cooking – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Fajitas Tuesday

Today I worked on my lesson plan for this week’s new ethics topic: Noise. With questions like:

What should you do if neighbours are being noisy when you need to study or sleep?
Is it okay to have an occasional loud party, as long as you don’t do it too often?
Can even soft sounds be annoying sometimes?
How important do you think it is to get away from noise and have some peace and quiet?
Should there be more quiet places in busy areas?
Should concerts be softer to protect people’s hearing?
Should electric cars make sound so people can hear them coming? Or is it better that we use the new technology to reduce traffic noise?

That done, I took Scully yup to the shops and got some sushi rolls for lunch. It had rained—again—overnight, but was clearing up as we went out and the sun came out in the afternoon. I noticed a lot of the footpaths are green with moss again, like they were a year ago when we were having ridiculous amounts of rain. There are also an awful lot of mushrooms sprouting from the bases of trees and garden mulch areas around the street trees.

This afternoon I spent some time sorting through Magic: the Gathering cards, trying to collect loose cards and the remains of decks into piles of specific sets so that I can offer them for sale on eBay as coherent lots. I discovered a couple of preconstructed Commander 2013 decks, which I barely ever played with. My friends and I preferred booster drafts and didn’t really get into playing Commander. So I confirmed that these decks still had all of the cards present and stuck them on eBay (Power Hungry deck, Eternal Bargain deck). These items join three lots of old sealed booster packs that I listed yesterday (Throne of Eldraine, Core Set 2020, and 6 mixed boosters going back to Ravnica block). In the next week I’ll start listing lots of loose cards from specific expansion sets, starting with the more modern ones.

In other gaming news, I got an email saying that backer surveys are ready for Goodman Games’s Original Adventures Reincarnated #8: Grimtooth’s Old School Traps. When I backed this, I chose the D&D 5E version of the book, but I’ve since re-evaluated and would prefer the Dungeon Crawl Classics version now. So I sent Goodman an email and asked if my pledge could be changed. Hopefully I’ll hear back in the positive.

For dinner tonight I made vegetable fajitas. Fried up some onions, garlic, julienned carrots, sliced broccolini, cauliflower, and mushroom, seasoned with paprika, oregano, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, chilli, salt, and lemon juice. Served with warm tortillas.

New content today:

Calzone Monday

Not much to say today – it was a busy day with 6 online classes. In between I went to the post office twice, to get some packaging, and then send it off, another Magic card sale. I also sorted out a whole bunch of cards that I still had partly assembled into decks, putting them into piles based on expansion set, so that I can reintegrate them into my collection before preparing to sell them off.

For dinner I made calzones, stuffed with pumpkin and ricotta, with a tomato sauce to spoon over the top. It’s a nice variation to make with pizza dough.

New content today:

Special calzones with caramelised fennel

Today was cold. I took Scully for a morning walk and it was pretty chilly.

This morning I sold some more old Magic cards online. I had to make a couple of packages and take them to the post office after lunch. I spent some time working on Darths & Droids comics, scripts and producing the actual strips.

And I started cooing early for a special dinner. I chopped up a whole fennel bulb and fried it up to caramelise it and make it soft, adding a bit of balsamic vinegar to deglaze the saucepan and add flavour. I let that sit for the afternoon. Then this evening I made pizza dough, chopped up some spinach leaves and blanched them quickly. I assembled them into calzones, with ricotta cheese, and baked them in the oven. I’d also made a tomato sauce with chopped onions, garlic, basil, and oregano, to spoon over the top of the baked calzones.

I’ve made calzones before, with either just spinach and ricotta, or mushrooms inside. This was the first time I tried fennel and it was delicious, adding another dimension to the flavours.

I’m also starting to organise our next Dungeons & Dragons session, which is planned for 28 June. I thought we could use another payer, and remembered an old friend who I haven’t seen for a while. She used to play with me and one of the other current players in different games many years ago. If you read Irregular Webcomic!, you’ll know her as the player of Alvissa the elf in the Fantasy theme and Paris in the Space theme. So I sent her an email to invite her to join our current game.

New content today:

Cinnamon rolls!

My wife and I made cinnamon rolls today! Before rising and baking:

And after:

She got me a “bake at home” box with all the dry ingredients and instructions. We aded milk, butter, and an egg and produced 20 rolls. Most of them will be taken to Mother’s Day lunch at her mother’s place tomorrow.

This morning I did a 5k run, managing to time it almost perfectly in between the rain, which has hung around all day. (It’s pouring as I type this.) There was a news article this morning saying that we might potentially break the record of 16 rainy days (≥ 1 mm) in a row for Sydney. It’s been 12 so far, and the forecast is about 50/50 for it lasting at least another four days.

It’s pretty horrible. We have a drying rack in the bathtub, festooned with wet clothes from whenever we go outside, and they take forever to dry because the air is so humid. There are umbrellas constantly drying off, and wet shoes everywhere. I don’t mind 3 or 4 days of rain, but when it gets up near two weeks without respite, it’s pretty miserable.

We gave Scully a bath this afternoon because she’s been getting a bit “wet dog” smelly. We might need to do it again in another few days.

Oh, apparently there have been sightings of the aurorae caused by the current geomagnetic storm as far north as Sydney’s latitude. Just not in Sydney, of course, because we’ve been under a blanket of cloud and rain. Pretty sure we missed the last lunar eclipse or two because of rain too.

And oh yeah… I didn’t post anything yesterday because it was online board games night with my friends. It was… a rainy Friday. I did some online classes, took Scully out briefly, but spent most of the day inside sorting through more Magic: the Gathering cards to get them into sellable lots. For dinner we had pizza at the local pizza place, which is always good. They have a nice cosy “al fresco” area out the back where we can sit with Scully, which is covered and sheltered from the rain.

New content yesterday:

New content today:

… And wintry weather has arrived

Tuesday, time to write my lesson plan for the new week of ethics classes. This week the topic is “Taking Advantage”. As in people who do things like cut in to queues, or park in disabled spots (when they’re not disabled), or generally otherwise take advantage of other people by bending rules, ignoring social conventions, or generally being insufferable. I said yesterday this week’s topic would be “Mysterious Beasts”, but I was getting ahead of myself – that’s for next week.

The weather turned cold and dismal today. A cold rainy front came in mid morning and cooled things down from a top of 19°C, so that by lunchtime it was just 16°C. There was also intermittent rain all day. The forecast is pretty dismal too: cold and rainy like this for at least the next ten days. We are expecting heavy falls on the weekend, close to 100 mm.

I took Scully for a walk in a brief non-rainy period. And this evening I cooked a recipe that we call “cauliflower bomb”. The recipe is online here, although with a less evocative name. It’s one of the more complex recipes I make, with several steps of preparation, cooking, and lots of pots and dishes and utensils to wash up afterwards. I also roasted the cut off cauliflower leaves, which are delicious when roasted with oil, salt, and garlic until crispy. We had those as an appetiser before the main cauliflower itself. I mentioned this recipe back in 2020 when I discovered it, and that blog post has a photo from then.

I also did some comic stuff today, both Darths & Droids and Irregular Webcomic! I’m cutting really close to publication time on both at the moment, and in fact missed the update time for the latter by an hour or so. Hopefully I’ll catch up this weekend.

New content today:

Attempting cacio e pepe again…

This morning I did another 5k run. I did the slightly harder route, all the way down to the ferry wharf and back, which has more and steeper hills than my more usual route. But I managed 12 seconds faster, so that was good!

My wife went to the North Sydney Community Centre for a four-hour introductory class on watercolour painting. She took Scully for a bit and then I walked down to pick her up half way through. My wife really enjoyed the class and came home with a decent looking landscape as a first effort.

At home, I finished writing that batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips, and then photographed the panels for them. I’ll have to assemble some on Monday for the week coming.

In between my three ethics classes this evening I tried cooking cacio e pepe spaghetti for dinner. The first time I tried cooking this dish, it worked beautifully. But every time since that I’ve tried it, the cheese has ended up lumpy and awful, rather than a smooth creamy melted sauce. It’s so frustratingly difficult. I looked up some tips afterwards – there are about a zillion web pages for “lumpy cacio e pepe”. It seems my problem is one or more of: too much heat when mixing in the cheese, too much starchy pasta water, or not enough starch in the pasta water.

No time for Lego construction today!

New content today:

Felting

My wife did the most interesting thing today. I stayed a home and made some comics, while she went to an all-day course for beginners in felting – making things out of wool felt. She came home with a simple sheet which could be used as a table placemat, and also a very cool felt bowl. The bowl is shaped like a rough sphere about the size of a rockmelon, with an opening large enough to put a hand in. She said I could use it for putting things in during Dungeons & Dragons games. Like lollies or maybe game tokens. Or slips of paper with rumours on them – yeah, that’s a cool idea.

Scully was again off her food today and wanting to go outside several times to eat grass. This is the third time in three weeks. I was wondering if it might be the peanut butter we’ve been giving to her as a treat on Fridays – but she’s always had that and has never been sick from it before. My wife thinks it might be psychosomatic, caused by her going away to do these courses on Sundays and not being at home. Which might possibly have some truth to it, because Scully wolfed down her neglected breakfast once my wife arrived back home.

The weather continues to be nice, not too hot, and pleasantly cool in the evening and mornings. I went for another 5k run this morning, but deliberately took it easy after my exertion and fast time yesterday.

For dinner I made vegetable fajitas. It’s tough predicting exactly how much vegetables to chop and cook. Sometimes we end up with not quite enough and sometimes there’s cooked vegetables left over after we’ve finished off all the tortillas. Today we had a generous serving. I used onions, garlic, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms. Sometimes I use zucchini in place of one of the other vegetables. And I just make a simple “Mexican” spice mix using individual herbs and spices: dried oregano, sweet paprika, chilli, cumin, cloves, and cinnamon. And a bit of lemon juice at the end. I found this mix somewhere online ages ago and it works pretty well. Just fry it all up and serve in a bowl with implements for people to fill their own tortillas.

Last night I started watching Oppenheimer on Netflix. I got 2 hours into it, but had to go to sleep, so I have the final hour to watch tonight. I’m enjoying it, but it takes a lot of concentration to follow the frequent flashback/forward time jumps as the story unfolds. The really cool thing is that being a physicist I recognise the names of all the scientist characters.

New content today:

More thinking about cooking

It was hot again today. This autumn heatwave didn’t let up, but it’s predicted to break tonight, with some rain and a cool change, and tomorrow should be a much more tolerable 24°C. But when I took Scully for a walk this morning there was a distinct smell of smoke in the air. Authorities were doing controlled burns of bushland around Sydney to reduce fuel load and the overnight wind direction brought it into the heart of the city. I closed up the windows soon after opening as I noticed the smell permeating the house.

My ethics topic on Cooking continues to be entertaining. Kids love talking about food, so it’s a good one. One question I ask is: Is cooking an important skill that everyone should learn?

One girl answered:

Yes, because if you become a refugee, and you see a dead deer by the side of the road, then if you don’t know how to cook you’ll either die by starvation or die by parasites. I’d choose the first one, myself.

I did the week’s grocery shopping online as I usually do, for pickup tomorrow morning. I added everything on the shopping list, and looked through the regular items to see if I needed to add any of those. When I was done, the total was barely over $30, which was really unusual, because usually it’s closer to $100. It must have just been a weird confluence of not running out of things that need replenishing this week. But when I tried to check out I discovered that the minimum online order for a pick-up (also for home delivery, incidentally) is $50. So I had to go back and choose things to add to bring the total up to that much! I added a few things that we don’t specifically need this week, but probably will next week, such as dried cranberries (which go in our home made muesli) and sesame seeds… and then I decided to add some things to make a dessert: cream, mascarpone, and chocolate biscuits.

Last night I started watching The Cabin in the Woods on Netflix. I’m halfway through and will finish watching it tonight after my last ethics class. I was expecting a standard sort of horror movie, but it’s clear that there is something very different going on in this film, though I’m still somewhat baffled as to what exactly. I’m eagerly looking forward to the second half. It feels like this is some sort of deconstruction of horror movie tropes and—I’m not sure if this will still apply after I finish it, but—I feel like it’s a significant film that anyone who thinks they know the horror genre must watch. Sort of like Scream (an absolute classic), only in a very, very different way. Anyway, I may give my final impressions after I finish it. (I’m avoiding spoilers, but I’ll have finished watching it by the time I read any comments on this post, so feel free to comment.)

New content today:

Thinking about cooking

Tonight I had the first three classes of the new ethics/critical thinking topic on the topic of “Cooking”. As an icebreaker I asked the kids if they did any cooking, were learning to cook, or whatever. Some of the kids said they never cook – their parents just cook for them. Some said they were learning and could cook a few things and weren’t very good yet.

And then there was one kid who said, “Yes, I’m good at it. I cook chicken and pasta, and crème brûlée, and croissants.” 😯

Earlier in the afternoon I had today’s university lecture, today on summary statistics for data. This is a long lecture and tutorial exercises, which occupied nearly the full 3-hour timeslot, so I got home a bit later than usual. Usually the classes only go about 2 hours. I had some sushi rolls for lunch, from a new place that I haven’t tried before. They were pretty good, and they have an interesting variety of fillings that is different to other places I go. One of them was a soft-shelled crab roll!

I picked up Scully from my wife’s work on the way home. Scully didn’t have breakfast again this morning, but she ate it when she got home, and then had a dinner as well. So hopefully her stomach is settled back down again.

Despite all the focus on food today, I didn’t have time to cook a proper dinner before my evening classes, so my wife and I just made ourselves eggs on toast at different times.

New content today:

Starting to sleep

I began the “Sleep” topic with the kids in my online classes today. This is a nice straightforward topic and I found my lesson plan to be smooth and just a matter of following the script I wrote. Last week’s class on “Why?” was much more convoluted and I often had to go off-script and ad-lib connections between the questions, which takes a lot more concentration.

This morning I worked on another Darths & Droids comic, and then I began working on a slide presentation for my visit to Loreto school next week. The teacher there suggested using old photos of myself at school, and a photo of my dog or something, which the kids usually like seeing. The audience will be younger kids, ages 8-10 or so. So I gathered some old photos and put them in. Now I still need to add some actual science content, on astronomy and photography, without making it too complicated.

Scully got to meet next door’s new dog, Sophie, three times today! When I took her out for her morning walk, Sophie was coming in with the man neighbour. When I took her out for lunch walk, his wife was coming in with Sophie. And when my wife took Scully for an evening walk they ran into Sophie and the husband again. Seems like they might be taking her for walks at roughly the same times as us.

Today’s sourdough loaf is a mix of all the different sorts of flours I have in the pantry: rye, wholemeal, and semolina, rounded out with baker’s flour. I’ve just put it in the oven after letting it rise all afternoon.

And for dinner I made coleslaw with wombok, or Chinese cabbage, and served it with vegetarian sausages. I wanted to do okonomiyaki, but the supermarket didn’t have any regular cabbage for the past two weeks, so I decided to get the wombok. And it’s much bigger than the usual quarter of a cabbage that I buy, so we’re having to find other uses for it. I didn’t have any coleslaw dressing, but I improvised with some mayonnaise, lemons juice, vinegar, pepper, and a bit of sesame dressing. It turned out pretty good, with the wombok and shredded carrot.

New content today: