Monthly Archives: October 2010

Iron Angel

Before turning novelist, Alan Campbell worked on developing Grand Theft: Auto for a living, and it shows. Not that this is a bad thing; I quite liked Iron Angel.

Campbell’s debut Deepgate Codex trilogy (Iron Angel being the middle book) is punk something or other. Steampunk? Gothic punk? Dieselpunk? None of these categories quite fits. It’s the story of a deep, richly imagined world where life sucks. For some deific political reason that is not fully explained (yet), the goddess of Heaven has closed her gates on the world. If you’re dead, you’re screwed, because everybody is going to Hell now. If you’re alive, you’re screwed anyway, because Hell is planning to stage an invasion. Iron Angel describes the movements of the ordinary and some not-so-ordinary people who have gotten caught in the crossfire.

Campbell’s descriptive power reminds one of the work of Mervyn Peake and Clive Barker. And if you know who those two writers are, then you should be very, very afraid of this book. Like the bit with Cinderbark Wood. Good Lord. There’s a lot of brutality and you might say that humanity is in a bit of a tight spot, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Amidst all the villains, there are some characters who are quite definitely good people, and they know how to fight. Recommended.

The Congee Incident

Back in August, I went out to a Chinese restaurant with a couple of old friends from Carleton. I had just moved into the Twin Cities prior to starting grad school and I was living in this temporary housing thingie like a cross between a motel and a dorm room. No money and no refrigerator space equals peanut butter and jelly and canned green beans. Anyway, I figured I could scrounge together enough to go to this restaurant and see my friends.

I ordered congee. It was mind-blowing. In retrospect, this may have been because it was the most flavorful thing I had eaten in a couple of weeks. It’s like this savory rice with chewy bits in it and flavored with ginger. We were having a ball, I was slurping away, Wing was telling me all about how congee is like the chicken soup of the Chinese community – it’s what everyone eats when they’ve got the flu. And ever since then it has been my mission to recreate this wonderful congee.

I knew from Wing that the basic principle is that you put some rice in more water than you usually use and then you boil it forever. And I knew from the restaurant menu that there was pickled egg and ginger in it. So I took some rice:

Kelp and pickled eggs from the Asian foods market near where I live:

I cut those up and threw them in the pot.

Can o’ mushrooms from the Rainbow Foods. Also thrown into the pot.

Ginger, salt & pepper, chicken stock, garlic, teriyaki sauce.

I put it all in the Crock Pot and let it rip. A few hours later, what do my wondering eyes behold?

OH GOD. This dish is going to be legendary. That was one of the most godawful disgusting things I have ever created. This ranks up there with the Kohlrabi in the Soup Incident and the Chinese Five Spices Incident. It smelled like low tide and the texture was like mucus. After I threw it in the trash I had to take the trash out because it was stinking up the whole kitchen.

Next time, I am going to look up a recipe for congee before I begin.

***Update***

I went and looked up an actual recipe for congee. Turns out you’re supposed to add one pickled duck’s egg, not the whole six-pack. That may have had something to do with it.

Sign That You are a Nerd #34

When you write notes to yourself on Post-its, you use a little triangle to stand for the word “change.”

And Now for Some Utter Nonsense

Amborella! Ella! Ella! Ella! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh!

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Extra Goodies

There’s not much recipe to this one; it’s just a modded version of the chocolate chip cookies on the back of the chocolate chip package. I upped the amount of vanilla, added a bit of coconut and toffee bits because I had them on hand, added some allspice and clove, and replaced 1 cup of the flour with whole wheat flour. Results of the experiment:

• Turns out it’s okay to make cookie dough the day before and refrigerate it overnight. I wasn’t sure about this since it the recipe involved baking soda.

• You can’t taste the coconut. It didn’t do any harm, but why waste your coconut?

• The toffee bits melted, which tastes nice, but I wanted crunchy bits. I won’t bother with these in the future, either.

• The allspice and clove: yes, please!

• The whole wheat flour: nice nutty flavor.

The Landmark Center in Downtown St. Paul

It used to be an old government building, with a number of courtrooms and the surveyor’s office, of old things. Now the building’s a historical landmark and there’s a history museum on the inside.