Noodles

Last weekend I made noodles from scratch. That's right - flour, egg, salt, basil, oil, stirring, kneading, rolling out the dough, and, finally, cutting the noodles. Then drying them. This takes quite a while, but they were really good. They have much more flavor than dried noodles from the box and accompanied perfectly the chicken soup I made from scratch (that was a lot easier). Still, they're just noodles and it took me about 2 hours to make them, so I'm not sure it was worth it. How did our ancestors find time to do anything besides farm and cook? This took me a while, but I didn't have to feed the chicken that produced the egg, harvest or smash up the wheat to make the flour (I have only a foggy idea how flour is produced) or do whatever it is one does to get olive oil. Nor did I mine the salt. So our ancestors ate well, but I wouldn't trade places with them, even if I could. Unless it was just at dinner time. Below is a picture of the noodles cooking.

Tuesdays and Thursdays

Monday, Wednesday, Friday I am an intern. Tuseday and Thursday, I sit at home and study Chinese and China. It's great: I learn tons of stuff, there's no pressure to learn anything I don't want to learn and I go at my own pace. What I learn now should really help with responsibilities in the fall. A friend told me about "The China Brief" a weekly publication by the Jamestown Foundation covering, you guessed it. It makes me realize how much I don't know. Join me in my humility at jamestown.org.

Another perk of working at home: no showers until after the late-afternoon run. Sure is hot out, though. The high today is 99, the high tomorrow is 100. If it were late July right now, it wouldn't seem so bad. But it's not late July, it's mid-June, and today is just one day in a long entourage preceding summer's most ruthless visitor: August. But at least we're not in Mexico.

Look, some bananas:

A new blog

Same me, new blog. This one has comments. So go ahead, comment.

You can still view the posts from the old blog by clicking on the "Old As Dirt" link under archives.