Avatar

dandy highwayman in, like, a bumbling fool way

@dyketurpin

elm | they/them | curator of funny words
Avatar

i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it’’s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i’m not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i’m talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it’s literally not even that difficult and it matters so much

Avatar

i truly believe that knowing how to cook is a basic survival concept and the fact that so many people can’t even make simple dishes is depressing as hell this is the sorta thing that should be taught at a young age. being able to take the ingredients you have around your home and turn them into a meal is like, essential and will make life so much better. you don’t need to be a high end chef you just need to understand some things that can be easily taught… but then again maybe the education system is playing a roll against this and ultimately they want you to grow up to rely on mcdonalds for dinner. i don’t know. please learn how to cook for yourself if you’re able. i’m not asking you to hunt for specific ingredients to make some expensive youtuber’s “best” recipe but if you know the basics of cooking you can do a lot with cheap canned ingredients. cooking can be affordable i promise you just need to learn how to make do with what you can get

Can anyone point me towards resources that teach those basics cus I would LOVE to teach my child this stuff but i dont know how to cook

Avatar

not comprehensive but heres some:

internet shaquille’s basics but especially:

food safety + a recipe to demonstrate

how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)

basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:

  • freezer meals,
  • weeknight meals,
  • kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &
  • kitchen care (mid-high advanced home cooking)

and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:

again definitely not a comprehensive list but it touches on most of the basics

Avatar
I found a soft quietude come over me. Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last.

This segment gives me so much joy, but is a great example of what makes Jonathan incredibly unique among similar types of horror victims in Victorian literature.

A lot of academic analysis notes Jonathan’s traditionally feminine role in the early chapters of Dracula, but chalk it up to “the horror of emasculation”—that Dracula imposing femininity on Jonathan expresses the gender role anxiety of the time and is part of how Dracula terrorizes him.

But that’s just straight-up not how the book is written. Jonathan is comforting himself with his connection to the sweet, soft ladies of old, wishing he were writing love letters to his own love far away. He soothes himself with the image as a way to escape the horrors surrounding him. He encourages himself with the comparison to Shezerade and her cleverness earlier.

It’s the difference between “Jonathan is facing horrors traditionally imposed on female characters” and “the horrors INCLUDE the connection to female characters.” That distinction is enforced by how he, on his own, finds comfort and encouragement by thinking of himself among their number.

It’s a distinction that wouldn’t be obvious from just reading a summary of the story, which in all honesty seems to be what some academic analysis is working from.