the wombatcave

1. Decide to finally heed the "clean me" light on the range hood and remove washable filter screens for cleaning.

2. Promptly drop one filter behind the stove.

3. Attempt to fish out with extendable magnetic probe-- no result; can't even tell where the filter has ended up.

4. Attempt to probe behind stove with wooden dowel. Accidentally drop dowel as well.

5. Realize that the storage drawer beneath the oven can probably be pulled out for access. Successfully(!) pull out drawer without major trauma.

6. Observe filter and dowel companionably resting against wall behind stove. Also observe that the drawer gap is not large enough to tilt the filter out from the bottom for retrieval, and that the filter appears to have no ferromagnetic components. (The other one was already cycling through the dishwasher, which was why I didn't cross-check that earlier.)

...so at this point, I guess I'll wait for the rest of the day until the wombat-consort gets home from work, and maybe then I can try to use kitchen tongs to lift up the bottom of the wooden dowel until he can grab it from the top of the stove again. (The stove is probably too heavy for him to move by himself, and I'm not terribly useful in appliance-moving assistance right now.) I guess if I were really clever, I could try fastening the bottom of the dowel to the filter-- maybe by reaching a piece of packing tape onto them with the tongs?-- so it would pull the filter up at the same time. However, I have probably considerably overextended my Cleverness Allowance already :b

Finally getting into shelf-purging mindset, now that there's a definite deadline for clearing all of the furniture out of the ground level so the flooring can be redone. Now all we have to do is find an appropriate collection of boxes/bags for hauling stuff off to the secondhand bookstore for trade-in.

The main media collection on the first floor is our manga and graphic novels. I have a very vague worry that I'm getting over-purgey, but honestly there are multiple serieses that I haven't gone back and re-read for a long time and am unlikely to do so-- they went on for too long, one way or another, and I just don't care about them anymore.( Read more... )

*stoically poking spoon into breakfast bowl*

Those little shelf-stable boxes of silken tofu are a pretty good option for a low-effort high-protein warm breakfast: slurry together some dashi powder and miso paste in a bowl with enough water to dissolve, dump in the tofu and break into chunks, add more water to fill the bowl (and maybe add some frozen spinach), and nuke until warm/hot.

Tastyish and easy... but boy, it gets repetitive after a few days. I really need to look into mass-producing breakfast burritos to stuff into the freezer.

I found an even easier recipe for sardines than Alton Brown's avocado sandwich.

Ingredients: 1 can oil-packed sardines + 1 8-oz block of cream cheese
Procedure: Mash them together into a mostly uniform paste. Slather onto toast or use as a dip with crackers/pretzels. (Or just shovel it into your mouth.)

That's about it, though all kinds of minor seasonings can be added. (Some versions of this recipe drain the sardines first, but I don't.) I've been adding a tablespoon of red pepper paste (which pinks up the color from the undistinguished native beigey-grey) and a dash of lemon juice. Minced preserved lemon would probably be great, except that my big jar of preserved lemons is currently stranded at the back of the fridge behind leftover turkey.

Robustly flavored carby things (onion rye etc.) go better with it than blander ones. The spread mellows out the intense fishiness of sardines into a smooth, fluffy mouthful reminisent of cream cheese 'n lox-- come to think of it, poppyseed bagels might also work well, perhaps with an underlying slice of cheese to keep the spread from falling through the hole in the middle.

In the name of sweet fuck, did AO3 just let their domain expire and get siteparked?

I continue to theorize that some librarians just plain hate books.

Yesterday when I got there, there were ungodly numbers of donations piled up, enough that I had to clear out the entire current booksale section and send everything that hadn't sold at our branch since last week off to the main library, just so I'd have somewhere to put the new stuff out. After a few hours, I thought I'd finished, but then peeked into one of three boxes that were stacked up on a cart near "my" desk. More books. The first box was fairly standard stuff-- an entire set of 80s/90s Tolkien editions (including a copy of _Unfinished Tales_ which the owner obviously never finished). It did have some vintage SF/F magazines from the 70s/80s that looked like they might have some resale value on Amazon, so I put those into a bin to send to the Amazon selling crew at Main and kept going.

The second box... ah, the second box. There was an delicate "old book" scent: part mildew, part dust, and part decaying paper/ink. The first item I pulled out was a dainty string-bound pamphlet, maybe about 20pp long and about the size of a large index card, with a textured rice-paper cover. It was in beautiful condition, with bright lithographed illustrations and crisp clean pages. It was an English-language edition of a traditional Japanese folktale, published in Japan in 1938.

I checked the value on Amazon. There's another copy currently selling for $250.( Read more... )

1.) Now that I've finally worked out how to set up and pin a stable crown braid hairstyle, it's amazingly fast, easy, and comfortable. It keeps most of the weight balanced right on top of my head, it doesn't pull at my scalp, and it'll stay in place with just one small barrette/hairpin thingie all day. It even improves my eternally slouchy posture a bit.

The tricky parts were figuring out how to get the tension right when adding in new strands, and carefully resmoothing each section in the hand after each new addition. Still, at this point usually I can manage most of it within a few minutes of waking up, though at the end I still have to go to a mirror to wrap and pin it into place.

2.) Aloe vera gel makes a pretty good hair product. One lingering problem I've been having with the crown braid (or any braid, really) is that throughout the day, loose strands keep squirming out and looking ratty. A nice glob of aloe vera gel, smoothed over the surface like hair mousse, seems to take care of that reasonably well without any lingering scent or plasticky feel. I had a bottle of it sitting around uselessly anyway, so I figured I might as well try it to see if it works-- turns out it does. Yay.

Nom nom nom.

Historically, I've loathed fresh persimmons. The mushy Hachiya type and the firm Fuyu type, both of them-- the taste just seems blandly sweet and unappealing. But now I have (re)discovered dried persimmons and I cannot stop eating them.

I think occasionally, my parents would have a type of dried persimmon that resembled flattened dry discs; I didn't mind eating those, but they really required some soaking or cutting before eating. These are different.

There's a farmer's market stand with dried fruit, including dried whole Hachiya persimmons; honestly, the first time I saw them, my reaction was "these look so hideous that they must be incredibly delicious, or they wouldn't bother selling them." Boy howdy. They are amazing. They're tender and succulent, and the drying process adds a bit of pleasant tartness/spiciness that livens up the flavor.

Trader Joe's has also started carrying a different type of dried persimmon in its freezer section-- the Fuyu-based Korean gotgam, I suppose. (IIRC they were identified/labelled as Korean on the outer cardboard sleeve, but I discarded that so I don't remember the name.) They're much more photogenic, like lovely bright orange mochi balls, but definitely pricier; they work out to ~$1/persimmon. And you have to store them in the freezer, of course. (They might make a really interesting dessert pairing with ice cream mochi, which are about the same size and which Trader Joe's also carries.)

The dried Hachiyas are larger and more shelf-stable; their number per package varies (4-7?), but the market stall charges $5 per package with a buy-4-get-1-free deal so it's 5 packages for $20. Definitely better pricing than the linked article describing traditional hoshigaki at $4 per fruit back in 2009, though maybe that was in Japan where fruit is pricier in general.

I've also seen rigid slices of dried Fuyu, but I'm just not interested in those somehow. It's all about the chompy mouthfeel. And now I must eat another dried persimmon or three.

From an ML prompt: I always wanted to write a poem where all the words are spelled like they rhyme but don't.

I think that I shall never hear
A poem as lovely as a pear.
A pear, not plum, upon a bough:
Ripe, sweet, and tender, not too tough;
A fruit more beautiful than fugues
Or melismatic riffs or segues.
No, poems and plays-- old rot like "Hamlet"--
Are useless to a hungry gourmet
Who'd far prefer a tangerine
Or even crisp roast porcupine
With apple juice to wash it down.
But too late now, that pig has flown,
And nothing's left but empty prose.
Say, which road leads toward San Jose?

(Dammit, kid, cooperate or I'll go after one of your less fluffy prumpts instead.)( Read more... )