I found a list of 134 synonyms for “said”, then searched the text of all seven books to count how many times the words “Harry said” or “said Harry” occurred, repeated this for Ron and Hermione, then did this again for each of the synonyms on my list. I found “said” and 51 synonyms used 7085 times for these characters over the million or so words in the series. By far the most common term is “said”, which they each use between 80% to 85% of the time they speak. The rest of the time, however, Rowling describes Hermione’s speech very differently than Harry or Ron. All three often whisper and gasp, but it’s almost exclusively Hermione who cries, screams, shrieks, squeals, squeaks, wails, whimpers, sobs, giggles, or screeches (in that order of frequency). (To be precise, Harry cries once and screams twice, but otherwise the above list is unique to Hermione.) Only Ron grumbles, pipes up, complains, or howls, and only Harry chuckles, frets, nags, states, thunders, or vents. Both Ron and Harry often mutter, yell, or shout.

It’s clearly not just Stephen Fry who views Hermione this way, although he does seem to speak her parts this way even more often than Rowling’s text tells him to. As my partner helpfully pointed out, since dialogue for all three is usually written with “said”, when Fry uses a shrieking voice the rest of the time, it’s his own bias he’s adding on top of Rowlings’ already sexist depiction of the character who seems to exist just to do everyone’s homework and emotional labour.

For complete word counts, see the source data in Google Docs.

I think about food pairings for our hot sauce collection the way some people think carefully about wine. In this case, I would suggest using this with eggs, potatoes, or a pasta dish with a simple tomato sauce.

Ingredients

All amounts here can be adjusted according to taste except for the salt.

• Hot peppers (but see note below about controlling for the level of heat)
• Bell peppers
• Onions
• Carrots
• Garlic
• Cumin seeds
• Salt (in proportion to total weight of vegetables; see below)

Preparation

• Wash and coarsely chop all ingredients.
  • I suggest seeding some or all of the peppers (the seeds have most of the heat and little of the other flavour in a hot pepper).
  • Use gloves when seeding the peppers to avoid a chemical burn.
• Roast the cumin seeds and garlic in a dry skillet.
  • To roast garlic, heat it with the skin still on, turning occasionally, until the skin is black on all sides.
  • To roast tomatillos, remove the outer skin, halve them, and put them on the bottom rack of an oven set to broil until the tops start to blacken.
• Weigh the processed vegetables, place everything in a large bowl, and add 1.5 to 2 teaspoons of salt per pound.
• With your hands and wearing gloves again, work the salt into the vegetables ingredients until it’s thoroughly distributed and you see liquid extracted from the vegetables by the salt via osmosis starting to collect in the bottom of the bowl.
• Place the entire mixture into a large airtight jar, but ensure the jar is not sealed too tightly for air to escape (see below).
• Store the jar at a cool temperature (18-20 degrees) and out of the sun for two to three weeks, or until it tastes sour enough for you. (If it’s too warm the fermentation will happen too quickly and the flavour won’t be nearly as rich.)
• Drain off the liquid, then blend the remaining solids to make a sauce.
• Store in the fridge and use within four to six weeks (or see note above about citric acid).

How to control the level of spice

Fermentation at room temperature will break down the level of heat in your hot peppers to the point that after 2-3 weeks there will be little left if you took the seeds out. This also happens when the finished sauce is in the fridge, but at a much slower rate. To save time seeding large quantities of hot peppers and to more easily control the final level of heat I now just ferment everything else for 2-3 weeks, then add a purée of hot peppers at the end to taste.

How to choose a jar

There are many options, from vapour locks used by homebrewers to a simple plastic lid screwed firmly but not too tight. Any of these will work for lacto fermentation as long as oxygen from the air doesn’t touch the vegetables but carbon dioxide produced within the jar can escape. In a day or two you should see bubbles forming in the jar, and if your lid is tight enough you’ll hear gas escape if you loosen the lid slightly as a test. If you use a tightly sealed glass jar, it is possible for the pressure to build to the point where the jar will burst, so be careful! The easiest solution I’ve found is to just use any bail lid jar, for example the Fido brand (as suggested by my colleague Jason, whose home fermentation successes inspired me to try as well).

Further reading

For more on home fermentation in general, a good place to start is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz.

Photos

We buy yogurt culture online from Glengarry Cheesemaking in Ontario. Glengarry sells the culture in packages of 60 grams, and they say to use 1/16 tsp per 2 liters of milk (traditionally called a pinch). If the yogurt is too thin for your taste, use more culture or ferment longer; if too thick, use less culture or ferment for less time. If it doesn’t work at all, you probably added the yogurt culture when the milk was too hot. This works best using UHT (ultra high temperature) pasturised milk, sometimes labelled as “stays fresh longer” on the carton (often this is the cheaper brands), so experiment with different types of milk from your local store to find the ones that work for you. The percentage of fat in the milk doesn’t affect the fermentation; you can even replace some or all of the regular milk with canned condensed milk.

The culture loses effectiveness after about a year in the freezer, but you can increase the amount to compensate. It’s also possible to strain the yogurt through cheesecloth to make it thicker.

Method 1: Stovetop

You’ll need a thermometer capable of reading temperatures from 40°C to 85°C, and a large thermos able to contain the jar you want to make yogurt in with lots of volume left over.

1. Heat 2L milk to at least 85°C.
2. Allow to cool to between 40°C and 45°C.
3. Pour into glass jar and stir in 1/16 tsp of yogurt culture.
4. Place glass jar into a large thermos filled with water at 45°C.
5. Let sit at least 4-7 hours (without moving or shaking the container).

Method 2: Electric Pressure Cooker

After years of making yogurt on the stove, we bought an Instant Pot model with a yogurt setting. No thermometer or thermos is needed with this method. You won’t bring the milk to pressure so it’s a little simpler to use a standard pot lid; Instant Pot sells a glass lid, but the standard lid or anything else that fits is fine.

1. Pour 2L milk directly into the pot.
2. Press the “yogurt” button, press the “adjust” button to set to “more” (display will show “boil” instead of a time), and put on the lid.
3. When the Instant Pot beeps to let you know the milk is at 85°C, take the inner pot out and let it cool to below 40°C, for example in a sink filled with cold water.
4. Stir 1/16 tsp of yogurt culture, and put the pot back into the cooker. (Remove the milk skin on top first if desired.)
5. Press the “yogurt” button again, set to “normal”, then set the time to 8:00 or more. (Do not use “less”; this is a lower temperature setting.)
6. Let sit at least 4-7 hours (without moving or shaking the pot), or longer.
7. Transfer to jars and refrigerate.

Instructions from Glengarry Cheesemaking

For even more precise instructions or for larger batches, consult the instructions provided by Glengarry.

It’s going to be quite a year. Wish me luck, and all the best to you & yours.

My plans for the year turned out alright: I succeeded in my goal to write short reviews here of everything I read in 2013; the total came out to 45 books, which doesn’t count a few children’s books and short graphic novels. I also more or less stopped dressing like I had walked into a Salvation Army store naked with a $10 bill, a step in a long, slow trend towards adulthood (or at least my own interpretation of it).

This year, I aspire to start taking better care of my aging body, regardless of how cliché it may be to resolve to exercise more. We’ll see how well this goal turns out.

Here’s hoping you have a year of joy and hope. As I said to a friend yesterday, may you have all the cake you deserve.