TWENTY DAYS?! SRSLY WHAT

This entry was originally posted at http://serinde.dreamwidth.org/537514.html, where there are comments.

I am somewhat covered in bees this week. It's mostly not start-of-semester crap, strange to say, but other things that are all landing at the same time; and I am never at my mental/emotional best when I can't exercise, so this is of course going to end wonderfully for everyone. But Mom is coming to visit this weekend, and I need to clean house, and tonight was theoretically the only evening I can do it. At the same time, I am again overpressed with farm share bounty; but lo! there is a work barbecue/potluck tomorrow! My bees were making it difficult for me to even figure that out, and I lost some time to general lazy-ass nothing, but in the event it proved that the avoidance brain would rather cook than clean.

I am not posting the recipe process per usual, because I am using nearly straight-up recipes from Smitten Kitchen: Slaw Tartare, which cuts down on the strategic cabbage reserves as well as finishing up some cornichon and capers that have been sitting around forever[1], and Dimply Plum Cake (fnarr fnarr), because I have all of the plums in the world[2].

It is now 9:40 and I have not cleaned a blessed thing other than dishes. The whole place is covered in cat fur, I have pieces of a Bronzino sari dress and a half-done chemise all over the living room, the bathroom is a right mess, and the bed Mom is theoretically sleeping in may not in fact have sheets or pillows on it; I haven't checked. Oh, and I have no clean towels. Perhaps I shall buy new ones. ><

[1] Change from printed: I used half yogurt, half mayo.
[2] Change from printed: I used lemon olive oil in place of canola.

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So Friday we were breaking down camp, and I had eventually put shoes on after scoldings from my loved ones, but then took them off because I was in inch-deep mud to hose off the shower parts as we pulled them up; and I was too tired and harassed to put my shoes back on before dragging the flooring planks topside to dry in the sun.

Naturally, I dropped one on my foot, and here is the result.



Supposedly I have two broken toes but I only see the one. Anyways, it hurts and I am a sad panda.

It's convenient to have your farm share land a couple days after you return from a two-week vacation and you have no food in the house. I had also possessed the wit to freeze some ground beef conveniently parceled into 3oz balls before I left; I put the Ziploc into the fridge when I left this morning, and lo! meat! Recipe so very loosely based on Smitten Kitchen's Lebanese stuffed eggplant that it might as well be something else.

1. Take two wee eggplants--one's 10-oz, one's 8-oz, well, how do we deal with this? The original desires you to take seriously tiny eggplants, hollow them whole, and stuff down. So let us do that to the smaller one, and cut & scoop out the larger one.

2. Chop some onion, start it sauteeing in a bit of oil. Should have used the lemon-infused oil. Hey ho. Also we are out of garlic. Poop. If you have some, add it here.

3. Chop up the scooped-out eggplant flesh, add to pan.

4. Liberally spice the mix with Auntie Arwen's Auspicious Omen curry blend, and also salt.

5. Add in the remaining portion of Sunday's rice, which is actually TJ's wild-rice-medley. It's probably about 1/2 c.

6. Add in about 6 oz. ground beef, which happens to be lean. Mix it all up and let the beef be a-browning.

7. When all is nicely integrated and cooked, lay the eggplants in the pan and fill them with glorp. There will be extra glorp. That's OK.

8. Add 1c. frozen chicken broth pucks. Realize that would have worked better without eggplant in pan. Take out the eggplant until the broth melts.

9. Re-add the eggplant.

10. Cover and let cook until the eggplant is fork-tender.

11. Remove one eggplant worth (reserving the 2nd for tomorrow), and blop 1/4 c. yogurt over top.

12. OM NOM NOM

It needed more salt; rather a lot really. I think perhaps eggplant is one of those things that, like potatoes, soaks up salt? And I much regret my lack of garlic. But still, it is tasty and also very virtuous, leaving calorie allotments for plum cocktails.

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( rant rant rave rave and also oversharingCollapse )

This entry was originally posted at http://serinde.dreamwidth.org/536828.html, where there are comments.

After the previous stupidity with boughten userpics, I decided I would not renew, since I could not choose which of my stored pics would get activated. So that expired; and what happens?

A completely random selection of my remaining userpics were left on. And I do mean completely random. Not the oldest, not the most used, and not even my default pic.

You people suck and you are not getting my money. Dreamwidth gets my money, because they are competent and clueful and some general notion of what a userbase might want.

Two and a half weeks after my return, I am finally writing up my trip before I forget completely...

Setup: A year or so ago, I had come to the conclusion that if I did not commit to travel every few years, I was never going to see anything I wanted to see in this world. As this was coalescing, solomita was looking to plan a trip too, so we joined forces (which ended up as "Ethan did most of the legwork"--not my intent, but he is a master at it) and started drumming up trade. Final roster: us two; college friend Joe; Ethan's Californian friend Debbie; nedlnthred; her mom; and Beth's old chums Cindy and Kevin. Final trip length: 1 week. Final venue: Florence, with one day of day trip to San Gimignano & Volterra. (But with personal flexibility; Ethan flew out a week earlier and went to Venice and Lake Como; Joe left us a day early to spend a few days in Lucca and Pisa, etc.)

( Day 1: SaturdayCollapse )

This entry was originally posted at http://serinde.dreamwidth.org/536523.html, where there are comments.

In which I had a Moment of "I simply cannot wear any of these old things again"; which is ridiculous, really, but I know enough to get out of my own way if there's something actually motivating me, however illogical it may be.

So, there is an SCA event hight Mudthaw, and it's pretty big locally, and more so this year because our dear Baron Dave was stepping down and various & sundry of our peeps were getting significant awards. Therefore, of course, one wants to look one's best and hold up our side and all that good stuff. Combining this with the ever-present elephant in my mental room of "OMG do I not have enough clothes for two weeks of Pennsic", I determined at the beginning of this month that I should make a new dress.

( Planning.Collapse )

( Process.Collapse )

( Presults.Collapse )

I feel a little discombobulated this morning, because I have been so monomaniacal about this project, and now I have a certain amount of "...now what?" I feel some urge to start working on another dress, being on a roll and striking while the iron is hot and other such figurative language, but I also don't know if I should do something else like, I dunno, laundry or vacuuming or sensibly planning out other obligations coming upon me. I seem to have two possible methods of working: "all in" and "avoidance". I'd like to even that out a little bit. Still, it feels really positive to have completed a project in a question of weeks rather than months or years, which are the usual units of measure.

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In which the photo taken of our lobscouse for the Glorious First of June Aubrey-Maturin dinner is, I find, the first hit you get if you do a Google Image Search for lobscouse.

This entry was originally posted at http://serinde.dreamwidth.org/535906.html, where there are comments.

For as long as I can remember, people have told me that I should be a writer. Which makes it every flavor of ironic that I have never made any advancement whatsoever in such a direction. --I lie; there is a carefully-hidden plastic binder containing a number of scrawled pages produced at approximately age 14 that embody the worst type of Mary Sue-ified teenage crap you can imagine; and even at that tender age I couldn't re-read them without cringing. But other than that minor fit, no. Why should that be? I'm certainly a more-than-competent wordsmith; why have I never made a conscious decision to focus on that skill? ( Time to unpack.Collapse )

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