Sweet potatoes. Yams. Different recipes call for different ones. All summer, I had my eye on a recipe, but could find only yams in the grocery store's produce section, no sweet potatoes. When I looked at cans, everything was labeled as BOTH. "CANNED SWEET POTATOES sliced yams". Buy a can of yams, and the ingredients list consists of "sweet potatoes, water, corn syrup".

Today I was looking for sweet potatoes, but found only yams in the produce area. Given that I'm making a stew, I figured they'd work pretty interchangeably anyway, so I bought a fresh yam and a can of sweet potatoes (which I used maybe half of, since the syrup made them squishy and I know they won't hold up well in the stew).

But when I got home, I broke open the trusty ol' Good Housekeeping cooking bible (which I recently re-discovered tells you EVERYTHING EVER - including how to make an omelet correctly! and successfully! even *I* got it right that time!). Under the column for "Sweet Potatoes": "Yams are not botanically related to sweet potatoes, but in the United States, canned sweet potatoes are often labeled yams".

WHY. WHY?!?!! (...also, how on earth are they not related, they're so insanely similar it's ridiculous.) I'm so annoyed, because I know there's just enough difference that while in a stew it's all good, when I want candied sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving I do not want to use yams, and when I want yams in a curry I may well not want sweet potatoes. Talk about false advertising, all they're doing is perpetuating the very confusion they're probably trying to cater to.

Grr.

Labels: cooking

 
It has been a very stressful couple of weeks. I was down with a maaajor cold last week, still dealing with the aftermath of being extra-tired. The store has been SWAMPED at night, between high schoolers having spirit weeks/homecoming and college chicks coming in to try on 8000 costumes apiece. And we're not even going to talk about Wing City's banners. (Except to say that, when I had called and talked to a fifth person, to verify the size so I could print it that time...FIVE MINUTES LATER the guy ran into the store to flail and say WAIT IT STILL SAYS QUESADILLAS YOU NEED TO TAKE THAT OFF THERE!1!!1 freaking disorganized idiots. Love the restauraunt, love the food, hate the lack of management organization.)

All this happening, of course, led to...was it Monday night? ALL I could do was fret about work when I got home that night. Had like three dreams about work. Couldn't drag myself out of bed because I knew that meant I'd have to actually go in and deal with things. It was bad. This has been going on for awhile, but it's finally bad enough that I know I need to do something about it. So I spent a good bit of time thinking, and I finally realized that a good bit of the problem is that there really isn't anything else in my life going on, besides work. Since my life centers around it, that's all I think about, which is not healthy or productive or making me happy. The simple distraction method, of listening to audiobooks and things all night when I came home, only worked as long as I was listening to them. Wasn't cutting it.

So, I've been trying to shift my mental focus. Not always easy, but, having NaNoWriMo looming is helping tremendously - and I've been thinking a lot about how happy I always am, being all wrapped up in stories all through November. In November, my mental focus turns to stories, and the whole drive and rush of NaNoWriMo keeps my focus there - it gives me something besides work to make my time and thoughts all about.

Every handful of months, I find myself in these depressions, and I promise all over again to do something creative every day. I always drift away, with one thing and another, but as long as I come back to it, I'll be alright. I bought myself a super pretty new notebook, to keep track of NaNo ideas and outlines and things in, gearing up for November. I also dug out my semi-current sketchbook, and both books are next to my side of the bed. With a pen attached to one or the other. I already have a page-and-a-bit of ideas for this year's NaNo, and a really gorgeous little picture popped into my head a few nights ago that I'll draw out sometime.


NaNoWriMo 2009? I'd been dying to do something like Beneath the Dust again, doing a series of short stories all set in the same location. It was the ideal mix of freedom and restraint for me, and I found so, so much to draw on in the one little room I created. So! I'm doing it again, with a fresh setting:
Mackie's garden.
...way back (i.e., a couple years ago) in my obsessive U2 rp'ing days with Megs, I created this vast garden, which was Macphisto's frequent haunt. Somewhere I actually have a sketch of the main layout, but I remember a lot of the little areas off the top of my head, easily enough to start with. I'd been just getting into the whole flower-meanings thing at the time, so I know there are places where there are trellises of...jasmine and honeysuckle, I think, with a certain type of roses nearby, all these things with complimentary and subtle interplays of meanings.

I have like ten different characters already in mind to put in the garden, some are doing things, some I just know the characters (I've been re-reading the Anne of Green Gables books, and I'm dying to try writing Anne's daydreamy point of view). I remember a few of the garden nooks, and it's never hard to think up more of them.

...so having all that to focus on, to bring my life's attentions back into the creative realm, I think is really going to help. Crocheting works in small doses, but once I get into a groove it doesn't hold my full attention, the way creating the world of a drawing or a story does. (Though crocheting + great audiobook = pretty near perfect.)


Speaking of audiobooks: The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. Fantastic book, I'm so sucked in it's ridiculous. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and it's the most wonderful kind of haunting family history story, with twins and people going insane and a house falling into ruin and everything you could want in a believably haunting story. (Though I do recommend it with a bit of a cautionary note, it can really suck your emotions down a deep dark pit if you ingest it for too many hours straight all alone in the house at night.) ...it sounds over-dramatic and awful in summary, but the story itself is so grounded in the everyday that it doesn't feel unbelievable at all. Lovelovelove.

Labels: crochet, navelgaze, printshop, work, writing