Drop Them Bones Chapter 9: Hard and Fast

This one's a doozy...

Hard and Fast

To be sure of, without a doubt, without debate History: In seafaring times, the term ‘hard and fast’ was used to describe a vessel that was beached on land and unable to be moved. [Don’t lie. Absolutely none of us thought it meant that. None of us.]

So, funny thing. Since posting Chapter 8, I had a wonderful long weekend in Manhattan, followed by the worst stomach flu I’ve gotten in at least a decade. Then, after a few weeks recovering from that, I partially dislocated my knee and sprained my MCL. Full damage assessment still TBD in a couple months, but I have a care plan for now.

What I’ve posted as Chapter 9 was supposed to be ten pages max plus additional scenes, and then this happened. So, I have 6k words of Chapter 10 already because I split Chapter 9 in half, and I’ve had the final scene in Chapter 10 (originally intended for Chapter 6, hah!) written for the last three months…

I currently have 9 more chapters planned out, but as this adventure has shown me, that’s more like guidelines. This chapter would have been out sooner, but reference above, and in retrospect, this chapter’s title also describes me in seafaring times right now…

Notes

At least I’m recuperating and back to excessive research spiraling:

If you have the equipment, time, and inclination, you too can om a gator nom. I have only ever outsourced my gator dining experience to trustworthy restaurants, because I’m happy to compensate people accordingly for their labor and gator meat is fucking expensive to have shipped up north.

I’ve mostly encountered alligator fried or in etouffees in restaurants, and if you can’t source alligator or just think they’re too cute to eat (look at them faces!), they do taste like a fishy chicken, but less swampy than frog, and have the consistency of a pork chop. So, imo, you can substitute either white chicken meat or pork to about the same effects in all the recipes except the whole smoked gator. Alligator meat is very lean and easy to dry out, though (flashbacks to straw-like fried, breaded nonsense on that one trip to Florida…) The Daily Beast has an article from 2019 that goes into more detail on taste, etc. I’m not going to link to any of the butchering videos I watched to make this fic, but if you’re interested, deermeatfordinner on Youtube has a good one.

And yes, in true Louisiana fashion, the state government does have an alligator cookbook available in PDF for free. The final page notes that funds for it came from both Florida and Louisiana, and the most approximate publication date I can find for it is 1994. Its text, graphics, and ingredients definitely look like something from the 80s or 90s…

I was not tracking that discarded crocodile and alligator fat can be used to produce biodiesel at competitive prices…

I went down a lot of interesting 1700-1800s sailing history that involved the provisions given per day to British Navy sailors, how much salt was needed to brine 100 lbs of meat, and how the brining process actually worked (floating eggs and meats, oh my!) The average alligator yields about 40 lbs of meat, so all the proportions and weights for applegators came from multiplying that by three, then adding on more layers of fat than an alligator would have because applegators can also go out in the deep sea. Yes, I know this is a fanfic for fantasy pirates on an imaginary planet. If Oda-sensei can say they’re all stronger because gravity, I can make chonky applegators.

Curing meat Wikipedia article; Quora entry (of all things) on sailor provisions; Colonies, Ships and Pirates blog; and an NIH paper with some science of curing meats; plus a definition of pellicle; and some historical pre-refrigeration context.  Salting meat Wikipedia article and smoking meat Wikipedia article. And of course, once the fancy bougie restaurants start using salt water, it’s cool again.

If you don’t have a smoker at home, here’s a stove-top smoked salmon recipe that could work with any type of fish (though, I don’t think a sweet cure would really go with white fish).

How to dehydrate food without a dehydrator ideas

Making a ground oven: I actually learned about this technique back in anthropology of food, as it’s one of the oldest cooking methods that we know of, and I’ve always wanted to try it. Darn you, local fire ordinances.

Random fandom trivia: If you’re a fan of 911 Lone Star, you may remember the first (I think) season episode of a family ground cooking in their backyard and their racist neighbor being a dick about it then getting a righteous comeuppance from the team. Is it over the top justice? Yes. Is the drama hilarious? Also, yes.

They use a technique in this chapter that I based off a New England clambake set up. Mainly, a pit on the beach with seaweed, hot rocks, and a wet sail over top, covered with sand. General bake concepts and times came from here (if you can read it through that horrible font…)

Sustainably harvesting seaweed.  Modern Farmer has a pretty informative newsletter I’ve been subscribed to for a couple years – It’s an interesting read if you’re into agriculture news (food-related technology, regulations, innovations, etc.) and like to know more about your food supply chain.

I didn’t know how to make sausage before. Behold, basic sausage tutorial!

Recipes bludgeoned in the making of this chapter:

I have never cooked gator meat or a whole pig, but here are recipes that sound like horrifying fun:

Whole Smoked Gator

But also, whole pig ground cooked

Kalua Pork  

Alligator Jerky

Songs: 

a day late because yesterday i was tooooo busy! some spoilers in here for dungeon meshi and saltburn!

listening: mostly background stuff. i still haven't played more nier: automata but the boyf got me listening to the soundtrack and it whips.

reading: more tgcf at night to soothe my frenzied brain to sleep. i finished dungeon meshi yesterday!! i did cry!!! it was so, so good, i loved it. i really liked that there was no set antagonist, per se, at least not until the very end with the fight against the winged lion, it was all just a bunch of characters with different but justifiable goals that had their aims all butting up against each other. very cool. i love kabru what a little shit

a collection of some good screenshots:

watching: many things this week. my partner is visiting for the week and we like to have videos on while we're cooking n eating so we watched...essentially the entirety of weird history food channel, started with the trader joes one and spiraled from there.

we also watched the currently-released episodes of dungeon meshi. very charming. i cannot wait to see how they animate certain scenes.

on sunday night we did a friend dinner, so me and my boyfriend, roommate and hers, and one other friend; after dinner we movie night-ed it and watched saltburn and blazing saddles:

saltburn was insane! apparently there is shock and alarm at the sex scenes, which i am not very online about it so i have no idea what people are actually saying but imo it was not that crazy. there is a solo, uh, let's call it Moment towards the end of the film that is pretty out there, but besides that the sex scenes are the least of anyone's worries in this movie. it took me WAY too long to realize that the main character was the antagonist, i'm normally pretty savvy to those kinds of twists so that took me off guard. my roommate had seen it once (or even twice?? i think?? i have no wish to watch that movie again, good for her though) and i didn't start clocking it until immediately before felix tricked oliver into going home. as they were in the car i was like "there's no fucking way that he lied about his family to felix. right. right??" oops. some good cool symbolism in there, i had a bit of an xkcd "of course everyone knows this myth" moment when my roommate was like "huh i wonder if there's a symbolic reason for the bull-man statue in the maze at the end, or felix's angel wing costume" and i was like surprise pikachu. the minotaur, the labyrinth, icarus, hello? wdym you don't know the story of the minotaur??? much to think about with this movie. i searched it on tumblr and feel like a lot of people missed the point in favor of blorbo romance but like, fair, it is the blorbo romance website. 8.5/10.

blazing saddles was our palette cleanser after that doozy of a film. my friend said at the end "anyone who thinks this movie is racist needs better media literacy" and i'm inclined to agree. yes the n word is in there - but the people saying it are so unambiguously depicted as insanely stupid and wrong, and the leading man is a charismatic handsome black man, and tbh the smartest person in the movie? arguably more homophobic (the end scenes) than racist but even then the way 'f*ggot' is deployed hit me like modern tumblr humor.

idk. even though it's a comedy it is Very clear to me that a message from this movie is "Racism Bad". i thought it was fun, didn't find the blonde lady's musical number very good or funny, got a few chuckles out of it overall. classic mel brooks. 7/10.

playing: wizord101.

making: started experimenting with english paper piecing! i forgot to take a picture yesterday so ill try to remember and add that later today. or maybe for next week's post. also started a pair of fingerless gloves for my mom

eating: my boy made us all a budae-jjigae type object on sunday and it was so so so yummy - photo from before simmering for like 30 minutes, with pork belly, spam, tofu, and a bunch of mushrooms, grunions, and kimchi:

before my roommate came back from a conference we did this cabbage and thin-sliced hotpot beef thing that was. so fucking good. we had it two separate nights in a row. just layering meat and napa cabbage and then cutting into ~2in strips, laying them in a pot, filling the center with mushrooms; make a broth of soy sauce/dashi/misc soup stock powder from leftover ramen, pour it over, simmer til cooked baby. delicious. this image is a little steamy bc i tried to take it right after opening the pot, lol

misc: wough. struggling to get back into the routine a little. i need to make more spreadsheets for my agonies (apartment hunting and determining what internships/programs to apply to for this summer). and i need to start using my planner again because i keep forgetting to do shit.

i’ve been in a reading slump as of late but a couple books that i can think of off the top of my head that have left an impact are

the secret history (my fav of all time it’s heavily annotated cause i’m a nerd💀)

crime and punishment (a doozy but worth it)

jane eyre (best book to start w to get into classics imo)

a little life (read it in three days cause i needed to finish it and get rid of it -10/10 i bc old write a whole rant ab this damn book it has some really good parts/quotes but not enough to make it worth it)

on earth were briefly gorgeous (ocean vuong is a poet so this novel read like poetry but in the best way)

OOOO I've read Crime and Punishment, and Jane Eyre! Excellent choice in classics!

I have A Little Life on my TBR and a physical copy in my very large pile already! People seem to either love it or hate it, I'm curious as to where I will fall on that spectrum lol. I'll have to check out The Secret History and On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous! I will admit I sometimes have a love hate relationship with the New England based dark academia books seeing as how I em grew up in that lol I'm also the worst, I have so many annotation tabs but never end up using them and then get annoyed when I try and go back and reread parts.

So far this year I've read:

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stars In Your Eyes by Kacen Callender ⭐️⭐️ ⭐️

Sanctuary of the Shadow by Aurora Ascher ⭐️

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin by Mariana Zapata ⭐️⭐️

The Idea of You by Robinne Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even If It Breaks Your Heart by Erin Hahn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Strung Along by Hannah Cowan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much for indulging me in this book chatter! Books are truly like the best thing ever. I love fanfic SO MUCH obviously, but there is also something so special about like holding a physical book in your hands! I hope you are having a wonderful Monday and a great rest of your week!

❤️Ally

Anyone here want to read my personal opinion/rant on the Pokémon Charizard later tonight?

I’ve just gotten sudden feelings (first time in a while for that one) that made me just want to... go off about my history with this thing.

Here's my 2x05 review...take it as you will

I'm still reeling from The JFK episode as I write because wow was it a doozy. I’ve been reading for the past week that it was a game-changer and they weren't wrong. To begin, its now canon that Rufus and Wyatt cannot function well without their historian on their missions. There were so many things that could have gone wrong by bringing JFK to the future. JFK may have been one of the most progressive presidents in American history, but that was why he was needed in his time. I cannot even begin to fathom what would have happened if he had never gotten in. What was really interesting to me is having JFK tell that present-day girl about time travel and the fall out from it. I thought for sure she was going to be dead by the end of the episode, but she lived. I'm guessing there are going to be major consequences for that, there can't not be. This will be an issue for future episodes, i'm sure. Now onto the Carol Preston problem. Every time I think I should think one way about her, she swings in the other direction. I was beginning to see the human side of her last week, but after tonight, I feel like she is back to square one. Its like one step for 10 steps back with her. She wants to protect Lucy, but she goes about it all wrong. She proves over and over again that she doesn't really know her own daughter. Lucy would never be okay with her threatening someone else’s life in order to save her own because she is that selfless. Yet again, I found myself liking Jessica. The writers stated that they were going to humanize her and give her a likeable quality and, imo, they did. She proved she is no pushover last episode, and tonight she also showed that she genuinely cares about Wyatt. She was willing to step aside and let Lucy have him if it made him happy, and that goes a long way. She also proved that she is useful when it comes to helping the team. I'm definitely not saying I want to see her and Wyatt together, but I don't not like her, at least right now. It could very well still come out that she is Rittenhouse, in which case needs to go. This storyline is in no way black or white, and that’s how it should be. That’s the mark of good story-telling. This brings me to the Lyatt of it all. Their story is both heart-breaking and exciting at the same time. Both Wyatt and Lucy are being torn in 2 different directions. Wyatt feels the need to give Jessica a second chance because he is genuinely a good guy. He never got the closure he so desperately needed, and this will give him that. He is also battling his ever-increasing feelings for Lucy and wants to still be close to her. Lucy, on the other hand, is torn between her feelings for Wyatt and wanting to see him be completely happy, and right now she believes that isn't with her. She makes the heart-wrenching decision to back off. We all know this is only temporary, but it hurts nonetheless. Over the next few episodes I'm sure things will get even angstier, but guess what, it will make the payoff that much sweeter. That little baby-doll/sweetheart segment towards the end only further cemented endgame status in my books. The writers gave us that scene in order to let Lyatt shippers know that we haven't been forgotten. Finally, Flynn was hilarious at the end when he came back from the past. And that little scene at the end kind of screamed nothing but friendship to me. Obviously he cares about Lucy and is protective of her, kind of like a big brother in a way. I’m sure others will see it differently, and that's fine. You see it your way, I see it my way. All in all this was a good episode and I am more than excited to see Wyatt shine next week. And, hell, does he ever look good in uniform! Whatever that shocking ending is, is making me all the more excited.