~plantssss~

but on the real though, here is your guide to assyrian rice preparation from your friendly neighborhood assyrian:

start wanting rice. (or, if you are traditional, simply recognize your constant desire for rice.)

measure out two cups of rice. then one more. then two more. then another. this seems fine. you love rice. there is no way that this will backfire on you.

remember that your great-great-uncle’s recipe says it should be soaked overnight.

become consumed with despair.

decide to soak it for half an hour instead, acknowledging that the final product will be inferior and anger your ancestors but will still satisfy your now almost-overwhelming need for rice to be inside your body much faster.

remember that you should have set the water to boil when you soaked the rice. goddammit.

once the water boils, put the rice in until it is half-cooked. the eyeballing or intuitive method is less effective than a timer but that’s how your aunt does it so you feel compelled to meet her standards.

now that the rice has fluffed up, realize how much rice six dry cups really is. holy shit. you’ve fucked up immeasurably.

take a minute to dwell upon your failings.

grease a baking dish with butter. this will never be as elegant as you want it to and your fingers will get greasy, but the slightly shameful, self-indulgent joy of licking your fingers afterwards will make up for it.

pour the rice into the dish. wonder immediately if you actually buttered the dish beforehand and if you’ve just fucked up.

melt approximately one thousand pounds of butter in the microwave and pour it over the rice, pondering your imminent death from rapid-onset arterial clogging. put a small pat of butter on the top to properly gild the lily.

put your pan into the oven, which you have absolutely preheated after your previous lack of foresight. shake the rice once or twice while it bakes to make sure the butter is well distributed. resist the impulse to climb into the oven with the rice. for the last ten minutes, sit next to the oven and count the seconds until it’s done.

remove the dish from the oven. shed a tear or two at the perfection laid before you. if you are dining with others, this is the time to serve the rice while making passive-aggressive statements about how oh no, you don’t need any help, you just made dinner all by yourself, you can serve everyone as well. (this is still fun if done alone, but optional.)

CONSUME THE RICE.

realize that you have eaten half of the dish in one sitting. no matter how much rice you made, this will always happen.

put the leftovers away, if there are any, and enjoy a cup of chai while marveling at the amount of food you have just eaten. if possible, fall asleep in an armchair, sitting up, head tilted slightly back, like a grandpa.

for the rest of the evening, think fondly of how much rice you have in the fridge now and how many meals it will supplement, refusing to acknowledge that you will almost certainly eat the rest of it in a few hours for a midnight meal.

i really played myself with this post huh. every time it gets a note i start wanting rice.

for anyone who wants it, here is my family’s actual recipe for assyrian baked rice:

1lb / approx. 2 ⅓ cups basmati rice (any long-grain rice will do)

3 tbsp salt

8 tbsp / 1 stick butter (you can reduce this if you don’t want to have a heart attack)

Put the rice in a pot and cover it in cold water and salt. Let it soak overnight. (If you don’t have the time to soak it, rinse the rice with cold water until it runs clear.)

Edit: The reason you want to soak basmati and other aromatic rice before cooking is to preserve more acetylpyrroline, the compound that gives aromatic rice its characteristic scent and flavor. Soaking rice allows the grains to absorb water, which reduces the cooking time, which means less time for the acetylpyrroline to cook off. It’ll still taste pretty good if you can’t do this, but you don’t want “pretty good”, you want mind-blowing, so for that perfect flavor you’ll want to soak your rice overnight. The soaking process also washes away the layer of starch on the outside of the rice, which allows the grains to separate rather than sticking together; this is why you want to rinse your rice thoroughly if you don’t have time to soak it.

Preheat your oven to 325°.

Boil three quarts of water in a separate pot. Once it’s at a fast boil, drain the rice and add it to the water. Boil for 5-7min or until one grain tastes half-cooked, but not soft. Pour the rice into a colander and rinse with cold water.

Edit: This step also helps get rid of any remaining starch on your grains, for perfectly separated rice. If your colander or strainer has large holes, you can put a paper towel/cheesecloth/clean dishcloth on the inside in order to drain your rice. Pour carefully if you’re using a paper towel, though, and put a bowl underneath your colander; I once lost a heartbreaking amount of rice when my paper towel got oversaturated and tore open.

Liberally grease the bottom of your baking pan with some of your butter. Pour the rice on top. Melt the rest of the butter in the microwave and pour on top of the rice.

Bake for 45min. (If you like, cover the rice for part or all of the baking time, but I find it gets less crispy on top if you do this.) Shake the pan a couple times during baking to ensure that the butter distributes throughout the entire dish.

Eat.

Serves four. Can easily be scaled up if needed (or down, but why would you do that?). Best enjoyed with a nice cup of chai.

(cc @raisedbyhyenas )

enchantingruinscandy

reblog for the awesome recipe and to make op want rice (rice is so good. ofc you want rice)

#cooking #rice #recipes #stories #tumblr stories #food

>:(

a-silly-poll-side-blog-yay

Solar eclipse photos if anyone wants

That's the maximum here 83%

#eclipse #solar eclipse #undescribed

prguitarman

Happy Left Handers Day!

#comic #comics #left handedness #undescribed

#plants #plant stuff #native plants #gardening #undescribed

MY BIG AS FUCK NATIVE THISTLE IS BLOOMING :D

So my sister wants to start sewing more, because

a. She’s 5′ 11″ and can never find pants long enough for her legs or shirts long enough for her arms.

b. She hates synthetic fibers as much as I do and it’s difficult to find natural fiber clothes that aren’t made of cotton

c. She’s a biologist and would physically fistfight microplastics if given half a chance

So her gift from mom and dad for her birthday was a sewing machine. Not a super expensive one but a good solid serviceable one.

And recently she asked “So where do I GET wool or linen and thread that isn’t polyester” and mom was like ‘go ask your sister’

And I, of course, crashed into the group text like “GET A PEN I HAVE WEBSITES FOR U” and honestly I’m thrilled about this

“Where did u get all this”

“Bets, u know I’m a 15th degree blackbelt of buying shit on the internet”

“oh yeah tru”

hermesmuse

Op can may we inquire about the website list

Linen; https://www.graylinelinen.com/

cotton and Silk thread; https://redrockthreads.com/

Linen thread and wool fabric; https://burnleyandtrowbridge.com/ (they’ve got wool stuffs and worsted wool fabric for $15 a yard! I just got three yards of navy worsted wool I’m making a constellation winter skirt from)

More linen thread and wool; https://wmboothdraper.com/ (just ordered wool broadcloth to make a coat)

Silk fabric (THE best place to get silk lining fabrics and raw silk fabric):https://www.dharmatrading.com/

A varying assortment of wool and silk and cotton and even some leather, use coupon code spring2020 for 50% off your full order, worked yesterday when I bought some stuff there; https://metrotextilesnyc.com/

Wool. You want wool coating for under $20 a yard? Sure you do. It’s here. Not a huge variety of colors, most are black or brown, but hey https://www.fashionfabricsclub.com/Catalog?refinementIds=4096748&Keyword=wool&pageSize=16

wingedtyger

I don’t know a lot about sewing, but I want to make or have my mom make some linen pants & shirts for when I’m watering, because it gets to 105 here and we have mosquitos so I need to be covered. What type of linen do I buy? Also, linen pajama shorts, yes/no?

(I’ve been wearing my renfaire pants which are a linen mix, I think. But the frikking mosquitos that hide in the tomatoes get my arms)

#sewing #sewing supplies #fabric #reasorces

Medium weight is what I’d go with.

And linen pajama shorts is a HARD yes.

beggars-opera

Renaissance Fabrics is good for all sorts of things

Mood doesn’t specialize in natural fabrics but they do have basically every fabric ever made so

the-merry-otter

For wools, I cannot recommend Woolsome enough! They’re a bit more expensive then the above links, but they have a spectacular range of colours and weights, as well as diamond pattern and herringbone weaves. They also have a range of linens, though not as extensive.

Historical fabrics for re-enactors

justgarb

Tiedtohistory.com has sheer voile linen

The Linen Lab has a variety of weaves, weights, and colors available

Period Fabric has a variety of wools, but switch to the full website if you’re on mobile

luna-azzurra

Something neuroscience-y that helps with prose: attention is selective. A character will not notice everything in a room. They will notice what matters to their goal, fear, desire, training, wound, or obsession. A jealous character notices hands. a hungry character notices food. A soldier notices exits. A lonely character notices pairs. Description becomes character when attention has a bias.

#writing #characters #stories

kaijufluffs

She's being so big and brave.

kaijufluffs

The long awaited sequel.

your-dewey-decimal-number-is

398.20932

folklore of ancient egypt (re: the sphynx)

#cute #comic #comics #undescribed #mythology

teaboot

There is a downside to having a job that largely involves standing perfectly still and silent without distraction for multiple hours on end and I think a big one for me is confirmation that staying up too late / having an injury / getbeing stressed etc. does ABSOLUTELY make u stupid

teaboot

from my strenuous research I have also observed:

An adrenaline high can make u impulsive and makes complex tasks difficult to parse

Sudden strenuous activity can trigger an anxiety attack

Your sense of smell can be sharper or weaker at certain points of your menstrual cycle

Your self-confidence can be higher or lower at certain ponts of your menstrual cycle

You can crash from an adrenaline high

Being irritatable CAN be a sign of hunger and eating WILL make u feel better

You can influence your BPM with enough practice

There us a certain point in meditation where music stops sounding like music and is unrecognizable

People can tell you're watching them if your feet are pointed in their direction

If you don't look at someone when they're talking they sometimes forget you can hear

Perfectly normal things will seem aggravating if u are already mad about something so if u don't chill it'll keep getting worse

#human stuff #health #adrenaline #stories #tumblr stories #my stuff #danger response #emergency situations

Crashing from an adrenaline high is real. A situation of extreme enough acute stress can make you feel like shit for DAYS

I used to be so confused when people would say that "you'll feel better once you do [scary thing]" like. What about The Crash. There's no relief to "getting through it" there's just Hell Hell Hell Garbage Hell

blue-orchid-child

I wanted to add something about adrenaline that I’ve noticed even though it might only be tangentially related.

In extremely stressful situations people seem to act on ingrained knowledge. Which is extremely useful for when they have to make split second judgments about dangers that they are already familiar with (ie. a firefighter taking shelter instead of trying to outrun a wildfire or a miner retreating to a stable position in the event of collapse)

Adrenaline is less useful when people don’t know (or forget) what to do to achieve safety. Examples of this might include flinching back instead of clamping down on a ledge when startled while climbing or struggling to swim upstream in a bad current instead of swimming horizontally to escape.

I’ve personally experienced both. While climbing I clamp down on my holds when startled and it’s saved my life before. On the other hand when I was swimming in the ocean (something I had no experience with, though I’m otherwise a very proficient swimmer) I panicked in the waves and had to be coached back to shore.

Everyone acts differently in stressful situations because everyone is working from a different framework of experience for how to save themselves in any given situation.

This effect is why I understand planes doing an emergency briefing before every flight. Because in the moment of disaster they NEED people to remember what to do.

byjove

The first time I went to Georgia, I stepped out of the car, walked to the porch, immediately had a fat fucking roach scuttle past my foot, said “This place has roaches.” only for my father to respond “Nah. It’s just a palmetto bug. 😌” and that was how I found out about the costal southeastern cultural tradition of lying to yourself by pretending all the roaches are native wildlife and not visibly a winged cockroach of the pest variety.

outlaw-monarch

Florida scared the shit out of me for this exact reason.

byjove

I’m from North Carolina so I’m used to bugs but I was not ready for Georgia and Florida bugs. Bugs 2.0. Advanced bugs. You’re constantly reminded that humans are drastically outnumbered by insects and they could have the upper hand if they really wanted to.

#bugs #cockroaches #wildlife #native wildlife #stories #tumblr stories #palmetto bugs

I mean, palmetto bug is native wildlife yes?

blue-orchid-child

Yup! Native and it has novel defense mechanisms that are unlikely to comfort anyone with fear in their hearts but I find myself fascinated.

Florida woods cockroach - Wikipedia

stahsm

Overlock Stitch by @clothes_reetzy

thatisuseful

Damn, that's useful

fluidstatick

Finally a hand sewing tutorial on a hemline that isn't just the ladder stitch! the ladder stitch disappears when you tighten it, but it's not meant for hemlines because it breaks really easily! The overlock stitch is more stable, so it holds much longer, and it won't pucker or warp the fabric!

#sewing #video #undescribed

gendercensus

Check out this fun graph that Google Sheets made on the public participation spreadsheet very briefly while I was updating it. :D (It's back to normal now but it was gloriously incomprehensible while it lasted.)

PS: If this is a semi-accurate picture of your gender, please do this survey.

#lol #graphs #graphing errors #survey #gender survey

lostinhistory

fouroclockwren

YES OMG BRÜNNHILDE

random-etymology

Brünnhilde

From the Old High German word brunia (“armor” or “breastplate”) and Old High German hiltia (meaning “battle” or “conflict”)

treeen

[ID:

[ID 1: A screenshot of a tweet by the Library of Congress (@librarycongress) reading:

“One of the most beloved free-to-use photos in the Library’s collection is of Brünnhilde, for obvious reasons. We’re happy to report that 2023 comes with a freshly digitized photograph of Brünnhilde from another angle. (cat emoji with heart-eyes)”

End ID 1]

[Both ID 2 & 3 have been taken from the Library of Congress site.]

[ID 2: Photograph shows front view of a cat wearing a winged helmet and breastplate armor in the role of the valkyrie Brünnhilde from the opera Der Ring des Niebelungen.

End ID 2]

[ID 3: Photograph shows side view of a cat wearing a winged helmet and breastplate armor in the role of the valkyrie Brünnhilde from the opera Der Ring des Niebelungen.

End ID 3]

End ID]

Big thanks to @dangerdang for the links to the site:

1 photograph : gelatin silver print ; sheet 12 x 9 cm. | Photograph shows front view of a cat wearing a winged helmet and breastplate armor

1 photograph : print ; sheet 12 x 9 cm. | Photograph shows side view of a cat wearing a winged helmet and breastplate armor in the role of t

#cat #cats <3 #described

fearforthestorm

they really don't prepare you for how much of having a chronic illness is just being angry about it

fearforthestorm

studies will describe your condition like "profoundly impacts the quality of life" and "dramatically reduces productive capacity" and "debilitating and incapacitating symptoms and worse prognosis" and then tell you that professionals are not often familiar with it and it's often underdiagnosed and recognized at more advanced stages if at all. and they will expect you to not be unfathomably angry about that!

#yeah #disability #chronic illness #medical stuff

neunhofferart

Nearly pissed myself laughing earlier when I saw this absolute Looney Tunes truck attempting to transport an oversized mattress down the road with only a couple tiny bungee cords holding on for dear life, while it ballooned out behind the truck like a drag racing parachute:

#stories #tumblr stories #undescribed

preserving-tiktok

#cat #cats <3 #undescribed #video

alpaca-clouds

Okay, let's talk about kids and needles.

Because under the post about giving minors the right to medically consent, people are spreading a ton of misinformation on this - largely because they just do not question the stuff they just assume are "normal". Which here is: "kids are all afraid of needles and therefore if we let them consent or not to medical proceedures, they would just not consent and not get vaccinations, because needles hurt".

And, look. Here is the thing: no, needles do not actually hurt a whole lot. And while, yes, certain procedures that involve being stabbed by a needle hurt more if you are younger for a bunch of reasons... that is actually not the main reason children fear needles. Because, again: the pain is not that bad. And most kids, especially young kids, whose motor skills are still developing, usually will have a bunch more hurting scratches, bruises and the like at any given moment than there will be pain from the needle.

No, from what research can tell, the main reason kids are afraid of needles, is more that for many of them needle procedures are very traumatizing. And that is largely because of the consent issue.

Imagine you are a person who is still pretty darn new to that whole human thing. So for one, yes, your brain is actually not that great in understanding what pain is dangerous and what pain is a safe limit of pain. So yes, someone intentionally hurting you (like with a needle) is really kinda scary. But then there is also the thing where this person hurting you is not telling you why they are doing. The people who you normally trust with keeping you safe (your family) is betraying you, by just holding you down and scolding you for crying over it. Or maybe it is not your family, but some strange nurse who is holding you. And while you are scared, because someone is intentionally hurting you, while someone else is restricting you, the adults around you are telling you, that your emotional reaction to this is actually bad and you are wrong for reacting that way. They might in fact lie to you and tell you that something that is insanely scary to you is "not that bad", instead of just understanding that it is super scary to you. And that is then what you start to expect whenever you see a doctor prepare a needle: people holding you down, hurting you without reason, and telling you that you are wrong for being upset, actively gaslighting you.

We have research on this. And this research is pretty clear: most kids are actually somewhat okay with needles, if you inform them why you are doing it, allow for them to have their emotions, talk to them about their emotions, and allow for them to set at least some conditions.

And frankly, I hate how many people just accept the framing of "kids are naturally afraid of this because it hurts". Like, folks, I know y'all are fucking Americans and that in your culture it is kinda normalized to like put kids into like some sort of fortified hamsterball to stop them from like doing typical kids stuff. But... let me tell you: if you do not do that, kids will actually very regularly engage in dangerous play that they know will often end up in injuries that are going to hurt. And, no, they are not to dumb to understand that. The kids know that this is what might happen because of their play. They actually just take the risk. Yes, they will cry if they get hurt, because - again - their nervous system is still calibrating how it relates to pain. But they will likely do that thing again and again. I can tell you: I fell down a tree so often during my childhood, and I still climbed it. Again and again. So did most kids I knew. Like, fuck, we lived next to a forest. We played "Tarzan", and tried to go along paths without touching the ground. And we fell. A lot. And we still did it.

It is not the fear of pain that makes kids afraid of doctors. It is the fear of the associated force, and gaslighting.