Thursday, November 13, 2014

Hunting and eating the wild Ginkgo

There are a bunch of Ginkgo trees in various places around the WSU campus. When, staring up into one of them, I noticed that it was a fruit bearing female, I was pretty excited. Like with some other plants, there are male and female ginkgos. Most of the time people only plant male ginkgos for decorative purposes because the fruit produced by the females is kind of stinky and messy. However, inside the stinky fruit is a seed rumored to be delicious when cooked. I'd never tried one, and was eager to get the chance.

Friday, November 7, 2014

By a train window (a translation by me of an Esperanto poem by Julio Baghy)



I like translating stuff from Esperanto. Here's a translation  (followed by the original) of a poem that I encountered in the book "Vojaĝo en Esperanto Lando" edited by Boris Kolker, which is a collection of a wide range of different kinds of writings. I got bored with that book and quit about 2/3 of the way through, but I liked the poetry. This isn't quite a literal translation, but it's pretty close (for better or worse).

Monday, November 3, 2014

An improved tempe incubator and more lupin tempe

It's been a while since I've posted about cooking with lupins, making tempe, or the impending Dennis Moore memorial dinner. Rest assured, the lupin project is advancing at characteristic pace for a project of mine (that is, not very fast...) .In this post I discuss an improved heater setup for the incubation. Then I talk about making tempe from lupin grits, and whole california white sweet lupins. I've also figured out how to make lupin icecream, but I'll save talking about that for later this winter when I get a chance to make a big batch of it.