he vuelto//bagels.

He vuelto {I'm back}.

Yes I'm learning Spanish. But how do I learn during the summer, without formal classes to guide? One way is to regurgitate everything I am thinking in English into Spanish.

solid method.

I haven't posted in a while, and that's because posting hasn't been my priority. Traveling as a Teaching Assistant, you reserve less time for what you're doing and thinking and spend more time doing and thinking things with your colleagues and students.

But ahora, he vuelto. So, I'll indulge. With bagels. Let's begin with this short video:

Food Science understanding adapted from thekitchn.com

Ingredients. 

This recipe is adapted from Margaret Anne's "Best Homemade Bagels".

Yield: 8 bagels [Today's making yielded 7 –– we lost some dough along the way]

Time: at least 3 hours.

Le Dough:

• 1½ CUPS warm water (Margaret's recipe calls for the water to be 110° F – I didn't have a thermometer)
• 1 TABLESPOON active dry yeast (a little more than the yeast in one of those Fleischmann's packets)
• 1 TABLESPOON brown sugar (I didn't have brown sugar either – scroll to the bottom for what I did to cope)
• 4 CUPS flour (I used all-purpose unbleached)
• 2 TEASPOONS salt

Le Water Bath:

• 8 CUPS water
• 2 TABLESPOONS brown sugar (one again, what did I do to cope? scroll down)

Directions.

1.) Pour the water into the bowl, and sprinkle in the yeast and brown sugar. Let sit 5 minutes. Add in the flour & salt and mix (you can mix with a mixer, but I don't like to use mixers. I use spoons & hands). A dough is now formed. Knead the dough gracefully for 10 minutes, like I did below: 

2.) Place the dough in a greased bowl (I greased the bowl using the bare end of a stick of butta), cover with a kitchen towel or cling wrap, and let rest for 1-1.5 hours.

resting just to rise. so poetic.

eyes targeting individual messes. not so poetic.

3.) Transfer the dough to a floured work surface. Divide the dough into 8 equal parts to shape into balls. Punch a hole in the middle of each ball and swirl the thing around your finger with its tip on the top of your work surface. Cover whatcha got with a kitchen towel and let rest for 30 minutes.

it's the bro. 

his hands were too lovely up there to the right so i made them black & white

these are my hands tho.

4.) While the dough is resting (to save time, of course), prepare the water bath by heating the water and brown sugar to a gentle boil. I was going to use a large pot, by Margaret recommended a wok. I didn't have a wok, so I used a large sauté pan.

upstage – what i was going to use

downstage – what i actually used

5.) Preheat the oven to 425° F. Re-poke a hole through the center of each ball, as some holes may have closed over. Swirl the dough on your finger to stretch the hole, like you did before.
Place each newly-swirled bagel on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet.

6.) Transfer the bagels to the simmering water, four at a time. Simmer the bagels for 2 minutes, flip over, and simmer for another minute.

7.) Use the end of a wooden spoon to remove the bagels from the water and return to the baking sheet.

8.) Ah! Because you preheated your oven, it is now hot. Bake the bagels for about 25 minutes, or until they look like the best NYC bagel you've never had.

9.) Transfer the bagels to a cooling rack 5 minutes before serving. Serve with whatever you'd like. You probably already have something on your mind...

Cream cheese ~ Lox ~ Butta ~ Bacon ~ Eggs ~ Cheese~ Bacon, Egg, & Cheese ~ Peanut Butter.

Y'all know I tend to opt for the PB. I won't add an end photo here because I don't want to perpetuate bagel paragons. You make what you make. 

enjoy.

****brown sugar note:

this was why I did not have brown sugar.

so I made brown sugar instead! 1 tbsp molasses for every cup of white sugar.

All videos made with Splice Video Editor by GoPro. Download it here --> it's free!

fear//make.french.toast

It is finals week here in college world! What an in to a discussion of FEAR.

I've been thinking about FEAR because I feel it, I'd say, 95% of the time, at least a little bit. A sense of FEAR seems to be perpetually looming. Both its presence and its absence come in waves. The FEAR waves just permeate less suddenly, and for longer.

hello i am either FEAR or no FEAR!!!!!!!!!

In the past two days, FEAR has turned from a feeling to an explicit thought. FEAR has ceased soaking the background of my consciousness and is now dripping in a puddle of its own pee downstage. FEAR is wet; like liquid, it pours. And recently, FEAR has been soaking up the spotlight–and is able to be seen through, for now. 

Flows of FEAR are usually followed by an ebb; now they are consciously monitored, analyzed, deliberated. Part of this temporary change, I think, was inspired by Liz Garbus' documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? I had heard about the flick for a while, and decided to see for myself what all the speculation was about. I am not going to make the space here for the discussion that her life and legacy deserve, but I recommend that you watch the doc. 

FEAR is also centerstage, downstage to Garbus' investigation into the musician's life and career. It is often humbling to remember that FEAR affects most people, even those who seem to have no reason to fear anything at all.

Maybe that's the relationship! I thought. Maybe it's as direct as that:

freedom = no FEAR. 

The absence of FEAR leads to freedom; freedom is only experienced in the absence of FEAR.

In appreciation of the human ability to THINK about THOUGHTS, I wrote a little thing:

what I could do if I had no fear!

how would i do it?:

extract the amygdala there are two and they are almonds but especially on the right

side 

rip it out 

with the fear of anaphylaxis from the one allergic

to tree nuts.

FEAR ancestors who were fearful lived by skirting

situations and saying 'that does not seem safe' while hiding

in caves.

but we are safe! we are safe in piles of laundry

still with this fear of having

nothing to put it into nothing

to promise a ripping out of.

it comes to malaise

I BECOME the cave.

think about my strange position!:

I am not the one seeking shelter;

I am not the predator;

I am the cave!

just standing and people

may visit. looking

for something.

i may see threat growing 

from the outside!

but i am standing

and i do not know how big I am.

I'm hoping to turn this stream of consciousness into a poem, but I believe that streams of consciousness are poems, too. 

This blog helps me face fear. By writing, I challenge fear with words. Every time I sit down to write a post, my syntax is shaking; I'm afraid that my points can't be articulated due to some inherent incapacity to communicate. 

But this is communicating.

I would like to think that the feeling will go away, that this will all get easier. Maybe for things to 'get easier', I will need to look straight through FEAR; maybe FEAR will go away when I look straight through it; maybe staring through what I don't want to even THINK about leads to freedom. 

If that 5% of the time that I don't feel FEAR is freedom, I could quantify its existence by assessing if, somehow, the FEAR waves begin to ebb 6%, 10%, 50% of the time.

If I could have that, half of my life, no fear.

If you are soaking in fear, try soaking bread instead. Ready for french toast, love?

VEGAN FRENCH TOAST RECIPE. 

IN CAPITALIZED COURIER TYPEFACE.

LET ME TELL YOU,IT ALL BEGINS WITH A BANANA IN SOYMILK AND FEAR.

this recipe does, anyway.

VEGAN FRENCH TOAST ON A SUNDAY.

INGREDIENTS: 

-2 slices of hard, stale bread that you were about to throw away before you saw this. (I used wimpy bread. I should have used hard, stale bread. There's where the name comes from, after all: pain perdu, or "lost bread".)

-1 nanner (banana yeh)

-1 cup soymilk or whatevermilk.

-cinnamon, vanilla extract, and nutmeg to taste.

PROCEDURE: 

1.) Pour whatever walk of milk you have in a blender or food processor. I used a nutribullet and am lucky to have one.

2.) Tear your nanner in 3 or 4 pieces and drop them in that lovely pool of whatevermilk. I feel like "tear" is not apt for describing what I advise you do to the banana.

3.) Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg in there, too.

4.) Blend all that up in your handy machine.

hah! get it? handy?

5.) Pour that mixture into a bowl and dip your (not wimpy) bread into it.

 

+

wimpy bread from Wegmans.

=

6.) Pour oil or butter in a pan. Remember to keep it vegan if you want to keep this recipe vegan. Vegetable oil, canola oil, and butter are good alternatives to animal products.

have no fear! the wimpy bread soaked it up already!

More dancing to come⁄⁄⁄⁄ ⁄⁄

This blog is more like a dancing blog than a food blog right now. How similar are dancing and food? I do indeed associate the two with one another, but only unidirectionally. Can you guess which way?

Food -->

From the most recent shoot for the DANCE LIKE photo project,

here is me thinking about Baked Alaska:

More to come. 

[Click on the photo for other works.]

did you know that cell//this is why i dance

ORIGIN Old English, from Old French celle or Latin cella ‘storeroom or chamber.’

If one body cell stores so much, then imagine what an entire being has to offer. 

A persistent and confounding fascination with people has led me towards portrait photography. A balance between learning the art and craving the skill has kept me going. 

A recent portrait project blends both people and pictures. Its only inkling of structure laid in a question: 

What's a song you like to dance to?

A corresponding inkling of diminished inhibition answered:

"Creiste" by Anthony Santos

"Starman" by David Bowie

"40 Day Dream" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

"Intro" by the xx

"Heroes and Villains" by The Beach Boys

Ok, dance.

[Click the photo for the album.]

you are on my mind//

For example, a group of neurons in a monkey's visual association area on the temporal lobe respond only when it looks at a specific person (Young & Yamane, 1992). This suggests that activity in those neurons tells the brain/mind that the monkey looks at that specific person. So the next time you see your best friend, remember that you can see him/her because a few thousand neurons in the visual association area of your temporal lobe have become active. Give them a pat on the back for the great job they do for you, without you even asking.

~~~Thank you Indiana University

(Click on photo for link)

i feel like im writing about "pop" psychology but im actually trying to decry it//right and left\\

You're trying to remember something.

lucky for you, this girl is studying memory.

Cognitive and Experimental Psychologists implement two major methods of retrieval when studying memory: Recall and  Recognition. We use these techniques too. For instance, when we're trying to reach back into our minds and resurrect a memory, a detail, the day the music died, we may be able to recall the item explicitly:

THE MUSIC DIED WHEN BUDDY HOLLY DIED ON FEBRUARY 3RD, 1959

seriously, type "what day did the music die" into Google. the search engine is pretty explicit.

If unable to pinpoint a date off the top of our heads, we may need some clues to answer the question. Items related to the main concept in question can lead you to recognize it, locate its trace in your mind eventually. I am totally assuming you know who Buddy Holly is by the way, and I apologize if you don't. I just need a specific fact that is somewhat well-known to roll out here.

So, we mentioned the word "recognize." That's a concept in cognitive psychology. Let's explore it by focusing on processes underlying recognition: re-experience and familiarity.

RECOGNITION by re-experience/recollection brings about feelings of being able to mentally relive the past. 

RECOGNITION by familiarity brings about feelings of being on the edge of knowing something for sure. One can feel clueless as to why the familiar feeling is arising.

Researchers conducting experiments distinguish between these recognition processes by asking participants if they can "remember" the item or word (which indicates recollection), or if they just simply "know" that they saw the item before (which indicates familiarity).

There is EVIDENCE for these different processes underlying recognition from neuroimaging studies:

Recollection shows increased activity in the hippocampus, while familiarity shows increased activity in the parahippocampal and perirhinal cortices. Think of these subprocesses as complementary to explicit recall. The parahippocampal and perirhinal cortices are literally encasing the explicit center:

The hippocampus (G. “seahorse”), the Explicit Center;

The parahippocampal cortex, a complementary structure to the hippocampus, involved in the “where” recognition;

sidenote:

Studies show the parahippocampal gyrus to have a role in recognition of social context as well as environment. Research from a group led by Katherine P. Rankin suggests that the parahippocampal gyrus is responsible for detection of sarcasm. 

You may be wondering: Isn’t the left side of the brain responsible for the understanding of language, and other linear, rule-based processes? As you keep learning about the mind, the more you will realize that the left-brained/right-brained dichotomy is grossly oversimplified. Both hemispheres have their specialties, but what is one side of your body without the other?

Yes, the right parahippocampal gyrus is involved in recognition of visual context, a finding that probably dances on your prior knowledge of right-brained specialization. But, in keeping with its name, there is strong evidence supporting that the parahippocampal gyrus is involved in recognition of paralinguistic elements of conversation (e.g. sarcasm). 

For a refresher on Greek prefixes: ORIGIN from Greek para ‘beside’;

The right parahippocampal gyrus has been shown to be responsible for recognition of environmental context, social context, as well as nuances in language–elements that sit beside language itself. This shows us that hemispheric lateralization is not as left-brained/linear, right-brained/spatial as we thought. While the left brain may be more responsible for following grammatical rules, the right parahippocampal gyrus can aid you in recognizing where those rules bend to take on a meaning other than the literal translation. 

Doesn’t this make splendid sense? The supposedly SPATIAL, weird-super-interpretive hemisphere of your brain aids you in detecting the location of sarcasm. If the left, more linear side of our brain did this, it would have to detect the sarcasm as a thing in each instance it arises. The things, or words, used to create a sarcastic sentence can vary, but the environment around it is what makes it sarcasm.

From this, we could say that sarcasm is not an object; it does not follow linear rules, or translate semantically. The literal meaning is the what. The where, on the other hand, considers where you and your fellow conversationalist are in your lives, in your surroundings, and, ultimately, in your minds. It is these spatial concepts that point to sarcasm rather than define it. 

Bihemispheric elements complement one another in dealing with a supposedly left-brained construction (language), which could not take on the same meaning–no matter how many grammatical rules you lived by–if you didn’t implement your right-brained wisdom.

Article concerning right-brains and sarcasm: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/research/03sarc.html?em&ex=1212724800&en=51b0f096761db2f9&ei=5087+&_r=0

So I didn't quite complete my whole lesson on recognition. I guess I just wanted to explain how subprocesses of memory, such as those facilitated by the parahippocampal gyrus, aid us in retrieving more explicit ones, such as the date February 3rd, 1959. While you tried to remember the day the music died and who I was talking about, this may have helped you (link):

And I was singin', bye, bye, Miss American pie...

that's why

Oh!