Hot or Sweet?

Used my instantpot for the first time in a few months, and made (more or less) this recipe for beef stew. Changes: I used pearl onions instead of 1 chopped up onion, I used 1.5 tsp garlic powder because I didn't have cloves, I used two 8oz cans of tomato sauce instead of one 10oz can, and I didn't have "Italian Seasonings" so I tossed in 3/4 tsp of oregano and 1/4 tsp of rosemary. It came out good, but still missing something. I added 1 tsp of Adobo (which is mostly salt+garlic powder) and another 1/2 or 1 tsp of ground black pepper, and it fixed the missing notes. yolen ate it with rice, because she's Puerto Rican and thus eats almost everything with rice. Rather than have the rest of the rice go to waste, I ate some with mine, but maybe half as much as she used. I still have a bag of egg noodles, which I'll likely make to go with the leftovers.

So I am working from home today, and yolen took MB out to the movies, so I'm solo for lunch.

I decide on franks'n'beans, because it's something I rarely have, being the only one in the family that eats baked beans. I'm hungry, so I decide to defrost the frozen hot dog first, so I can cut it up without waiting for it to thaw in the beans.

My thought process goes: put it on a small plate.

Answer: no put it in a bowl, so you can reuse the bowl for the franks and beans, and have one less dish to wash.

Answerback: no, put it on a small plate, because you're going to eat that stuff out of the pot and not use a bowl.

I got yolen hooked on Rainbow Rowell, via Carry On, Fangirl, and Eleanor & Park.

Love you yolen <3!

We had some chicken breast sitting in the refrigerator since Tuesday, so it needed to get cooked. yolen had meant to cook them earlier this week, but for various reasons, it didn't happen, and she dozed off early tonight, so I was on my own.

I reviewed several baked chicken breast options online, but did not see one I wanted to follow completely. So I pulled out my spices and smelled them, to decide what to use. Here's what I settled on.

1/2 cup of seasoned breadcrumbs
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tbs rosemary
1 packet of goya sazon (mostly MSG, some additional garlic/salt, and saffron)
all mixed together.

Coated chicken with mayonnaise, dipped in bread crumb mix, baked at 400F for 15 minutes, flipped, baked for another 10 minutes.

It came out quite tasty, though in retrospect, I think next time I'll cut the salt to 1/2 tsp, because I forgot there was additional salt in the sazon. Still, it came out good, and not over salty. Just I think a little less would be better.

I read a few books recently. First up, I've read the first two of N. K. Jemisin "Broken Earth" trilogy - The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate. I've started on the third, but I got distracted by Rainbow Rowell's "Fangirl", which was a quick, enjoyable read.

I've also been working on a few Clark Ashton Smith short story collections. I think there was something else, too, but I cannot remember what right now.

Tonight yolen and I watched The Shape of Water, which I had borrowed from the library. Overall, it was good, but I had a few issues with it. Also, before we watched it Yolen said she had seen someone's comparison of this movie to Splash, which had me watching for parallels.

After dithering, I jumped in and backed The Fantasy Trip (TFT) kickstarter at the last moment, even though I own the original material. This way I'll have legit PDFs as well as new hardcopies.

Also now, I'm trying to decide if I want to buy in on the Beasts & Barbarians Bundle of Holding. On one hand, I like Conan/Leiber/Smith stuff, but on the other hand, I have no experience with the Savage Worlds game system.

Man, digging through DW and bits of LJ I can see through the javascript remind me of who I was 12+ years ago, and I have to say, I miss that guy. It's one of the reasons I like to stay up late, because it feels like that guy wakes up more at night.

And sure, there are reasons for the changes -- getting married, having a kid, getting older -- but there are also bad reasons -- Facebook, for one.

I am swearing a mighty oath to reduce my use of Facebook, and flow out more to the interesting corners of the net, and IRL too.

So I've been reading a lot of fantasy (and some SF) in a massive bout of escapism. Roughly a book every other day.

In the past two weeks I've read or re-read:

Empire Games by Charles Stross
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
Red Shirts by John Scalzi
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Dilvish the Damned by Roger Zelazny
The House on the Boarderlands by William Hope Hodgson

I used to read this much, but it's been a while.