vital functions
Apr. 26th, 2020 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. More testimonials about The Poly Missing Stair; this one in particular took up a lot of brainspace for a few days there.
A reread of So Much Cooking, by Naomi Kritzer, because it's doing the rounds; food blogger in a pandemic, approach with caution. Followed up by her essay about it, and her recent short story Little Free Library.
Continuing to make slow progress with The Story of My Life, Hellen Keller; I'm dipping in and out of it rather but it's making me smile a lot.
Watching. A friend doing an online talk on games, and how to win at them. I think that might be it? I think that might be it.
Listening. TMA! Writing up my flail: still on the list!
Cooking. I always forget how good the lemon-artichoke-broccoli pasta is, but then this evening I wanted Quick Food and the fridge is pretty well-stocked and it took all of fifteen minutes, and it's so good. (Steam the broccoli over the pasta, cook onion and chilli on high until it's starting to blister, turn well down and add garlic and the steamed broccoli and some chopped-up tinned artichoke, squeeze in a bunch of lemon juice and chuck in some zest if like me you have a tub of it in the freezer, finish with pepper and basil; I had mine with goats' cheese, and A had fake parmesan, and I don't think it was just that I'd spent the bits of the afternoon I was actually awake during at the allotment.)
Last night and then this morning for brunch: I'd been craving something patatas-bravas-ish, and we have a lot of sweet potatoes plus the latest batch of Small Irish, so we finished up the freezer-burrito* while I chucked into the oven a roasting dish containing, in chunks or, as relevant, cubes: an onion; two sticks of celery; two sweet potatoes; a whole bunch of wee red-skinned potatoes; about half a bulb of garlic, peeled but cloves left otherwise whole; salt, paprika, cumin, rosemary, a little berbere. Chucked in the oven with oil at 200°C for about an hour and a half, and then heated back up this morning. Excellent brunch, did exactly what I was wanting in terms of textured starchy cubes, will make again.
* Things we had in the freezer: avocado. tortilla. half a tub of refried beans. Things we had in the fridge: a tub of sweet-potato-and-bean chilli. most of the fixings for sweetcorn salsa. lettuce. So given things that needed et, and given that I was sort of sadly craving burrito, and given that I had got confused and thought our next Ocado delivery was a ways further off than it actually was, my meal plan included "emptying out some more of the things in the freezer that we keep not getting around to eating". Ergo: freezer burrito.
Growing. Friends. Friends. I have so many plants.
Given courage byewt, I finally potted up the last of the tomatoes into newspaper pots. They, and all of the peppers and most of the chillis, are now on a bench in the greenhouse at the allotment. This means I am... committed... to actually going at least two days in three and ideally a lot closer to every day, I think, which is probably good for me.
At home, I've sown some poppies (in a planter that otherwise contains lovage) and some cucumbers (in the modules freed up by the great tomato transplantation).
At the allotment -- in addition to transporting the nightshades various over, thank you Adam -- I've done a whole bunch of weeding. I planted out half the peas and some of the most advanced broad beans, around the edge of a first attempt at outside squash; that happened on Wednesday, and then I didn't make it out to the plot again until today because Paper Revisions, and unsurprisingly they were all looking a little crispy (and something had dug up the squash, bah). But. I've watered them thoroughly; I'm rearranging my life to attempt Regular Allotmenting (see above); I'm pretty sure the peas will pull through, and I have... no shortage... of additional squash plants to try.
And also: more infrastucture. With a lot of help from A, I am incredibly close to finishing up the fruit cage. I've resentfully ordered some more pipe clips, and I think tomorrow morning's allotment job (interspersed with getting back to work on some of the other bits of PhD...) is going to be sticking things together with netting rings and starting to peg the sides down. The fruit's all forming on the jostaberry and the redcurrant; I don't think the gooseberry's got as far as flowers yet but the chicken wire is a 1" mesh and I'm reasonably confident that pollinators won't get too confused by it.
The cherries are also forming. I've speculatively dumped some French marigold seeds around the shallots, just to see.
Observing. Chaffinch! The chaffinch is back. Adam's worked out how to encourage the birds to actually eat the suet balls he got off a co-worker whose birds disdained them; I've spotted the bat most evenings; the cowslip stubbornly reasserted itself in the lawn. A wide variety of splendid insects in the compost.
Playing. Dominion Online, with A & B; a quiz on Friday night via Zoom, with some of A's relatives, which was An Experience (we came last, naturally); in PoGo I am delighted to have filled out the Illumise Pokédex slot, I have no idea what on Earth to do with the fifteen shiny Abra I caught over the course of community day from my sofa, and I am Very Pleased to have hatched a 100% IV Snivy.
The horn: I think I am resentfully coming to the conclusion that at least some of why I've been getting some specific back ache is that I need to tweak my posture, and especially I need to hold more of the weight of the thing with my actual upper arms. This makes breathing easier, weirdly enough, and I suppose it's at least a partial answer to my vague wonderings about how to not entirely regress when it comes to upper-body strength, but also here is a me, sulking.
A reread of So Much Cooking, by Naomi Kritzer, because it's doing the rounds; food blogger in a pandemic, approach with caution. Followed up by her essay about it, and her recent short story Little Free Library.
Continuing to make slow progress with The Story of My Life, Hellen Keller; I'm dipping in and out of it rather but it's making me smile a lot.
Watching. A friend doing an online talk on games, and how to win at them. I think that might be it? I think that might be it.
Listening. TMA! Writing up my flail: still on the list!
Cooking. I always forget how good the lemon-artichoke-broccoli pasta is, but then this evening I wanted Quick Food and the fridge is pretty well-stocked and it took all of fifteen minutes, and it's so good. (Steam the broccoli over the pasta, cook onion and chilli on high until it's starting to blister, turn well down and add garlic and the steamed broccoli and some chopped-up tinned artichoke, squeeze in a bunch of lemon juice and chuck in some zest if like me you have a tub of it in the freezer, finish with pepper and basil; I had mine with goats' cheese, and A had fake parmesan, and I don't think it was just that I'd spent the bits of the afternoon I was actually awake during at the allotment.)
Last night and then this morning for brunch: I'd been craving something patatas-bravas-ish, and we have a lot of sweet potatoes plus the latest batch of Small Irish, so we finished up the freezer-burrito* while I chucked into the oven a roasting dish containing, in chunks or, as relevant, cubes: an onion; two sticks of celery; two sweet potatoes; a whole bunch of wee red-skinned potatoes; about half a bulb of garlic, peeled but cloves left otherwise whole; salt, paprika, cumin, rosemary, a little berbere. Chucked in the oven with oil at 200°C for about an hour and a half, and then heated back up this morning. Excellent brunch, did exactly what I was wanting in terms of textured starchy cubes, will make again.
* Things we had in the freezer: avocado. tortilla. half a tub of refried beans. Things we had in the fridge: a tub of sweet-potato-and-bean chilli. most of the fixings for sweetcorn salsa. lettuce. So given things that needed et, and given that I was sort of sadly craving burrito, and given that I had got confused and thought our next Ocado delivery was a ways further off than it actually was, my meal plan included "emptying out some more of the things in the freezer that we keep not getting around to eating". Ergo: freezer burrito.
Growing. Friends. Friends. I have so many plants.
Given courage by
ewt, I finally potted up the last of the tomatoes into newspaper pots. They, and all of the peppers and most of the chillis, are now on a bench in the greenhouse at the allotment. This means I am... committed... to actually going at least two days in three and ideally a lot closer to every day, I think, which is probably good for me.At home, I've sown some poppies (in a planter that otherwise contains lovage) and some cucumbers (in the modules freed up by the great tomato transplantation).
At the allotment -- in addition to transporting the nightshades various over, thank you Adam -- I've done a whole bunch of weeding. I planted out half the peas and some of the most advanced broad beans, around the edge of a first attempt at outside squash; that happened on Wednesday, and then I didn't make it out to the plot again until today because Paper Revisions, and unsurprisingly they were all looking a little crispy (and something had dug up the squash, bah). But. I've watered them thoroughly; I'm rearranging my life to attempt Regular Allotmenting (see above); I'm pretty sure the peas will pull through, and I have... no shortage... of additional squash plants to try.
And also: more infrastucture. With a lot of help from A, I am incredibly close to finishing up the fruit cage. I've resentfully ordered some more pipe clips, and I think tomorrow morning's allotment job (interspersed with getting back to work on some of the other bits of PhD...) is going to be sticking things together with netting rings and starting to peg the sides down. The fruit's all forming on the jostaberry and the redcurrant; I don't think the gooseberry's got as far as flowers yet but the chicken wire is a 1" mesh and I'm reasonably confident that pollinators won't get too confused by it.
The cherries are also forming. I've speculatively dumped some French marigold seeds around the shallots, just to see.
Observing. Chaffinch! The chaffinch is back. Adam's worked out how to encourage the birds to actually eat the suet balls he got off a co-worker whose birds disdained them; I've spotted the bat most evenings; the cowslip stubbornly reasserted itself in the lawn. A wide variety of splendid insects in the compost.
Playing. Dominion Online, with A & B; a quiz on Friday night via Zoom, with some of A's relatives, which was An Experience (we came last, naturally); in PoGo I am delighted to have filled out the Illumise Pokédex slot, I have no idea what on Earth to do with the fifteen shiny Abra I caught over the course of community day from my sofa, and I am Very Pleased to have hatched a 100% IV Snivy.
The horn: I think I am resentfully coming to the conclusion that at least some of why I've been getting some specific back ache is that I need to tweak my posture, and especially I need to hold more of the weight of the thing with my actual upper arms. This makes breathing easier, weirdly enough, and I suppose it's at least a partial answer to my vague wonderings about how to not entirely regress when it comes to upper-body strength, but also here is a me, sulking.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-04-27 10:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-15 09:08 am (UTC)There's... A Lot of testimonial. Several of them got me less directly in the feels, while helping to build up a broader picture, but -- yeah. Well done for boundaries.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-04-30 08:32 pm (UTC)We have now got a friendly chaffinch who comes and yells at us. We had other bird friends, but the chaffinch is a new addition.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-15 09:08 am (UTC)(Currently the coaltits are presumably feeding TINY SHOUTY GAPING MAWS given how rapidly the feeders are going down...)