hthrrloooo

Librocubicularist. Klutz. Magpie. Bricoleur.

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we have bunnies!

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Still—always—growling low in her small chest at the mailman through the living room window.

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[shirtsthatgohard]

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Jenny George's "Vivarium"

Thoughts on loving as a form of trying.

To love is to be an amateur. It is never to be an expert. It is to be in thrall with unknowing, and to call such unknowing intimacy.

[azspot]

“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

— The Butlerian Jihad Has Begun

[hthrrloooo]

I appreciate that summer break gives me the leisure to consider the really important questions, like Are papal and Paypal homophones?

[hthrrloooo]

Meal plans (past and present)

I start my summer gig on Thursday, so here's what we've had so far this week and what I'm planning for quick and easy dinners while I'm in goblin mode.

Friday night we had that five-minute tuna udon (but I totally could—and will—eat it again and again), plus cabbage salad.

Saturday night was shrimp po-boys made with frozen tempura shrimp.

Sunday night was buttermilk-brined roast chicken done the lazy, cold-oven-start way, with sauce Jean Vignard and roasted radishes drizzled with honey

Last night the leftover chicken got cubed up and put into curried chicken salad melts on sourdough, plus air-fryer breaded okra.

Baked Tofu with Coconut Kale is a longtime favorite. I've made the coconut rice in the head note and it is delicious, but this time I might opt for basmati instead.

Instant pot "baked" potatoes (loaded up with canned turkey chili, tomatoes, green onions, black olives, cheddar, and sour cream) stay on heavy rotation in this house.

Balsamic marinated tofu wraps with mozzarella, roasted red pepper, and arugula, plus chips

Chile Crisp Fettuccine Alfredo with Spinach is such a great meal, and it uses a whole container of spinach, so you don't even need to make a separate vegetable side unless you want to.

Chipotle Chicken Pozole with all the fixins: queso fresco, cabbage, avocado, cilantro, sour cream, lime, crumbled tortilla chips.

Southern macaroni and tomatoes are an easy meal, kind of like Marcella Hazan by way of the American South. And with it, a salad reverse-engineered from a favorite from a local pizzerie: a dressing made of finely shredded Parmesan whisked with lemon juice and olive oil, then tossed with arugula, halved grape tomatoes, and more shaved Parmesan.

Sardine pâté and fried egg salad on toast with a mustardy dressed green salad

Kani cucumber salad sounds great!

I'd like to have tuna and cabbage salad with fried lemon again soon.

[stuckinapril]

I think part of getting better is complete ego death. Like you’re not above setting a timer for 5 minutes and focusing on a task. You’re not above doing a very simple 3 minute workout to start. You’re not above reading for 10 minutes a day when you first get out of your reading slump, even if you used to read for hours. You’re not above starting slow and then building up to where you want to be/where you once were. What you are above is total inertia. Doing something really is better than doing nothing. Radically accept where you are, radically accept your limits, and go from there. Don’t let your ego get in the way.

[hthrrloooo]

I admit that making this curried chicken salad, which I love and almost always make with leftovers the night after roasting a chicken, stresses me out because it's a kind of non-recipe thing where I just taste as I go until it tastes good. I'm always afraid I'll mess it up!

So tonight I finally (mostly) measured and standardized this recipe's amounts:

Curried Chicken Salad

dressing:

3 tbsp mayo

1 tbsp sour cream

1 tbsp heavy cream

1 tsp crème fraîche

1/8 tsp garlic powder

1/8 tsp onion powder

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp S & B curry powder

pinch (less than 1/8 tsp) MSG

1/2 tsp quick pickled red onion brine

solids:

1 whole leftover roasted chicken breast, chopped, plus a little more dark meat

1/4 c toasted cashews, chopped

1/4 c balsamic & boiling water-plumped golden raisins, drained

2 peeled stalks celery, finely diced

1 green onion, minced

2 to 3 tbsp quick pickled red onion, minced

Whisk together dressing in a small bowl.

Put solids into big bowl. Fold in half of dressing. Add the rest if it's too dry. Taste for seasoning and add salt, pepper, mayo, red onion pickle brine, lemon juice, etc. if needed.

I like to smash this onto toasted sourdough, top with slices of Swiss, and slide under the broiler for curried chicken salad melts.

[hthrrloooo]

11/19/22

Mushrooms

Oh room of gills one must possess to live inside this world,  dark rafters in the dome of earth, digesting all that is,  when I taste you I taste my own death, but too  what will come after, what you’ll make of me when I’m  no more, I see the door that opens into everything, the everything I’ll one day be. Oh molder, oh rot, oh knotted network tying together all things, I eat your flesh and make it part of my own, and so I carry us both, knowing someday we’ll return to the loam,  a home beneath the turf. Praise you, filth. Praise to what decomposes, its noble uses, its rightness, its is-ness  and not-yet-ness, the business of conversion, of dispersion,  the end, the beginning, and the being in the midst.

(Prompt: “Write a poem about your favorite vegetable. Don’t pick up your pencil off the page.”)

[knightofleo]

[demonicae]

SOUND. ON.

soundonsoundonsoundonsoundonsoundon!

[hthrrloooo]

I had a period last month after four months of nada—my longest stretch yet in perimenopause—so I didn't expect to have another regular one this month. Yet it arrived today, 28 days later, right on schedule, so I guess we're still doing this for a while? Or possibly just one more time? Who knows?

Wondering what to expect of my final period (still somewhere in my future) sent me to this reddit thread, and reading about other people's experiences of the winding-down and the ending has been fascinating. We're all so different.

[hthrrloooo]

I can count on one hand the number of times she's thrown up since I've known her, but today she did and it included something that was either a big hairball or a dead mouse. We honestly couldn't tell, even poking at it a little, so the mystery remains. Anyway, she and I had a good long nap together this afternoon and she seems to be feeling much better.

[hthrrloooo]

kudzu wallpaper for my phone

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William Stafford

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William Stafford, "Dreams To Have: an Interview with Cynthia Lofsness," Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation