I’ve done it! Finally! After all this time and after all the failed trials! I’ve done it!
I guess it all started when I was seventeen and went to lunch with my best high school girlfriend at this little thai cafe in Libertyville, IL. A monster was created. I’ve always been a picky eater, but not only am I picky, I’m rather odd in what I do consider to be acceptable food items.
For instance, I grew up believing that I hated fish, and within the reasonable sense, I do. To this day, fish makes me gag, unless it’s complete raw–or maybe just slightly seared. Anything over rare though, i can’t swallow it–like my body literally will not allow me to swallow it.
But my complex with food gets weirder. If I get a craving for something, I will not eat anything else. In fact, food that is not the food I’m craving will make me nauseated at the sound, sight, or smell of it, and I will go to great lengths to get what I’m craving or some substitute there of.
Thai food is one of these weird triggers. Being in Baton Rouge where there are, i’m sorry to say it, but no acceptable thai restaurants in my opinion. They are decent, but they don’t make my dish correctly. And yes, my craving for thai food is for a single dish–Lad Na.
I’ve tried to make it on several occasions, but have failed miserably and to my deep dissatisfaction. I’d given up, but last week was a week of hunger. I tried to sub in my curry stirfry with tofu and other stirfry options, they worked a little, but only temporarily. The rest of the time, I just starved. I got hungry enough by thursday that I finally went online to importfoods.com to maybe just try again. I did some reading about it, and bought a few different ingredients.
Did you know that there exists a large assortment of soy sauces all with different flavor profiles. As a homebrewer and knowing that soy sauce is essentially the filtrate or the beer rather of fermented soybeans, I should have known that there would exist such a variety. When it comes to fermentation, there is always an art resulting in an assortment of processes to refine a desired profile.
A unique thing about soy sauce is that both the effluent (soy sauce) and the sediment (the beans) become products. Tea is another item that people seldom realize is a product of fermentation. Green tea & black tea; same leaves–tea tree. I’ll give you a moment to allow your mind to blow. Yep. black tea is just fermented green tea.
Anyway, as I so often do, I digress. I made an attempt at Lad Na on Sunday, and it wasn’t right, but suddenly, the flavor was there. It tasted of Lad Na, but it wasn’t quite Lad Na. I tried again on Monday, but with black beans (longer fermentation time) instead of yellow beans. Also not right. Good, but not right.
Today, I made the noodles from scratch–they actually don’t take very much effort. I’d made similar ones years ago, and they were a disaster. The ones I made today were quick. I made the batter this morning to let it sit, and then made the noodles, which don’t even require being rolled, at lunch time. I still haven’t nailed it, but despite having been a little overzealous with the soys, what I made today was certainly, albeit very salty, Lad Na! So yay! I will never starve again and in reality seeing how much oil and (omg, the) tapioca starch that go into this dish, I’m probably going to gain like half my weight if not more plus some a bunch of splotchy cellulite. But who cares! I made Lad Na! Next: Tofu from scratch–and i need to get my hands on some chinese broccoli!
Also and more to the point of what my blog should be about, trello! I am fully linked on the trello side.
That’s right!
I conquered those malevolent json devil objects and compelled them to return on their Promises!
And suddenly, like a click of understanding, I was making javascript do stuff. And my swipes of the keys became deliberate and expecting, and my expectations were being met with more and more reliability.
The syntax still drives me a little nuts, like why do i have to set a key-value pair into a map and then return it also. Like just return it with my last command. Json likes to have cake and eat it too.
The thing about clojure is that for every bit (ha! Bit! That wasn’t even on purpose) powerful that it is, it is that much more efficient. Lists and structures and maps are easy with clojure. So easy in fact, that when you attempt to translate your knowledge of clojure into another language, it makes you feel inadequate because maps are easy! You just (:key map) and voila! The value is there.
Not with json. Actually, it kind of is the same with a json, but it’s much more convoluted and i’m not willing yet to give it any credit.
But, and it’s a big but, clojure is immutable. Other more common languages are less so and can thus pull variables out of seemingly nowhere and can pass invisible arguments into subsequent functions. Clojure builds a habit of assigning a variable, passing it around (advisable in a map when appropriate), and always being able to see it. You know what you’re calling and you know what you’re passing or at least a :kind of what you’re passing.
JS, like so many others, is mutable and has objects to work for it (omg, the words coming out of my mouth like I almost understand what I’m saying!!!). Do you know how long it took me to really understand the word mutable, or rather immutable. Like, what? You can’t shut it up? There’s no mute button? What does this have to do with programming? Yes, I read the definitions, and I understood them, but not the core.
I do now. I think…
Anyway, I’m a week a late, but I am now read for last week’s iteration! I am going to advise my client that the next best thing to do is to get the trello-post handler set up. Without that and because of the changes for the user-flow, a lot of everything else is stagnant.