My thesis is going fairly smoothly so far (actually a little ahead of my self imposed schedule) but it's amazing how the technique of marinating can be applied to writing.  In order to marinade something you steep it in a highly seasoned mixture until it takes on the desired flavour.  When it comes to writing, and I'm assuming the same technique can be applied to many other things as well, things go far smoother when you let things sit for awhile and settle, marinade.  Or I guess an even better metaphor would be the practice of letting a freshly cooked piece of meat sit for a few minutes to let the precious meat juice settle back into the meat.  If that stage of the cooking process is rushed once the meat is sliced all the juices run out and you're left with a dry, far less tasty piece of meat.

It's very important that I have a moist, tasty thesis so it's going to rest for the weekend.  The current plan is to take a red pen to it sometime next week. Then take it to Prof. Glick (my adviser) the first week of August for more fine tuning.  Ah the humbling process of editing, nothing quite like it.

(The above lyric is from the song SpottieOttieDopalicious by Outkast, big tune.)

I'm making jook (aka congee) for breakfast today using David Lebovitz's recipe.  It's not quite ready as I type this, I"m trying to let the falvours get to know one another as Lebovitz suggests in his recipe.

This is a very exciting breakfast option for me.  I like the idea of porridge, jook is essentially a rice porridge, but I'm not a huge fan of sweet things and especially not in the morning.  I've added frozen peas, dried mushrooms and garlic scapes to my jook, just stuff I had on hand.  It's a shame that I didn't go out and get some ginger and dried shrimp but if this goes well then those can be for next weeks batch.

It's a big recipe so in a perfect world I could make this Monday morning and then have it for the rest of the week.

Here's a picture of its process.

JOOK