September 3, 2021
1. The fragrance of ginger, garlic, and green onions = heaven.
2. I’m so grateful for clean running water. We’re so lucky to have it though as we move towards either perpetual drought or aridification, we may not have it for long.
3. I took Rae and Bethany’s baking advice to make my second batch of biscuits!
Last time the dough was too dry, I had to add extra milk while mixing, and I felt the end result was too dense and tasted strongly of flour.
This time I overcompensated by probably an eighth of a cup of milk. I used 1.25 cups instead of 1 because I had so much flour that couldn’t be incorporated last round. Next time I will start with the 1 cup and add a splash if it’s needed as I mix. This time I grated the frozen butter, which was a lot more work than I expected, and only folded the dough about 5 times instead of the prescribed 10. Oh also I soured up the milk with a tablespoon of vinegar to make it buttermilk.
They were very wet when I was working the dough and I despaired that they wouldn’t work out as I transferred them to the baking pan. But! They were actually quite good! Much less floury tasting, lighter and fluffier. Not yet the layers I wanted but much closer.
4. I loved Xena the Warrior Princess when it was on TV and this thread reminded me I wanted to watch it again. Also Lucy Lawless still seems great as a human. Much better than that limp tool, Kevin Sorbo.
Challenges this week: I’ve only been sleeping in short blocks of an hour or two at a time. Something in my mind or body or both is preventing me from actually getting the rest I desperately need and this will only end in delirium.
The wildfires are raging on and that means our air quality is garbage. We are staying inside as much as possible but we still have to walk the dog and take JB outdoors for their mental and ocular health. The optometrist wants them to have 2 hours of outdoor time a day and that’s not happening but we are trying our best to do as much as we can.
It’s hard balancing the minutiae of everyday life, including a complement of its own horrific stressors like racism, COVID, being affected by the actions of horrible people, being subject to terrible decisions by political leaders, with the concerns almost too vast to comprehend with climate change and what feels like a sweeping wave of right wing Christian extremism taking over our laws, destroying our rights and suppressing votes.
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August 27, 2021
1. We happened past a produce shop we used to frequent a couple years ago, and stopped in. It was such a delight to pick up loads and loads of fresh produce for $22 again. I feel like we just don’t get those prices and that quality, even if the prices aren’t spectacularly low, at the bigger stores. I think we also feel more motivated to eat better and cook more when we get their produce. Though my seasoning for the veggie soup I made was the opposite of inspired. I won’t be making that flavor profile again. PiC wouldn’t admit to disliking it but that’s as close as he’s ever come to showing he didn’t like something I made.
2. I pivoted in the middle of making this lemongrass chicken with bone in thighs, not liking how it was turning out. The rescue recipe used the boneless diced chicken breasts that were intended for another recipe and turned out a lot better than I had expected. Too bad I didn’t have enough lemongrass to make enough to freeze but now I know that I do like it with the diced preparation. I was concerned that it’d be dry, which is why I went with bone in thighs but they required too much cook time for the aromatics. I may play with the recipe some more to make it work with bone-in chicken. Update: actually both recipes were good in the end. I’m glad I tried them both.
3. I made up a big batch of coconut lime chicken for the weekend and will freeze one portion for some later meal. Future me will thank today me for that. I managed to cook enough to cover this whole week of dinners without takeout, supplementing with some frozen foods. I’m proud of myself for making it a whole week and it was really nice to be able to cook even when under extreme pressure at work.
4. I made an experimental batch of biscuits. Everyone else liked them but I want them to be flakier and lighter. I can’t remember what makes biscuits light and fluffy, with those great pull apart layers. Working the dough less? More butter?
Challenges this week: Parenting a six year old feels exponentially harder than parenting a baby.
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August 20, 2021
1. I finally learned the name of one kind of flower I really like but never bothered to look up: gladiolus! They’re striking!
2. Sometimes it feels like the robot vacuum taking a million passes on our high traffic floors is a judgment but then I’m just glad it’s there to pick up all that dirt.
Challenges this week: The world?
The ongoing situation in Afghanistan.
The nasty attitude this country has about refugees and our moral responsibility to be the country they pretend we already are.
The ongoing uncertainty with the Delta variant.
The ongoing uncertainty of having a child in school, in person.
The various nonsense and absurdities of my clientele at work.
Finding a healthy way to manage and minimize how much the incoming stressors affect my personal well being.
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August 13, 2021
1. Almost without fail, going to fetch Smol Acrobat from the crib always lifts my spirits. They look up, flash a gummy grin, and start chuckling. I can’t help but chuckle back.
Challenges this week: Remember when I pondered whether I’d keep up my COVID weekly life posts? Because it seemed like perhaps an end was near? Hahaha … sigh. I remember that.
The computer chip shortage is really doing a number on the used and new car markets. We had intended to avoid them until more of this pandemic and disrupted supply chain thing was over but that’s not practical.
We have to deal with the nonsense of this recall election in CA thanks to some pack of political hyenas. And if it works, we could be stuck with a horrible Republican governor. Yes I needed more stress, thank you.
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August 6, 2021
1. Getting to see a few people I have missed deeply lightened my heavy soul. I guess even I need a little in person time.
2. I’m slowly catching up on shedloads of work that I had to get through.
3. I missed a big annual bill by a few days, but I caught it in time to mail the check within the grace period and didn’t start to beat myself up over it other than feeling a gust of exasperation in the moment. Progress!
Challenges this week: We memorialized a dear friend’s passing.
Travel with little ones is HARD.
Preparing for a new school year hardly any better equipped or informed than last year feels awful. How are we still in this muddle?
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July 30, 2021
1. Our power went out right when I needed to prep a bottle for Smol and though I had a flash of annoyance, I thought you know what? Opportunity! We’re going to practice our disaster scenario skills! (Tons of good comments there that I didn’t reply to at the time because it was December 2019 right before the pandemic became a reality for us, so I need to go back and revisit.) I’ve been after PiC to do a dry run for a while and he’s been reluctant because he doubted that he’d like it. But I wanted to confirm, I don’t want to find out our supplies suck when we’re already miserable and stressed. It was fun! We heated water on the stove, cooked up three Mountain House pouches (thanks to Stacking Pennies for recommending them seven years ago!), and used our little silicon lantern for light at the dinner table. We didn’t really need it since it’s summerish right now and the light lasts until nearly 8 pm but hey, it’s a dry run. We also cranked up PiC’s crank radio to find the emergency station but we couldn’t find it. Something to figure out! The food was actually quite good. Chock full of sodium and I’m parched but it was tasty. PiC said they’d be exponentially tastier after a day of energy expenditure if we were to use them after hiking.
2. I’ve been running the robot vacuum every few nights now that Smol Acrobat is all over the floors, and it’s really quite satisfying to push a button, walk away and have wide swaths of the floor be clean later. After the fiasco with the cleaners, I needed a cleaning win that wasn’t using my precious energy.
Challenges this week: As people start to socialize more and we get invitations to things, I’m having anxiety nightmares about overbooking. One dream was about trying to make it to two weddings in one day! It was a mess.
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July 23, 2021
1. Neither good or bad: time is so WEIRDLY elastic. Saturday flew by way way way too fast. Sunday was much less disappeary.
Challenges this week: technology. ARGH.
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