(no subject)

I'm in the middle of everything.

I've done my planning for tonight's teaching and printed my teaching notes and handouts. I've done a bunch of small things for Masques. I'm halfway through the first recipe tests for Conflux, which I'm also using in my class tonight. I still have to pack my teaching bag, but that's an easy task tonight. I have a testing table for the rest of the Conflux test recipes, so sometime today I can send out a call for testers and start sending out recipes to those who have already asked. So many pies and cakes!!

All this and I am 1/3 of the way through everything I need to do by Thursday. I made a list, you see. Lots of people are running to me with questions and queries and need for help and if I didn't keep a list of the essentials I'd get into very hot water very quickly.

Conflux Southern Gothic banquet - yummy recipes just waiting to be tested

Volunteers wanted. Louisianan recipes from the nineteenth century - amazing stuff (and mostly, not so hard).

Email me at banquet(at)confluxdotorgdotau or at any other address you might have. Let me know how many recipes you are happy to cook before March (1, 2, 20 - I do not hate numbers as long as they are above zero) and any food restrictions you might have.

I need everyone! There are over 400 recipes to test at this stage (though I am going to get the numbers down quickly) and I can't possibly eat them all. If I do, I will need new clothes.

(no subject)

About that concert on 16 February, it appears that Susie is the same Susie who is friends with my sister. It is a very, very small world, where, in a concert hundreds and hundreds of miles away I have known two of the performers since childhood and am related by marriage to a third.

(no subject)

For a few minutes in tonight's class, all sorts of things fitted together that normally occupy quite different sections in my life. It was like succeeding with a particularly difficult puzzle without even knowing that I was playing with it.

I cooked the first recipe for the Conflux banquet testing. It was delectable and got this new class (on writing one's family history - a writing and research and history class, please note, not a genealogical one) talking about taste memory and how it could affect how the students talked about and write their family histories.

Everything just flowed from there. The class just came together and started exploring some really cool things. I kept it all together through the material I had planned to teach tonight. Everything from note keeping systems that will make their research life easier to how big political events (specifically Reconstruction in Louisiana - it tied the cake together with the rest of the subjects we were discussing) can have a big impact on taste memory and family culture. The students made it bigger than it was, though, and have set the bar very high for next week.

When one of them (jokingly) asked for homework, there was a half-wish for it by at least some of these very adult students. When I allocated food duties (to build on the taste memory and the cultural function of food, but also to train their verbal skills and to encourage them to look further into their specific family traditions) the schedule was filled faster than I've ever seen it.

I think my Tuesday nights are going to be fun for the next few weeks.