A dish of Rice and Fire

Classic dish of rice and brains.

In this episode, Liv eats fried brains and rice… Fried rice and brains.

I decided I needed to try this cauliflower rice trend. Might as well try new things while I'm learning to cook.

It was delicious.

I've found the secret to bring a good cook is the sauce. Aspiring cooks it there, I've just passed on all my knowledge.

Here's how it ended up.

I'm not one for measuring. It just doesn't strike a chord with me. Don't tell me what to do.

I put in way too many peas and not a whole lot of “rice”.

Here's how you make cauliflower rice.

Step one: buy some cauliflower. Make sure you misread the price and spend twice as much money as you meant to. (Coming soon, my learning to budget while watching Ozark blog)

Step two: use a cheese grater to grate the cauliflower.

Step three: Fry it in a pan with some vegetables. Realize you don't have canola oil. Find olive oil and then realize you buy “90% vegetable oil butter”, add that to the pan. Think to yourself: "this is some real gluten free, vegan shit”

Step four: add whatever you want. I'm my case: green onions, carrots, garlic, two eggs, too many peas and of course… Imitation crab meat

Step five (the most important): read a recipe that suggests oyster sauce. Look for oyster sauce at the store. Don't find it. Google “oyster sauce” to see if it comes from oysters. Read a list that mentions oyster sauce in the same sentence as hoisin sauce.

Make fricken delicious fried rice.

Here's my short story of the week, it's a little bit weird and I hope I don't have to end up explaining it:

The day faded into night. She closed her eyes and tried again. Nothing. Looking constipated is the key, she thought. I need to look more constipated. That’s how Hiro Nakamura did it.

She squeezed her eyes tight, scrunched her face up completely.

She rolled over in her bed and opened her eyes to the silent telephone. She sighed and closed her eyes once more. She summoned the thought of him. How his arms felt around her, the weight of his chest pressing into her back as he breathed. She thought about how long it’s been since she felt his breath on her neck. She can feel it through the phone sometimes, she swore. Energy can travel when it’s strong enough.

So she squeezed her eyes shut, and inhaled deeply. She squeezed with that breath, tried to squeeze her thoughts from her head, the warmth from her body. She drew the energy, starting from her toes, upwards through her legs, she breathed the energy from her diaphragm. She scrunched her face tighter, prepared to force everything out. Her brow furrowed, a vein in her forehead throbbed as if it might burst. And then it stopped suddenly.

She had been imagining disintegrating. Piece by piece appearing in his room and reassembling just like the candy bar in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She had concentrated really hard on the wind blowing through his window AC, the smell of his sheets. She had concentrated really hard, but that’s not what happened.

She exhaled. Opened her eyes to see her own bedroom window and sighed. She had failed. Her sigh emitted no breath, and she looked down to see her own body. Her, whatever she was in this moment at least, floated above it. She saw the rise and fall of her own chest.

At least I’m not dead.

But she could feel herself. Whatever she was, she was real and she had energy, if not substance. She paddled herself through the air, interacting it as if it were water and she a solid. She glided through the window and into the open air.

She looked to the stars and chased them. Up above the city, she traveled much faster. The lights blurred beneath her, streaks of white and yellow obscuring the freeways, vineyards. Over the nothingness between cities. The radiance of the large cities and the dim glow of small towns. Until she closed the gap.

Moonlight trickled down through clouds and trees to a small streak through his window. She watched him, not quite asleep, not fully awake. Stairway to Heaven from his stereo gently wafting through the crack in his window and carried by the wind. He was staring at his phone screen, the blue glow colored his face. A picture of her---the last thing he wanted to see before he closed his eyes that night. The sight spread warmth through her being, and as she glided closer, his eyes snapped open. He stared out the window. She couldn’t explain how, but he knew.

He stood up, walked across the room. The direct blow of the AC chilled his chest, sent patches of goosebumps over his arm as he crossed to the other window. He opened it. She swam in, put a hand to his face, her thumb to his lips. And he felt it.

No words were exchanged. Her thoughts were his thoughts. His feelings hers. She embraced him in a way neither of them understood. She felt his breath on her neck. She warmed the goosebumps on his chest. She entangled him in a perfectly palpable, intangible way---enveloped him, yet slipped through his fingers. Like water. Like a wave.

She rocked him, gently, the steadiness growing. The sensation bubbling. The wave rose to a crescendo, to a rhapsody that overtook him. His heartbeat stalled, a fermata where there was no beginning, no end, no him, no her, just that moment. Then the wave crashed around him, every drop, bliss. Her molecules, like beaded droplets, reassembled to a body of water. She didn’t want to part.

The AC tore at her, rippled through her like pebbles in a pond. Whatever she was was no longer stable. She breathed a goodbye, once more grazed his lips….then dissipated through the window.

The zoom home was less steady. She felt herself slow, become diffused. She was losing cohesion. Her being was being stretched out like dough, parts becoming thinned, stringy, then ultimately, full of holes.

She hit the glass pane of her own window hard. She ricocheted off it, then recuperated. Held what was one point was a hand against the solid glass. On the other side of the glass, her body lay still. She tried reaching through the glass but only pounded against it. She pressed against it, watched her body. There was no rise and fall of the chest. No blink of an eye or twitch of a toe. She watched her own lips turn blue.

In a burst, she funneled herself through the crack in the window frame and drifted onto her cold body. She blanketed it, wishing for warmth, for breath, even for tears. Her body was as impenetrable as the glass had suddenly been. She tried to sigh, but couldn't. She tried to cry, but couldn't. She faded into the night.

The episode:

Best song---even better to hear Alexa from Google read you the lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQldvoB5XvY