kiwifruit are like traffic lights: red means go

man i kinda wish i could always be travelling to new places, seeing all the plants and animals, seeing the iconic stuff nearby, getting to see what people there think as normal and everyday stuff, etc

man i just came back from florida and it's fucking snowing. very cool

they are absolutely delicious. the skin is thick, sour, and astringent like a plum or concord grape. inside is delicate, juicy, syrupy sweet flesh, it tastes creamy and somewhat grape-like, some foxy notes and a slight tang, but it also reminds me of mangosteen. i'm down to my last one and i'm sad

at the airport quickly going through these so i don't have to explain an uncommon fruit to customs

this has been a wishlist fruit for me for like... forever... the jabuticaba (plinia cauliflora). probably its most famous trait is that it grows straight on the branches of the tree

tbh the texture of this hawthorn (left) is similar to crabapples (right) but the flavor definitely hits more berry notes, similar tartness, maybe less astringency. i've seen some recipes suggest substituting crabapples for these hawthorns but honestly, the flavour is quite different

i'm happy i could get my grubby lil paws on these again. chinese hawthorn fruits

i searched up "neohesperidin dihydrochalcone" btw so only two of the results here could really be related

i searched something up and the google algorithm started freaking out and going "uhhh idk wtf to suggest them anymore, just give them the longest words we got"

that says a lot about you

that: "a lot about you"

but after that woman told me why that piece was special to her, i started putting attractive stuff into my repertoire i had avoided before cuz i thought they were overplayed. sure, i love it when i see my friends utterly confused, but it's nicer when someone tells you what that music means to them

so... honestly, beforehand, i was really into playing a lot of weirder music (e.g. later scriabin stuff, bartok, messiaen, maybe prokofiev) that would make people go "wtf are you playing". i did enjoy seeing others' bewilderment at the music, but also i genuinely enjoyed listening to and playing it

Chopin: 19 Nocturnes (Moravec) YouTube video by Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

it reminds me how, back when i was learning the chopin nocturne op.27 no 2 in Db major, this one woman came up to me and just started telling me about how her mother used to play that one and how me playing that piece brought her back to when she was around.

youtu.be/kHXxWfSAxik?... (timestamped)

i specifically remember practicing piano and then going outside to see the olympic torch relay passing by outside, and then once they had gone past i went back inside and practiced some more. i remember performing this in public where someone else from my school was also performing. a lot of stuff.

Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op.37a (Primakov, Pletnev) YouTube video by Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

man it's kinda interesting to go back to old piano stuff i haven't played in a while. i remember learning june/barcarolle from tchaikovsky's "the seasons" cuz i really liked how sad it sounded when i was a kid, and playing it now, a lot of memories came back

youtu.be/XOVndSdAq2Q?... (timestamped)

i think i'm just allergic to stuff in the mulberry family in general cuz figs and jackfruit also seem to trigger itching for me. sad.

mulberry's one of those fruits where, to me it's not really worth the allergic reaction i get from them, since sometimes they can have a delicious dark earthy berry flavour like a mix of blueberry and blackberry, and other times they're just kinda... bland.

for reference they look like this and apparently i don't have any pics of the interior. these are actually in the citrus family and they're super hard to get a hold of in north america, so... i would do many things to get my grubby paws on some

i found a place here that sells drinks with crushed wampee fruit and the taste and texture is actually like fresh ones. how on earth did that bubble tea place get a hold of them at this time of year? i want to know who their supplier is

spent some time polishing this wooden (drink) coaster so that the wood itself would gleam in the light and i decided to make a layered drink to show it off

it's honestly impractical since even the slightest scratch from a glass or the table will shine through, and you gotta mix the drink anyway

also potato chips. i can only fry an amount i would just eat in less than a minute, so unless i'm trying to make a special flavour it's just not worth it. also idk how but i made my potato chips taste like shrimp chips

my favourite noodle soup dishes all have a million toppings and they're some of the things i only get at restaurants instead because it's really not worth making at home just for myself

cuz i'm not a huge sweets person, my birthday treat was a slice of strawberry cake and a cup of hojicha

i really liked the table, the wood was so amazingly chatoyant and had some nice figure. i also do like myself a bitter roasted tea and the balance of a light and sweet cake with tart fruit

i was kinda in the mood so i bought a wax apple, this one is a bit old but is decently sweet

its name is 莲雾/蓮霧 (lianwu in mandarin, renbu in japanese), meaning "lotus mist" which i never really understood, maybe cuz of its mild floral flavour? turns out it's a transliteration of the malay "jambu"

searched this up and i was like, i mean, yeah i guess

but i tried searching up other birds and they were all described as "birds"

i didn't not know you didn't not think i wasn't not telling the truth

well i tried that and processing two canes of sugar i only ended up with like a tablespoon of syrup that has very strong earthy and mineral notes. i don't have the equipment to remove the molasses so uh... i'll just make a drink out of it

i don't have a press i can use, and in the process of peeling and chopping it up it had already begun to ferment so i ended up cutting it into small pieces and freezing them in the hopes it'd halt the fermentation and that bursting those cell walls would make juice extraction easier. let's see

a while back the first couple of lines of this popped into my head and i thought it was maybe some earthbound or undertale dialogue, and then i looked it up. nope. emily dickinson poem.

to be fair, i think i last read this poem maybe 10 years ago sooo