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Recipe Log: Easy Salmon Potato Cakes

May16

We made these yesterday:
http://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/easy-salmon-potato-cakes/d0f1f1de-af65-447c-a268-ea4bc6431ab3

Notes on the cakes:
The recipe means 2 cups of completed spuds, not two cups of flakes.

They need to be a bit more fishy, even with that – maybe a couple anchovies pasted?
Don’t bother with seasoned breadcrumbs, use plain and spice it yourself. Tarragon, horseradish?

Very tasty and good reheated the next day (30 seconds microwave).

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Recipe Log: Chocolate chocolate-chip mini muffins

May16

We made this – http://www.theperfectpantry.com/2014/03/chocolate-chocolate-chip-mini-muffins-recipe.html – tonight for the first test run.

Notes:
* probably replace the oil with browned butter
* should probably replace half the milk with sour cream.
* needs a little more salt
* if making for home, make 1/2 with walnuts, 1/2 with chips. (Maybe use white chips for game)

* I used 4T of cocoa instead of 2T, white sugar instead of superfine, and 1/2c chips (probably up to 3/4 in next run). I added 1/2 teas espresso powder, as per normal.

Tasty as is, could be a lot more tasty with a bit more work.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/715565.html. You can comment here or there.

Sunday’s Dinner: very indicative of the Thorne household shopping

May12

Dinner Sunday was shrimp alfredo with pan-roasted asparagus on the side:

Asparagus and tomato from a local farmstand
Shrimp from the restaurant supply store
Pasta from the Bulk Store
Spices bought online
Alfredo and Parmesan from BJ’s Club
Wine from Six Mile Creek Vineyards, bought during the Cayuga Wine & Herb trail last weekend

And then a pecan quickbread from the same place we bought the tomato & asparagus for dessert (with cream cheese from BJ’s.) Just needed something from Wegmans to fill out our normal shopping. 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/712510.html. You can comment here or there.

“Does this always smell like this,” the adventures of Lyn’s nose

May8

For most of my life, I’ve had a relatively stunted sense of smell. I can get very strong odors, some very pungent ones, and a few random smells, but for the most part, I didn’t smell stuff. It just didn’t happen.

I recently (last year) started going to a new doctor, and she prescribed an over-the-counter supplement – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercetin – for my asthma/allergies, hoping to eliminate Singulair.

And I can smell!

I mean, things I’ve never smelled at all before suddenly have nosefeels. It’s very strange – although it makes for some odd conversations.

“Do mushrooms always smell like this?”

“Does Spinach always smell like this? It smells like bad fresh-cut grass!”

and so on.

Appears yes, spinach always does smell like that. And, go figure, shit actually does stink.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/711324.html. You can comment here or there.

Wine, and then some more wine, and then some herbs (Cayuga Wine Trail event)

May5

This weekend was the Cayuga (Lake) Wine Trail Wine & Herb Event.

The 17 wineries on the trail (All alongside and many within view of Cauyga Lake) participate.

You start at one winery, where you get a map and a glass, and at each winery along the way, you get a tasting (2-6 types of wine or, in one case, cider), a potted herb (or tomato, or lettuce, or pepper) plant, a recipe using that plant, and a sample of that recipe, cooked (or prepared), usually with a wine pairing.

Seventeen wineries. 2 to 6 tastings at each. /falls over/

Okay, really, we did it over two days. We tasted seven wineries up the West side of the lake, spent an hour at the outlet mall, had Dim Sum and tea for lunch, and hit the much-more-spaced-out 3 wineries on the East side; Sunday we picked up the seven we’d missed on the west, stopping for lunch at Knapp Winery in the middle.

There was a lot of really good wine. Even wineries I’d blown off before as being not complex enough, too tannic, or just too boring, were in good form this weekend. Everyone had out their best wines, the food tastings were very good, and I have seventeen little plants to put in the ground or pots as soon as Last Frost is past. Even the food tastings were good.

If I have a disappointment with the event – and I’d say this is the only one – it’s that I ended up with three basils, and I really would have liked one of them to be a mint instead.

But all in all, it was an immensely fun weekend of wine-ing. Will definitely do again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/709979.html. You can comment here or there.

Day 1 Restart – My Fitness Pal

Apr30

So, I’ve decided to make myself plug everything into My Fitness Pal and see how far I can get with weight loss that way.

It set me up with the following goals, which I’m going to playtest for a week or two before deciding if I want to keep:
Nutritional Goals
Net Calories Consumed* / Day 1,410 cal/day
Carbs / Day 176.0 g
Fat / Day 47.0 g
Protein / Day 71.0 g

Fitness Goals
Calories Burned / Week 390 cal/week
Workouts / Week 2 Workouts
Minutes / Workout 30 mins

Yesterday I netted 7 calories over, which, for not really planning ahead, I’d say is a win.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/708578.html. You can comment here or there.

Seems to be the season for it – writing and brain chemistry issues

Apr25

  So, completely ignoring for the moment the argument that you should "write every day, write no matter what," because I find that advice  to be good only if your goal is simply to put words on paper…

What happens when your brain chemistry won’t let you write?

(The writer in my attic just posted a blog about this too; it’s going around.)

I have, over the past years – I think since 2008 is a good marker – gotten relatively good at having an "off" day and moving on the next day.  It’s part of why I don’t believe/follow the "write every day" advice, because sometimes it’s just not a writing day. 

Sometimes you want to go out and play outside, for instance.  

And some days the brainweasels are just too much and you stare at the screen, totally unmotivated, and, if you’re me, end up curling up and watching TV mindlessly until you sleep. 

Normally, if I have a bad month, I have a bad month, and I pick up again the next month.  Writing is still a part-time thing for me, after all; it’s not the thing paying the bills yet. So I can afford to slack off. 

This month….  This month I’m doing Camp Nano, and so I have an external accountability I don’t normally have (At least not since I stopped writing Addergoole episodes the day before I posted them).  And I don’t have the oomph.  Or, rather, there have been a lot of days of not having the oomph.

I’m not sure, yet, what to do about it.  Write when I can, I suppose, and write as well and as much as I can when it’s there. 

Do you have tricks for getting yourself around the bad-brain-chemistry times?  

 Or tricks for getting yourself back on the horse, as it were?

 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/707299.html. You can comment here or there.

On Chives

Apr9

I started chive seeds last night!

Chives are one of my favorite plants, because they start coming up and are green and edible when the rest of the world is full of snow. Plus, they’re super low-maintenance.

I already have chives growing in my Invasive Plants garden (two sorts), but I want to fill in some of the bleaker and weedier parts of the hedgerow with chives, which will take, ah, quite a bit of chives.

I started one “flat” (in this case, two stacked take-out containers with holes poked in the top one for drainage), one of chives-chives (Allium schoenoprasum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chives) and one of garlic chives (Allium tuberosum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic_chives) I’m not sure about the second chives – they are listed either as the same thing as gau choy/Chinese chives or a completely different thing, so we shall see).

Each flat has 6 rows of 4 seeds each, which will get me a good start, but I want to do two flats each eventually and find other varieties of chive, as well as something that I bought from a nursery last year – society garlic (which is grown for its leaves, culinarily, and for its pretty flowers). Our hedgerow is going to smell beautiful. Well, depending on your tastes, but we’re downwind from a dairy farm, sooo…

This might be a good article for me to bookmark – http://www.bhg.com/gardening/flowers/bulbs/alliums-for-your-garden/

And more info on chives – http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Chives

Know any good varieties I can grow from seed?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/703365.html. You can comment here or there.

Food Log 3/19 & 3/20

Mar21

The goal is to stay as close as possible to my daily points all week because this weekend is LARP and LARP = bad food. Also tight skirt 😉

19-Mar
Coffee as per normal
Cheerios, 1/2 cup
egg salad w/lettuce
Coco multigrain pop cake, x3
Puffed grain cake x2
Peanut Butter, 1T
Milk
Ovaltine 1T
Gym – 1/2 hour on the elliptical, mid-range
pizza

20-Mar
Coffee as per normal
Cheerios, 1/2 cup
Pad Thai Tofu
Shopping – in which I have an allergic reaction to shopping, oy.
Peep
Salad
Brownies (nom)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/695602.html. You can comment here or there.

Food Log!

Mar19

3/18/2014
Coffee as per normal
Museli (1/3 cup, with Milk, Skim)
Gumbo & rice – leftovers and still tasty
Cardio Shopping!
Coco multigrain pop cake, x2
Salad – with hard boiled egg, bacon, balsamic vinegar
Cookies (leftovers, mostly mint chip)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/695179.html. You can comment here or there.