Principles to Remember

There are some things it's wrong to do to people, even if they consent.

Sex should not hurt.

"It's the only way I can get off" does not excuse harmful behavior.

"But this turns me on" is not an excuse either.

Until the 1980s, desiring anal sex was a practically infallible marker of having been anally abused in very early childhood. This leaves me deeply suspicious of the fad for it now.

Likewise, BDSM is strongly associated with a history of abuse. This leaves me deeply suspicious of BDSM also.

Some people claim they are practicing safe, harmless role-playing under the rubric of BDSM, and that anything else is not "real" BDSM.
Nonetheless, since it chronically provides cover for bullies and abusers, something is wrong with it.

Seasoning with Rosemary

Rosemary tastes good -- at least to some of us -- on meat or potatoes. Put it on food before cooking the food.

It's usually sold as whole 'needles', looking sort of like spruce needles. You can cook with whole rosemary, but I recommend grinding it into small pieces. If you have a spare grinder, like a pepper-grinder, you can try putting rosemary through it. Or you can use a SHARP knife to chop it small.

Sample recipe: wash and chop about 2 pounds of potatoes. Dump them into a deep baking dish, pour a little cooking oil on, sprinkle salt and about half a teaspoonful of chopped rosemary on, mix thoroughly (adding more oil if you think it's needed), put dish in oven. Bake at about 325 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour and a quarter, maybe hour and a half.

Video-posting practice

This is a sample piece of video. I made it mainly to test the camera and try out the editing software, so this is almost entirely content-free. It does have a view of my kitchen and a view of kneading bread.

I used Apple's iMovie to assemble a couple of video clips and a couple of still frames, and experimented with chopping up the videos into itty bitty clips (just like chopping vegetables!) so I could try out transitions.



Then we used FreeVideoCoding.com to post the video sequence. I'd saved my video two ways, as a .mov (I hate QuickTime) and as an .mpg. Turned out this was lucky--FreeVideoCoding doesn't accept .mpgs. Sigh. I prefer MPGs because I've had trouble getting QuickTime for my Windows computer, but maybe now that I have cable internet access it's time to try again.

Anyway, my plan is to post explanations of basic cooking techniques, with short video clips of the stuff you can't get from reading recipes: really basic stuff like How to Chop Vegetables Without Chopping off your Fingers, or Keeping Carrot Slices from Rolling off the Table While You're Cutting. We will also cover intermediate topics like How to Tell When a White Sauce Has Really Thickened, or How to Tell When a Custard is Finished Baking. You would not believe how many custards I overcooked because I thought when it was done it should be as firm and stiff as brownies.

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Note for me:
1) Edit video
2) Export as one file, all-lowercase name,
3) Upload to my web server (FTP)
4) Create new post
5) go to FreeVideoCoding.com and use their interface to generate handy HTML for linking Blogger post to my video on my server
6) Preview and publish post.