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Found via nihilistic_kid:

I need to get some of this. Just to know. I have long believed that no chocolate could be too dark for me, I who chew cocoa-nibs for pleasure while I bake; it is possible that I'm just wrong. I need to find out. Besides, I can always cook with it...

It deepens like a coastal shelf

It's astonishing, how organised I'm being. I am sorting all the Meccano-pieces of my new shelving into its various sorts and kinds, before I start thinking about fitting any of them together into, you know, an actual shelf.

Thing is, there are forty-odd verticals, over seven foot high, of at least three and I suspect four different designs; there are about 200 three-foot shelves, of at least four different designs. And no, I have no instructions; I do not know which go together and which don't, what roles each design is intended to play. I'm going to have to work it all out from first principles. Which in my case are trial and error. Much error, which will be great trial.

Right now, though, I'm going into town to hear m'friends Valerie Laws and Joanna Boulter (scroll down a little way) read poetry, because that is the sort of thing I like.

Couldn't resist...

I am smarter than 99.25% of the rest of the world.
Find out how smart you are.

Yes, I have my arrogance; and yes, this is the consequence of a perfect score. But don't go look. Half the questions are dumb or tricksy-cute, and the rest are guessable general knowledge. Also, the setters can't spell.

Sometimes, cooking just happens...

Here on my desk, I have a dish of garlic-fried croutons with pancetta, because I gave up smoking lo, these many moons ago (seven years, or thereabouts: so long, I no longer quite remember) but my oral fixation is still with me, and I must have something to nibble. Preferably, it is to crunch.

Down there, on or in the oven, I have a small saucepan and a large casserole dish both full of belly pork doing its confit thing, because I ate the last of what I had last night (after, lawks, these many moons of keeping - not sure how long, because I don't know how to search LJ for the entry where I mentioned it; but anyway, it's been several months sitting under an inch of fat in my larder, and was perfectly fine; which makes this my new favourite way of preserving food, for those of us who don't actually have a smoker); and I also have a tray of pork-rind heading to be scratchings; and I also have a large casserole of lamb shanks cooking down, on account of a shopping accident. And I also have a ham shank making stock for soup tomorrow, so I expect you can guess the nature of the accident. (Why yes, I am the kind of guy who will buy lamb shanks meekly, sooner than point out to his big & scary butcher that what he actually said was ham shanks. Assertiveness? What's that you say...?)(Besides, I like lamb shanks; and I have onion and carrot and celery, and thyme and rosemary and bay, and tomatoes and olive oil and lamb stock and balsamic vinegar...)

And meanwhile, because some things are endless, this is where the SF novella has now reached:

37,150 / 45,000 (82.6%)

- and today's news is that yes, the prospective total has grown again; but yes, the completed portion is still creeping closer day by day, so that every time I post this I am technically nearer to the end, even though it's a moveable feast; and today I have actually had sight of that end, because I worked out what it's all about. I know how it ends! And why! And now all I have to do is get there, and from here on in it should be much more like reeling it in, and much less like chasing after it...