Baked squash, Bean soup, and more philosophy

So it turns out that our professor was just pulling a Socrates on us, and making us realize some of the contradictions in our thinking. Basically, my reaction was the same as Euthyphro's. I felt rather sheepish when I realized our similarities.

That being said, I am now completely loving the class! I'm thoroughly enjoying reading all these philosophers. We've just finished up Hume and are moving onto Kant today. Yesterday my professors unknowingly made a pun. He was talking about Kant's theory of consciousness or something along those lines, and said something about the "contours of the brain." However, what I heard was "KANTours of the brain." Ha ha! It was almost as good as Danny's famous "you KANT understand him" pun. Dear old Immanuel lends himself so well to name jokes.

I will be churning out an essay on Kant tonight on the role of Phenomena and noumena in his epistemology. We'll see how that goes. The idea of noumena kind of fascinates me...the 'being' of something that we can't perceive. Maybe it's just me, but any time a philosopher says something that we can't (KANT!) do, I immediately think "but what if we COULD? what would that be like?" I felt the same way when Hume claimed that we can't know necessary connection a priori, otherwise we could just pick up an object and just 'know' what kinds of effects it would have.

Wouldn't that be an awesome super power though? You could pick any plant and know if it had any medicinal properties or if it was poisonous or something. Forget Supergirl or Wonder Woman, I would be Necessary Connection Woman.

Speaking of superheroes, I felt like one this past week, because I did some real cooking! And it WORKED!
I should define what I mean by real cooking: either creating a recipe myself, or doing some improvisation off of another. This week I did both! My first success was baked butternut squash.

I'll admit that butternut squash is kind of one of the easiest things to make delicious, but it still felt like a victory for someone who a day before ruined a batch of box brownies. I managed to ruin brownies from a BOX. I'm sure somewhere, Martha Stewart was crying.

Anyway, I baked up that squash with a little oil in the bottom of a glass baking dish, then I sliced some butter on top and shook some brown sugar on top. Then I put it in the oven at 350 F for about 15-20 minutes, till the squash was soft. Then I cooked up some rice and mixed it all together.

A few days later, I made some ham and bean soup from a recipe on a bag of mixed beans I bought. I left out some ingredients, and because of time constraints, I had to figure out how to get the beans to soften quicker, so I consulted Google, and several sources said that boiling them furiously sometimes did the trick. So, I took a risk and did that, then simmered on medium low (level 3) instead of on the simmer setting, hoping that it would cook faster.
IT WORKED. It even tasted like my mom's ham and bean soup. It was like the day I learned to make a fried egg, like I passed one of the tests for being an adult.
So far I think I am doing well on these tests, at least the ones that have come up so far.

• Making a fried egg --  check
• Wearing/owning a thumb ring -- check
• Making ham and bean soup -- check
• Ability to drive a stick shift -- in progress. I have already melted some tires, so that's out of the way.
• Being financially savvy -- not even close
• Having a real job -- do I have to?
• Living on my own -- Yikes!

Yeah, those later tests are doozys. Not sure how I'll fare on that.  Now if I was just Necessary Connection Woman/Noumena-Knower, it would a lot easier.