Once again that makes perfect sense, unfortunately there are some serious extenuating circumstances that I'd rather not get into here. It's a bit of a catch 22. I realize that on the surface it appears that she is being unreasonably controlling in this regard, but like I said extenuating circumstances. Also, I don't always do what is acceptable so I don't think I'll have to resort to any of the pitfalls you mentioned at the start of your first post.

At the risk of going all Caroline Hax on you, I'd say that your partner is being unreasonably controlling. No one has the right to dictate what you can and can't do with your own body in private when no other parties are involved, any more than they have the right to dictate what you must let them do with your body for their pleasure over your objections. "Unacceptable"? If it were me, my response would be "I'm sorry you feel that way about it, but you're trying to assert an authority that you don't have over me. It's not your call."

But then, I grew up in a household that didn't get all hung up over sex. The ground rules were that you had autonomy over your own body, a responsibility to avoid transmitting diseases or starting a pregnancy that wasn't wanted by both partners, and the rest was nobody else's business.

Dear Ursa,

I appreciate you taking the time to pen such a detailed response. Ours seem to be the only posts on the forum in the last week that aren't SPAM. Everything you laid out makes perfect sense, however none of the listed options are really open to me. It has been made clear that even getting a "grip on myself" is unacceptable. Normally I would say that it is time to rethink things, but I have obligations that must be met, and sadly that isn't an option either. Thanks again for the effort of well thought out answer, I'm glad that you haven't totally disappeared.

Dear Unevenly Stoked,

Differences in sex drives between partners are more common than not, and most couples manage to deal with it more or less gracefully unless the mismatch is very great. Others never come to terms with it, leading to frustration, arguments, and clandestine dalliances with third parties, rental 'companions', and/or slow-moving livestock. You probably want to avoid these scenarios.

Although there are plenty of unhealthy ways to do it, I'm not aware of any safe, reliable way to reduce your basic sex drive. The pharmaceutical options all have unwanted side effects. So, you're better off accepting that your libido is what it is. This leaves behavioral approaches to the problem.

Discussing the topic openly with one's partner (without playing the guilt/blame game) is useful, not for matching libidos, but for understanding and acknowledging each other's needs and desires. Some degree of compromise can often be achieved, but the bottom line is almost always that the partner with the more active libido is going to end up having sex less frequently than desired. Such are the ethics of sexual relationships; sexual activity requires mutual consent.

Everybody has a comfort zone. If they don't overlap at all, this will be a permanent source of friction in the relationship, and maybe it's time to rethink things. Although you can control your sexual behavior, libido itself is not something that you can negotiate or ratchet up and down at will. Human relationships are multifaceted (i.e., there's a lot more than just sex to them), so you have to weigh all the factors and decide if the current relationship is going to work for both of you in the long term if the libido mismatch is very pronounced. If you're not careful, one of you will always feel pressured, and the other will always feel frustrated. Do the positive things about the relationship outweigh that, or not? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it's no. I'm a high-libido guy with a low-libido partner. We accept our differences and we've made it work for 22 years.

That said, there is no reason (other than convention) why all sex has to be with one partner, as long as you're open about it and all parties are in the loop and agreeable to the arrangement. It's definitely not traditional in modern Western culture, but polyamory works for some people and has been an accepted part of many cultures throughout human history. It's very different from the clandestine love affair. I know a few couples where one or both partners are openly polyamorous, and it seems to work fine for them. It does, however, lack widespread social acceptance and support in this day and age, where monogamy is viewed by mainstream society as the only ethical choice.

There is also the option to, ahem, 'get a grip on yourself'. A lot of people are uncomfortable doing this because they feel like they're somehow cheating on (or worse yet, criticizing) their partner. That's a pity, because it's a cheap, safe, fun way to relieve sexual tension.

- Ursa

Dear Ursa,

I'm hoping you are still lurking, and could possibly answer my question. If not, I hope some other user may have some experience with the topic. Is there a safe way to reduce ones libido? I need to lower mine to more closely match that of my partner.

sincerely,

unevenly stoked

Humor is a dish that is best served deadpan.

Pi/trout, that's a good one.

When I took music theory, when ever we composed in common time, I always wrote the symbol pi/4 just for kicks. On one of my compositions, he noted that I had an extra .859 of a quarter note added per measure. Never even cracked a smile. Dr. Hyden had a great sense of dry humor that I'll never forget.

Dear Don't Hate Me,

I shall take the British approach and be slightly cross with you. Strong stuff, I know, but you did ask more than one question.

1. The time signature is written on the musical score at the beginning. If you don't have the musical score, hum a few bars and then ask yourself if you would rather waltz or polka to it. Waltzes are in three-time (generally 3/4) and polkas are in four-time (generally 2/4). If it can't be shoehorned into one of these categories, you are probably listening to the theme song from Mission Impossible, which is in 5/4 and will damage your brain. Repeat procedure with several songs, then draw the graph, take the second derivative of the plotted curve, and extrapolate as needed to music written in 3/2, 6/8, 4/4. Do not include any samples of Yoko Ono recordings in your graph; they are screeched to a time signature of pi/trout and will cause your plotted function to be discontinuous.

2. The key of a song is also written on the musical score at the beginning. Again, if you don't have the musical score available, hum a few bars. Well, actually, you just want to hum the root note of intro chord or the final chord, which in modern popular music is almost always the tonic note of the key. Check it against a set of pitchpipes, a piano, or other instrument of defined pitch. I find tin whistles and recorders are handy if you don't have pitchpipes, and you can pick them up pretty cheaply.

3. Your best option for gaining weight cheaply is probably rice and beans, especially if you buy them in bulk (50 lb. bags, or by the cubic meter or the hogshead or however you do it on your side of the pond). There are hundreds of recipes out there on the internet. Red beans and rice is a favorite of mine. Both rice and beans contain plenty of carbohydrates for energy, and the combo provides all the essential amino acids that you need to build muscle. Also, beans have lots of fiber. Don't like the gas? Soak the beans overnight at room temperature with some sodium bicarbonate in the water to solubilize the raffinose, and a tablespoon of plain yogurt with active lactobacillus cultures. Lactobacilli eat raffinose. Your flatmates will thank you.

- Ursa

Dear Ursa,

I have two problems. Please help!

a) I used to be a classically trained violinist when I was still in primary school. When I finished primary school, I largely forgot about playing an instrument and all the things I had learned until I was about eighteen, where I picked up the drums and guitar. I dropped the drums in favour of the guitar and would occasionally play it. If you remember, about a year and a half ago I auditioned for a pop-band for a rhythm guitarist role and mentioned it on the forums (I didn't get the role). Since then, I haven't really touched the guitar until about a week ago. Now I realise how bad I've become. My two biggest problems are music theory and working out time signatures of a song and staying in time. So my questions are:

- How do I tell what time signature a song is in? Any advice about staying in time as well?
- How on earth do I tell what key a song is in?

b) Since I have literally no money left in my bank account, do you have any suggestions for cheap recipes which will surely put on the pounds? Bear in mind that we don't eat junk food in my house. I'm planning to resume working out, but I need to pile on the pounds more.

Signed,
- I just realised that that was about four questions, not two. Don't hate me.

Dear Julie,

Salmon is good prepared a variety of ways. Personally I don't care for fried salmon or salmon patties, but a lot of people love them. Frying gives a very distinctive flavor to this particular fish, one that I don't happen to like. But don't let that put you off trying fried salmon. You may very well love it.

Poached or broiled salmon is good. You can poach it in water, fish or chicken broth, white wine, or any combination of the above. For something different, poach it in orange juice.

Salmon has a fairly robust flavor for a fish and will stand up to a lot of different seasonings. Butter, lemon and dill are the traditional seasonings for it. Any citrus juice plus pepper (black or red) goes well with it. So does thyme if you use a light touch. Bay leaves are good for seasoning any poached salmon or salmon soups and stews. For something out of the ordinary, slather your favorite fruit jelly or preserves over the top of it and broil it (I find apricot jam is quite tasty with salmon). And one can never go wrong covering salmon with freshly made hollandaise sauce. (Note to all newbie chefs: learn how to make hollandaise sauce. It ain't rocket science. It's not even slightly challenging if you do it in a blender).

When I'm in a hurry I just poach salmon in some water with a whole sliced lemon thrown in. When I have more time, I like to broil it or make salmon soup. The best combo I've found is your basic vegetable soup (carrot, onion, celery, potatoes) made with a seafood or chicken broth or clam juice and a good splash of dry white wine. Season with a bay leaf or two. Cube the salmon in 1-inch chunks and throw it in the pot about ten minutes before you plan to serve it. This recipe is also good if you jazz it up a bit with a touch of cayenne pepper.

As for food combos, rice goes well with salmon, especially a nice rice pilaf. Wild rice is excellent. Steamed green beans or broccoli or asparagus are also a great accompaniment to round out the meal. My husband loves plain poached salmon with a side of macaroni and cheese, which is not a pairing that I've ever developed a personal taste for. You will note the curious scarcity of fish-and-cheese recipes in the world's great cuisines. Like the scarcity of recipes for eggs scrambled with lime juice and cocoa powder, this should tell you something about the combo. But what the heck, if it sounds good to you too, go ahead and try it.

- Ursa

Dear Foodoholic,

My cookbook wouldn't be of much use in Europe. It's so hard to get fresh bison or woodchuck meat over there.

- Ursa

I usually just go with recipes, but it's mainly when I'm cooking with rice and whatever meat and veggies I have laying around that I like to experiment.

If I were to try and cook up some salmon, are there any good recipes/spices/food combinations you would suggest?

Dear Ursa,
When will your cook book come out? And will it be on sale on the other side of the pond?
Signed
A Foodoholic

Pork chops are delicious but I've rarely ever had them. I need more in my life. The last time I had one was probably 2011, and that was probably my second time having them.

Four hours on low in the slow-cooker is about right for a two-pound pork loin, which is essentially one giant pork chop without the bone. Any longer and it gets tough and dry. I imagine that regular pork chops will behave similarly, but might cook in as little as two to three hours because they're thinner. Again, the trick is to get them through the uncooked-tough stage, but not so far as to push them into the overcooked-tough one. It varies according to the temperature of the individual slow-cooker, so it might take a couple of test runs to perfect it.

BTW, there's nothing stopping you from marinating pork chops that you are going to slow-cook.

The bread and bake is decent. I crush up stuffing cubes for the breading and it's ok. But it's not as good as the marinade and grill we do in the summer. It's been a long time since I tried the slow-cooker. I think I left them in too long, because they were tough and dry.

Lean pork is tricky because it toughens so easily. If you undercook it, it retains its native raw-meat toughness. If you overcook it, it becomes shoe repair material. There's a sweet spot in the middle where the collagen has melted but the muscle fibers are still moist and tender, and that's what you're aiming for. Forget about all the horror stories about trichinosis- the parasite is killed instantly at 144 F, and is bumped off even at considerably lower temperatures by a few minutes of exposure. Don't overcook your pork.

I like to sear the outsides of the chops quickly over high heat in a frying pan to add some color and flavor, and then finish cooking them with some variation on the slow braising technique. They're really good if you cover them with a batch of Flemish red cabbage and apples and let the whole thing simmer in the slow cooker on low for a few hours.

Pork chops can also be baked, either breaded or unbreaded. I confess that I haven't tried this method myself, although I've been served pork chops baked by others which were quite tasty and tender (and also some that were more like hockey pucks than food). I know there's a Shake 'n Bake coating mix for pork chops, which is probably the most painless way to experiment with the technique if you haven't done it before.

How about pork chops when you can't use the grill?

Personally I flambé them with baby oil.

Dear Need to Know How to Season Dead Babies,

Honestly, I don't remember that chart. The brain cells, they do not live forever.

The conventions about which spice goes with which meat are very culture-dependent anyway. E.g., modern Western cuisine tends to put cinnamon only in sweet baked goods, but medieval Western cuisine included it in practically every meat dish, and several contemporary Indian culinary traditions still do something along these lines. So, which cuisine are we talking about?

There are certain unbeatable combinations, such as rosemary with a pork roast or cloves with ham. My suggestion would be look up individual recipes that interest you at first, rather than consulting a huge chart and trying to improvise. Pay attention to mastering the basic cooking techniques; seasoning is a relatively trivial thing to learn by comparison. As you gain experience, pretty soon you will be able to throw together meals on your own without consulting a recipe, and you'll have a good feel for which seasoning goes well with which meat. There are lots of possible combos and crossovers. Dare to be daring. You know you want to try the beef pot roast with orange juice and cinnamon.

If you have a specific question about a particular meat, I can try to tackle it in depth.

- Ursa

P.S. The proper seasoning for dead babies is, of course, baby powder.

Dear Ursa,
I have recently discovered how much I love cooking. I remember some months back seeing a chart posted somewhere on this forum that showed different types of meat and all the spices that went well with each of them. I think you either posted it or commented on it. This isn't to make you look through different threads for it, but I'm just curious if you can remember where you found it?

Thanks,
- Need to Know How to Season Dead Babies

Perhaps you have caught on. When it's tomato juice, I plan to add it to vodka.

Dear Just Mary,

Unseasoned crushed tomatoes or tomato purée would work just fine (the former should be run through the blender and maybe strained), although you'd need to dilute them a bit. I would definitely not recommend using condensed tomato soup, pasta sauce or salsa as a substitute, unless you find their unique seasonings acceptable in your "tomato juice".

If you decide to go ahead with the experiment anyway but are afraid of watering it down too much, just use vodka! It's much drier than water because it's almost half ethanol. I'm thinking that it might also help take the edge off any objections to the taste of your ersatz tomato juice.

- Ursa

Dear Ursa,

Can I make tomato juice out of other canned tomato products? It doesn't have to be exact, just close enough. I think I have a can of campbell's condensed tomato soup or I could use a large can of crushed tomatoes in the pantry. What I'm afraid of is watering it down too much or else being a little too chunky. I think all those things are basically in the same flavor family though. My other concern is not having to go outside in the snow and the store is too far to walk because I don't feel like it.

Signed,
It's just mary now.

Edit: I don't know what happened to the crushed tomato, but I have a jar of pasta sauce and a tub of supermarket-deli-made salsa to work with (medium), in addition to the soup.

Glad the roast worked out. You really ought to try the orange juice version some time and see how the kids like it. You're allowed to cheat with orange juice if you must and use the store-bought stuff, as it's very close to fresh in quality, but promise me that you will never try this in any recipe whatsoever with (ugh!) bottled lemon juice.

But the essential key to a good pot roast, as you have seen, is long cooking at low temperature. Everything else is mere detail.

Hey thanks! The roast turned out good. Thanks to a kid with a nightmare, I was up at 4 a.m. and put everything in then. Nice and tender.

Thank you for the advice. I guess this is a good idea to not throw out the refrigerator contents first, then do the dishes. I don't think it's a great idea for me to join a club where knives are thrown by or handled by a type called "newbie". It is probably easiest now to wash them best I can and not use them. I don't use them enough to need them, and that's why they're rusty and dull yet still pointy and sharp. They are 2 threateningly large and remind me of freak accidents. I would not want anyone to suffer injury due to my careless disposal.

Dear Need to Know,

How do you throw out a knife? Carefully.

Your chief challenge is to prevent the blade from poking through the trash bag and stabbing somebody. Now is the perfect time to pull that moldy cantaloupe out of the fridge and bury the blade of the knife in it before putting both items in the trash bag. As a precaution against slippage, you should duct-tape the knife and the cantaloupe together. Make sure you draw the blinds before you do this or the neighbors are really going to start wondering about you.

If you don't have a moldy cantaloupe handy, you can use a cardboard box or some other sturdy container and put the knife inside that. A large block of styrofoam also makes a good moldy cantaloupe substitute.

You can also wrap the blade in multiple layers of newspaper or bubble wrap or an pair of old socks and duct-tape it firmly together. Old Fed-Ex or other mailing envelopes are pretty tough, too, and make good knife-disposal containers.

The lazy woman's way to dispose of a knife, though, is to join your local SCA chapter and go to thrown weapons practice. You simply "forget" to retrieve the knife and leave it stuck in the target when you're finished. It will then find its way into barony's collection of loaner gear for newbies. This is perhaps the greenest option, too, as the knife does not end up in a landfill.

- Ursa

Dear Ursa,

How do you throw out a knife?

Signed,
Need to know

You might be able to get away with a splash of red wine to add a little flavor and tenderize the meat. A quarter to a half cup of dry red wine added to the broth gives a nice, subtle flavor to it. Anything more and the wine flavor dominates- which is definitely more suitable for the adult palate than the kiddie palate.

You can also try a tablespoon or two of red wine or cider vinegar, or even lemon juice or orange juice (fresh-squeezed, of course, from a real fruit. Don't forget to throw in some of the zest). Any addition of acid helps to tenderize the roast. Your kids would probably enjoy beef roasted in orange juice. But perhaps this is an experiment for another meal.