Romanticizing

My tagging system is based on features I'll remember when I go up against the Tumblr search function.

[depsidase]

[highhappyhog]

I made a Zine about this! If anyone ever wants to print and hand it out, please do!

[chiropteracupola]

The Maple Pomegranate Brussels Sprouts That Can Defeat Any Evil.

the original version of this recipe is from unpeeled journal, but I'm writing this out on my blog my way bc it's the season of the brussels sprout. take my hand let's go to brussels sprout world.

for the sprouts:

2 lbs brussels sprouts

4 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp kosher salt

24 turns of freshly cracked black pepper

for the vinaigrette:

2 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp cider vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

1/8 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp whole-grain mustard

3 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

3 tbsp pomegranate seeds (measure with your heart)

preheat the oven to 420°F. halve all your sprouts and remove any stumps or outer leaves that don't look particularly edible. (if eating-quality leaves fall off, you can just roast them along with the rest for extra crunch.) toss them with the olive oil, salt, and pepper, spread them on a half sheet pan, and roast for 20-25 minutes without stirring or turning. I like to do a quite hot oven and a quick roast for an extra crisp sprout, but ymmv.

meanwhile, chuck everything else but the parsley and pomegranate seeds in a bowl and whisk them together. if you do this towards the beginning of the roast, make sure to whisk again later because it'll start to separate quite quickly.

chop up your parsley into fine confetti. my favorite trick for this is to put the parsley in a cup and snip it violently with kitchen scissors a few leaves at a time, since this helps it stay light and fluffy.

sprouts should be done now, so transfer those over to a serving bowl, pour the vinaigrette over top, and toss with the parsley and pomegranate. eat right away, but in the event of leftovers, these are still really good fridge-cold.

if all goes well, you should now feel ready to defeat any evil, or at least feel full of brussels sprouts, which is an important step on the way to defeating the majority of evils.

[fox-bright]

hi any life advice for 21yo

Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.

Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.

Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.

There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.

Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.

Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.

Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.

Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.

Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.

If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.

[cosmicyellow]

Not my usual post style but I WISH someone gave me this advice at 21. Now I'm nearly 30 and I'm grateful to have came across this post now rather than even later on in life.

If you're in the stage transitioning into adulthood (18-23) PLEASE take note of these, they are CRUCIAL (especially #1). People WILL take advantage of you if they see an opportunity to do so. Don't lose your whimsy, love yourself, but protect yourself also.

[prismatic-bell]

I recently discovered laundry stripping and y’all, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, you’re underestimating.

[prismatic-bell]

[image ID: a screenshot of the notes on this post, featuring several people indicating they want to know more. End ID.]

OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself “necessary” is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?

Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.

Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (I’ve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, there’s a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. I’ve been going for 12-24.

What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.

Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.

You will notice I didn’t suggest any further pretreatment, and that’s because 1) you don’t want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.

When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatment…to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to “well, it’s old” dinginess. I was planning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. “I need to reshape it” is nothing.

Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but we’ve been trained to believe it’s all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is “normal wear and tear” and can’t be fixed.

It’s utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from “I keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasons” to “I could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectable”! The pajama bottoms I’m wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!

I do not know how often you’re supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention it’s way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I don’t wear white, so I can’t test the “it will make whites look almost-new as well” claim, but I’ve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.

Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.

Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.

[thatisuseful]

Damn, that's useful!

[maelace]

I have also discovered that washing fabrics with washing soda will remove the smell of male cat urine better than products that are for that specifically.

[prismatic-bell]

Can confirm it also does this for female cat urine.

[sandersstudies]

Was designated to bring dessert to two separate Thanksgiving meals today, did NO shopping and just scrounged in my empty cupboards for ingredients. This baking shit actually easy af.

Thank you to the cookbook I was gifted from a convent — turns out people who take vows of poverty know how to make good food out of NOTHING.

[sandersstudies]

If you’re in desperate need of recipes with only 4/5 ingredients, here are some suggestions from the Carmelite sisters.

The book also includes recipes like these:

[illiana-mystery]

Wandering Eyes

[lizmamont]

NEW HEAD NEW HEAD NEW HEAD NEW HEAD!

[cherriepyii]

Cher, 1974

[vanalex]

[pairs-studio]

[toiich]

Willem Dafoe for Vogue, 2002

[escuerzoresucitado]

[worldbuilding-tomfoolery]

Being extremely temporary confers on you the same reckless boldness as being immortal

[fukurouonthesea]

@theshitpostcalligrapher

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

just wants a sippy. of tears :>

ink: small batch floral ink collection orange i bought in china, idk the brand since i lost the packaging

[mimsymars]

Dear Diary 1 - The Ghost

Deirdre meets a new friend.

[dinoswordsb]

This is in no way the best way to post it but it is the only way I could get the format to stay

[archiemcphee]

No one else looks at an urban landscape quite like a street artist. Norway-based artist Skurk spotted a pair of light fixtures above a stairwell and saw the bioluminescent lures of a giant anglerfish, so that’s exactly what he painted:

Follow Skurk on Facebook or Instagram to check out more of his awesome artwork.

[via Colossal]

[iveofficiallygonemad]

@princess-of-purple-prose

[nebulations]

[ID: Two photos of art done on a stairwell on the side of a building. An anglerfish has been painted in black with its mouth wide open as if to swallow people walking down the stairwell. Two lights on the side of the building have been incorporated into the design- one is the anglerfish’s eye, and the other is its lure, hanging over the stairs. One photo is taken during daytime and the other at night. End ID]

[canonkiller]

so gaze upon this wretched thing and know that it is love

[jartita-me-teneis]