Tereza Okava

Roxy Van wrote:-Marmite in savory dishes, esp. vegan ones. The dark, aged, umami flavor it imparts is similar to soy sauce, which I also use. All my beans get a small scoop of marmite. I'm currently wondering if a dash of it would improve my vegan pesto.

I bet it would! I know it was always the magic ingredient in my gravies.

If you're not vegan, worcestershire sauce is also a great something-something sort of magic ingredient.

Eric Hanson wrote:always open the door

something that I always think of as a woman when someone opens a door for me.... one of the few things I did learn from my parents, along with calling everyone sir/maam (woot army family)...

If someone's coming up behind you and your hand is on the door, it's only right to hold that door OPEN, be they man/woman/butcher/baker/candlestick maker.*
It can lead to funny moments when the man behind me really wants to hold the door open for me. I prefer to laugh at the improbable situation that two humans want to outdo each other with niceness!


*Maybe DO let it slam if it's a raccoon, alligator or zombie.

i really like making the 'easy sachets' to put in with stored clothes and bedding.

I'm really enjoying seeing how some customs still persist and can be reimplemented. Because for every person who says 'hey nobody does X anymore' someone else will see someone doing X that very day. I think a lot of these maybe aren't as far gone as we think.

I was raised by two people from non-functional families, so I didn't learn a lot of the 'normal' cultural stuff and quite frankly am not sure what was normal. But starting when I went off to boarding school I learned what other people did, and it was a buffet of things for me to adopt as I moved from place to place, and those became our customs-- what my daughter does now, for example. One of those is to never arrive at someone's house without a gift, another is to send food to a family where someone's just died, leave a bag of garden produce on my neighbor's gate, things like that. Anything that's not common here is explained by the fact that I'm not from around here (and I've also passed the age of caring what others think of me).
It's kind of like Permaculture-- you never know who you're going to influence with your actions.

Barbara Simoes wrote: the teeny-tiny hard to see kind of ants

here in tropical ant paradise, these ants can be really, really hard to get rid of. I have known people to keep all open food in the refrigerator (including and especially the sugar bowl) and then undertake frequent cleaning with really smelly cleaning products (vinegar, oils, etc) to encourage them to go elsewhere. They seem to mostly be an urban thing (in my house out in the suburbs I've never had them, but in our shop, which is in a more central area of the city, they come in every year) and take real effort to get rid of.

I for one am thrilled that in many cases now the hug/kiss that used to be an obligatory greeting where I live is often now just a fist bump or a wave etc. The worst thing is hugging and exchanging face germs and then the person mentions that they just got out of the hospital, just got over the stomach flu, etc etc.

i just came across the AI researcher [specializing in critical thinking and the importance of humanity in the age of AI] who has talked about this at length (wanted to share the other day but couldn't remember her name. She's got a substack, youtube, etc but I only have accessed her instagram content. https://www.youtube.com/@iamshaeo ).
this is an instagram post, the comments are really much more informative than the actual post because they get right into the discussion about the books. https://www.instagram.com/p/DbYO4HGsurg/

and also https://www.instagram.com/p/DbYBT3AshmI/, where they discuss this happening as early as 2023 (we're only hearing about it now) and some reasons why.

I agree with her general takeaway: the big overarching challenge is that DO books need to be digitized, but for everyone's use. Gutemberg and academic collections. A book that is rotting in a private collection or never gets accessed on a stack is not going to be of use to humanity. The more that get scanned and put into a publically accessible format, the better. Supporting libraries and researchers who are doing this work makes sure it stays in the public domain.

Nice find, Bruce, I'd also be throwing all that in the cart in a hot minute!
You hit a lot of my flavor favorites with the rye and molasses and caraway, but especially the fennel seed, which I think makes everything about 85% better.

My morning started putting out fires from a mistake I made yesterday, but we get back on the horse.....

Judith Browning wrote:
I have a reputation for not buying stuff like that so will have to go incogneto or something to get a jar😏

You know you'll run into everyone you know at the Walmart as soon as you have it in your hand!! (I think he might have said he got it from the dollar store)