so that was a day.

yay/wtf
#2 and I had been talking about how Ossoff's yay-we-won speech at 8 a.m. seemed a bit early, but it was a good speech and we felt civically refreshed (plus utterly gobsmacked that we'd actually managed to pull off both Senate wins) and then it was afternoon and holy shit, we were watching an attempted coup.

So, yeah, in retrospect, we're glad he spoke early in the day.

books
I meant to do the Wednesday book meme but obvs that was overcome by events. Since I'm trying to be more interactive here, I'll throw out that I finished Hench, by Natalie Zina Walschots, which I really liked except for maybe the end. I didn't *dislike* the end, but I did have an issue or two with it. If you've read it, come tell me what you thought...?

And I'm listening to The Thousand Dollar Tan Line, which is a Veronica Mars novel, narrated by Kristin Bell. It's fun having Veronica in my earbuds, at least so far.

cooking
I finally gave up trying to even pretend to work and went and to figure out what to make for dinner and ended up making the sort of rice you get at Mexican restaurants to jazz up some basic chicken breast cutlets. I posted about it here on cookbook_challenge.

It continues the theme of making my own version of packaged food and tl;dr is that I liked the recipe & will prob make it again.

Stay safe, kids. Keep going, the only way out is through.

Hello, December, who knew we were going to make it this far? Hi to the new friends, too (and the old ones, too.)

( holiday chat, which ofc necessitates pandemic mentions )

In other news, I got a hankering for my mom's hamburger soup (my mom, as you may remember, was not the best of cooks and did the whole '50s American casserole thing to death, but sometimes, you just want what you had as a kid, yeah?) but couldn't find any alphabet-shaped pasta and um, may have accidentally ordered 10 pounds of it off of Amazon, whoops?

If you, too, would like a copy-cat version of Campbell’s vegetable soup, this one is easy & pretty good. (I feel like 2020 is going to end with me completely losing the ability to cook anything other than semi-homemade versions of American suburban bland but we do what we have to, yeah?)

Pursuant to the above point, here is a link to Smitten Kitchen's Green Bean Casserole with no condensed soups in sight, for all your upcoming holiday (or everyday, no judging here) dinner needs.

Ciao, bellezze, have a nice rest of the week, don’t freeze, be safe!

hi, hi, hello, I'm still alive, though, woof, I could give up the waking-up-at-4-a.m. thing my brain seems to be all about lately. I took yesterday off in an effort to chill and managed to vote w/o any issues and then D & I drove up into the mountains to catch at least a little of the autumn color. Chill was achieved, but I was still awake at 4 this morning, so, sigh.

A couple of links (my brain is not forming free thought very well atm, so list-ho):

I started writing a Joe/Nicky (The Immortals) PWP, and, uh, here's the 25 page backstory my brain insisted on before it got to the sex: kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight. I swear the pr0n is coming.

I'm not doing NaNo this year (it is too much time dedicated to a stressful thing at the exact wrong time of the year), but I am, once again, signing up for mini_wrimo. Tell me if you're signing up, too, and I'll try to cheer for you in the daily posts.

For those of you who have a nostalgic craving for Hamburger Helper, but can't make yourself buy the boxed stuff these days, I present 20-min, mostly from scratch dupes for Cheesy Italian Shells, Cheeseburger Macaroni, Beef Stroganoff, and (actually super-excellent and more like 45 min) Skillet Lasagna.

(It's been a really long month and we still have to get through the US elections so I'm not arguing with whatever my brain is deeming to be comfort strategies, but I can't feed D the processed stuff so I went down several internet rabbit holes & came up with some acceptable substitutes. Please, god, if you don't know what I mean by Hamburger Helper, do not take these links (except for the last one) as indicators of my cooking abilities.)

Also, did you know Dan Stevens narrates several Agatha Christie novels, complete with excellent voices and accents all around? His Poirot is sublime.

ciao, bellezze

It's been... quite a while, whoops. Work got ridiculous and I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with going to the office every day and #2Son is taking more classes on campus (which is so exciting I can't even tell you but means I'm either dropping him off or picking him up 4 days/week, which is adding to the logistical issues.) And then, we're having work done at the house, so I've been dancing around crews in and out of the house, plus clearing out rooms/cleaning up the dust after (omg, SO MUCH DUST. EVERYWHERE.)

Also, it was Winter and I was hating the world (as usual) so there's not much reason to spread those nasty vibes around.

Anyway, I tried to read my circle and drop a comment here and there, with at least some minimal success, but it's spring now and I got in a dose of Disney therapy and the stupid work project got shifted to another team (where it more logically belongs, even though it's still stupid) and I am finding it easier to breathe, tfg, and I'm hoping to be back a little bit more.

So, in the middle of all of that nonsense, I was still commuting by train, so I did get some quality reading/audiobook/netflix download time and that seems like a good thing to talk about...

firstly, I blasted through the last four of the Rivers of London series, all on audiobook (which is how I've done all of them.) I'm not sure what ignited the frenzy, but I did Broken Homes, Foxglove Summer, The Hanging Tree, and Lies Sleeping in less than a month, which is something like 45 hours of audio (and I was listening at normal speed, not 1.25x or 1.5). This is entirely due to how awesome Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is as a narrator. I'm pretty sure I never would have made it through Aaronovitch's odes to London architecture if not for how dynamic and engaging the narration was. At one point, BabyBoy (the BFA acting kid) made me replay a couple of scenes as we drove so he could tease out the variations in accents and inflections and take notes for a class, so that was fun. Now I'm all caught up and would be in withdrawal if I hadn't finished the last one right before I hit Disney World (which usually clears everything out of my head by dint of complete overstimulation.)

Anyway, A+++++, would listen again, must go see if they've done audio of the novellas (and go look for post-canon fic while waiting for more books.) (Oh, and here's a little book trailer for one of the novellas to give you a taste of the stories/narration.)

I also remembered that I could download shows from Netflix and thus watch things w/o burning through data (which is a thing around the HoB, as we all share this cheap, grandfathered plan that is enough for regular use, but not so much for streaming and I'm currently not in favor of an extra $100/month for an unlimited plan.) So, that's enabled a fair amount of stuff, most gloriously Samin Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which was *such* cognitive whiplash to watch while schlepping to/fro on the train. Still, it was incredibly soothing to have her voice in my head during the dreary winter commutes, where it was gray and dark in both directions. (The link goes to the book, but as lovely as it is, the series is just over-the-top beautiful and nourishing.)

Also food-related, the boys got me Chrissy Teigen's new cookbook for Christmas (Hungry for More), which I initially assumed was just going to be a fun read (it's like the longform of her twitter/insta, if you're a fan) but has turned out to be a solid source of actual recipes. We're currently 3-for-3 in total wins (the scallop linguini with casino breadcrumbs, chicken teriyaki burgers, and seared fish with herby brown butter.) Honey-garlic shrimp is next on the cooking agenda.

If you follow me on insta/twitter/fb, you probably noticed that we hit Disney World over spring break. Yes, I know you're shocked. It was just D & I, though, as nobody's spring breaks aligned and there are tickets that are expiring soon (and it goes w/o saying that I'm not giving Disney corporate money for things I haven't used.) So, that was fun -- I got a deal on Priceline that got the Beach Club down to breathable rates; we ended up calling a Minnie Van one morning to get to Magic Kingdom; and D turned out to be a FastPass-refreshing savant, so we had excellent times/rides. I upgraded to an annual pass while we were there and I'm going with the boys in May, once everyone's finals are done with and before BabyBoy starts the summer theater stuff. (Also to clear out their soon-to-be-expiring tickets.)

The key part of that last paragraph is that I'm now in possession of a WDW Annual Pass. So. If you're feeling the need to run away to Walt's giant playground, ping me & let's see if we can link up. :D

Okay, if you're still reading, I ♥ you and regardless, I hope you have a good day (/week/month!)

Finally getting my act together to follow st_aurafina's lead, I present my first Recipe Friday…

Something I've cooked recently:
Skillet Lasagna, adapted from Keepers -- if you're a USian of a certain age, you may be flinching at the very words 'skillet lasagna' but please rest assured that this is NOT of the Hamburger Helper oeuvre. (Actually, I had to debate whether my Italian nonna and her many sisters would haunt me for even considering making this. The pictures looked really good and there's enough cheese to keep a cow in service, so I pressed on.) I even managed to make it on a regular weeknight (not a work-from-home day), twice now. It's better with San Marzano tomatoes and the very slightly spicy Italian sausage that I get at the farmer's market, but then, what isn't? It's pretty decent with store-brand tomatoes and sausage, too. If you follow me on IG, I was so pleased by this that I actually posted a shot of it.

Homemade Starbucks Sous Vide Egg Bites -- I usually alternate between yogurt with granola and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast (both of which are easy enough to carry into the office along with lunch), but when my sous-vide manufacturer covered these in their latest newsletter, I decided I'd give them a try--to great acclaim. Easy AND quite tasty. I did the bacon-gruyere recipe, because I had everything at the house, but I foresee some branching out in the weeks ahead. Also, yay for getting the jars sealed tightly enough that no water got in but not so tight that they explode in the water bath.


Something I have concrete plans to cook soon:
In a little more than 48 hours, the Atlanta Falcons will take on Tom Brady and the Patriots for Super Bowl LI (yes, we're back to the Roman numerals. I guess the NFL decided it was safe to go back for 51? Ugh, who knows with those idiots.) Despite having lived in the ATL for 20 years, I am firmly in this for the food (especially since the Steelers faded and died 2 weeks ago—I could hear my dad screaming at the tv set from the afterlife) and have definite plans to try Serious Eats recipe/method to get crispy baked chicken wings. Then I'll do Bon Appetit's sauces (their wings are pretty decent, but Kenji Lopez-Alt is my guy these days so I'm going to see what his obsessiveness has produced.) I am also doing BA's fried mozzarella. Then it will take me all week to clean up the kitchen, so that's it for anything more than pasta and some grilled chicken and veggies.


Something I am idly considering making:
Smitten Kitchen's Blueberry Bread and Butter Pudding, possibly for Valentine's Day breakfast (baseball season has started; I doubt I will see D for dinner until spring break.) I might also try to sous vide a rack of lamb to see if it'd work for the big Easter dinner…

mecurtin asked me what my favorite cookbooks are... which, y'all, I have a LOT ("") of those to choose from--4 physical shelves and then another dozen or so on my e-devices, and that's after a couple of years of culling and donating to the Dugout Club's tag sale fundraiser. I have ones that have one or two totally knock-out recipes, I have Ina and Nigella and Martha and Tyler Florence and Mark Bittman, but the ones that have the most half-destroyed pages are:

The Way To Cook, Julia Child -- Classic Julia, for when I want to know how to make a quiche or soups or coq au vin or any of a dozen not-too-complicated dishes that my mother never would have dared to make (she is not inspired in the kitchen.) Also, this is serious chocolate mousse.

Baking: From My Home To Yours, Dorie Greenspan -- I checked this one out of the library at least 6 times (at 3-6 weeks a pop) before I broke down and bought it. (I didn't think I needed a baking book, but then I thought I should probably let someone else have a crack at the library's copy.) I've lost track of how many batches of World Peace Cookies I've made over the years.

The (New) Best Recipe, Cooks Illustrated -- I had the original version and ended up with the revised edition as well.
It takes 3 pages to get to the actual recipe, but by the time you do, you know every single variable in the cooking equation and why it didn't work.

Great Food Fast, Everyday Food -- This one's great b/c I can turn a kid loose on a recipe and have it turn out almost every time. I can also walk into the house at 6 and have dinner on the table by 7ish even if I'm picking recipes based on what I know I have in the house.

My Calabria, Rosetta Constantino -- My grandmother's family is from Calabria, and betweeen how none of my mom's generation of cousins really cared about cooking and how none of the sisters (my grandmother and her sisters, I mean) ever really cooked from a recipe, no one knew how to make anything. Oh, y'all it was so sad--we had scraps of paper with notes like start with 10# flour and the people writing stuff down had no clue how things were supposed to fit together and the people doing the talking didn't understand that they had to be super-basic and even being someone who always messed around in the kitchen, I couldn't make things work. This book was published a couple of years ago and when I started leafing through it, all of a sudden a fair number of those scraps of recipes started to make sense.

Honorable mention goes to The Silver Palate Cookbook, which I have in the original, paperback edition from the early 1980s. I don't really cook from it now, but oh my goodness, this was the first cookbook I ever owned that was inspiring. The dinner parties that came from this book! I remember sitting at my tiny, 2-person kitchen table with the (landline) phone tucked between my shoulder and my ear, leafing through pages with a dear friend doing the same on her end of the call, deciding if we wanted to try the salmon mousse *and* the phyllo spinach triangles for the same party. (The answer was YES. Tres (80s) chic!) I am terribly nostalgic about it, about the veal scallops with the mustard cream sauce and the lemon chicken and the Mediterranean chicken salad and, and, and...

Between my mom being in the hospital, DragonCon, a late summer cold, and the office move, I have just been staggering through life, but last week I hit the wall and exploded into some kind of over-compensating kitchen binge.

( cutting for menu details probably of interest to no one but me, but recipes are available upon request (if I have them, sometimes I'm just riffing on a theme) )

After all that, I'm thinking this week is going to be nothing but creative re-use of the leftovers (opening the refrigerator door is an exercise in dodging falling Tupperware. The dog is in heaven, waiting to see what might explode upon contact with the floor.)

cut for your scrolling ease

( this week in fandom )

( this week in writing )

( this week in DragonCon )

( this week in food )

Also, Trader Joe's cookie butter is EEEEEVIL.

::waves::

So, I'm writing an Avengers/Agents of SHIELD/Hawkeye Clint/Coulson that I've wanted to write right from the start of AOS, and I'm posting it a chapter at a time, because that's the only way I can reliably finish anything these days... ( and that got long and boring )

...and that was probably 100x more than what you signed up for around here, but it feels like I just freed up my brain to keep going on the writing, so cut-text it is.

I feel vaguely guilty for doing anything but trying to write on this thing (I, er, underestimated how long it was going to take to claw out of the angsty hole I dug for everyone, so instead of a nice 15K fic, I'm about to crack 25K and still have a third of it to go, whoops), but I have managed to read a couple of books (I finally realized I could put my iPad in a ziploc bag and read in the bathtub, which makes life SO MUCH BETTER, duh.)

What I've Just Finished
So poisontaster not only sorted me out on where to start with Barbara Hambly, but also loaned me her pick, so Bride of the Rat God, it was. I enjoyed it immensely, especially the setting and atmosphere of 1920s Hollywood, which was vivid enough to be a character of its own. So, that was fun.

And then I resolved to actually *read* some of the sale-of-the-day e-books I compulsively buy, so I dove into the first of the Phryne Fisher mysteries, Cocaine Blues, and didn't come up until I'd gone through Flying Too High and Murder on the Ballarat Train (and #4 is on the way from the library.) I think it's safe to say I enjoyed the series--it's nice to read something outside the usual post-WWI setting of England/NYC (these are set in Australia) and Phryne is entertaining enough in her own way. Plus, dear lord, the *clothes*. I find myself googling her designers and imagining my grandmother (who was a knockout in her day) in various and assorted outfits. The mysteries are fine -- I never bother trying to work out who the villain is when I read these things, I just float along and (if all is working right) am entertained by the spectacle, which these are doing nicely.

What I'm Reading Now
Nothing, at the moment -- or, well, cookbooks as I sit around assorted therapist/orthodontist offices. Canal House Everday and Bouchon Bakery (which qualifies as strength training, too, as it is huuuge.)

What I'm Reading Next
Phryne Fisher #4--I can't remember the name, just that it's waiting at the library and tomorrow is conveniently enough a work-from-home day, so I can grab it on my errand run around the little town we live near.

Other random stuff
Spring break -- I am experimenting with a third-party broker for Disney Vacation Club properties and have a savanna-view studio reserved for approximately the price of a moderate-resort room. (This is mostly so that #2Son can hang out in the room and have something to see if the rest of vacationing gets to be too much for him.) I will report back on how it all turns out, but so far it's been pretty painless. I also started making dining reservations in November, as soon as D confirmed that the varsity team was playing in a WWoS tournament, so I'm holding Saturday evening fireworks-timing at the California Grill, a reasonable time for dinner at Le Cellier, and an actualfax dinner table at Be Our Guest. (My squee is only barely contained at this trifecta of Holy Grail restaurants.) The Flower & Garden Festival is doing food booths again this year, so that's cool; the new MK daytime parade starts in about a week (and has so many steampunky elements I might have to see it more than once); and the construction walls are down from around the Seven Dwarves Mine Train, with the possibility of it being in soft-opening by the time we get there. For this being my 4th trip in 9 months, I am ridiculously excited by all of this.

TV -- Behind on everything except for SPN but that's only because BabyBoy has caught the bug and watches it in the morning before school. I was very happy to see who I saw this week, even if I'm seriously ready to start smacking some sense into people named Winchester.

Movies -- We finally (!!!!) coordinated schedules and went to see The Hobbit last weekend, and all I can say is that I have given up trying to be rational about those movies. As soon as the score begins, I just fall into this place where I'm catching up with friends I haven't seen in decades and while I can objectively see where the first part was a little slow, I honestly didn't care. I think we're trying for the Lego movie this weekend; I have promised not to make loud comments about Manic Pixie Dreamgirls while there (note the 'loud' part, because that's as far as I was willing to go.)



Anyway. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm still here (and on tumblr and twitter and goodreads and pinterest -- come see me if you're hanging out there, too!)

::waves::

Things that have happened since last we chatted:

Drove 400 miles with BabyBoy for company. Browsed a book store. Ate wood-fired pizza.

Searched fruitlessly for a non-foofy angel to replace our beloved lady who lost her head last year due to an unfortunate ladder-climbing incident.

Baked 10 dozen Gingerbread Kisses for my mom's cookie exchange. (If I don't bake some, she won't go, and it's an easy trade-off for me to get her some socialization w/o my dad.)

Saw Thor 2 again, this time with my parents. (At some other time, I will go into the blissful irony of explaining comics book canon to the people who literally burned any copies of said comics if they found them in their house.)

Concocted a ham dinner with all the trimmings when we all decided we weren't in the mood to eat turkey multiple times during the week.

Ate wild mushroom ravioli and pan-seared grouper over grits and was harassed by my favorite waiter (he was upset that the Beach Week crew dared to come in on his off-day last summer, so I promised we'd check his schedule first next year.)

Did not check work email, not even once.

Drove 500 miles back home (detoured to pick up Oldest.) Met the new GF, looking and feeling my best after 6 hours in the car, but apparently did not scare her unduly.

Made an assortment of cream-soup-based casseroles for the in-laws Tgiving.

Spent Tgiving keeping my mouth shut and reading by the fire at said in-laws, surfacing only to show my father-in-law pictures of his niece on the red carpet at the Catching Fire premiere. Made a valiant attempt to explain the plot and her role in it, but crashed and burned.

Threw out the remains of the cream-soup-based casseroles.

Ran around and dug the house out from under all the crap so the wonderful lady who cleans for me could, y'know, find the house to clean.

While out stocking up on general food necessities, saw that they had fresh, free-range turkeys for under a dollar per pound and decided to make an actual Thanksgiving dinner, mostly because #2 had spent the week being overwhelmed and didn't get any feasting in.) I had cornbread dressing in the freezer, so I hit the (clean) house at about 4:30 and we were eating by 7:30. I have to link you to Smitten Kitchen's Green Bean Casserole because it is SO FREAKING GOOD. Holy moly, I was mostly just making it as general cooking therapy for me, but guh, it was amazing even though I made it with 1% milk instead of cream. (I'm not even apologizing to the tumblr/pinterest people who are seeing this again because it is just that good.)

Cleaned up the kitchen. Made brunch. Cleaned up the kitchen again.

Administered oxygen to the Auburn fans in the house after that finish.

Made dinner. Left the kitchen a wreck.

Read some stuff. Watched some other stuff. Caught up on AOS and Arrow. Didn't quite get there with SPN or Sleepy Hollow.

Did not shop. Am not 'mostly finished' with my holiday shopping. Do not care.

My life. So exciting. ;-)