vital functions
Jun. 7th, 2020 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. The Story of My Life, Helen Keller. I'm now through the framing discussion of Helen's letters and indeed of Anne Sullivan's letters about teaching Helen (mostly!) and am abruptly making much more rapid progress again, in relative terms. I am properly charmed by Sullivan's "... WHY ME (also this is a great honour and I am delighted)" attitude to suddenly finding she had a child with a seven-year-old's attention span and stamina... going through the "but why?" phase of language acquisition.
Watching. This House, National Theatre at Home. This was absolutely entirely utterly immersive and, well, I didn't actually cry at it? But I'm thinking about crying at it now. I didn't manage to see this on stage when it was on again recently, but goodness did this... hit hard... under the present circumstances.
The finale of She-Ra, a second time, with friends (remotely); I spotted MORE THINGS they were doing this pass and was Impressed (and still cried a lot).
Listening. Half-listened to Ben Ottewell doing a livestream of Liquid Skin (?), apparently, which A settled in to listen to.
TMA. Nearly finished S1 on the relisten; quite !!! at S5 still.
Cooking. Another round of roti canai: we are definitely levelling up at that. A pointed out last time that I wasn't doing a great job of keeping my left (pivot) hand still; I focussed on that yesterday (and indeed today with the second half of the dough...) and did rather better. In an ideal world I'd have a larger surface to work on; as it is, shifting the ramekin of oil off the pastry board does seem to help really quite a lot. For next time: we're going to want to try to make sure we're dividing the dough up into slightly smaller balls (~80g rather than ~95g), which will (1) get us an even number of roti out the end (currently we're getting 9 from 500g of flour) and (2) will make it easier to stretch, heh.
Almost entirely A: another go at Ben's cookies. I lost track of how many we were supposed to make with the dough quantity so we actually ended up with something like 9 instead of 12, But That's Okay. This time around we tweaked the recipe some: two whole eggs (because they're smallish) instead of one egg plus one yolk, and then splashed in some milk when it still looked too dry. They came out just about perfect.
Eating. Most notably: half a cherry off the tree! Adam had several more and tells me they're tasty; I think they're cherries.
I watched a sodding magpie pick the first ripe strawberry a few hours before I thought it was ready to eat, and then fly off with it; I am Outraged! -- and need to get my head together to work out how I actually want to sort out a tiny fruit cage for the decking.
Making & mending. At the greenhouse: replacement base board for the side bed more-or-less in place (it did not end up having the fixings I was expecting), and shelf brackets along the south side taken down to make way for the New Staging.
At the plot more generally: tomato support infrastructure Continues.
Not actually progressed: the stand mixer ground to a halt partway through kneading the roti dough, so I'm going to need to open that up.
Growing. All but two of the tomato plants in their final locations, now; the first identifiable chilli fruit exists; see above re cherries; and I spotted, yesterday, the first of the jostaberries ripening up. Heaps more redcurrants heaps redder than yesterday also: they are Brave and I am very much enjoying watching them.
I have, via a comedy of errors, sufficient purple sprouting broccoli seedlings that unless there's a truly disastrous attrition rate I'm still going to come out with the other end with enough to, um, feed a family of twenty-ish. Theoretically. Oh dear.
The water butt is actually mostly full after the past couple of days of rain, which is a great relief.
Everything is trundling along quite well and it's Nice.
Watching. This House, National Theatre at Home. This was absolutely entirely utterly immersive and, well, I didn't actually cry at it? But I'm thinking about crying at it now. I didn't manage to see this on stage when it was on again recently, but goodness did this... hit hard... under the present circumstances.
The finale of She-Ra, a second time, with friends (remotely); I spotted MORE THINGS they were doing this pass and was Impressed (and still cried a lot).
Listening. Half-listened to Ben Ottewell doing a livestream of Liquid Skin (?), apparently, which A settled in to listen to.
TMA. Nearly finished S1 on the relisten; quite !!! at S5 still.
Cooking. Another round of roti canai: we are definitely levelling up at that. A pointed out last time that I wasn't doing a great job of keeping my left (pivot) hand still; I focussed on that yesterday (and indeed today with the second half of the dough...) and did rather better. In an ideal world I'd have a larger surface to work on; as it is, shifting the ramekin of oil off the pastry board does seem to help really quite a lot. For next time: we're going to want to try to make sure we're dividing the dough up into slightly smaller balls (~80g rather than ~95g), which will (1) get us an even number of roti out the end (currently we're getting 9 from 500g of flour) and (2) will make it easier to stretch, heh.
Almost entirely A: another go at Ben's cookies. I lost track of how many we were supposed to make with the dough quantity so we actually ended up with something like 9 instead of 12, But That's Okay. This time around we tweaked the recipe some: two whole eggs (because they're smallish) instead of one egg plus one yolk, and then splashed in some milk when it still looked too dry. They came out just about perfect.
Eating. Most notably: half a cherry off the tree! Adam had several more and tells me they're tasty; I think they're cherries.
I watched a sodding magpie pick the first ripe strawberry a few hours before I thought it was ready to eat, and then fly off with it; I am Outraged! -- and need to get my head together to work out how I actually want to sort out a tiny fruit cage for the decking.
Making & mending. At the greenhouse: replacement base board for the side bed more-or-less in place (it did not end up having the fixings I was expecting), and shelf brackets along the south side taken down to make way for the New Staging.
At the plot more generally: tomato support infrastructure Continues.
Not actually progressed: the stand mixer ground to a halt partway through kneading the roti dough, so I'm going to need to open that up.
Growing. All but two of the tomato plants in their final locations, now; the first identifiable chilli fruit exists; see above re cherries; and I spotted, yesterday, the first of the jostaberries ripening up. Heaps more redcurrants heaps redder than yesterday also: they are Brave and I am very much enjoying watching them.
I have, via a comedy of errors, sufficient purple sprouting broccoli seedlings that unless there's a truly disastrous attrition rate I'm still going to come out with the other end with enough to, um, feed a family of twenty-ish. Theoretically. Oh dear.
The water butt is actually mostly full after the past couple of days of rain, which is a great relief.
Everything is trundling along quite well and it's Nice.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-07 11:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-18 10:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2020-06-08 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-18 10:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 05:10 am (UTC)I was touched she trusted me.
I was a bit exhausted by the barrage.
I was furious that apparently no one else had answered enough of her questions.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-18 10:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 06:54 am (UTC)I also have pigeons eating my brassicas, which I am less relaxed about.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 07:45 am (UTC)My mother refuses to grow any other kind of strawberry because they all taste wrong! I am glad yours are doing well. Good luck with the pigeon scourge; I am only now starting to move my brassica outside...
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 10:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 07:53 am (UTC)Oh nooooo. Poor both of them!
Glad everything is trundling along. <333
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 11:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-18 10:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-18 10:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-08 09:14 pm (UTC)Sorry about your thieving magpie!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-11 02:21 pm (UTC)