This is the recipe I made this evening.
Kathryn made it for me the other night. So good.
And it actually looks like that, too.

Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Soup with Mint
Makes 4 to 6 servings

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/4 lbs sweet potato, peeled and cut into chunks
1 1/2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 whole star anise
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup red lentils
2 3/4 pints water or vegetable stock
Juice of 2 limes
Salt and pepper
Greek yogurt or sour cream
Leaves from 5 sprigs of fresh mint, sliced

1. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan, and add the onions, garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes. Do not allow to brown.

2. Stir in the sweet potato and star anise, reduce heat to low and cover tightly, leaving to sweat for 10 minutes. Then add the tomato paste, cinnamon, lentils and water or stock. Bring up to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the lentils and sweet potato are very tender, about 30-35 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Remove the star anise, then liquidize the soup with an immersion blender. Stir in the lime juice and taste and adjust the seasoning, if necessary. Spoon into bowls, topping each with a spoonful of yogurt or sour cream and some sliced mint leaves.

From The Wednesday Chef

Just heard from Jesse’s cousin Jay. He has a spare room for me with a fancy bed for the two nights in DC that I am not with Joey.

Imagine my friends,
122 nights with a mp3 player and very expensive ear buds; 100+ GB of love songs.
A kindle and a slew of books; detocqueville, proust and friends.
A DS lite; electroplankton, princess peach, final fantasy, mario kart, Korg DS-10, NYTimes Crosswords.
Digital cameras and audio recorders; microphones; fancy lenses.
A keyboard, protools and Ableton Live; pitch n time, t-racks, Kaoss pad.
Winter, cold and gloomy, a strong desire to stay inside and do nothing but read and write and listen and make.
Train tracks across America in the snow.
A hundred friends to visit.

Dreamy.

Oh yes, busy!

I’ve been chatting online with old friends (and new friends) all day. Reconnected with Julie and Bridgette in Chi. Totally chuffed. They are two of the best people ever. I love them so much. They are the better part of my old band Carnival de Carnitas, and two of the major inspirations in my life.

Dropped an email to a DC couch possibility.
Have a couple NYC emails in play for couches.
Have a slew of couches on offer in Chicago.

Downloading stuff I need to travel with.

Went through my few possessions (Disembody wiped me out object-wise). The photos in this post are what I think I’d like to bring. Though not all my hoodies are in that pile.
And since I’m staying at a fancy country club hotel with Joey for the first two nights of DC, I’ll have to take my suit and a tie.
But that’s most of what is going.

Updated myspace and facebook. Set up facebook to suck my twitter posts into my status, so that’s cool. I f’ing <3 twitter!

I got my stuff in proper storage condition for my trip now. Except the desk and thesis stuff and soem junk I need for doing Marti’s work. But mostly I have stuff ready to go. Maybe a few hours more work before I go, taking the desk and computer apart and stuff.

Making Kathryn’s amazing kick-ass yam soup with mint tonight for my folks.

And helping my dad get an old computer up and running with a new drive and OS later.

Rocking out to love songs. My playlist is 2872 songs so far. That’s A-C and X-Z and searches on the words love and sex. Still have to go through D-W. And that’s only one drive, 500GB. I have two more 500GB drives to go through. That may not happen. Too bad. I could have a pretty rad love song list if I went through them all.

It’s looking like I won’t be dropping 122 thumb drives of love mixes while traveling. I can’t find thumb drives for a buck apiece and I’m not spending more than that.
I think I’ll do 122 CDs, each one a unique love mix instead.
I’m up to 49 mixes so far.

Well, my thesis defense was two days ago.
I can proudly announce that I passed with flying colors. Quite delighted. I still have a good deal of work to do between now and Spring when I officially finish all my thesitic duties, but I have no more “tests” I must pass, so that’s a relief. And all my advisors had fabulous critiques and suggestions, so I’m looking forward to getting into the thesis and reworking some of it.
I’m also excited to start looking at PhD programs to shop it around to, in hopes of turning it into a book. The feedback from my advisors on the topic (I’m writing on the conversion of information from public property to private property from the Gutenberg press to the web toady) is really positive.
I had feared that I had never encountered anything like my topic because I hadn’t looked hard enough or because it just wasn’t an interesting or relevant topic to anyone but me.
My advisors, however, assured me that is not the case, and that they would really like to see it published and becoming a part of the debate around intellectual property.
So, that was really fulfilling to hear.
Plus, the day before my review, Lewis Hyde was featured in a Sunday New York Times magazine article, talking about his upcoming book, which sounds like it basically is my thesis. That really makes me feel good, too. Having a voice like his present this side of the debate - one neglected up until now, by everyone but Lyman Ray Patterson, imho - is really wonderful.

So, anyway, my trip,
you’ll hear more about it in the coming days, but in a nutshell, I’m going to be on the road for 122 days of 2009, a third of a leap year.
While traveling I’ll be working extensively on the Disembody enpsychlopedia - the wiki expounding upon every reference and influence in Disembody.
And of course, it’s a wiki, so hopefully, all of the other crew will be participating.
I’ll also be visiting all the alum of the show (except Honyo, who I can’t afford to visit right now, as he lives in Tokyo.) I’ll see Erin, Jonny, Stel, Libby, Phil, Sue and all the SF folk. I may not see Daniel, as he’ll be in Central America. But we’ll connect one way or another, as we have to get the tarot work for Portal 7 done soon.
More deets on the trip in the coming weeks.
For now, what inspired me to write is that I just checked my bank account, and I’ve got $1000 less for the trip than I thought I did, because a check I wrote last month just cleared.
Yowch! I had hoped to do the whole thing for 4K, including paying bills and debts while on the road, and travel expenses, and $5 a day to live on.
But not I need to re-budget for 3K.
Time to look for work.
LOL