vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. More slow progress on Tales from the Inner City, and dipping in and out of recessional's your blue-eyed boys (because I needed the reminder that it's okay to be me, which ybeb does a really thorough job of).

Film/TV. Dosage V, Rodden and Meltdown: oh no Tommy's little FACE. He so BADLY wants her to DO THIS. Aaaaaaaah. Oh no her face when she sends it. (Gosh it is... a thing, knowing what all else was going on in their lives at the time.)

And we finished Leverage! I... really want to care about them, but it just didn't quite gel for me. (Happy to discuss this in more detail in comments! Do not actually want to squee-harsh, though.)

Music. I got home from Cornwall to discover that Adam had pre-ordered hurts 2b human (P!nk) for me, after we'd spent a little time the week beforehand watching music videos (I particularly love what she's doing with Walk Me Home). I love the way it's a concept album about Being P!nk; I love the way it threads a narrative with references and allusions that don't prevent the tracks standing alone; I really want her to be okay. Happy in particular is written Specifically For Me, obviously.

Which has also brought to mind the part where sciatrix has been talking recently about "ASMR", which is apparently a thing now. Like sciatrix, that sensation (or at least the sensation I think is being described) is one that's absolutely just... been part of my life for as long as I can remember, and that unlike the various videos set up to provoke it is... mostly associated with what I'd loosely classify as religious experiences, which sometimes show up in connection with music, and indeed did with part of this album.

(Relatedly: I love Pink Floyd. I have a... lot of emotional response absolutely hardwired to Pink Floyd, such that I really can't actually usefully listen to it while attempting to do anything else, because it just entirely hijacks my brain. Which means that of all the music I've played to Adam, Floyd isn't yet on the list, because I want to be lying on the ground in the dark and just Having An Experience, where most of the introducing-Adam-to-music I've done has been in the general spirit of putting on background music, or playing him a couple of tracks, and I just can't do that with Floyd: it's got to be the whole album, start to finish, without distractions, or my emotions and thought processes end up upended across the floor and it takes me hours and a sleep reboot to properly recombobulate them.)

Culinary adventures. I went to a knife skills workshop!

Additional notable cooking: baby's first attempt at home-made refried beans, because (1) I had a burrito craving, and (2) I realised that the Instant Pot made this actually fairly trivially achievable. I poked around the internet a bit and found some advice, and also I decided to have a go at sweetcorn salsa.

Ingredients
500g pinto beans
1 shallot
Some Garlic
a bay leaf
some oregano
some cumin
some chipotle paste
1l vegetable stock
500ml water
salt (to add at the end)

Method
Stick all of the above in the Instant Pot, set it to 30 minutes of Cooking A Bean, and leave it to decompress under its own steam. (As it were.) Then: fry up an onion and some garlic, dump in the beans, and mash them a little. Once they've heated through some and combined their flavours, add salt and mash. Optionally additionally add lime juice.

These were better after they'd sat for a day.

Sweetcorn salsa
Make a tomato-based salsa (onion/shallot, garlic, tomato, herbs to taste, oil and lime juice and seasoning to taste, chilli to taste) and... add a tin of sweetcorn. And also some cubed avocado, if you're feeling super enthusiastic.

I absolutely spent the train ride back up from the mouldering ancestral pile looking up recipes instead of wrangling my to-do list, but there we go.

In summary, I had a craving for burritos that I didn't have to pay someone for, and now I've got proof-of-concept for at-home burritos, and my only sense of mild impending peril is regarding the risk that I'll start actually making tortillas at home. ("We might need a bigger crêpe pan," I said to Adam, mournfully. sebastienne apparently thinks this is incredibly on-brand for me.

Final culinary-adventure-in-potentia: I'm tentatively considering having a go at panettone, and I tracked down (surprisingly easily) wahaca's black bean soup recipe, which I am excited about because I Particularly Enjoyed That. And, again, Instant Pot = I'm actually willing to cook dried beans.

Notable wildlife. First swallow! Also a splendid red kite at rest on the power lines on the way up to Oxford on Sunday.

Notable Pokémon. My very first Mesprit raid had 100% stats, and I actually caught it, which... WELP. No new shinies this week (!), but A indulged me to the tune of spending a lot of yesterday evening Trading Pokémon, which (1) got me a lot more Pokébox space (I'd been saving a bunch of things for him, either because they were from Far Away or because they were potentially interesting), and (2) several Lucky Pokémon. I am delighted about the Togepi and the Piplup; I'm rather more dubious about the Primeape and the Delcatty.

Comments

[recessional]

I am still not sure what ASMR refers to. And every time I try to pin it down I end up more confused.

[jesse_the_k]

Congrats on further adventures in fancy ass spoons.

There's a typo in your recipe: it should read all the garlic.

[azurelunatic]

I really must figure out what to do with the instant pot.

Burritos sound good!

[archangelbeth]

Instant Pots have such a promise of cooking ability... *wist*

[sebenikela]

i find that just a pinch of cinnamon is a great addition to refried beans--i usually make them with black beans rather than pinto but i think the principle is still sound. :)

(hmm i should make refried beans that used to be a Thing I Did)

[cadenzamuse]

New P!nk album! Knife skills! (I HATE cooking, but I have always kinda wanted to take a knife skills class. I suspect it might make me hate helping in the kitchen less.)

For me, Leverage was enjoyable but not life-changing, although it made me rather like John Rogers as a person (even before the "made the OT3 canon" tweet).

[jedusor]

I was briefly startled that someone who cooks as much as you do hadn't made burritos, which I think of as a very basic don't-feel-like-real-cooking-tonight dinner option, but then realized that my California upbringing may have something to do with my assumptions on that and most people probably don't start making their own burritos when they're eight. But I don't soak dried beans or make tortillas from scratch, that does sound like effort XD

[silveradept]

I am jealous of your 100% raid character.

I got Shiny Lugia for my 7-Day Research Reward (earlier, I had received a Shiny Articuno and assumed that would be the last shiny I ever got from there) today, so I should probably not be all that jealous.

I am curious to hear your feelings on Leverage and what did not gel for you.

[calissa]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Tales from the Inner City sometime. It won a couple of Aurealis Awards last weekend and I need to pick up a copy to read before voting in the Ditmar Awards.

I also love the notable wildlife! The other day I had my first sighting of wedge-tailed eagles for the season, which was glorious.