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zesty_pinto"I will write a post as soon as I have free time" was my mantra all week.
Yes, all last week!
My accounts have been hammering me but I'm starting to see some respite between all the chaos and as one relent in the routine allows me to catch up with the work of another account, I can finally safely say I have the free time to actually type something up.
I've been so freaking tired that I can't even play video games when I get home, I just make dinner or I power down in front of the TV.
My rice noodle ambitions were a double edged sword as I found them to suffer from having that "been in the plastic wrap too long" flavor to them. I ate them all after microwaving, then steaming, then frying, and then finally making a damn sauce and steaming it with the sauces immersed in Chinese rice wine just to see if I could get them to some state of palatability*.
*By the time I reached that desparation move some of the noodles were starting to show the colors of mold. Did you know rice dough is one of the few mediums that encourages this stinky bright red strain of mold? I learned a lot about cultures thanks to this state's obsession with cheese and fermenting things.
So this weekend I tried to encourage Michelle to go to IKEA when I realized the mirrors she wanted to smuggle across the border were 5 bucks in IKEA in the US!!
The Weekend
So yes, no rest for the weary: we took a trip to Boston. It wasn't all bad, we got to rest up. Michelle was so tired that she had 11 hours of sleep the other night. The traffic was relatively not-ridiculous for once (the advantage of avoiding any route to Boston), and I got to pretend "me big man" by hauling five panels of mirrors over my body as my arms tried their hardest to remind me that I am the most out of shape guy in the store.
We didn't really find much else worthwhile. I think she got a curtain rod and some white curtain to double up the heavy ones that we got.
I wanted that fake seaweed-based caviar my mom got me from there, but they didn't have it. I just looked it up and it seemed to not even be part of their brand identity. Oh well, I figure I could make it with kombu and some sodium alginate, but I'd honestly be just as okay buying it from Amazon and feeding the evil Bezos machine. I've seen some mention of agar agar powder and oil suspensions, so that might also be part of my grand design later (at least I know I can find agar agar all over the place here, so suck it Amazon).
Oh, Michelle wanted to make something more out of the trip and hit two birds with one stone by visiting H-Mart. I figured, eh, sure.
Then we go there and I'm going "EEEEEEEEEEEEE" all over the place because I realized that we're missing a lot of ingredients. Chili oil? Oh yeah, we need that. Gochujan? Yup, add that. Hey, they have meat buns! Add those. They even have Bruce Cost ginger all in all of the flavors. All. The. Flavors.
It seems the only thing they didn't have were some of those Japanese gummies (kusugai?) which is odd because you can find them even in Wal-Mart. And, no, I'm not willing to go to Wal-Mart for them since they're more for my office desk.
Then it's off to Home Depot because it's nearby for wipes (because Home Depot seems to be having a price war with Wal-Mart), then it's to Target for something else. I forgot, which probably means they didn't have it. Nifty thing about the Target by IKEA though: it's built above the ground with a garage underneath, so you enter and exit with an escalator and one of those cart escalators.
I got some lotion for my hands at least.
We get back by 1 and I'm packing everything up into the fridge before bedtime and before we know it, it's morning. I wake up at 11 because I must have been exhausted. I was nodding off by the last hour of the trip, but I didn't think I was that out of it.
My muscles are also sore, but we get laundry done. I install the curtains to the guest room once and for all. Michelle makes bread for the first time out of the clearance bread machine ("just use my gluten flour, it should be fine!" I told her). Everything goes good except for the bread, which is a noodle-topped creature. It tastes fine despite being this really chewy and pretty close equivalent to what I'm sure the Unions and Confederates called "hardtack." If I needed a test that my teeth was fine, that was it!
We found a toad in the laundry room that we thought was dead until I got it to move its arms. Moved it to the sink.
Oh wait, what if that's bad for it and the water system?
Moved it to the ground again, but not before it jumped into a wastebin. Dug it out and picked some lint off of it before leaving it on the floor.
Reminder: where I live, 20 and lower is the norm. I read that toads sometimes dig their way into basements, so I guess this one certainly did.
Anyway, off to the Co-op for flour! Then off to the Asian market for snacks! And they didn't have gummies, sonofabitch!
Apparently, their supplier ran out, so they should have more in stock soon. Also I saw someone get upset with the owner and chewed them out because I think they misread an old sign that said 2 for a buck for some shrimp chips. Fun times!
Also saw the neighbor: she hasn't had any noise problems for awhile. The curtains are doing their job! Huzzah!
Oh,jocosa nagged me because I couldn't get a poll out because I've been so busy. I was hoping more people would post polls on ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fridaypoll, but I'll keep picking up the slack until the community starts working like a community!
I'm just hoping Friday gets quiet again, these last few ones have been much worse than they're usually supposed to be.
Cooking
Monday was my new team leader's birthday and she has a thing for pulled pork, so I told her I'm making some. The sous vide is doing 24 hours at 160 on a slab of pork with some soy, ginger, honey, maple syrup, sweet soy, and a small clump of szechuan peppercorns. Once I get home, I'm pulling it out of the stove and reducing the liquids until it's mostly collagen and then reintegrating the sauce with some green onions and minced garlic and maybe liquid smoke when I bake it out in the oven before the tear up.
Valentine's is coming up and I offered to make chocolate covered popcorn again. This time I'm determining what sort of white popcorn to use as the last batch I was unhappy about since it didn't feel crunchy enough. I'll probably make the corn, air it to cool, and then integrate the drizzle this time. I'm thinking white with raspberries (someone in the office is allergic to strawberries so foregoing that) and dark with blueberries.
I wanted to go visit a friend who came to Vermont to play last night, but I was just too worn out. I vegged to Mighty Boosh and Peep Show because I needed something mindless and humorous to pick up the slack. I still feel guilty about missing it.
I should have done some sets with the tension cords as well. I'm mentioning this just to remind myself I need to do that.
Also, it's podcast night. No rest for the weary! Maybe I can work on some photos since I'm stuck on the computer while doing that. With the curtains in the guest room, the reverb should be reduced some and I haven't had a chance to really flesh out work with the Yeti, so it'll be an entertaining experience.
Yes, all last week!
My accounts have been hammering me but I'm starting to see some respite between all the chaos and as one relent in the routine allows me to catch up with the work of another account, I can finally safely say I have the free time to actually type something up.
I've been so freaking tired that I can't even play video games when I get home, I just make dinner or I power down in front of the TV.
My rice noodle ambitions were a double edged sword as I found them to suffer from having that "been in the plastic wrap too long" flavor to them. I ate them all after microwaving, then steaming, then frying, and then finally making a damn sauce and steaming it with the sauces immersed in Chinese rice wine just to see if I could get them to some state of palatability*.
*By the time I reached that desparation move some of the noodles were starting to show the colors of mold. Did you know rice dough is one of the few mediums that encourages this stinky bright red strain of mold? I learned a lot about cultures thanks to this state's obsession with cheese and fermenting things.
So this weekend I tried to encourage Michelle to go to IKEA when I realized the mirrors she wanted to smuggle across the border were 5 bucks in IKEA in the US!!
The Weekend
So yes, no rest for the weary: we took a trip to Boston. It wasn't all bad, we got to rest up. Michelle was so tired that she had 11 hours of sleep the other night. The traffic was relatively not-ridiculous for once (the advantage of avoiding any route to Boston), and I got to pretend "me big man" by hauling five panels of mirrors over my body as my arms tried their hardest to remind me that I am the most out of shape guy in the store.
We didn't really find much else worthwhile. I think she got a curtain rod and some white curtain to double up the heavy ones that we got.
I wanted that fake seaweed-based caviar my mom got me from there, but they didn't have it. I just looked it up and it seemed to not even be part of their brand identity. Oh well, I figure I could make it with kombu and some sodium alginate, but I'd honestly be just as okay buying it from Amazon and feeding the evil Bezos machine. I've seen some mention of agar agar powder and oil suspensions, so that might also be part of my grand design later (at least I know I can find agar agar all over the place here, so suck it Amazon).
Oh, Michelle wanted to make something more out of the trip and hit two birds with one stone by visiting H-Mart. I figured, eh, sure.
Then we go there and I'm going "EEEEEEEEEEEEE" all over the place because I realized that we're missing a lot of ingredients. Chili oil? Oh yeah, we need that. Gochujan? Yup, add that. Hey, they have meat buns! Add those. They even have Bruce Cost ginger all in all of the flavors. All. The. Flavors.
It seems the only thing they didn't have were some of those Japanese gummies (kusugai?) which is odd because you can find them even in Wal-Mart. And, no, I'm not willing to go to Wal-Mart for them since they're more for my office desk.
Then it's off to Home Depot because it's nearby for wipes (because Home Depot seems to be having a price war with Wal-Mart), then it's to Target for something else. I forgot, which probably means they didn't have it. Nifty thing about the Target by IKEA though: it's built above the ground with a garage underneath, so you enter and exit with an escalator and one of those cart escalators.
I got some lotion for my hands at least.
We get back by 1 and I'm packing everything up into the fridge before bedtime and before we know it, it's morning. I wake up at 11 because I must have been exhausted. I was nodding off by the last hour of the trip, but I didn't think I was that out of it.
My muscles are also sore, but we get laundry done. I install the curtains to the guest room once and for all. Michelle makes bread for the first time out of the clearance bread machine ("just use my gluten flour, it should be fine!" I told her). Everything goes good except for the bread, which is a noodle-topped creature. It tastes fine despite being this really chewy and pretty close equivalent to what I'm sure the Unions and Confederates called "hardtack." If I needed a test that my teeth was fine, that was it!
We found a toad in the laundry room that we thought was dead until I got it to move its arms. Moved it to the sink.
Oh wait, what if that's bad for it and the water system?
Moved it to the ground again, but not before it jumped into a wastebin. Dug it out and picked some lint off of it before leaving it on the floor.
Reminder: where I live, 20 and lower is the norm. I read that toads sometimes dig their way into basements, so I guess this one certainly did.
Anyway, off to the Co-op for flour! Then off to the Asian market for snacks! And they didn't have gummies, sonofabitch!
Apparently, their supplier ran out, so they should have more in stock soon. Also I saw someone get upset with the owner and chewed them out because I think they misread an old sign that said 2 for a buck for some shrimp chips. Fun times!
Also saw the neighbor: she hasn't had any noise problems for awhile. The curtains are doing their job! Huzzah!
Oh,
jocosa nagged me because I couldn't get a poll out because I've been so busy. I was hoping more people would post polls on fridaypoll, but I'll keep picking up the slack until the community starts working like a community!I'm just hoping Friday gets quiet again, these last few ones have been much worse than they're usually supposed to be.
Cooking
Monday was my new team leader's birthday and she has a thing for pulled pork, so I told her I'm making some. The sous vide is doing 24 hours at 160 on a slab of pork with some soy, ginger, honey, maple syrup, sweet soy, and a small clump of szechuan peppercorns. Once I get home, I'm pulling it out of the stove and reducing the liquids until it's mostly collagen and then reintegrating the sauce with some green onions and minced garlic and maybe liquid smoke when I bake it out in the oven before the tear up.
Valentine's is coming up and I offered to make chocolate covered popcorn again. This time I'm determining what sort of white popcorn to use as the last batch I was unhappy about since it didn't feel crunchy enough. I'll probably make the corn, air it to cool, and then integrate the drizzle this time. I'm thinking white with raspberries (someone in the office is allergic to strawberries so foregoing that) and dark with blueberries.
I wanted to go visit a friend who came to Vermont to play last night, but I was just too worn out. I vegged to Mighty Boosh and Peep Show because I needed something mindless and humorous to pick up the slack. I still feel guilty about missing it.
I should have done some sets with the tension cords as well. I'm mentioning this just to remind myself I need to do that.
Also, it's podcast night. No rest for the weary! Maybe I can work on some photos since I'm stuck on the computer while doing that. With the curtains in the guest room, the reverb should be reduced some and I haven't had a chance to really flesh out work with the Yeti, so it'll be an entertaining experience.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 04:37 pm (UTC)Also, neigh. :P
no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 06:24 pm (UTC)Also, going to have to give you a big fat F on that cut. Or lack thereof. :P
no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 07:56 pm (UTC)Nope, cut feature is still there. It might be missing when you view the article directly?
no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 08:05 pm (UTC)