ingredience:

lemons/limes (this needs to make up the bulk of the fruit being used, like at least 80%)

whatever other fruits or fruit scraps you want, plus any herbs/other flavorings you want to try. by fruit scraps I mean things like cherry pits, apple peels, pineapple cores, strawberry ends, things like that.

granulated white sugar, the coarser the better, 50% by weight of total citrus rinds + 100% by weight of any additional fruit. you'll measure this after you prep the fruit.

water as needed

equipment:

a few nonmetallic mixing bowls

a mesh strainer

a chinoise, ricer or some cheesecloth

a kitchen scale

a citrus juicer or reamer (manual or electric)

a potato masher

juice the citrus through a strainer - saving all rinds -  and refrigerate the juice for the time being. dice the rinds and other fruits if any, keeping the rinds separate. make note of weights, and measure your sugar.

 Place sugar in a large nonmetallic bowl. If using non-citrus fruits and/or any other flavorings, mix them in with the sugar and mash with potato masher. add diced citrus rinds, mix thoroughly, and mash again. cover and let stand at room temperature for at least 4 hours. this allows the sugar to draw out flavors that would otherwise get discarded with the rinds, and the rinds' acids should be enough to dissolve the sugar into a syrup.

Afterward, mash one last time, then collect the syrup by pressing the macerated mixture through a strainer/chinoise or ricer, or squeeze it through cheesecloth. if you want, this can be saved as a standalone syrup at this point, for use in cocktails or desserts. if not, slowly pour the reserved juice through the solids to to help get the remaining syrup out, and squeeze/press again. do the same thing one more time with warm water (roughly the same amount of water as juice). discard solids (or try making sangria with them!).

taste the mixture and add more water if necessary. a stronger mix is totally fine if you anticipate serving over ice on a hot day, or adding booze, or if there was a lot of non-sour fruit. keep in mind that it will taste a bit less sweet once it's chilled. pour into a pitcher and refrigerate.

citrus oils will float to the top, so stir/shake before serving. love you. enjoy.

some tried and true flavor combos:

straight lemon or lime, or any combination of the two, is of course an untouchable classic

lemon & strawberries (that's pussy babe!)

lemon & orange with a hint of vanilla (creamsiclemonade...?)

lemon & apples or apple peels with cinnamon/ginger/allspice (for late summer)

some cocktail type combos, booze optional:

lemon or lime & berries with basil + gin

lime & mint + white rum

lime & ginger + dark rum

lime & cucumber + gin

lime & orange (berries optional) + tequila

And my sibling was like “oh hey; they’re writing a book about a jockey”

And their partner was like “and they’re all Irish or from the Dominican Republic????? Why??”

And I was like “oh yeah - the weight limit has to be half the weight of the average American male so by numbers Americans don’t really ride races any more, the top flat jockeys in the USA are from Latin America. In Ireland and the UK there’s a lot of Irish and the Irish go everywhere for economic reasons and get purposefully imported to Japan and-“

And the partner was like “and they’re all four feet tall and crazy!”

And I was like “and they’re all crazy! The most injured athletes!! The athletes with no off season! The most concussed athletes! And unlike football and hockey players, they don’t get brain damage from it.”

My sibling was like, “they don’t?”

And I was like, “well no!! They don’t!! The most resilient and fastest-healing athletes for some reason. Of course, two of them die on live TV every year —-“

“TWO OF THEM DIE EVERY YEAR?”

“Yeah well that’s just the ones that die IN RACES, more of them drop dead in exercise riding but dw about it…”

My sibling’s partner broke in, in a tone of revelation; “and nobody notices them! They only see the horse!!!”

2) two jockeys die on live TV a year (average)

I wrote a Tumblr-style starter pack on the history of Black jockeys in the USA with resources (this book cited) https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/776574564787470336/thank-you-so-much-for-pulling-together-all-this

https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/805427397681971200/ourfriendsthejays-blackhistoryalbum-the Isaac burns Murphy biography post

https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/801817879304683520/sharpay-did-you-know-that-the-very-first-assembly on why the opening lines of “Nope (2022)” are technically inaccurate but dont worry about it and more information about the Black jockey who was one of the FIRST HUMAS TO BE FILMED

https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/798212921538772992/a-video-from-the-met-museum-about-conserving-a context and reflection on silks that belonged to a Black jockey

A phenomenal piece of Ancient Greek sculpture depicts a Black jockey - the Greek African child riding a racehorse in eternity, called the Jockey of Artemision: https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/796192644208459776/today-we-can-learn-about-the-jockey-of

Vital - A powerful wavetable synth, my personal favorite VST synth, very easy to figure out creating new synth sounds, with the help of the plenty of tutorials that are out there for the plug-in. (There are paid versions but they are completely unnecessary to get 99% of the features of the plug-in.)

Synth1 - A classic piece of synthesizer software.

Pendulate - An interesting, chaotic synth that you can make weird little sounds with.

Native Instruments' free plug-ins - Various cool VSTs, including the Komplete Start pack.

The Free Orchestra - A set of orchestral instruments for Kontakt Player (see previous link).

BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - More orchestral stuff! This one has its own player so you don't have to download a separate VST to use it if you don't want to.

Magical 8bit Plug - A chiptune plug-in, intended for producing sounds like that of 8-bit systems like the NES and Master System.

Genny - A synth VST made to emulate the soundchip of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

MT Power Drum Kit - A nice rock n' roll style drum kit plug-in.

This guy's weird VST collection - 6.4 gigabytes of weird VSTs, including some you might know, like Delay Lama and MeowSynth!

sforzando - A free player for soundfont files.

Musical Artifacts - A resource I mainly use to find soundfonts, on which you can find other various things as well.

Kilohearts Essentials - 30 effect VSTs including reverb, delay, compression, pitch shifting, transient shaping, ring modulation, phase distortion, and more.

Xfer's freeware VSTs - Exactly what it says on the tin, including the one and only OTT compressor.

Illformed - The good ol' dblue Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch, and TapeStop.

Hysteresis and Fracture - Two interesting glitch effects, one being a delay and the other being a buffer.

Codec - A cool digital audio degradation effect.

Le Phonk - A slick distortion plug-in.

MAIM - An effect that mimics the sound of MP3 compression.

Soundly Shape it and Place it - One is simply an equalizer VST, the other is an effect that emulates a speaker (ex: a radio) and a space (ex: a cave).

Fresh Air - An effect that adds high end information to your sounds, to provide brightness.

ValhallaSupermassive - A combo reverb and delay plug-in that sounds quite big.

UnplugRed - A collection of various interesting VSTs, most of which have free versions.

Chowdhury DSP - I can't personally speak for all of these but their tape model effect is great for some lo-fi style effects.

TAL-Chorus-LX - A thick sounding chorus, good for "retro" sounds too.

Polyverse Wider - A great effect for widening sounds up, really simple too with only two controls.

Freesound - A good audio file resource, mainly for foley recordings.

Cymbatics Dubstep Starter Pack - A little sample pack with some good drum and synth samples.

fishmonger drum kit - A pack of samples from the album 'fishmonger' by Underscores!

WangleLine's sample packs - Free samples put out by my awesome mutual WangleLine!

aaand I might as well include this set of drums I made a while back :P

Reblog this on the first of the month for good luck all month long!

if you're cold, she's cold

@thedisablednaturalist @fagtabulous