mishalak

Last year I mostly switched over to drinking coffee instead of tea. I still like tea, but the library runs on coffee and I just fell into the habit. So I've been making coffee at home during the pandemic. It is a nice drink, but at times the reports about caffeine half life in the body and so on might be impacting my sleep. This is no different than tea it just happens that this is my caffeine drink of this time.

So right now I'm down to drinking two small cups, 400 ml of coffee. It is brewed quite weak, though. Only 14 g of beans in that so it is probably about 100 mg of caffeine. Just at a wild guess that the first 200 ml of water extract the usual 80 mg. According to a great many people who experiment with coffee brewing a ratio of 15-18 to 1 is better for flavor. The trouble is that I'm greedy and want another cup, but I'm a bad sleeper and if I have caffeine in my system lingering from the 5.7 hour halflife I have a harder time getting to sleep and staying asleep. Maybe I'll go back to tea once I've finished my current kilo of beans.

½ cup of evaporated milk plus
¼ cup of evaporated milk (this will be 6 oz of a 12 oz can)
¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp. dry mustard, dissolved in ½ tsp. water
1/8 tsp. white, red, or black pepper (optional)
¼ tsp. hot sauce like Tabasco
1 large egg
½ pound macaroni or penne pasta
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (if you have salted, just leave the salt out of the sauce)
6 ounces sharp cheddar, Jarlsberg, or Monterey jack cheese, (shredded this makes about 3 cups)

Set one liter of water to boil with ¾ tsp salt. While it heats measure ½ cup of the evaporated milk into a bowl (4 oz). Then measure another ¼ cup and put away the remaining half can of the the evaporated milk for another use. To the milk in the bowl add ¼ tsp salt, the mustard mixture, the pepper, hot sauce, and the egg. Whisk to combine or use a fork.

Weigh out or measure you pasta and set aside.

Shred or cut up the cheese. I usually cut it with a knife since a knife is easier to clean than a box grater.

When the water is boiling add the pasta and cook for about 8 minutes. But really I know when to stop by fishing out a piece with a spoon, letting it sit a moment on the cutting board, and then feeling how firm it is. The pasta needs to be cooked, but still quite firm. It's going to absorb more moisture from the sauce. Drain, reserving a some of the pasta water in a heatproof bowl or cup.

Return the pasta to the pot and put in the butter. Over low heat mix until the butter is melted and pasta is coated. Add the egg and milk mixture and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula, something with soft edges that won't cut up the pasta. Add in 2/3-ish of the cheese shreads. Stir until cheese is completely melted. Add in the remainder of milk and cheese a little at a time, keep stirring. Once completely melted it is going to start stiffening as the moisture absorbs into the pasta. Add in a bit of your reserved pasta water until it looks right to you. Serve.

Jarlsberg makes for a more earthy experience. Good with white pepper. I think black pepper works better with cheddar. I suspect any reasonably melting cheese would work, but the harder and drier the less like it is to melt.

The more easily melted the more smooth the sauce so a medium cheddar or jack cheese would work better. Pepperjack sound really interesting, but it would be a bit much with the other spices.

I started with a Cook's Illustrated recipe and made alternations as I found necessary. The Jarlsberg is entirely my idea. I like it. If you use American cheese you have my sympathy.

I made six cookies tonight. The last time I made pecan sandies the cookies came out weird shapes and ran together. A cookie does not have to be perfectly round to be good, but I did want to see if I could make a prettier cookie. Also ones that baked very evenly. I did manage to do both of those at the expense of taking far too much time in the getting the cookies onto the baking tray. I was able to make them round using a cookie cutter as a guide and packing the dough into shape. Then giving them a bit of a touch up after easing them out. Far too much work, really.

I could put up with uneven or misshapen cookies if they were really easy to slice and bake, but they're a bit of a pain due to my too warm kitchen or some other error that makes the dough as soft as whipped cream. Perhaps I ought to scoop it into a bag and then pipe it into shape. Or maybe some sort of guide for making even slices would be the ticket.

I really had to get all my angry out of my system over spending too long forcing myself to read a book I was not enjoying. So, now, I'm going back to the warm fuzzy memories of a book that had lots of emotionally charged issues, but I enjoyed getting through it. I listened to the audio book version of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. YA book about a young woman going to the first semester of college dealing with her own mental health issues through fan fiction writing. And actually making new friends even though it seems impossible and she self-sabotages quite a bit. It had moments that were hard for me due to my own issues around college, making friends, and mental health, but it read as hopeful without being saccharine. Also, pretty positive portrayal of both people who love fanfiction and an authority figure who does not "get it".

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
The protagonist just took a whole bottle of prozac because she was angry. Then when she's in a hospital and being manipulated by her husband using her children she thinks, "I'll never forgive him for this." The book cuts to three years later and she's still with her husband. If I had a physical book it would have just met my drywall with a thump. I don't expect my protagonists to be perfect, but I do expect them to not be desperately stupid. Also I have issues with anything that looks like a suicide attempt in fiction. I'm a little more than halfway through.

Up to this point it was a difficult read that was also compelling because of good descriptions, being a window into a very different life, and character types. Southern housewife having to deal with social situations and keeping a house together. On top of all that a vampire moves in. I am probably going to follow the advice of friends and never bother with a book set in the south again because every one I have read tends towards the depressing.

There were definitely moments where I felt like the protagonist was getting on top of the situation and was showing herself to be a big damn hero in her own way, but I'm done. Life is too short for mediocre books that put the reader through an emotional wringer in order to cover up the writer's shortcomings. It is not Steel Magnolias meets Dracula. It is The Stepford Wives meets a slasher movie that puts on a self-awarded "feminist" badge for having the abused female character kill the monster after putting her through hell for whole length of the movie.

Award: "This would have made a lovely sound if skimmed into a pond."

I crushed up four cardamom pods and put them in with my coffee this morning. Nice. Very pleasant addition to the roasty flavors. I also had a little ice cream for breakfast. In a while there will be oatmeal and strawberries. Left over stir fry for dinner. It is very cool right now in Denver so I should get started with my yard work before it gets too hot. There are weeds to pull and plants to water.

400 g Country Ribs
2 Tablespoons soy sauce

Give the ribs a rinse and pat dry. Cut across the gain into thin flakes of thumb width. Put into a quart freezer bag with the soy sauce. Flatten out to aid when thawing.

I could possibly stand just a little more soy sauce. Not much. The texture was good, but not quite as salty and savory as I thought would be perfect. Maybe. On the other hand it was far too salty in a previous experiment where I think I put in 3 tablespoons. Maybe 2 is perfect. The meat was put in the freezer in January and was still quite good when cooked.

I need a gardening icon. Because there should and will be a lot of gardening entries if this plan works. Because I need to be able to look in my diary or calendar or something to see when I watered my plants. It is summer in Colorado this week with the air as dry as bread left out overnight. We had a few summer days already, but this week was the full on blast with temperatures peaking above 30 C (86 F) every day, often up to 32 or 33 C. The sun has been particularly shiny and the last hard rain on Friday the 15th has evaporated from any uncovered ground. Like the soil around my still cheery patches of dwarf blue grass. I have heaped absolutely ridiculous amounts of care and attention on these palm sized patches of deep green grass. All two dozen-ish of them after most of my plugs died last year. Weeding around them like they are prized petunias, noting new clones, fertilizing them, and giving them a clover-y friend. They may expand enough to have two patches just big enough for my feet by fall.

I watered them thoroughly and deeply yesterday since the top 2cm of the soil was as dry as a butter cookie. Not yet hard, but holding together firmly when I tried to see if there was any moisture under the surface.Maybe I'll put this act in my phone calendar so I don't end up writing about soil moisture every three days. The rain last night ended up being just enough to wet most surfaces after the long foreshadowing drops. Probably not even 5mm, but I did not have my rain gague out.

Right now is one of those moments when I wish I had a boyfriend, or a roommate, or a minion who had to take my calls even in the early middle of the night. I was standing here minding my own business letting the cool come in an open window, but with the curtains closed. It is vitally important that you know that the curtain was closed. Because I smelled rain. Which was confusing because there was no noise, but I definately could smell the distinctive smell like wet concrete and iron pipes rusting in dirt that says, "rain". I looked outside and there were like three drops visible on the pavement. Man, my nose is good at detecting things. So I am awesome like a vampire bloodhound. Because of my good nose.

Three potatoes, cut into slices, boiled in salted water. Three-ish garlic cloves cooked just enough to drive off the rawness in the boiling water for a minute. A handful of whatever random herbs come to hand from my yard. Today it was tarragon, peasant spinach, lovage, salad burnet, and parsley. Some mustard, some apple cider vinegar, and a little schmaltz.

I had leftovers today. The last of my giant batch of chili.. Well the last that is not frozen. The deep freeze currently holds 13 widemouth jars with soup or chili in case I get sick and don't feel like cooking for a fortnight.

I think I have a pretty good giant batch of simple chili recipe at this point.

2 tablespoons of fat (bacon drippings, sausage drippings, even vegetable oil)
2½-3 giant onions, medium diced
2 small cans of tomato paste
2 tablespoons ground sweet red pepper or paprika
1 tablespoon medium-hot red pepper or paprika
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1½ tablespoons cumin
1 tablespoon coriander
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons oregano
6-9 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
~800-900g ground beef
2 (15 oz) cans of dark red kidney beans, drained and rinced
1 (28 oz) can of roasted red peppers, drained reserving the juice, rough cut
6 (15 oz) cans of diced tomatoes
Table salt

Heat the fat in the big dutch oven over medium heat and shimmering. Add onion and cook until just starting softening then add the cans of tomato paste mix in to cook off the tinned flavor. Grind the whole spices except the oregano. Keep stirring occasionally until starting to darken and brown. Add in the ground peppers, cumin, and coriander. and add in half the meat. Break up and cook until no longer pink. Add the other half and repeat. Add all the remaining spices. Stop the browing using the reserved red pepper juice. Scrape up any brown or sticking bits from the bottom of the bottom of the dutch oven. Once everything is moving around and the mixture is starting to bubble dump in the kidney beans, the tomatoes with their juices, and the red peppers. Bring up to a simmer and then put in a 135 C / 275 F oven. Leave uncovered too cook down for 2 hours. Stir every half hour or so. Season with salt to taste.

I often add in a bit extra ground red pepper or smoked paprika. A good-ish supermarket chili mix can substitute.

In a physical sense I was super prepared to be made to stay home instead of going out for food. I already preferred my own cooking to going out much of the time and only skipped when I wanted to do something social. Now there is almost always time to cook and when there is not I have a freezer full of good soup and stews ready to be thawed.

On the social side I am as ill prepared to be totally alone as crow or some other famously gregarious animal. I would always go off and do my own thing for a while, but I need getting together with people. Video chats fall somewhat short of actually making me feel much better. My social skills and ability always kept me on abstemious monk's diet of being social, but now it is like I'm locked out of the kitchen with only the memory of smells to satisfy my hunger.

It is very simple to live alone until you're required to be alone almost all the time.

I accidentally made my cast iron skillet rusty by not coating with oil often enough. So cleaned it thoroughly with a rust remover and put on a coat of oil to try start making it nice and shiny black again. I think this will work. Second coat on it here today and then a third coat when I make pizza later.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large-ish onion, cut into half slices
2 tablespoons dry sherry or close enough
700 g carrots a third scrubbed and trimmed, the other two thirds (about 9 medium sized ones or 4 cups chopped)
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
¼-½ tsp. spicy tiscy
½ tsp. ground ginger
Mint, chive or parsley if you want a garnish

Prepare almost everything first. You can leave the chopping of the carrots until the onion is started, but don't try to peel them all while sautéing, you're not that fast. Put the can of chicken or other stock in a measuring cup because chances are it will be short and you'll need to add some water to get the full amount.

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium to high heat. Sauté onion until golden, that should take about five minutes. Throw in the alcohol and chopped carrots and toss around for half a minute or so, all the alcohol should evaporate leaving just good flavor.

Add the stock and. Bring to a boil to kill any last germs then cover and reduce to simmer until the carrots a very tender, about half an hour at altitude, somewhat less at sea level.

Ladle your carrots and liquid into a blender. Yes you can get away with one of those in pot blender wand things, but your soup won't be as smooth. I have a 7 cup blender, but I still blend in batches and pour into a second pot to make it all even. The soup usually won't blend without some extra water. Then I add the spices and salt so I can adjust as things go along and so I don't cook off flavor.

Cautions and Options:
DO NOT SKIP PEELING THE CARROTS. Leaving a third of them unpeeled adds a bit of flavor, but all of them being whole makes for a bitter soup. I might increase the unpeeled portion to half as an experiment someday, but I did not feel like experimenting tonight.

I bought a frozen duck with the intention of roasting it for Yule. That did not end up happening. So instead I roasted it this week. Fair amount of work, but I'll be eating it all week. I've had one breast and one serving of soup made with the bones and bits left after carving. I'm going to have more soup tonight at work and also some bread. Like many people I've been baking bread because I have more time.

Sometimes I write big long rants about what is wrong with the world and It really makes me feel better. I don't generally launch them on the world anymore because what good would be served by depressing the hell out of the few readers of my words? Thinking about how I by accident and reflex avoided having more troubles does improve my mood though. I am so glad I don't have to "be strong" for someone else. My problems are largely my own and not those of a partner, child, or elderly parent. Which is a damn good thing because I'm not even competent to care for myself, much less anyone else.

NOPE. I've lost track of experiment numbers because I was lazy about keeping up my experimentation journal. But food experiment no. something or other is a failure. Kentucky Coffee is as uncoffee like as the people who mocked it said. I am very unlikely to keep trying because I wanted a totally caffeine free drink that was warm, dark, and flavorful and mixes well with milk. The Kentucky coffee tree's roasted beans produces a dark drink that is somewhat vegital (that is so a word), mildly flavorful, and coagulates milk.

My procedure was to roast the washed and cleaned beans at 150C for two hours in cast iron skillets. Left over night to cool they are quite darkly colored and at twice the weight per unit of measure of water as coffee grounds it produces a beverage that could be mistaken for coffee visually. The flavor is not actually terrible, but it has a flavor like well cooked baked beans in with the roasted flavor. This might be overcome with the right procedure in roasting or something, but I'm not going to continue the experiments because when I added milk it went "funny". Since I have often been accused of liking coffee flavored milk this is a fatal flaw in this as a coffee substitute.

USDA plant guide Kentucky coffee tree

Yes, yes, no one was waiting for this. But I am back and I am going to blog here because. Expect plants, food, more plants, and random book/library stuff.

My subconscious is an extraordinary thing at times. I sometimes have exceedingly cinematic dreams.

Such as the one yesterday where I was in a very old fashioned library with big heavy books in dark oak shelves and there are these spiders. BIG spiders with upward curving bodies in bright colors like pink and ghostly white. They are, of course, terrifying because spiders the size of a Stephen King paperback novel with slightly odd accordion folded abdomens are going to be scary no matter how pretty the colors and non-aggressive they are being.

But I wondered why they were not being more angrily spider like so then there were the tiny Lachrymose Mice, who's tears make everything friendly. Long limbs and big sad eyes and even aggressive centipedes become kindly disposed when exposed and I found when I experimented. I was still nervous, though, when I was waking up because I did not know how long the effects would last.

"Die apple tree!" I took the axe to the offending large plant with relish. The diseased trunk fell before my blows and I straightened to look about the garden. "And let this be a lesson to the rest of you minions. Grow healthy or suffer the consequences!" I dragged away the remains to give a druid funeral: left to return to earth in the open air.

The offense? Fireblight. Damn tree got it the year before and I, foolish one, tried to cure it by cutting it out. No. No. I should have saved my effort for minions proving their worth by being healthy and strong.

It is spring and a villainous gardener or landscaper's thoughts turn to plant murder at this time of year. It is time to kill off the under-performing and sickly lest other plants get the idea that they will be babied through difficulty. Also to murder the plants that are getting in your way or will be soon. All the sunflowers and asters sprouting too close to sidewalks and paths. It saves having to do it later. Also anything that just displeases or any arbitrary reason like that dandelion that looked a bit insolent when you walked by. Murder them all, and the sooner the better. Your land must feel the strength of your determination.

Also, plant murder is socially acceptable murder. Get all your murderous impulses out on the plants where no one can stop you.

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Coffee Drinking

Simple Macaroni and Cheese

First Test Batch of Pecan Sandies

Unicorn Chaser: Rainbow Rowell

Book Thowing Log: Entry 1

Cardamom Coffee

Freezing Pork for Stir-Fry

Leaps Onto a Concrete Slab Shouting "Praise Me!"

Awesome Like a Vampire Bloodhound

Simple Warm Potato Salad

Last of the Chili for Lunch

Pizza for One

Reseasoning

Carrot Soup

Duck Soup & Daily Bread

The Joy of Singlehood

Kentucky Coffee

Back Again

Dream Log: Of Lachrymose Mice

Murdery Mood

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June 2020

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