Mae 美妍

I made it out to the local park for some coffee and walnut cake, a mostly drunk mug of tea, and looked at these bright flowers.

I've been lucky enough to live alongside bay trees for decades now but on god I've never met a plant that stores worse than bay. Completely different animal. You put it in a cabinet for one week and it looses half its flavor. One month and it dries up into a crunchy little nothing. Anyone who tries to sell you a bay leaf in a little plastic jar that has been in Walmart for half a year is complicit in pushing those recipe blog ingredient lists.

If you don't have fresh bay around (and who WOULD) just use a little greek oregano or thyme. But ideally, if you live in zone 8 to 10, plant a bay laurel because they are just wonderful trees and are a truly useful addition to any garden. Also they make SO MANY BAY LEAVES. You'll never want for it again.

being able to go outside and grab a flavor is one of the best parts of my life

Okay maybe this is a US thing or a skill issue but dried, cheap, grocery-store bay leaves do absolutely taste and smell like something and their presence in a broth is very detectable. Maybe ones that have been in your cupboard, open but unused, for several years lose their potency but people are being insane hipsters about this posting like "well unless you get artisanal hand-picked fresh bay leaves from the farmer's market where I barter my kombucha mother mock-dashi flakes"

Yeah, the dried ones actually develop a stronger flavour after being picked and dried, and that's one of the main flavours of dishes like biriyani. If you don't add bay leaf to the rice when you're cooking biriyani it just won't taste right. You can test this out by cooking 2 batches of rice, one just with butter, the other one where you fry bay leaves in the butter first, and then boil the rice with the leaves in it. Frying the leaves in oil first releases some of the flavour. Even without the other spices in a biriyani, having the bay leaf alone makes the rice taste like biriyani. Without that it really won't taste the same.

Or dried bay leaves are used in Sichuan dishes (including hot pots), or generally in some Chinese dishes that need braising.

For a quick and dirty soy sauce chicken, for instance, I add 2 dried bay leaves to the wok, along with star anise, and if I have it, some cinnamon, and braise the chicken in that with shaoxing wine, and a dark & light soy sauce, sugar & oyster sauce mixture. If I leave out the bay leaves, it doesn't have the same depth of flavour, because the slightly bitter-savoury-aromatic profile of the bay leaves cuts across the warmth of the cinnamon & star anise, and it enhances the salt-sweet soy sauce flavour.

I think it's one of those herbs where some people either don't know how to cook with it, or don't imagine some of the combinations you can use it with - maybe because they aren't familiar with Asian cooking, or Carribean food.

(I'm trying not to be entirely snarky about white people not knowing how to use herbs or spices here, but it's difficult not to feel snarky when people are tossing off lines about "real cooking" and "real chefs", when most of the rest of the world knows how to cook with these ingredients. 😒)

The Purrgil King was a large male purrgil who led a group of purrgil. He was multicolored showing that he was the leader as well as bigger than the other purrgil in the group. He befriended Ezra Bridger and saved his life.

I always have this feeling when I see some things in Star Wars: What does that thing eat? Like I know from the wiki that it inhales a type of gas, but what does it eat? Does it also eat the gas? How would it digest that?

Many of the Star Wars creatures are large animals living in what look like specific and potentially challenging ecological niches, especially given the size of the animal. This one in particular appears to be huge, so it must eat a lot to grow to that size. The teeth would suggest that it grinds something up - maybe asteroids? IDK. I wish sometimes that they would say what everything in Star Wars eats.

My partner and I had Korean food for dinner from Oshibi Korean Bistro. Bottom right section is Yang Nyum chicken, which is spicy and sticky fried chicken. Bottom left is Bulgogi beef, which has a sweet, slightly spicy flavour. Top right is Yachae Mandu vegetable dumplings and Kimari, which are fried seaweed rolls stuffed with glass noodles. In a small section in the middle is banchan pickles and kimchi. And then I think the boiled rice is pretty identifiable. 😂