Salmon Aphrodisiac

I swear.  I started out intending to make a Salmon Skin Salad, and ended up making something else that created a scene from a sappy chic flick where we were feeding each other and licking the sauce off our fingers…and…things…*cough*

Here are the ingredients:

3 tbsp peanut oil

cracked black pepper

ground white pepper

ground cayenne pepper

ground ginger

a small pinch of whole mustard seeds

1 tbsp fish sauce

1/2c worchestershire sauce

dash of lemon juice

2 garlic cloves

1/4c dried cranberries

1 filet of salmon w/skin

First thing, I took the fish and cut it up into edible sizes (not that it really matters when you sautee and it falls apart, but that’s what I did), then tossed on a few dashes of fish sauce and worchestershire sauce to let it marinate.

Then, I started the sautee pan cooking on medium head (see? already a freudian typo! I meant “heat”!) with the peanut oil and added all the peppers, the ginger and the mustard seed.  I let the mustard seed pop, then added the fish sauce and the worchestershire sauce.  I swirled that around the pan until everything looked even, then added in the garlic, lemon juice and cranberries.  Once this seemed to start saturating the cranberries, I added the cut-up salmon and skin.  Turning it constantly to keep it from scorching, I let it cook until the salmon turned color completely, then turned off the heat (for now, haha).

*I* served it over an Italian mix Salad (basically a Spring mix without the baby sized lettuce or Frisee), but I think it would do well over Ginger Rice :9

What happened next…well…let’s just say it made a previously argumentative night into a rather snaxy one ;)

It probably didn’t hurt that I had Dominique A playing in the background… >.>  (ahem–sexy french vocals) And it went really well with a bottle of 2010 Our Daily Red Organic California Table Wine…

Tags: sexy, sex, nude, naked, LOL, love, living, life, recipe, food, salmon, salad, aphrodisiac, aphrodesiac

The Influence and Empowerment of Writing

My writing, as is most, revolves around the study of the human condition.  I’m one of the watchers, the studiers, one of the ones that sit and watch a scene of life unfold and view the participants and their actions as each take their turn to play.  I try to watch them and determine what their perceived actions are versus their possible intended actions, and, possibly from a slightly masochistic streak, I also try to determine what their motives were in varying between the two.

For example (making a simple case):

John walks into the room.  Brenda and Sherri had been gossiping furiously over another co-worker and what it looked like they might have survived the previous night by the unholy circles under their eyes and supposed sound sensitivity.  The girls maliciously suggested a drunken binge.  As soon as John walks in, however, all talking ceases and Brenda blushes, looking away.

John thinks they were talking about him.  Sherri smirks behind her hand.  John asks, “What’s so funny?”, to which Brenda immediately snaps almost angrily, “Nothing!”

John snorts, walks off in a huff, and now Brenda drops her head in her hands.  After a moment, she speaks quietly to Sherri: “See?  He doesn’t even like me.”

Now.  How many different interpretations of THAT can you come up with?  Several, I’m sure, and that’s half the fun!  I love watching things like this play out because they formed so much of my own perceptions growing up.  So many people that I misconstrued to think one way when I was younger, informed me later it was rather to the opposite at the time it happened.  How can you not become fascinated with the quadrille and calculation of emotion that is life?

It brings us high, it rips us low, it levels the field and takes nations to war.  By every definition and example, it rules our lives and that’s why I find writing…empowering.  I have that power in my hands, even as I write this to you.  Every writer that endeavors to master his or her craft has that power and it is intoxicating.

Tags: blog, empowerment, fiction, influence, life, living, LOL, love, power, promise, publish, science fiction, writing

Blaspheming and Pontification over a Stubbed Toe

First, I’d like to point out that my computer did not recognize “pontification” as an actual word.  How sad.  Just in case, I checked the good ole’ www.m-w.com and it was there, all right.  *sigh*

We live in a  world where “friended” is more easily recognized as a word than “pontification”.  We also live in a world where I, immediately upon stubbing my toe as I miss a stair tread, burst into blasphemous phrases the likes of which make my dogs cringe in fear.  Why?

We’re so accustomed to crude language and elementary vocabulary, we’re almost offended when someone reaches above and uses that great vast welling abyssal of lexicon available to us.  Many times I find people will get angry with me for what I think are simple or common words (ie: gregarious, dismal, droll, cacophony) and will then resort to cursing or blaspheming to “get the upper hand”, so to speak.

Isn’t that interesting?  That the use of coarse and crude language instills power in us, some sort of control over the situation…  Why would my first instinct be screaming “Son of a Fuck” upon stubbing my toe (amongst other, more damning things, I assure you) instead of just “Ow” or “Well that was stupid of me”?  Why?  I lost control over my body for a split second and therefore felt the need to scream expletives to the air – not another soul around but me and my pets, and quite possibly eavesdropping neighbors.  No one saw me (of any consequence).  It hurt like hell, I’ll admit it, but that’s not why I yelled.  I’ve been hurt worse and not admitted a sound, so it wasn’t the pain.  Perhaps it was the emotional equivalent, needing to be released, something like a pressure valve?

Do we therefore have an emotional connection to physical pain that has to be released before we can resolve the physical pain?  Yelling, crying, laughing, fainting…

It certainly makes me wonder about the mysterious mechanics God built in these bodies.  Just how intertwined are our physical nerves with our emotional brain centers?  I’ve heard many stories of a good deep tissue massage or accupuncture session creating amazing emotional reactions in the client, most of which are from past, blocked, or stored emotions (or at least, that’s the theory I’ve been told).

So my next conclusion would be that emotions are much less ephemeral than I originally thought.  They must therefore be something rather concrete, physical and measurable.  If they are so physically tied to the body and its reactions (think about how tied up you can get with stressors affecting you) then emotion simply CAN’T be intangible.

I wonder if, somewhere, there’s some group of people in a lab working on this, trying to quantify and measure these things.  I know this can’t be an original thought ;)  Besides, they’ve been putting nodes to people’s sleeping heads to try and capture DREAMS for decades, if not longer.  That’s not much more different.

And then there’s always the Wachowski brothers…  ;)

Tags: fanfiction, publish, writing, fiction, promise, exercise, blog, science fiction, kitten, sex, aliens, planet, hate, LOL, Earth, love, green, climate, living, life, electrons, cursing, curse words, fuck, expletives, blaspheme, the matrix, wachowski, dreams, emotions