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Of Burning, Brain Aches, and Biryani
Jun. 13th, 2017 12:58 pmGood grief, the heat! It was like that walk on Saturday though thankfully without me being exposed to that and the sun for several hours. I've been waking up with headaches and I think it's dehydration. Aceteminephin and caffeine this morning is not cutting into it as well as I'd like, so I'm ingesting salty foods as well in the hopes that it'll help compensate for this. The headache is still here, throbbing mutely in my head. Save me, sesame sticks.
Gardening
I went to the garden to move the tomatoes and another set of bean plants. The ones by the window sill are yellowing hard, which means stress from water or something else. Maybe I should be enriching the soil? I'm wondering if growing beans inside is not conditioning these plants properly, so planting again, this time in the ground sown a few inches below. We'll see how many manage to survive not getting eaten. I set up some strings and tightened the twine lines, added a few lines to attach to the sprouts in the hopes that they grow up off of them as they grow. Really hope those bean sprouts are going to be okay.
More mosquitoes came by and this time they got me; three bites to mark the occasion. They may have been waiting for me: the spiders I fed are gone, as though they were provoked away or mysteriously killed by unseen forces in an act of revenge... Regardless, my pants have been stained with their sacrifices, so great. When the weather cools down, I need to start picking out the weeds again.
Speaking of Which
I saw a spider last night in the bathroom; decent sized, not half dollar sized like the wolf spider outside, but large enough to be significant. One grab with my boxer shorts (I took a shower), and I quickly unloaded it to the patio, where it can go dine on moths or whatever else decides to try coming in like those june bugs that keep battering my screen door.
Cooking
On Sunday I picked up most of the ingredients to try making biryani. Now, here's an interesting thing I learned about biryani: there is no one, true, recipe.
Now a lot of websites are like that, I get that; I know three different ways to make an alfredo sauce, so I can get that. But when I say there is no one recipe, I mean every single recipe I saw diverges wildly. Cinnamon? Sometimes used. Saffron? A few mention it. Some also mention coconut oil. But do you cook it in one vessel or several? Are potatoes classic or is it better to use fruit and nuts? I even found a few that don't use yogurt, which threw me off most since most of the recipes I found mentioned it so I figured it was standard!
So the only thing I really found that was universal was that it involves making a roux (masala?) and then mixing the rice into it.
I ended up trying a fusion of different ideas.
-Throw in half a stick of butter, melt in stainless pan
-Throw in stew beef and pork chunks, brown them and put aside (okay if a little rare)
-Throw in diced potatoes and onions, move it around a bit, then throw in diced ginger, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, cayenne, cumin, some adobo (since I have no sodium source in my ingredient list) and toss around until potatoes start to soften and onions start to glass up. While this happens, slice up cubes of meat
-Deglaze pan with half a cup of white wine, throw in two cups of yogurt, mix
-Throw in some more coriander and cardamom and cinammon because I can't get the flavor to stay no matter how hard I try!
-Throw in basmati rice, mix
-Throw in meat slices, along with sliced mint leaves and cilantro, mix
-Cover with lid and set to low and steam the flavor out before letting the potatoes fully cook through and then serve
I ended up upping the recipe again by adding some maple syrup because the flavor could use some mix since I only get a barely registered sour note with the savory and the mixture of the ingredients.
The end result isn't great? I think I'll have to toy around with the idea until I figure it out right, but it may also be because I used greek yogurt instead of regular. It was the only one I could get in plain form but was available in cup increments instead of pints. In retrospect, I think I could have gotten away with vanilla yogurt without too much problem.
Next time around, I'll try using coconut butter since I have a few things of that left as well. I'll have to try seeing if I can play around with the flavor profile better too. I wonder if I should deglaze with some chicken stock instead so that there's more opportunity to flavor it too. Perhaps paprika and black pepper as well. I was honestly tempted to use some rosemary as well, but I noticed that none of the recipes I saw mentioned using it. Maybe even a whole stick of butter may have been a better idea.
Michelle thought it was good at least.
Television
Finally finished MST3K with one last episode. Dear god, these 70's era films based on Victorian fiction. Birds exploding. Things like this would have turned me off science fiction as a kid. I'll probably rewatch it regardless though. Season 2 is only bound to promise being better since this return is with a green staff, so now they can troubleshoot what works and what doesn't and make a stronger product.
Miscellaneous
I ran out of dandruff shampoo a week ago, and now me and Michelle are on a quest for a dandruff shampoo that we can use equally because dandruff shampoo seems to be a men's product for some reason. A giant bottle of tea tree oil shampoo is coming later today; would have gotten a smaller one, but this one was highly regarded on Amazon and the other alternatives I considered were basically salon products at salon prices with no option to upsize. The irony is not lost on me as tea tree oil often adorns my body as part of my morning ritual to fight athlete's foot and the like. Given how badly I've had some fungal issues, it's amazing how effective it is (it's the only damn thing that took care of one strain that the store brand and even prescription fungicide couldn't get rid of).
Gardening
I went to the garden to move the tomatoes and another set of bean plants. The ones by the window sill are yellowing hard, which means stress from water or something else. Maybe I should be enriching the soil? I'm wondering if growing beans inside is not conditioning these plants properly, so planting again, this time in the ground sown a few inches below. We'll see how many manage to survive not getting eaten. I set up some strings and tightened the twine lines, added a few lines to attach to the sprouts in the hopes that they grow up off of them as they grow. Really hope those bean sprouts are going to be okay.
More mosquitoes came by and this time they got me; three bites to mark the occasion. They may have been waiting for me: the spiders I fed are gone, as though they were provoked away or mysteriously killed by unseen forces in an act of revenge... Regardless, my pants have been stained with their sacrifices, so great. When the weather cools down, I need to start picking out the weeds again.
Speaking of Which
I saw a spider last night in the bathroom; decent sized, not half dollar sized like the wolf spider outside, but large enough to be significant. One grab with my boxer shorts (I took a shower), and I quickly unloaded it to the patio, where it can go dine on moths or whatever else decides to try coming in like those june bugs that keep battering my screen door.
Cooking
On Sunday I picked up most of the ingredients to try making biryani. Now, here's an interesting thing I learned about biryani: there is no one, true, recipe.
Now a lot of websites are like that, I get that; I know three different ways to make an alfredo sauce, so I can get that. But when I say there is no one recipe, I mean every single recipe I saw diverges wildly. Cinnamon? Sometimes used. Saffron? A few mention it. Some also mention coconut oil. But do you cook it in one vessel or several? Are potatoes classic or is it better to use fruit and nuts? I even found a few that don't use yogurt, which threw me off most since most of the recipes I found mentioned it so I figured it was standard!
So the only thing I really found that was universal was that it involves making a roux (masala?) and then mixing the rice into it.
I ended up trying a fusion of different ideas.
-Throw in half a stick of butter, melt in stainless pan
-Throw in stew beef and pork chunks, brown them and put aside (okay if a little rare)
-Throw in diced potatoes and onions, move it around a bit, then throw in diced ginger, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, cayenne, cumin, some adobo (since I have no sodium source in my ingredient list) and toss around until potatoes start to soften and onions start to glass up. While this happens, slice up cubes of meat
-Deglaze pan with half a cup of white wine, throw in two cups of yogurt, mix
-Throw in some more coriander and cardamom and cinammon because I can't get the flavor to stay no matter how hard I try!
-Throw in basmati rice, mix
-Throw in meat slices, along with sliced mint leaves and cilantro, mix
-Cover with lid and set to low and steam the flavor out before letting the potatoes fully cook through and then serve
I ended up upping the recipe again by adding some maple syrup because the flavor could use some mix since I only get a barely registered sour note with the savory and the mixture of the ingredients.
The end result isn't great? I think I'll have to toy around with the idea until I figure it out right, but it may also be because I used greek yogurt instead of regular. It was the only one I could get in plain form but was available in cup increments instead of pints. In retrospect, I think I could have gotten away with vanilla yogurt without too much problem.
Next time around, I'll try using coconut butter since I have a few things of that left as well. I'll have to try seeing if I can play around with the flavor profile better too. I wonder if I should deglaze with some chicken stock instead so that there's more opportunity to flavor it too. Perhaps paprika and black pepper as well. I was honestly tempted to use some rosemary as well, but I noticed that none of the recipes I saw mentioned using it. Maybe even a whole stick of butter may have been a better idea.
Michelle thought it was good at least.
Television
Finally finished MST3K with one last episode. Dear god, these 70's era films based on Victorian fiction. Birds exploding. Things like this would have turned me off science fiction as a kid. I'll probably rewatch it regardless though. Season 2 is only bound to promise being better since this return is with a green staff, so now they can troubleshoot what works and what doesn't and make a stronger product.
Miscellaneous
I ran out of dandruff shampoo a week ago, and now me and Michelle are on a quest for a dandruff shampoo that we can use equally because dandruff shampoo seems to be a men's product for some reason. A giant bottle of tea tree oil shampoo is coming later today; would have gotten a smaller one, but this one was highly regarded on Amazon and the other alternatives I considered were basically salon products at salon prices with no option to upsize. The irony is not lost on me as tea tree oil often adorns my body as part of my morning ritual to fight athlete's foot and the like. Given how badly I've had some fungal issues, it's amazing how effective it is (it's the only damn thing that took care of one strain that the store brand and even prescription fungicide couldn't get rid of).
