Perfection and Sentiment, With a Side of Altered Brain Chemistry

 

                                                      MILK does a body goooooood, y'all.

The paneer turned out PERFECTLY!

No I do not have glamor shots.  They are on my phone, and my phone is refusing to release them without a titty fucking and a blank check, so here is a picture plucked from the innerwub that looks pretty much exactly like how it turned out:

                                                                    Cue angel chorus!

It was as simple as simple could be, I must say.  Bring whole milk up to a boil, then add one teaspoon of citric acid in one cup of hot water, and foof...it gently separates into snowflakes and clouds like magic.  It was one of those cooking moments when you try a new method and it blows your mind, like mounting a sauce with butter and watching it thicken, when logic would seem to suggest otherwise, and you stand there like a muppet going 'Whoaaaaaa' at your stove like it just grew a pair of tits.

Paneer is the dairy version of tofu. It's only flavor is protein and creaminess.  (Shut up, ya filthy minded trollops.)  It's the depth of the sauce and the pungency of the other ingredient in the dish that sinks into the paneer and flavors it up, and the sum is far, far greater than the parts.

As tends to happen, home-made is infinitely better than what you'd buy at the store (plus you know what's in the stuff you made.)  The difference is astounding, both in flavor and texture.  Home made is like a sliceable cloud of rich,wonderful potential. Store-bought, even the artisanal stuff, is like someone took a golf ball and beat it with a rock.

 I will never buy paneer again!  And cheap? Holy crap I saved $3.00 a pound! To fuck around and have fun in the kitchen!

Here is a link to the recipe I was making:

https://aishcooks.com/2015/10/29/saag-paneer-creamy-spinach-and-paneer-curry/

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Holy shit I've been married for 37 years.

Ask me this tomorrow, I won't know the answer since I'm the one who forgets sizes, phone numbers, birthdays,  holidays and anniversaries in this house.  The Biker is the one who has a memory that borders on the eidetic. I have a memory like a rubber hemorrhoid doughnut.

And so 'twas me that went "Ruuh?" 

 

when he announced yesterday that we would be staying the weekend in Anacortes, and here I am, aniversarying my ass off, eating expensive chocolate in bed and drinking Bushmills out' the neck of the bottle, ripped to the tits on a certain schedule A substance and lolling about en dishabille in our snazzy hotel room.  It is BLISS, children.

I've gone over our Anacortes holidays so many times here I won't tire you with it.  Suffice it to say that this is our ideal getaway spot and dream retirement destination.   It is what Washington State is really about.  Unlike the little red blight of Trump holdouts and fundamentalist-separatists that is the Fourth Corner where I live, this is the Washington I moved to, lo back these many years ago, back when the Stainless Steel Amazon was but a wee Stainless Steel Amazette; where everyone is tolerant, where the ages and races mix and share cultures and music and ideas, the exact opposite of what the rest of the world thinks America is like.  

It was a SUCH A RELIEF to get out of lockdown, out of our house, out of Sumas, out of the Fourth Corner, and come down south into the real world again that I literally cried on the way here, I was so happy.  It also helps that it is an astounding Fall day. The sun is out, the sky is bright blue, the leaves are burning down towards Winter in every color imaginable, and all the fields are plowed and black, waiting for the rain to bless them.  Everyones gardens are glorious with the years' last flourish of color - and the home gardens here in Anacortes rival mine, and many surpass it.

I look back on the bad times in our marriage and am absolutely fucking amazed that it lasted this long. You take a ferociously intelligent, German, hardass mans' man from Alaska and add a study addicted, flamboyant Bi-feminist-hippie street fighter from Portland Oregon and there's going to be an exchange of Molotov cocktails occasionally.  We've almost gotten divorced twice. Signed the papers and everything.

Yup.  

And yet here we are in defiance of all logic and common sense, 37 years together, having a blast, behaving badly, watching Mila Jovovitch shoot mutants on TV and joking and laughing and doing our favorite things and you know what?  This is the LARGE LIFE. We know each other better than any other person on earth, and have each others' backs because we consciously decided to do that thing.  Our marriage is so much deeper and means so much more now, compared to the days back when our relationship was based on a mutual predilection for Jaime Lee Curtis, Phillip K. Dick, motorcycles, antisocial behavior, marathon blow jobs and carbohydrates - interspersed with being pissed off at our daughter.

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I am high as fuck. It's awesome.