vital functions
Jun. 30th, 2024 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, Dana K. White: this contained very little that was new to me, but it's definitely a more coherent and better-organised overview of Her Ideas and Approach than reading her entire blog from day 1, and it's also significantly shorter. Inhaled happily; we'll see how long the nudge to Unfuck Habitat lasts this time.
An Immense World, Ed Yong. I reached a stage in Dreamwidth catch-up where one of you mentioned reading it, poked the library with a stick, discovered to my amusement that apparently at some point in the past I had already tagged it as something I probably wanted to try reading at some point, and am now partway through the introduction.
Last night's 2 a.m. medical literature was on the topic of ureteric stents, with a focus on how they're fitted and removed, and what they're for, including but not limited to the part where sometimes they're illuminated (link to a review on the benefits of same, rather than images of the stents, which you can look up yourself...)
Playing. More Ori and the Blind Forest. Not much additional commentary.
Cooking. Some new things! An Ottolenghi chickpeas and spinach with honeyed sweet potato; I think if we do this again then it will be making the sweet potato as an accompaniment to the confit tandoori chickpeas. (It is I suppose possible that this chickpea variant would be more interesting if I'd actually used dried not tinned? But hey, it used up the spinach.)
East "dorayaki" pancakes with blueberry cream (actually blueberry mascarpone). Very tasty but also a full recipe's worth is Too Much For One Sitting.
Eating. MANY MORE THINGS FROM OTTOLENGHI because I had another in-person appointment at the hospital just round the corner from them. Really enjoyed the cakes I got to take home -- an apricot (and almond?) deep fruit tart, and a lemon, bay leaf and olive oil cake that I instantly hunted the recipe for because !!!. Pleased to have tried the blueberry-apricot-almond-coconut mini loaf but it was definitely the least interesting not only of My cakes but also including A's tiny individual passion fruit meringue tart (I did not try the coffee and walnut cake). Salads as previous, plus kale with pearl barley, grape must tahini, pickled shallots and pumpkin seeds (which I tried and decided I did not want any more of), and chargrilled hispi cabbae with chilli & garlic (tasty). Hot chocolate better, I think, than most coffee shop chains, but less good (for my tastes) than Le Pain Quotidien (which is my high street benchmark on account of being slightly more widely dispersed than, er, Ruby Violet).
RASPBERRIES AND JOSTABERRIES.
Exploring. Poked around an alley we had not previously met on the way home from visiting the coot! It had some excellent -- I am going to call it "lacework brick", which is almost certainly not the correct term and probably deeply unhelpful, but there was, and I liked it. Bit of a bimble through some other back streets when being herded gently to the allotment.
Making & mending. Item the first: brooch back pins arrived! So the pronoun badge now has one attached to it, which in turn is attaching it to my hat. I will be interested to observe the effects.
Item the second: have removed the extremely sad fabric from my bureau and have done cleaning of the grooves around it... one of which is actually deep enough that I might be able to stuff velvet into it and the other three of which are decidedly not. So I'm going to sit and contemplate what I want to do about that while also trying desperately to ignore the lure of vass' comment re stripping/staining/refinishing the wood...
Growing. More seeds in ground (squash, some misc beans, some peas). Lots more weeding. All of the peppers are setting fruit. Persimmon is still a persimmon! And I brought a bunch of escaped rooted strawberry runners home and reinstalled them in the strawberry pot on the patio, which I have been gradually gently tidying a tiny little bit at a time, and where I have also actually potted up the Sad Supermarket Basil I acquired ... some ... time ago...
Observing. BABY COOT. I have a Long Set Of Handwritten Notes about the Baby Coot, including alas its lack of siblings, but on Monday night it was Tiny and emitting lots of squeaking that was somehow still audible despite the muffling effects of ITS ENTIRE PARENT; by the time A went past it again on Thursday evening it had approximately doubled in size...
And the parakeets are being particularly raucous this week!
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Date: 2024-07-01 10:47 am (UTC)I read An Immense World last year and really liked it. (I actually used it for distraction while I was waiting in the recovery ward after the operation on my leg. I kept myself busy texting Random Facts to Mum. XD) I hope you enjoy!
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Date: 2024-07-01 10:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-09 07:08 pm (UTC)