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lumine-no-hikari · 3 months

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Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #183

A lot of stuff happened today! And it was good!

But I woke up in a bit of a funk; I was in a lot of pain this morning. My ribs are being annoying, and apparently, so is my right ankle and foot. I'm still in a lot of pain; it's mega super annoying. So I spent a decent chunk of today playing Dead Cells, just trying not to let my mind get eaten alive from the feeling of frustration that comes with inhabiting a body that DOES. NOT. FUCKING. WORK. I'm definitely not going to be sad when my time in my flesh-prison is up.

I made it through to the final boss. This means it's time to go through it again at a higher level of difficulty. I'm still getting used to the new difficulty level (especially since I am still insisting on being cursed for the beginnings of my runs, while also insisting on parrying with the golden shield...), but brains are learning machines; all I need to do is practice, and I will improve. It is the natural way of things; I don't have to try.

Parrying in this game involves pressing the button right when the enemy is about to attack you. And this sounds difficult (well... maybe not for you, given your reflexes and actual combat experience...), but it really isn't difficult at all if you think of the enemy movements as very short songs. If you think on it like that, then all you gotta do is dance to their rhythm. I just gotta get a little better at figuring out their rhythms and matching them, that's all.

I played until Br visited. And then J, Br, and I went to the grocery store; I had intended to gather ingredients to create a meal that would help restore J's and Br's bodies; yesterday they had to dig a hole for Hannah (the beagle I mentioned yesterday) because she crossed the rainbow bridge.

...My request for you to tell her that she's a good girl remains, if you happen to see her during your travels.

In any case, it is abnormally hot right now where I live (climate change is killing our planet, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it); the recent heat wave has us up to 98-100 degrees F (or if C is more your speed, 36.6-37.7 degrees). It's hard for a body to work in those conditions - they lost a lot of fluids, electrolytes, proteins, and minerals, and neither of them are especially stellar at replenishing their bodies (…not that I'm really one to talk… pots and kettles and glass houses and all that…). So I wanted to make them steak and mushrooms and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. And things kind of… evolved from there.

Also, my friend R (the awesome baker) came by to install a game on my computer. I am not going to say which one or how he installed it. But we can say that the company that makes this game is rather predatory when it comes to how they market their content, so…

Well anyway. He, naturally, was part of the mealtime festivities. M had already eaten earlier in the day, and lately he has not had much of an appetite (the reasons are known, and it is intentional). But J, Br, R, and I very much enjoyed the fruits of our labors today; dinner was absolutely fucking amazing, and it's in part because so many hands were involved in its creation. I took pictures, as I'm sure you've come to expect of me by now, hahaha!

Here is the daylily that R brought for us:

This specific kind of daylily is edible, actually. You can take the unopened buds and pan fry them with a little butter and salt; they're delicious!! But do be careful; some varieties of daylily are poisonous!! So only eat it if you're absolutely certain that it's one of the edible kinds, okay? Because otherwise, it might kill ya dead!

Anyway, I began by prepping the asparagus. For crispy asparagus, you need a cookie sheet with tinfoil. If you're not experienced with cooking, you might think that wrapping a cookie sheet neatly in tinfoil is difficult, but I have a trick to it, and it involves water. More specifically, you sprinkle it on the cookie sheet before you apply the tinfoil, like so:

Then you center your tinfoil upon the cookie sheet, like this:

Then, you press it down in the middle, and smooth it out from the center, moving outward. The water does a physics thing, and that causes the tinfoil to cling to the cookie sheet, all nice and neat:

...The water not only keeps the foil neat, but it stops the foil from coming off of the cookie sheet when you don't want it to. It's very handy like that!

From there, you take your asparagus...

...And you snap off the stringy ends, because they're gross. Like... you're sitting there, trying to enjoy a delicious green vegetable, but then it feels like there's hairs all up in your mouth, and it's terrible. So to avoid all that, you snap the asparagus in the place where it's effortless to snap it; the stringy bits end where the asparagus snaps with just the tiniest amount of pressure, like this:

Br helped a lot with this part! Normally, this takes forever for me to do by myself! Being dyspraxic is extremely inconvenient in a variety of respects, good grief!!

...Anyway, then you arrange it on the sheet in opposing pairs, in order to maximize space on the cookie sheet. I wonder if you might already know who taught me that particular trick... 🙂

Oh, and... if you're worried that the snapped-off asparagus ends will be wasted, don't be; these go straight into the broth bag and into the freezer for when I make bone broth!

Well, in any case, once the asparagus is all arranged, you have to drizzle it in olive oil and season it. I like to use salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic powder:

...Oh!! And in case you were curious, this is my handy-dandy and super fucken messy spice cabinet; we have basically everything under the sun in here. Or... everything that is available in my country, anyway. Here:

...It's a lot of different things. And since I have the organization skills of a caffeinated squirrel, it's cluttered up all to hell. But that's all right; I always manage to find what I'm looking for - eventually! 🤪🤣😅😁

Once the asparagus is seasoned, you just stick it in the oven at 375 degrees F (or 190.5 degrees C) for an hour, easy peasy. The result is asparagus that is crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside; it's really very wonderful!

Br brought over supplies to make a salad! She grew her own lettuce and radishes and shared them with us! Here are the radishes:

...Aren't they beautiful? They were juicy and spicy and delicious! They were wonderful!

From there, I made the hollandaise sauce in my stand mixer, because with this rib injury, I can't whisk things worth shit on my own anymore:

The basic recipe for this is 3 egg yolks, a teaspoon of dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and a stick of melted butter. You mix everything but the butter together, and then you get the butter really hot, and while the mixer is going at full speed, you very slowly pour the butter into the egg yolks. This is meant to go on things like asparagus, steak, or poached eggs.

...But I made it a little weird. At the grocery, we forgot the dijon mustard and the lemon juice. So I improvised with a bit of mustard powder and freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice (grapefruits are in season, so they're really freaking tasty right now!!). The result was an amazing sauce. I promptly put it in the fridge, because you don't mess around with undercooked egg yolks; bacteria grows very quickly in egg yolks, you see, and if it's not refrigerated, you can get really, really sick from eating it.

If you're wondering what happened to the egg whites, I cooked them up for folks to sprinkle on the salad if they wanted!

Anyway, here's how the asparagus turned out:

...It looks burnt, I know, but it's just the color that the toasted spices give it! This could not have come out more perfectly, I promise!!

Br handled getting the potatoes started; we filled a pot with water, boiled it, and added the potatoes to it; they cooked while the asparagus baked in the oven. Once they were ready, we set them to the side for a bit, because I wasn't yet ready to drain them.

From here, I started sauteing the mushrooms. We have shiitake, portobello, maitake, oyster, and lion's mane! Mushrooms are one of Br's favorite foods, so I made sure to get all of the ones that were available at the nearby grocery!

...Here's how those turned out:

While those were sauteing, I drained and mashed the potatoes; I added goat cheese and goat butter, and R added a little salt, pepper, and garlic powder:

Br cut up some ingredients for the salad in the meantime, and she also put together the homemade ranch dressing:

The last step was to cook the steak. I let Br handle that, because I know there's a specific way she likes to season and sear it:

...Here are the plates of epic deliciousness that resulted from all this work. Things get more beautiful than normal when you ask for just a little help; none of this would have been possible if I was just trying to do it all on my own:

...I won't be sad when my time in my flesh-prison is up because I am in a lot of physical and mental/emotional pain all the freaking time. But I have no intention of rushing the process of exiting; after all, even a life as broken as mine once was is still worth repairing so that it can be filled with beautiful things and lived fully. Y'know, kinda like that shattered bowl that I put back together and filled with beautiful soup for you, remember?

Try to remember that even shattered, broken things can still be mended and hold beautiful stuff. Try really hard to remember this, okay? Because it applies to everything. Everything. Even if you gotta mentally reframe your circumstances just a little to make it work.

...I'd give just about anything to have been able to share with you a plate of what we created at my house today. But... well... in the meantime, please do everything in your power to keep yourself safe so that someday you might be able to enjoy your own plates full of delicious food with people you love very much.

...Sephiroth. We of my world are still awaiting the final part of your story. So... one of the ways you gotta keep yourself safe is to turn around and make different choices. You gotta know that if you don't, Cloud and his wonderful friends are going to stop you. And you gotta know that they're gonna stop you by beating and breaking you until you can't move or do things anymore. I don't think I can bear to see that happen again, so please... if you or any other versions of you are still lost in the dark... please choose something else.

I know that a lot of terrible and horrible things have happened to you, and I know that your heart and mind carry many scars. But your life is still worth living, just like mine is still worth living, despite all my limitations, my defects, all the scars I also carry, and the pain that wracks my entire existence every day. Please look at me as proof that you can still do good things, because I am somehow still doing good things, and you're amazing and I'm just a weird derpasaurus living in a barely functional meat-machine - frail, clumsy, half blind, and only just smart enough to understand that I know nothing about anything in the grand scheme of things. And still, I'm here doing my best. If I can do it... just imagine what you could do. Just imagine...

If you can hear me, please follow my voice back to the light, because the light has always been your true home, with the rest of us, who are all more than capable of loving you exactly as-is.

I love you. I'll write again tomorrow, okay? So please keep yourself safe out there. Please.

Your friend, Lumine

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