There was less of it usable than if it hadn't been sitting in my living room for a fortnight, but there is one dehydrator load of apples drying, and one saucepan of Apfelmus cooling, and... I think the latter is probably going to get frozen (at least in the first instance) because I am not at all convinced I have water-bathing a couple of jars in me right now. That might be a December problem.

But. The pulp leftover from the medlar jelly is frozen in Future Sticky Toffee Pudding-sized portions. The quince sorbet is in the freezer in its tub. And the apples are As Above. I am very very glad to have got that all dealt with, but alas have no other thoughts to contribute. <3

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but I did spend this morning sat down with my printouts and my page markers and my highlighters, and I did this evening take some photos of the relevant pages of a book I've loaned to someone else, and the essay (I say, grandiosely) tentatively entitled The Obligatory Page And A Half On Descartes: against a new dualism is definitely In The Works.

I haven't quite worked out the It is a truth universally acknowledged... opening sentence, and it's probably mostly going to be a series of quotations accompanied by EMPHATIC GESTICULATION in the form of CAPSLOCK, but it's not actually (in its entirety) germane to The Book, so here the indignant yelling can go.

"Ugh," I thought, "why am I feeling weirdly migrainey? My Next Phase Of The Menstrual Cycle is very much not due for like another week? I've been weirdly super regular basically since it reasserted itself post-surgery?"

... TURNS OUT that I had lost track of time a bit and I'm not a solid week early at all, it's a whole two days. This Means Some Things:

1. ... still super regular by my pre-surgical standards,
2. I will not be at the worst stage of my cycle during Significant Travel next week, and LAST BUT VERY MUCH NOT LEAST
3. the migraine is still in fact very clearly associated with hormonal changes even when I'm not expecting them, take THAT Headache Is The Second Most Common Form Of Psychosomatic Pain ~statistics~ (and ongoing anxiety).

Irritatingly, the medlar jelly recipe I used last time I made the stuff, over at the RHS, is no longer extant (web.archive.org link!). Herewith my own readily findable copy of the thing, plus my notes on what I'm actually doing this time around.

(For amusement: I apparently first found the medlar sticky toffee pudding recipe in 2023...)

( Recipe as written )

( Notes )

... Nor shall I say what objects of vision must be agreeable or disagreeable to it; for from what I have already said about the other senses, it is easy to grasp that light that is too strong will injure the eyes and moderate light must refresh them; and that, amongst the colours, green, which consistss in the most moderate action (which by analogy one can speak of as the ratio 1:2), is like the octave among musical consonances, or like bread among the foods that one eats, that is, it is the most universally agreeable.⁴⁰

⁴⁰ What the basis of this remark is is unclear, and although various writers have made suggestions about the relations between colours and sounds, the attempt to quantify green on a par with an octave certainly cannot be sustained. It is worth noting that Descartes will later advice Elizabeth to rid her mind of sad thoughts by reflecting on the greenness of a wood (Descartes to Elizabeth, May/June 1645, AT iv. 220).

(trans. and footnote courtesy of Stephen Gaukroger.)

[cn time-restricted eating.]

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1. I will grudgingly concede that the ridiculously overengineered parsnip risotto from The Modern Vegetarian is actually very tasty and it's very obvious that without the THREE DIFFERENT PREPARATIONS OF PARSNIP it would also be significantly less Parsnip. It is not, however, sufficient to convince me to update The Risotto Rule. But, as I say, it's very tasty and we have at least another day (possibly two?) of it, which I am cheerful about as a concept!
2. Blessedly my repeat prescription request had made it to the pharmacy by the time I swung by to pick up A's IOU and a new thing, so I won't need to make any more trips there this week, at any rate.
3. Chillis in the greenhouse that I really need to bring home before I lose the gamble on frost are looking happy still despite a week+ of neglect.
4. Through hunting duvet covers (the one I bought for myself when I first moved out of the Den of Christians and into My Own Flat, in very early 2014, has tragically failed catastrophically) I have been reminded of the existence of incredibly gaudy (watercolours of) tulips, and I'm probably not going to spend slightly silly money on watercolour stripy tulips, but I'm very glad they exist.
5. We are continuing to Really Enjoy playing Inkulinati together, and I now definitely have enough grasp of the mechanics to collaborate on What We Wanna Do Next. One level fits quite neatly into some of the slightly awkward chunks of time in our week; I am looking forward to tomorrow's. <3