Apocalyptic Recycling

Library, Lori Nix 2007

Sherlock Challenge

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most beloved characters in English literature and whether you've read the stories or not, you certainly know his name. I read some of the short stories as a child and young adult and enjoyed them immensely. I had read the usual and most popular of the Sherlock Holmes canon, i.e. The Hound of the Baskervilles, but never got beyond that. Since I've had so much, um, "free time" in my job this past year I decided to try to read the entire canon. What the canon is exactly is slightly debatable but I'm making the call and saying it's the following.

1. A Study in Scarlet (1887)
2. The Sign of the Four (1890)
3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891-1892)
4. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1892-1893)
5. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902)
6. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903-1904)
7. The Valley of Fear (1914-1915)
8. His Last Bow (1908-1913, 1917)
9. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1921-1927)

I can check numbers one through four off my list and I've been pleasantly surprised with what I've found within. Doyle's first Holmes novel was written when he was twenty-seven and was written in the space of three weeks. The man was a machine. A very interesting machine. I was blown away by the subject matter in some of Holmes cases, especially concerning the time period. One of the most surprising aspects was the overtly anti-racist messages in multiple works. Cases featuring honest, upstanding Jewish bankers and interracial marriages weren't exactly common in 19th century literature. Yet, only thirty years after the Emancipation Proclamation Doyle was writing of white women marrying former slaves in America and of interracial children as ... well, being normal children. Plus, he didn't portray Americans as a bunch of hicks, so I thought that was sweet of him. And surprisingly, A Study in Scarlet actually took place almost entirely in the U.S. It's nice to read 19th century British authors who didn't disdain Americans. At the same time Doyle wrote depictions of civilized Americans (both white and black) Oscar Wilde wrote A Woman of No Importance in which the U.S. is bashed multiple times. For example, this conversation between aristocratic ladies.

Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America. 

And this short quip from Lord Illingworth, "The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years." Ha ha, very funny Oscar. (Don't worry I still love you.)

Word cloud for A Study in Scarlet

Nikko Day

So, Sean and I went to Nikko, Tochigi with friends on the 22^nd and …

Woke up at 7am, misery!

Had a crazy rash. Allergic to hotel soap/sheets/air?

Took a ton of Benadryl, checked out, snuck Sean out, got food, hit the metro for Asakusa

Difficulty getting seats on the train together. We realized we couldn’t buy group tickets (7 of us) from the Tobu counter so we ran down to the tourist info center around the corner, after speaking for 20 seconds in Japanese everyone suddenly switched to English. (David, who was speaking Japanese, is CLEARY WHITE. But it was nice of them to keep up the Japanese for a while.) There was some confusion from the young woman helping us because she didn’t understand why we didn’t want return tickets back to Tokyo. My brilliant contribution to the planning session was to tell her that we lived in Fukushima-ken. The look that crossed her face was indescribable.  “Fukushima?” she repeated in not slight, but ENTIRE disbelief. Yes, yes, we live way up there in Inaka-shima, just please give us our tickets so we can make this train already. We got to go through a secret entrance and then run to our train 20 seconds before it left. Fun.

Benadryl made me sleepy and crazy. Got custard all over myself before passing out.

Was poked awake as we arrived in Nikko. It was cold and raining. I brought umbrellas but Sean didn’t want THAT umbrella so he bought a new umbrella.

Ate yuba-don. It was acceptable. Acted a little more crazy because of rash and Benadryl.

 

It was still raining. Hopped in a cab to the main temple complex. Was like 1300 yen to go into the park, expensive! Saw the stupid famous monkeys and sleeping cat. It was actually really pretty in the rain. Walked up 900 stairs to see some more temple stuff. Super elaborate decoration on everything.

Walked to The Sacred Bridge. It was cool.

 Walked back to the station. Ate age-yuba-manju. DELICIOUS red bean past wrapped in tofu skin battered and fried and salted. The things I now think are delicious since moving to Japan are interesting.

Delicious

 Bought omiyage, bought a new keitai strap. Caught a train to Utsunomiya around 5.

Apple Walnut Cake (baked in rice cooker!)

I can't take credit for this one.  My friend Leah, a CIR in Ishikawa, translated this recipe from a Japanese Cookbook

 called Make Delicious Sweets and Fluffy Bread in Your Rice Cooker.  Being a Japanese cookbook, everything was 

measured in grams.  I used this conversion chart to convert everything in volume measurements.  This cake turned out 

surprisingly well and is perfect for fall!

 

Ingredients
3 eggs
⅓ cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 ⅓ cup of flour
5 g (about 1 teaspoon) of baking powder [ベーキングパウダー]
1 teaspoon cinnamon
40 grams of butter/ Just under ¼ of a cup (Hokkaido brand butter has lines on the wrapper for every 10 grams!)
1 small apple chopped (about ½ cup)
Chopped Walnuts- as many as you like!

Glaze: 2 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of water


Directions

   1. Mix the eggs and sugar. In a bowl, beat the eggs. Add the sugar 
and mix well with a whisk until the sugar is mixed in.

   2. Add the dry ingredients and butter. Mix flour, baking powder, and 
cinnamon together in a separate bowl, then sift the mixture into the egg 
and flour mixture. When the flour is mixed in, add the softened butter.

   3. Prepare the apple and the nuts.  Add the apple slices and chopped 
walnuts to the batter.

   4. Set the rice cooker. Remove the bowl of the rice cooker and grease 
the inside of the bowl with butter. Pour in the batter and set the bowl 
back into the rice cooker.  Make sure it’s flat and level.  Close the 
lid and press the 炊飯 (cook rice) button.

   5. In some rice cookers, one cook cycle may be enough to bake the 
cake.  Stick a knife into the cake to check if it cooked through.  If 
not, you may have to flip the cake over in the rice cooker pan and run 
it through another cook cycle.

   6. Once the cake is thoroughly baked, flip it onto a plate and 
prepare the glaze by mixing the sugar into hot water.  Pour the glaze 
over the warm cake and serve!