some things that were not howling in outrage at Parcelforce

[kaberett]

1. All of my seedlings appear to have survived pricking out, even the ones I abused horribly, about which I am Very Pleased.

2. I am most of the way through Wrangling The Stamps (First Pass). I am Very Much Enjoying all of the botanical illustration and celebration of postal services and unions and TRAINS and and and. I have an untidy number of them separated out for My Own Purposes, plus the piles for the hedgehog charity, plus the ones I need to take back to my mother to Demand Further Information About.

3. Sciarid nematodes arrived and have been applied! (The part where this is "again" is frustrating, but nevertheless: arrived. applied. none of the seedlings seem to have suffered too badly.)

4. I am having a great deal of fun with the next nonsense recipe book I borrowed from the library, by which I mean "if your introduction earnestly belabours the point that you don't use mysterious powders that are inaccessible to the home cook like skimmed milk powder and glucose, it might possibly behove you to not? have two out of your first three recipes? rely on carageenan iota? which I can't even get from my usual supplier of culinary nonsense unless I buy an entire modern gastronomy kit???" (That's not a referral link, but this one is -- £10 off for both of us.) (From a quick poke, it's available in the UK from msk and fisher scientific.)

5. It has also, rather more helpfully, pointed out to me that once I've scraped vanilla pods out and given them their first boiling, and then used them for Vanillezucker, I can rinse them off and dry them again and then stick them in a part-full bottle of nondescript vodka, leave to stew, and wind up with vanilla extract. A has a vodka surplus, including some he only keeps in to flavour anyway, so A Plan Has Been Hatched.

6. The not-a-skiver on my bureau (padded writing surface, but not made out of the specific kind of leather that a skiver is) arrived with one corner flapping sadly and consequently pretty unpleasantly creased. Earlier this week it finally dawned on me that cotton velvet was probably what I wanted to replace it with, and found someone selling a suitable shade of blue (upholstery, even!) velvet on eBay, by the kilo, who was willing to confirm that one of the pieces in a bundle was big enough for my purposes. This means I'm expecting to wind up with most of a kilo of blue velvet to sell on, but this I do not actually mind.

7. I appear to have made accidental ricotta. By which I mean: last night I was very proud of myself for just about managing to get my act together to set the yoghurt going overnight without ending up ridiculously late for bed! ... and then this morning I got up. and stumbled past the table to check on the yog. and had a moment of Dawning Horror as I realised that I had left. the reserved yoghurt from the previous batch. which was intended to inoculate the next batch. on the table. overnight. nowhere near the Instant Pot. But then I opened the pot and the milk had... slightly... cultured... anyway??? so I panicked and boiled it up again, which it didn't really, and panicked some more and boiled it up some more, and then dumped the yoghurt in and stirred ineffectually and told it to incubate for another four hours max and checked on it halfway through and it was... not good. so I stopped it! and poured it into the muslin in the sieve over the bowl to strain and in the process discovered that the stirring had in fact been astoundingly ineffectual, such that I could extricate! the lump of starter! and TRY AGAIN.

   From this experience I learned two things. The first is that if you boil up sorta-cultured milk in its own acid whey and then strain it aggressively you get remarkably flavourless sorta-ricotta, which I am probably going to wind up squishing and then frying, because paneer is good. The second is that I appear to have got away with this terrible adventure in the sense that the second batch of yoghurt is recognisably yoghurt, i.e. I have in fact managed to salvage a viable culture from the disaster of my own unforced errors. (The whey is all getting used as the liquid to make sourdough with.)

8. All of the Bits for dis- and re-mantling Previous Phone (to a state where I can hopefully e.g. get myself set up to actually back up photos and the like, and for bonus points maybe even add Stuff Stored On Phone to my regular back-ups) have now arrived.

9. Rice cooker. Rice cooker is very good. Today I actually remembered (which I have not for much of the rest of the week) that a significant part of the point of it is that I don't need to time when to start the rice relative to all of the other cooking! Instead I can just tell it to go and the rice will be ready when I want rice! ... unfortunately I forgot to, er, reassemble... everything... after cleaning up thoroughly after yesterday... but fortunately in spite of the absence of such minor niceties as "the dew collector" and "sealing rings" the rice came out perfect. (I have managed to get away with a multitude of culinary sins today, for which may I be truly thankful.)

10. I stomped angrily down the hill in the heart-not-really-in-it drizzle and arrived at the supermarket 15 minutes before closing. Ten minutes before closing I was leaving again, in possession of a litre of fancy gay milk (reduced to the price per litre of own-brand milk) and some cut-price watercress (For tomorrow's dinner) and a big bunch of somewhat droopy white and purple flowers (£2.99 down from £16) and a cut-price iced cinnamon bun. By the time I'd stomped back up the hill again and trimmed the flowers and got them into water and was settling down with my Fancy Straight Milk and the cinnamon bun I forbad A from starting without me (he thought it was a Treet For Adam and the way that ends is that he inhales it before I even realise he's doing so and then he is very :( about Everything when he Realises) I was feeling much better. And I still am.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

Is "skimmed milk powder" the same as "nonfat powdered milk"?

[kaberett]

... I think so, yes!

[sporky_rat]

Is...that not just hanging out with your shelf stable milk in the baking aisle?!

(Genuine question! It's part of life here.)

[kaberett]

IT VERY MUCH IS. I don't use it much! But it sure as hell is *a damn sight more accessible* than *carrageenan iota*.

[fyreharper]

I am confused about your milk’s sexuality, and also about why (how?) it has one XD

[kaberett]

OKAY SO UH some facts:

1. one of my grandfather's brothers emigrated to Canada shortly after getting married
2. iiiiin around 2002? 2003? we visited him & family
3. at this point I was but a wee thing and had just about started to have the vaguest inkling that maybe? queers? were a thing? I didn't think it was relevant to me yet! but.
4. then my parents accidentally took me to Vancouver Pride i.e. Baby's First Ever Pride
5. and then when we actually made it to my great-uncle's I discovered. that Canadian milk. is commonly proudly emblazoned HOMO MILK.

Obviously this is as in "homogenised", but nonetheless homo milk --> gay milk, and unhomogenised milk --> hetero milk --> straight milk. At least in my idiolect! Though I do occasionally manage to convince someone else to adopt this particular affectation. :-p

[shewhostaples]

Someone else whose first Pride was accidental! Mine was on honeymoon (Paris) - which, now I look back on it, is a very, very bi thing. Almost as bi as having married a straight person of a different gender whose birthday is 23 September...

[fyreharper]

AHA thank you - now that I see this, it sounds familiar, but my brain Was Not coming up with the relevant reference XD

And then I had to go check the milk in my fridge to see if it was closeted or if it said; it does say that it’s homogenized but it’s just one of a whole string of identifiers which also seems appropriate in this day and age ;)

Not a euphemism, yet

[hairyears]

Dismantling a phone...

Have you, too, ascended to the ranks of ubergeeks who know the word 'Spudger'?

Re: Not a euphemism, yet

[kaberett]

Delightfully this is a tool with which I have been acquainted for some time!

[lunabee34]

Watercress is delightful.

[kaberett]

I like it! It's over in a part of the salad spectrum that A is not particularly keen on so I'd not have got it if it weren't reduced, but it was and I did and I very much enjoyed its contribution to dinner today. :)

[vass]

I was feeling much better. And I still am.

<33333

[kaberett]

AND my pakidge just arrived and is everything I hoped for! so that's even better.