" that we do with our duck breast (we raise Muskovies) is to add blueberries to the pan drippings, and deglaze with balsamic. I might add a dash of maple syrup if I feel an absolute need for the flavour, but generally it's unnecessary for the sweetness.

Oh my, caramelized onions. Divine. I like to add a bit of chopped rosemary to mine, around the same time as the vinegar. I've also become a convert to onion masala (which I freeze in pucks and use liberally during the year in soups, stews, curries, dals).

What is your choice of vinegars? I do have a few, since different tools for different jobs, you know...
 
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Your vinegars sound divine. I'm afraid I am not such a big user of vinegar. The only vinegar I use is a 12 year balsamic vinegar from a local oil shop. It is smooth enough that you can actually drink it. It isn't infused with anything although I believe the store does sell some infused ones. In fact, I know they infuse because the olive oils I had purchased recently were infused with cilantro and roasted onion, and another one was infused with mushrooms for more of an umami flavor.
 
Your vinegars sound divine. I'm afraid I am not such a big user of vinegar. The only vinegar I use is a 12 year balsamic vinegar from a local oil shop. It is smooth enough that you can actually drink it. It isn't infused with anything although I believe the store does sell some infused ones. In fact, I know they infuse because the olive oils I had purchased recently were infused with cilantro and roasted onion, and another one was infused with mushrooms for more of an umami flavor.
I have really embraced the versatility of vinegar in cooking over the last couple of years. I don't think I'd used it much before, then I started deciding that stuff needed a splash of acid, and then started experimenting with different kinds of vinegars for different purposes. I'm not that adventuresome, I only have about 5 types of vinegars that I routinely use, and they're pretty bog standard (except the nasturtium one). I made a mint infused vinegar one year, and haven't done it again, but might next year. It was pretty good, kind of like how my Mom used to make a quick mint sauce for lamb. It's pretty simple to make your own infused vinegars, if you're curious (1 part finely chopped herb, 5 parts (usually) cider vinegar, infuse for at least 4 weeks, decant off the solids), and the results are quite interesting. I'm not really much of a foodie, but I do enjoy flavour, plus we have a garden full of interesting herbs to play with. We never have enough chives (that's one we struggle with), but I'd like to do a chive vinegar one day.
 
my carmelized onions turned out okay. I don't usually measure things but I was careful to do so in this instance to share what I did.

1. I chopped 4 onions and put them in the pressure cooker, added a little seasoning salt, bouquet garni, garlic powder, 3 cups of water, and a piece of butter about the size of a snark tuner.

2. I pressure cooked it for 7 minutes for this scientific reason: 1 pot, 3 cups of water, 4 onions, 7 minutes. 1,3,4,7 is a Δ7sus4. To be honest 7 minutes was probably slightly too long. The onions were a bit overcooked. I will try 5 minutes next time.

Then I drained the onions and fried them in butter in a 12 inch skillet until carmelized. I added 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar and 1 teaspoon of dark brown sugar.

I haven't tasted it yet. I spread it out on a jelly roll ran and it is cooling.
 
I have really embraced the versatility of vinegar in cooking over the last couple of years. I don't think I'd used it much before, then I started deciding that stuff needed a splash of acid, and then started experimenting with different kinds of vinegars for different purposes. I'm not that adventuresome, I only have about 5 types of vinegars that I routinely use, and they're pretty bog standard (except the nasturtium one). I made a mint infused vinegar one year, and haven't done it again, but might next year. It was pretty good, kind of like how my Mom used to make a quick mint sauce for lamb. It's pretty simple to make your own infused vinegars, if you're curious (1 part finely chopped herb, 5 parts (usually) cider vinegar, infuse for at least 4 weeks, decant off the solids), and the results are quite interesting. I'm not really much of a foodie, but I do enjoy flavour, plus we have a garden full of interesting herbs to play with. We never have enough chives (that's one we struggle with), but I'd like to do a chive vinegar one day.
Here in the desert our acid of choice is lime juice. And I know of some people who use straight up white vinegar for dishes like carne adovada (a local braised pork). It was illuminating for me because when I was growing up, white vinegar was a cleaning agent and not a food.
 
I pulled out my 12 inch skillet and I was saddened at its condition. Those who cook with cast iron will know what I mean. We behold our cookware with a strange fondness since we own our pans for our entire life.

I have a cast iron 9X9 pan and a cast iron lasagna pan. A cast iron wok and dutch oven. I have cast iron skillets of these diameters: 6", 8", 10", and 12". I mostly use the 8" skillet. The 12" one hasn't been used since at least 2019. I do not use it much because it is too big for what my wife and I need. But that doesn't excuse its polymerization. It was patchier than Ted Cruz's beard. I need to refurbish it.

After the onions were cooked, I scrubbed the skillet, coated it with olive oil and now I'm letting the oil polymerize in a 375 degree oven.
 
I pulled out my 12 inch skillet and I was saddened at its condition. Those who cook with cast iron will know what I mean. We behold our cookware with a strange fondness since we own our pans for our entire life.

I have a cast iron 9X9 pan and a cast iron lasagna pan. A cast iron wok and dutch oven. I have cast iron skillets of these diameters: 6", 8", 10", and 12". I mostly use the 8" skillet. The 12" one hasn't been used since at least 2019. I do not use it much because it is too big for what my wife and I need. But that doesn't excuse its polymerization. It was patchier than Ted Cruz's beard. I need to refurbish it.

After the onions were cooked, I scrubbed the skillet, coated it with olive oil and now I'm letting the oil polymerize in a 375 degree oven.
Cast iron is the best. Love it. I've quite a collection myself. Plus a few ceramic-coated cast iron pots that I'd inherited, which are also good. I'm very possessive about my favourite cast iron skillet (it's just the right size, has beautifully rounded edges, and it just seems to cook things exactly so), and get very grumpy when other members of the household casually haul it out and use it. My sister in law hates cast iron, and gave all of her husband's cherished collection to us (her husband & my husband are brothers), and I'm basically figuring that I'm merely caretaking it on his behalf until he's allowed to use cast iron again. You never know... she changes her mind about stuff constantly, it could happen.
Here in the desert our acid of choice is lime juice. And I know of some people who use straight up white vinegar for dishes like carne adovada (a local braised pork). It was illuminating for me because when I was growing up, white vinegar was a cleaning agent and not a food.
Mmm yes lime juice is an excellent acid of choice. We get pretty grim limes here usually, and have to resort to bottled stuff, which can be ok. Yes, white vinegar is a cleaning agent, or a pickling agent. I don't really consider it for adding a splash of acid to anything. I'd use cider vinegar any day over white. But that's just me.

My daughter teases me: she figures I wouldn't know how to cook if I didn't use our pressure cooker. Not quite, but pretty darned close.
 
Maybe you'll understand. It is kind of a joke, but kind of serious. My mother died a little more than a year ago. My father is just kind of puttering around until he dies as well. In the meantime, there is a 10 inch cast iron skillet, as smooth as glass. I know it is there because I have used it in the last couple of years and I remember scrubbing off fried potato pieces when I was a teenager. I need that skillet but I don't know how to get it. I know for a fact my father isn't using it. At most he is going to the grocery store and getting glorified TV dinners or soups. I am the one best suited to receiving that skillet but there are procedures in well-ordered lives. You don't just go and take things from a household as if all the denizens are already dead.
 
My Mom died about a year ago too, and my niece stole her 6“and her 10” cast iron skillets. My Mom was 107, so you can guess how old the skillets were. We never got them from my niece. Just sayin’ . . .

I still like readin’ your food posts — thanks.
 
My Mom died about a year ago too, and my niece stole her 6“and her 10” cast iron skillets. My Mom was 107, so you can guess how old the skillets were. We never got them from my niece. Just sayin’ . . .

I still like readin’ your food posts — thanks.
I actually felt your presence today because i bought some dried cilantro today and I know that you wouldn't be on board with that.

As for my aged father, I saw that he had called today. I called him back and he had just been trying to re-program his phone with its automated numbers. He had my correct number although my brother had told him he needs to update my number. It was very sad because I called my father and had nothing to say to him. I fell back on my vocational scripts and said "now that I have you on the line is there anything I can do for you?" I think I lost quite a few points in how I see myself as a human.
 
I actually felt your presence today because i bought some dried cilantro today and I know that you wouldn't be on board with that.

As for my aged father, I saw that he had called today. I called him back and he had just been trying to re-program his phone with its automated numbers. He had my correct number although my brother had told him he needs to update my number. It was very sad because I called my father and had nothing to say to him. I fell back on my vocational scripts and said "now that I have you on the line is there anything I can do for you?" I think I lost quite a few points in how I see myself as a human.
My husband hates to chat on the phone. He dislikes the lack of extra cues that you get from an in person conversation, and it bothers him a lot. He'll do it, but he struggles. When the other person (e.g. his aging uncle) on the phone doesn't speak at all, or very little, my husband just doesn't cope. So it's hard enough making conversation when you're likely the one putting in most of the effort; I feel it's even harder on the phone because you're not getting that feedback of being in person with them. Don't beat yourself up too much.

I've never used dried cilantro - does it work? I've used dried coriander (seeds from the same plant) and that's effective; I would have thought dried cilantro was about as flavourful as dried basil (i.e. not especially), but then I've not used it so...
 
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