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Adventures in Cooking

Oct8

Yesterday, I learned:

That porchetta is a food item (Wikipedia says it is “a savoury, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast of Italian culinary tradition”). It is also a food item that our local grocery store sells.

That pancetta is a food item. (Wikipedia says that is is “is Italian bacon made of pork belly meat that is salt cured and spiced with black pepper and sometimes other spices”).

That my husband’s handwriting can make pancetta look exactly like porcetta (it’s that a-n) and that I should really check the list in the evening, before I go to the grocery store at 8:30 a.m.

That the recipe I want to make later this week calls for pancetta, not porchetta.

And that porchetta is very tasty, and very different from pancetta.

Time to hit the local butcher’s!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/825731.html. You can comment here or there.

Everyone Else is doing it: October Goals

Oct3

1) Finish at least one project around the house.
2) Regularly empty the kitty litters
3) Equally regularly clean up the “snail trail” (as T. refers to it) of stuff left ’round the house (i.e., this morning it would be the charm box from my birthday-present charm)
4) Track food daily in myfitnesspal
5) get 30 minutes of exercise at least 3x/week.

Wish me luck!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/819890.html. You can comment here or there.

Recipe Try-outs: A quick review

Sep12

So, we bought “PBFit,” powdered peanut butter, because we had a coupon at BJ’s club (A big-box/buy-in-quantity style-store) and wanted to try it.

And I was craving peanut butter cookies, so I did some googling, and found this:

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/1026723/how-to-use-powdered-peanut-butter

If you scroll down, there’s a recipe for “Easy chocolate chip peanut butter cookies recipe.”

It’s a bare modification to the (halved) Tollhouse recipe – 1/8 c less flour, 1/4teas less salt, and then add powdered PB (yes, I have the Tollhouse recipe memorized).

It tasted… good. Not peanutty enough, although replacing the chocolate chips with pb chips might have helped. Not quite the right mouthfeel for peanut butter cookies, though adding a bit more pb fit might help.

Short sum: tasty, will cook again, but will modify next time to be tastier.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/809277.html. You can comment here or there.

Links of Awesome, Friday Edition

Sep12

The Kitchn: Advice for Eating on a Very Tight Budget

(we ate lots of rice and beans, and “splurged” on condiments when they were on sale. To this day you can see that echoed in our condiment selection, which is, ah, extensive).

Via M.C.A. Hogarth: Russian Scientists Build Monument To Honor Lab Rats

Now I want to read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH again…

And FROM MCA Hogarth: Now Available: Not in Need of Quests, a Men in Fantasy Coloring Book!

You have GOT to look at this! It’s beautiful!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/809067.html. You can comment here or there.

Gone Sailing!

Sep5

It’s almost the weekend again, but oh, wow, was last weekend fun!

I went on a boat! And Drank Wine! And ate Tapas! And drank more Wine! And then it was Christmas!

My dear friends E.Mc & Pivin gave T & I, for Christmas, a gift certificate for two people’s ride on the Schooner True Love – they also got themselves two tickets, as a promise to come visit sometime in the summer.

And, sliding in just under the wire, they came to visit last weekend!

So we went out on this lovely sailboat – about 60-something feet – for about two hours, tacking back and forth across Seneca Lake.

It was awesome. (My new icon for [twitter.com profile] thornewrites is me on the boat, just before I lost the hat). I haven’t been on a sailboat in probably a decade, and it was the most soothing feeling. Also, the best day for it – warm, no rain, but not oppressive, plenty of breeze.

The rest of the weekend was just as awesome. We checked out a new-to-us tapas place: Mia and ate lots of tasty food, then unwound at Autumn Leaves, a used book store on the Commons – I bought Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which I’ve been wanting to read for ages!

Then it was “Christmas” – technically a mutual celebration of birthdays that took place in April, April, May, and June. All the gifts!

And then there was wine, but this post is already dragging long. More for next time! Cheerio!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/803330.html. You can comment here or there.

Weird Summer – a blog post

Aug29

It’s been a weird summer, and an even weirder week.

The weather’s been off all summer – spring storms and autumn chills through July and August, grey days and damp nights and not a day in the nineties – hardly a day in the 80’s! And I’ve been a little off, too. Not entirely sure why, but it’s been a bit harder to get excited, and bit harder to hold on to energy, all summer – all year – long.

These things happen, and as we go into September, I’m trying to muster energy to … well, to have energy.

The weather might be chilly, but it’s lovely for hiking; I want to do more of that in the next few weeks. Then there’s the wedding – Best Friend Evar is getting married at the end of the month – AND she & Fiance are coming to visit this weekend!

(gonna be so much good food, and so much awesome hanging out, and so much… everything!)

(I don’t get to see them often; they live ~4 hours away and are Very Busy People)

So! There are things to be excited about, and one of my goals for September is to work on remembering that.

The other goals: remember I’m trying to lose weight, not gain it; and actively work on submitting stories to anthologies/contests.

Oh, and get that Kickstarter thing going.

I can do this!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/797402.html. You can comment here or there.

I was Curious, so I went back 8 years in my Livejournal

Aug27

12:04 pm August 29th, 2006
Care & Feeding of the [Lyn]…

Painting with broad strokes, it’s generally a good idea to not tell me things unless I ask for information. I’m a bright girl; I know a lot of common knowledge things and am good about asking for information when I don’t know something. I get irritated when I’m told things that a moment’s thinking should suggest I already know.

But, worse that that… ye gods, don’t ever tell me what I’m thinking, what I want, what I’m feeling. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you don’t know. Yo’re not in here, and assuming you know what I want/feel/think more than I do is an onforgivable arrogance.

Feel free to suggest that my words and my actions don’t seem to be in line, of course (“You said you liked him, and then you spit in his coffee. That doesn’t seem to make any sense” but not “Bah, you don’t like him!”)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/791693.html. You can comment here or there.

Musing about Identity online – in which I talk about people as cartoon figures, but only at the end

Aug21

This is going to be a bit disjointed, apologies in advance.

I was thinking about identity online this morning (In part because a friend posted a comment which made me think their account had been hijacked).

We rely so much on that little icon to tell us who’s who – or the name at the top of the chat window. And, while I could probably imitate with some success the typing voices of my top 5 online friends, there is still a matter of trust – that when I’m talking in the comments to, say, Kelkyag, that it is actually the same person every time.

I get ~freaked out~ when I find out someone is talking to me on someone else’s account. It’s like… they put on a Friend One suit. At first, Friend One is just acting a bit strangely. Then, Friend One says something out of character, and by this point I’m starting to panic. Then Friend One says Ah ha ha ha no, this is Friend Two (Or Friend Ones’s Girlfriend)…

…and I get furious.

But *cough* that could just be me.

How do you deal with identity when your “mental image” of the person comes from a cartoon icon?

(Speaking of which, I’ve MET @inventrix in person, & I still picture her as her icon (not @capriox, though :-P).)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/784049.html. You can comment here or there.

Tomato Season!

Aug20

This is my favorite time of year for garden-eating, because I get to eat Tomato Everything.

Fresh Tomatoes on Pizza.

Grilled Cheese & Tomato Sammiches.

And homemade Tomato Soup.

We made this the other day – it’s one of my favorite non-recipes.

More or less: cook a hot sausage (we used chorizo) in a deepish pan. Once it’s rendered some fat and is cooked, pull out the sausage and put it aside. Toss in two onions and plenty of garlic, chopped roughly. Cook until tender, then add a bunch of fresh tomatoes.

Add some fluid – usually water – and maybe a bit of bouillon – or just stock, but we have bouillon around, not stock, so.

Let cook until the tomatoes are stewy and the soup is red all the way through. Add the sausage back in, and add fish sauce & molasses to round out the flavor.

Stir a little cream in at the table & enjoy.

Aah, summer.

(bonus? It’s so cold this summer, we can actually enjoy soup).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/783347.html. You can comment here or there.