{"id":3762,"date":"2024-12-30T03:21:45","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T11:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=3762"},"modified":"2024-12-30T03:22:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T11:22:37","slug":"endings-and-beginnings-and-food-and-drink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2024\/12\/30\/endings-and-beginnings-and-food-and-drink\/","title":{"rendered":"Endings and beginnings and food and drink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight my mood shifted dramatically. I like to think that this signals a better year for all of us in 2025. For certain, it signals that a friend had a birthday and that I got to taste a yuzu sak<span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman, serif;\">\u00e9<\/span> (light and slightly fizzy and perfectly delightful) and am maybe a little drunk. I seldom get drunk. I used not to be able to (trust me, friends tested this, many times) and now that I can\u2026 I don\u2019t care to any more. Tonight was an exception. I avoided the wine and only emerged to taste the various types of sak<span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman, serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>. I like the sake gin, but I adored the yuzu sak<span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman, serif;\">\u00e9<\/span> and so I drank two glasses.<\/p>\n<p>All I got from drinking was being very relaxed and talkative (and I am often talkative, so even that was nothing new) and a very enthusiastic discussion of the foodways of Japan and South Korea. I was also given two small bottles of cooking sak<span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman, serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>. I am supposed to be writing up a literature study now, but my mind is fixated on the best dishes to make with cloudy cooking sak<span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman, serif;\">\u00e9<\/span> and clear cooking sak<span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman, serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>. Australian-made. I am thinking chicken. Maybe using the same technique I use to cook chicken with verjuice. Maybe something different. I shall put my dream-brain on the problem and emerge with something wonderful for my first dinner next year. I shall eat the chicken and rice with tabbouli (my grandmother\u2019s recipe).<\/p>\n<p>Quite obviously, me slightly drunk is not a lot different from me slightly sober. I think about food history, pop culture, and what food I should be cooking with cool ingredients. I might do some shopping for more cool ingredients tomorrow, for delivery in the new year, just to provide continuity of thought. And I shall finish my literature review tonight and put the books away so that the friends coming to dinner for Chanukah tomorrow have chairs to sit on. I will be offering them tortillas with various fillings and much salad. Also cherries and apricots and iced tea.<\/p>\n<p>This is maybe the best way possible to spend the second last and last nights of the old year. With friends, having enjoyable conversations, not a single racist in sight, and dreams of what to do in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>May you also have a very fine last two days of a not-so-good year, and emerge into a far more delightful 2025. I know it will be more delightful because I have publications emerging. One of the stories that will emerge is exceedingly sarcastic. This is another very good continuity between two years. I like the thought of all of us dumping the bad and enjoying the good.<\/p>\n<p>Happy 2025!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight my mood shifted dramatically. I like to think that this signals a better year for all of us in 2025. For certain, it signals that a friend had a birthday and that I got to taste a yuzu sak\u00e9 (light and slightly fizzy and perfectly delightful) and am maybe a little drunk. I seldom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,406,636,56,19,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-food","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-publishing","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3762"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3764,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762\/revisions\/3764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}