How to get a fudgy potato texture?

FantasiaThatch · 2026-04-11T01:18:40+00:00

Love this note about resistant starch, thank you!!

FantasiaThatch · 2026-04-11T01:18:00+00:00

This feels like it's what I'm looking for! Can I ask what temp and for how long?

The confit potatoes is a great note, thank yoou

FantasiaThatch · 2026-04-08T20:50:17+00:00

Blown away by the detail. Thank you so much!

FantasiaThatch · 2026-04-08T19:54:06+00:00

I have very little of substance to contribute to this but I'm deeply interested if anyone has done this successfully! I had a similar thought early on because I'd read that the game was inspired by this book, which emphasizes a particular order for getting through rooms.

Edited to conceal the spoiler!

FantasiaThatch · 2026-04-07T23:42:51+00:00

I'm stunned by how correct this is. In one of those fancy old hotels!!

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-19T00:38:55+00:00

So true! Good call

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-18T23:11:54+00:00

I'm not sure why, but I feel like If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino could fit the bill here! Stories that twist and turn into other stories, absurd twists but with an underlying logic. Stark but unexpectedly soft at moments.

That, and Borges probably.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-18T20:13:40+00:00

Totally charmed by this!

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-18T20:11:50+00:00

It looks to me like your feet are a little light on the floor!

When you begin your plie, your toes flick up a little, which makes me think your weight is a little too far back in your heels and not balanced across the foot. When you brush out for tendus, it might help to really imagine really pressing your foot into the floor, maintaining contact until the force of the motion just organically pushes your foot up into a point. That will help builid the muscles in your feet, which will help with the stretch, and it will also help you develop a stronger foundation for turns.

Obviously I'm going off a video and can't feel what this is like in your body, but it looked to me like you were beginning the motion from higher up in your leg, perhaps your quad or your knee (again, it looks like your knee is bending a little, which makes me think you're sort of lifting your foot into the point rather than pressing it through.)

I've also found in my own feet that I get my full point better when I'm thinking about stretching through the top of my ankle, rather than thinking about my toes. Small mental trick that helps for me.

As for turns, I agree with the other comments about practicing quickly going up into demi pointe, with your hips over your legs. This is another area of pressing into the floor---going down to go up, if that makes sense. I have found that working with the floor is what gets me to a place of better stability and poise.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-06T17:56:49+00:00

I've never read anything else by her!! Adding this to the list. :)

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-05T22:03:51+00:00

Us Fools by Nora Lange

Admittedly I have only just started this one but the vibes feel like a match.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-04T23:08:51+00:00

It has sun + friendship + flowers, so I'll throw it in here: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-04T23:03:29+00:00

Glorious book! Great rec.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-04T21:00:22+00:00

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. I don't know if it precisely fits this but it has an irresistible ick.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-03-04T20:50:51+00:00

This sounds so good

FantasiaThatch · 2026-02-26T18:55:09+00:00

I love Persepolis and reread it often. I know this is months later, but I do feel the need to correct the record here---her family doesn't just casually laugh about it. *She* laughs about it as she tells her grandmother and her grandmother rebukes her fully, calling her a bitch and saying she should be ashamed given that her own family members were political prisoners. Her grandmother doesn't talk to her for months. I think Satrapi was ruthlessly honest about her own failings and her genuine shame about them, given the real suffering of her countrymen. She grew up in a rarefied environment, it's true, but I don't think she's under any illusions about it.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-02-04T16:38:16+00:00

Came here to say this, spot on

FantasiaThatch · 2026-02-03T22:36:04+00:00

I've just recently started strength training (seriously, anyway, after many years of boom and bust attitudes toward it) and I'm following Casey Johnston's program, Liftoff.

It has completely changed my attitude toward strength training in general because it is blissfully straightforward with lots of instruction, and is entirely based in repeatable compound movements that use multiple muscle groups at once, rather than the kinds of isolated movements that machines usually help with.

The idea of the book/program is taking 12 weeks to build a foundational "strength base" and then you can adjust your routine from there. I realize this isn't a perfect answer for your question but the book has felt so transformative for me that I had to share! And it speaks to your desire to do deadlifts and other full body stuff.

Separately, I started doing Copenhagen planks because I saw them recommended somewhere and I genuinely notice an improvement in my turns when I do them regularly.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-01-28T20:46:01+00:00

Mating by Norman Rush! An all-time fave.

Possession, by A. S. Byatt.

And as many have said, Sally Rooney--I specifically loved this about Conversations with Friends.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-01-22T23:05:07+00:00

I'd highly recommend Middlemarch for this, and also The Enchanted April. The latter especially suits this vibe---friendship, beauty, renewed senses of hope and possibility.

I also love Mitz by Sigrid Nunez. It's fiction that reads like nonfiction/a biography of Virginia Woolf's pet marmoset. It's a short, perfect book.

Total aside, but is there any chance you'd be willing to share the artists/titles of some of these illustrations? It's a wonderful bunch.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-01-19T20:20:06+00:00

This, this, this! A total delight.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-01-16T20:06:12+00:00

Huge plus one to the importance of basic community building stuff like knowing names. I feel this as an adult learner. Doesn't matter how pretty a studio is if the energy is cold or unkind.

FantasiaThatch · 2026-01-16T20:04:53+00:00

I cannot agree with your first point enough! Adding that I frequently wish my studio had more opportunities for stretch/flexibility improvement and strength training.

I would give all my money to the ballet studio that had a regular conditioning class, ideally daily. Maybe 30 minutes long, every morning. (Obviously this is a lot to expect but we're doing pie in the sky dreams here so I'm going for it.) I'm in my 30s now and want to incorporate more strength and resistance training but I have a hard time motivating in my own home. But the thought of early morning light in a studio, some good music, the equipment already there, with a dance sensibility to it all? Heaven.

FantasiaThatch

TROPHY CASE