Pescatarian paella

 

To create vegan paella, don't put the prawns on

I don't remember where I found this recipe for paella, but it worked fine for me. I started out buying for 2 but ended up cooking for 3-4. The ingredients almost overflowed my skillet.

Slice or rip 200g mixed mushrooms (it's nicer if it's not just cremini or button mushrooms). Halve and thinly slice a thick zucchini. Fry in 1 tbsp olive oil on a medium-high fire for 12 minutes in a large, fairly deep oven-safe skillet, stirring regularly. Then remove and put in a bowl.

Boil half a stock cube in 400 ml water.

Preheat the oven to 220C.

Chop an onion and fry 5 minutes in the same skillet in another tbsp olive oil.  Add 3 chopped cloves of garlic, a pinch of saffron and 1 tsp of smoked paprika. Stir, then add a can of chopped tomatoes and 150g of paella rice (or risotto rice if you can't get it). Stir again. Then add the veg you fried earlier, 150g peas, 100g roasted bell pepper (from a jar, chopped), and 65g spinach. Stir until the spinach wilts. Then add the stock and bring to a boil.

Top with about 165g of prawns and put the whole thing in the oven for 20 minutes. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley and with a lemon wedge on the side.

You know what sparks joy? People.

I've never considered myself a hoarder, and Swatra and I keep our apartment relatively tidy. But in the past week or so, we've systematically gone through every room and thrown away huge amounts of stuff. Knickknacks, kitchenware, clothes, books, CDs, DVDs, you name it. Here are seven things I've learned.

#1 Let go. If you find an object that triggers a fond memory, but you haven't touched or used it in years, and have even forgotten that you had it, chuck it out. The object is not the memory. It doesn't contain the memory. Your brain contains the memory. If you need the object to trigger the memory, take a picture of the object, then throw it away. Photographs and documents can be scanned. Books and movies can mostly be reacquired in digital form (but be sure to save the ones that can't).

#2 This is your stuff, nobody else's. The decision of whether to throw away an item should not depend on whether some friend might want it or need it. If they really wanted it or needed it, they would have taken it from your home and put it in theirs. They very probably don't even remember you have it.

#3 Trash hides treasure.Your home contains many beautiful, precious and display-worthy objects that you didn't know you had. Why? Because there's a pile of useless trash between you and it. Once you get rid of the trash, put your treasure proudly on display.

#4 More space equals more trash. I really thought that living in a spacious apartment would mean no more unnecessary stuff. The opposite is true. The space fills up automatically. I'll be very conscious of what I buy in the future, but I know we'll have to do a cleanup like this all over again in a few years.

#5 Resist the urge to think, "Someone else might want this." Of all the things we threw away, the only things we gave away was a bunch of cookbooks. We offered it to our neighbors, who took it off our hands. As for the rest, yes, it feels bad to throw things in the trash instead of checking if someone might want it. But here's the thing. Checking if someone might want it keeps the trash in your house.

#6 The regret you feel throwing stuff away now is the regret you should have felt when you bought it. If you feel a pang of regret throwing that pasta maker you never used in the bin, don't let it stop you from throwing it out. Instead, remember that feeling, and recall it when you're in the shop, about to buy another useless will-use-once-only kitchen implement.

#7 Keep the stuff you love. The whole purpose of this exercise is to hold on to what matters. For the most part, that's not material stuff, but people. And crows, obviously. But your home does contain things that matter deeply to you, and things that are unique and irreplaceable. Keep that stuff. When asked, Swatra estimated that this was about 10% of the stuff we went through. For me, it's more like 5%.

When Podcasts Collide

 I'm an avid listener of podcasts. Here are two that deserve more attention.

Humanist Trek (https://humanisttrek.com/)

Hosts Sarah Ray and Allie Ashmead offer a humanist and hilarious perspective on Star Trek. They've worked their way through The Original Series and are about to wrap up The Animated Series as well.

Logo of the Humanist Trek podcast

It's Probably (Not) Aliens (https://solo.to/probsnotaliens)

Logo of the It's Probably (Not) Aliens! podcast

Host Tristan Johnson educates co-host Scott Niswander about the often surprisingly racist truth behind "ancient aliens" conspiracy theories.

How they collide

These two podcasts crossed paths, in a way, in the latest Humanist Trek episode, "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth." Sarah and Allie review the ST:TAS episode of the same name. The Enterprise crew encounters an alien winged serpent with god-like superpowers. A conveniently available native American crew member, Walking Bear, tells us that this is Kukulkan, a Mayan deity. As the hosts note, this is straight-up "ancient aliens" lore, modeled after Erich von Däniken's batshit and offensive theories that ancient cultures must have had help from extraterrestrials because they were obviously not smart enough to build pyramids themselves. This is what It's Probably (Not) Aliens is all about.

Kukulkan in his bestiary

And as it turns out, Russell Bates, one of the writers, has this to say about that aspect of the show:

I always had been outraged that Europeans said the vast cities in Central and South America could not have been built by the 'savages,'" Bates commented. "They had to have had help: the Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the Phoenicians, or even the Atlanteans came, taught the poor Indians how to build their civilization, and that's how it all happened. Horse breath! So, the story about Kukulkan became that Kukulkan visited ALL races of mankind, taught them his knowledge, and then departed. Now the story said that NOBODY on Earth invented a damned thing! They all got their knowledge from somebody else!