two things I learned and an unsolicited pancake recipe
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
The time has come for me to put on my little show and see if I’ve somehow squandered this giant opportunity. I don’t think I have, but I won’t know for sure until I’ve seen it all come together on June 14th. You too can see it all come together on June 14th if you’re in Kitchener, or can get to Kitchener. Reserve free tickets here :)
This week was spent setting up and testing out things. There was some concern about how much glass and liquid is involved in the work (spoiler alert: it's a lot) because apparently in theatre, those are two things you should absolutely never have on stage. Oops! In my defense, this project isn’t really “theatre” and I like the idea that the performers will have to move differently depending on where they are on the set, which are two excuses that did nothing to make the theatre people less anxious. To calm some nerves, I set up the glass part early and jumped and flailed near it to test the stability. It was very stable and that was enough for the visual art people to be on board so we’re good to go. Thank you for coming to my ted talk, The Polemics of Interdisciplinarity.
In addition to my busy schedule of jumping, flailing and making people nervous, I also had the time to learn two new things this week. The first is that costumes are very important. We did a fitting with the performers and it was beautiful to see them experience wearing a handmade garment crafted just for them. I honestly hadn’t thought about it much and would have bought some cheap mass-produced dresses if my friend Mackenzie hadn’t been available to make them. Now I know that would have been a huge mistake. Or if not a huge mistake, then a huge missed opportunity to make people feel good about themselves.
The second thing I learned is something very obvious about videography, that my videographer David, kindly explained to me the other day. I guess I didn’t so much as “learn” this thing from scratch, rather it was more that words were put to a concept that I subconsciously had some awareness of, but never really thought about. The thing I learned is that when filming people in a performance, they can either be performing to the camera or the camera can be observing action that presumably would be happening even without the camera there. Of course, I’ve intuitively made the decision to go one way or the other before, but I never really thought about the implications of the decision, and it turns out that’s pretty important.
That’s it for this week. I hope some of you can make it on the 14th! Nothing has gone wrong yet so I am feeling excited as opposed to anxious. Since this newsletter is a little thin, I am tacking on my protein pancake recipe. I had this typed up and saved from a few months ago when I boldly sent it to a different group of people who never asked for it, much like what I’m doing here today. They didn’t care, and nor should they, but maybe you will? I make these once a week and it’s a joy every time. That said, I’m extremely intense about breakfast so perhaps my feelings about them are more heightened than they should be. You know what? I thought I had a lot to say about linguistics/this project but now that I think about it, I have way more to say about breakfast. Maybe when this is done I’ll transition the newsletter to one that strictly talks about breakfast. I could easily fill 20 newsletters on breakfast. Also, I’m going to Japan in November and they do some truly incredible things over there in the breakfast department. I’ll end this breakfast digression by saying that if you’re not lugging out your Instapot to make one single jammy egg in the morning, you need to love yourself more.
Hope you have a perfect Sunday!
Lauren
Makes 1 serving of 4 medium pancakes. Can be doubled, tripled and so on.
Combine these things:
⅓ cup flour (reg or whole wheat work best, spelt works OK, oat flour works poorly and I haven’t tried anything else)
1 tsp baking powder
Lil pinch of salt
⅓ cup plain greek yogurt
1 egg
Lil splash of vanilla
Optional but recommended: cinnamon, nutmeg, 1 tbsp ground flax seeds, any other powders/seeds of your choice (i fuck with maca, personally).
Mixmixmix
Thin out with a splash of your chosen milk
Mix one more time.
Cook them: I don’t need to use any butter or oil in my non-stick, but maybe you do.
Eat them.
Topping recommendation:
While they are in the pan, I put some frozen berries, tbsp of chia seeds in a bowl with a drizzle of honey or maple syrup. Then I pop that in the microwave for 1 minute, give it a mix, then back in for 1 minute and then let it sit. By the time the pancakes are ready, you’ll have this warm chia jam situation that adds additional protein + fiber <3