Menage à Trois Bingo

Ever since I watched the Untamed for the first time eighteen months ago, I have wanted to know: What does lotus root & pork rib soup taste like???? And since I am a white person with no Chinese relatives or friends, and don't know of any local restaurants that serve it, my only option was to make it myself and hope I got somewhere close.

I visited my go-to international grocery last summer and perused the produce section but could find no lotus roots. I even asked, but they told me they didn't have any and I should call another day to find out whether they had them. Being moderately phone-phobic, that wasn't going to happen.

Then I took a Chinese class from the local community college this spring, and the professor kept mentioning a different Asian grocery. Week ago I went there with my daughter, and found lotus roots: fresh, dried, frozen, or pickled! I bought some fresh ones, and also some pork ribs and dates, and a giant pile of other assorted Asian food items I hadn't eaten in a while, and went home thinking I'd make soup the next day.

Except then I looked at the recipes--don't ask why I didn't do that while I was still at the store!--and there were several additional ingredients I still needed. We went back Saturday and acquired those, and I made the soup yesterday.

Speaking of recipes. I had found three, and what I made was different from all of them for various reasons.

Recipe #1: attached to a (quite good) fanfic https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979641#work_endnotes

Recipe #2: Woks of Life
https://thewoksoflife.com/lotus-root-pork-soup/

Recipe #3: Wok and Kin
https://www.wokandkin.com/lotus-root-soup/

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I hate peanuts, so those were getting left out no matter what. I could only find one kind of dates, and I didn't find goji berries (I didn't ask. I imagine the store had them, but I wasn't bovvered).

My ingredients list
- lotus roots
- pork ribs, blanched
- about 1 c dried seaweed, soaked overnight
- about 1/2 c dried scallops, soaked for 1/2 hr in hot water
- about 1/2 c dried cuttlefish, soaked for 1/2 hr in hot water
- 10 dates, soaked for 5 min or so in hot water
- two hunks of ginger, sliced
- half a head of garlic, chopped






I followed the ao3 recipe directions to blanch the pork ribs. Boiled everything together and then simmered it for four-ish hours. I did not add any salt because the fishy items were already salty. The house was REDOLENT of garlic while it cooked.

Immediately after putting everything in the pot:



And SERVED:



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I also made chili oil (by filling a small bottle half full of red pepper flakes and a bit of garlic powder and then the rest of the way with sesame oil).

My overall opinion is that my soup was very good but a bit too fishy. I think about half as much of the dried scallop and cuttlefish, and possibly less seaweed as well. It would probably be good to actually add the scallions at the end like I intended to, and a bit more grated ginger may also help. Might add a bit of pepper next time. A few drops of my chili oil were a nice addition.

I have really not been posting this year. Even less than normal. Which has in the past sometimes been a sign of depression but really has not, this year. I've been surprisingly content and happy, what with all the *waves at the outside world*.

Last real updates in February and March. Dance lessons! AirBnB night! All kinds of goals related to singing!

And then the world changed, and we've hardly left the house since mid-March. Choir rehearsals & concerts cancelled. I now work from home 100% (Tammie and Chris have been doing up to 3 days a week in the office but probably an average of 1 day/week over all, due to illness or covid exposure or whatever). I've put gas in my car exactly three times in eight months.

Tammie was ill for six weeks or so in the spring; at first we thought Covid, but it wasn't. We still don't know exactly what it was, but she's been on steroids and several other new meds and is feeling mostly better, although the meds have had their share of unpleasant side effects.

Chris is doing more-or-less the same as usual. He's recently received a VA disability rating: we finally convinced him to apply, after 30 years out of the army when he should have been getting disability much of this time.

Rosa and her dad were both exposed to Covid recently, while she was with him for the weekend. They got tests (his was positive, hers was negative) but neither of them showed any symptoms, and after quarantining together for two weeks she's just come back home.

I've been generally healthy, modulo the usual summer allergies. I walk the dog twice everyday (occasional exceptions for nasty weather).

Back in September my parents extended a Thanksgiving invitation to all of us (which would be a first; C&T have only been to my parents' house once, on a random weekend in April a couple years ago--we all stayed in a hotel). My sister and her family were also going to come up from California. I'd thought even then it would probably be a bad idea due to the pandemic, and Tammie was disinclined to go regardless unless I come out fully about our marriage (which I need to do, I know; we've been married almost three years now). Then a few weeks ago we found out that my sister's breast cancer had recurred, and she was going to be on chemo/radiation so wouldn't be able to travel, but Rivendell!we were still welcome....until last week when dad called to say sorry, he was going to have to rescind the invitation because Wisconsin is a covid hotspot. I said that's ok I was about to decline it anyway, since Missouri is a hotspot too and also Rose was just exposed. But I've set up a family zoom for the Saturday, and hopefully that will at least be nice.

CHARIS has been meeting virtually, every other week or so, which is NOTHING like real choir but at least offers a chance to sing and hang out. We all have to be muted, because internet lag would make the sound awful. But we did make a virtual choir video that I'm in, at 1:17:40ish of this cabaret showcasing choir members and friends.

Fandom has been kind of my refuge and community as well. I am still very fond of Good Omens but I have not been as connected to that fandom since September, because I fell in love hard with The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi. I did attend the virtual Ineffable Con in October--which I'd never have been able to do in a normal year, since it was based in London--and co-presented a panel on podfic, watchable here! (sorry about the first five minutes of tech issues)

I have been INCREDIBLY prolific with podfic this year so far. Over 48 hours, 400K words so far, and I hope to get to a full 50 hours. Doubt I'll make it to 500k words, but one never knows. I have a lot of time off the rest of the year, so it could happen. If I get 70K more, I'll have surpassed a million words total podfic (and nearly half of it from 2020).

And in completely unexpected news, I've been WRITING. Not a lot, and some rather niche interest pairings (lol), but still. It's basically all been MDZS, except for a few hundred words back in January on an HP/Amber crossover that I've re-abandoned subsequently. Here, listen to me and some friends sing an MDZS filk that I wrote. And then hate me for the next several weeks because that shit is an EARWORM.

Part of the reason for all the writing is inspiration from a new fandom friend, Ollie. They and I watched the last 20 or so episodes of the Untamed together (ie, starting the ep at the same time and live-reacting on chat) . We've been chatting A LOT on discord DMs, and they like to send me snippets of writing or plot ideas or headcanons. Which I started sending responses to, and now we have an actual co-written fic, a bunch of plotted/outlined/partially-written stuff, and one set of fic-written-by-them and sequel-written-by-me (to be published this week--with my shield or on it). Plus I have a (small) pile of ideas and outlines all my own. I am shooketh.

AND AND AND...Under the influence of my infatuation with MDZS, I started doing Chinese lessons on duolingo. I've done almost 60 days straight, and a total of 65 or so? But because I'm me, and always like to make things difficult for myself, I am ALSO doing Japanese at the same time. As my longtime readers know, I have a bachelor's degree in Japanese and was near-fluent once upon a time (in the late 80's/early 90's) but I've forgotten a lot. So I had been hoping that I could resurrect that knowledge as well, given that languages-not-english seem to all live somewhere similar in my brain. And it's been working, I think. I understand tons more of the anime that I watch with Rosa than I did even three months ago. Still use the subtitles some, but less and less.