darkfyre_muse | Reading

nverland posting in

Miami Vice Cocktail
Yields: 4 - 6 serving(s) Prep Time: 10 mins Total Time: 15 mins

Ingredients

Piña Colada
3 cups ice
3 (2.45-oz.) frozen pineapple fruit bars or 1 c. pineapple sorbet
4 oz. white rum
1/2 cup cream of coconut
1/2 cup pineapple juice
Kosher salt

Strawberry Daiquiri & Assembly
1 (1-lb.) bag frozen strawberries
8 oz. fresh strawberries, hulled (about 2 c.), plus more for serving
2 (2.45-oz.) frozen lime fruit bars or 2/3 c. lime sorbet
4 oz. white rum
1/2 cup strawberry jam
Kosher salt

Fresh pineapple wedges and/or leaves, for serving

Directions

Piña Colada
In a blender, blend ice, pineapple fruit bars, rum, cream of coconut, pineapple juice, and a pinch of salt until smooth. Transfer cocktail to a pitcher and freeze until ready to use.

Strawberry Daiquiri & Assembly
Step 1Rinse and dry blender. Blend frozen strawberries, fresh strawberries, lime fruit bars, rum, jam, and a pinch of salt until smooth.
Step 2To serve, pour piña colada and daiquiri into glasses, either alternating flavors or stacking one over the other. Garnish with a pineapple wedge, fresh strawberry, and a couple of pineapple leaves.

jazzfish

Snapped the violin's E string a few days ago. This was a good reminder that the over-tight strings on the viola are probably not good for it. So, in celebration for selling the condo and also because I sold a couple of expensive SubPress books, I went ahead and ordered proper tenor strings. The one guy in the States is now directing people straight to the French manufacturer to buy them, because he's sick of dealing with stupid US tariffs. Hopefully those will arrive soon. I've ordered them to Mya's address in case they turn up after I move, in which event I will get them from her somehow.

Based on a very limited sample (cokes, bananas, trash bags), stateside groceries are the same price as groceries in Vancouver. By dollar amount. Not accounting for currency conversion. This is bad. I knew it was bad, I've known it was bad since January when Steph and I went out to eat and the restaurant prices in Bellingham were indistinguishable from prices in Vancouver, but this is Bad. On the bright side I can just copy over my budget spreadsheet and won't have to change the numbers.

The apartment complex I was looking at most seriously in Mpls turns out to have lied to me. When I talked to them a couple of months ago the guy said that having money in the bank would suffice to get approved for an apartment. Now they're telling me I have to show sufficient income, or get a co-signer. Bah.

I've been doing some internet poking-around and have determined that I'd like my next car to be a BMW i3. This is a zippy little city runabout with more passenger and cargo space than one expects. I used to say that Straylight, my late lamented Saturn three-door coupe, was more car than I wanted but as much car as I needed; I suspect an i3 would be similar. ("As much car as I wanted" would have been a Smart. Or a Saturn Sky / Pontiac Solstice, a fancy roadster whose trunk space I once heard described as "you could fit a two-four in there, if you poured it out.") The fact that the i3 also has trick backwards-mounted back doors just like the Saturn is, I'm sure, entirely coincidental. What can I say. I have an affection for small quirky zippy-looking cars.

The i3s are hard to find, especially ones from 2018-2021 when the bugs were mostly out of the design and the battery got beefed up. Not unattainable, though. Will see what shakes out. And of course if I don't get the NG job I'm not buying a new car, either.

vvalkyri

If not for the walking boot, I probably would have been up on the monument grounds doing the alternate cage match possibly as a frog possibly with pool noodles.

If not for the walking boot I would feel like I had to do something about marshalling the they fight we feed thing that's ongoing right now and I suspect it's a s*** show

I find that it's even less likely that I get out of bed when I feel like I have to put the boot on to do so not that I necessarily do but

There's so much to write about over several several weeks.

And the foot's not particularly hurting but if it does it's sort of this oh I noticed that that might be a problem

Which combined with still not having a very good mental model of what's okay and what isn't okay because I need the why means today is just gone by

And I haven't gone and done anything and I don't have plans with anybody and I don't know how to make plans with anybody and I feel remarkably isolated and it's weird

Like I didn't make plans Thursday cuz I thought I was going to go out to something that's ended up being sold out and I could do that soon but it's expensive and it's do I really want to and I don't know

And I don't know when the severe storms are supposed to come through

And honestly I'm kind of mad at myself for not driving down to Richmond when we were worried about severe storms.

But that's different again.

So tired. And that's of course partly because I haven't caffeinated or taken in the Adderall or...

If I thought about it earlier I could have gone out to the outdoor pool and tried to bring things out that way.

If I were in the indoor pool I would have thought I could do heel raises to try and keep my calf from atrophy

But while I have one legged balance exercises in the boot the in pool heel raises are too much weight?

And while I was still dithering about activism stuff that meant I didn't go up to Acro and I could have done Acro today I did flying on Tuesday but I don't know what this day is.

And this doesn't really work as an actual post either

sorcyress

It is a well known fact at Pinewoods that there is exactly one shower in all of camp, so here I am, sitting and writing some of my words while waiting for it to become available unto me.

(This is extra funny, because waiting for it necessitates being directly across from the open empty room with another shower. In a building that has at least two more showers beyond that, none of which are currently occupied. But no, the outdoor shower is the single and only shower and I will not be hearing any arguments to the contrary.)

Anyways, I am having a _wonderful_ time at Lavender spring camp. Here are some things from today!

*Ben Sachs-Hamilton hosted a callers confab, which was a completely unplanned/unstructured session devoted to "hey, uh.........let's chat about stuff!" and it was a really interesting glimpse into the How Contra Callers Do Things situation. I was able to say some hopefully useful things and learn a lot of hopefully useful things, and it was a nice situation!

*Lindsay Dono, who I deeply adore, stopped me very briefly to be all "hey, I'd love to pick your brain sometime about how I can work on getting the Seattle SCD scene ganderfree" which OH GODS YES PLEASE ME TOO! So we didn't actually have that conversation yet, but I'm so very excited to do it later.

*At the very end of the evening, after last waltz and people are packing up and the like, a couple of the young spry gremlin-like creatures at camp suddenly went full goofy beast mode, scrobbling around on the floor in a squat and bounding forward on their hands. There were two of them, and some wry lad shouted "do a reel" to which they replied "we can't with only two". Which meant inevitably there were suddenly six of us. Four of us, me included, did manage a really quite fantastically weird reel, kinda leapfrogging around our partners, and then we had to do Quite A Lot Of Balance And Petronella as well, which was _extremely_ satisfying because we got a good rhythm and quite literally, "everyone clapped" to keep time for us. Really fun and stupid and goofy.

I am so _so_ thrilled for a body that I somehow do manage to take enough care of that I can do absolute nonsense bullshit like that sometimes, on very little notice.

*Everyone is unbelievably attractive, and that's great in and of itself, but it's also extremely charming to have moments where I am hanging out with one attractive person, and we are both very wistfully commisserating as we look from the porch to the suddenly-at-eye-level extremely short white tennis skirt being worn by another attractive person.

*The music is making me gay? Like, by which I mean, I have an emotion in my chest that I've long since identified as "I am attracted to this person in a gay way" and I have received that feeling multiple times in response to the music. Which is _fucking fantastic_ honestly, I would be very very happy to continue to be queer for music for a long long time.

*SAW A LUNA MOTH! Best part was one person pointing it out and a whole bunch of us scrambling over to also see it! It was _so_ large and _so_ beautiful! I don't think I've ever seen one at camp before? Maybe just once, but years ago and high up in the rafters of Hands Across and not going anywhere, this one was fluttering marvelously around Ampleforth.

*Also saw a dragonfly this afternoon that landed on my shorts in a very photogenic way, and as I was photographing it, I noticed it had something sightly weird going on, which I eventually determined was the damselfly it was in the process of eating! That was VERY COOL TO WATCH and I got a lot of photos of it with various amounts of blue darner sticking out of its mouth.

*I have been talking so much about Scottish Dancing, and it has been with SO MUCH MORE LOVE than I norally feel like I get to talk about SCD with non SCDers, and I'm sososososoososos happy about that! I've also been putting some conversational thought into "what is the difference between SCD and contra/ECD, and that's been _really_ fun to puzzle through and work out the many differences that actually mean anything!

*I am going to run an SCD class tomorrow and I really hope it goes well to Do Hard Things Badly, and also I hope I have chosen some good hard things, but also I was looking through my collection of dances and had SO MANY OPTIONS! Some of them are much more accessible than others, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can get away with!

I looked unbeleivably good for the costume dance tonight, wearing clothing that I have all gotten in the relatively recent past. I own so much Good Clothing and I really enjoy getting to peacock it up!

*The mustard tempe tonight for dinner was so fucking good, damn

*I have gotten to meet a new friend! He doesn't necessarily realize we're friends yet, and to be fair, we do not have to be friends, but I hope we will. He is FOUR MONTHS OLD and his parents love him so much and also love each other so much and watching all this community be all starry-eyed at each other is really fucking wonderful!

*Now the shower is open so I'm gonna do that! Then maybe I walk to the camphouse party past the wifi shed to see if I need to write any more, or can just post these. I really fucking love LCFD, which I have been informed stands for "Lets Contra Fucking Dance"!

*Finished showering and now my hair is clllllleeeeeean which I am extremely excited about (I love the Pinewoods shampoo/conditioner/water situation very much --in 2023 I washed my hair at camp for the first time (normally I wash it just before camp) and realized How Good It Was For My Hair and now it's my *favourite*!)

*Speaking of good hair, a friend of mine is going through a really tough time, and I was hearing about some of it while braiding my hair this morning. So then I offered to braid their hair, as a social friendliness thing, and they were all "actually, it really needs buzzing on the sides" and immediately I was like "I ALSO DO THAT FOR PEOPLE I DO IT REAL GOOD" and I got to have the amazingly queer experience of being at queer camp and touching up a beloved friend's badly grown-out undercut to look fresh and fuzzy and new just like, out on the camphouse back porch and that felt Very Gay And Good. Great times!

Now I'm at the wifi shed. Let's check word count...

Yep, 1149. Let's party!

~Sor
MOOP!

jazzfish

Subjects removed, deposit received. It is still possible for something to go sideways but it's now much harder. I'll be out of there by 10 July.

Incidentally, this is how I know there's something wrong with my brain: I feel no excitement or joy at this, just a sense of relief followed by "okay, now on to planning the next things." I am told that normal brains get pleasure and dopamine from accomplishments, which makes succeeding at things and completing tasks "worthwhile" and consistently repeatable. Yeah, not so much over here.

Interview with NG went quite well I thought, but the position is even worse than anticipated. I'd be the first writer in the department, tasked with rewriting / standardising all their procedures, in Microsoft Word. Not to mention that a 45-minute (one-way) commute on top of 10.5-hour days is unlikely to be a good fit for me. I will of course take it if offered, and use the opportunity to swap my twenty-year-old gas guzzler for an electric (the apartment complex I'm looking at has chargers available for $100/mo, which would be substantially less than the gas cost, plus this way I wouldn't have to deal with the hassle of importing a vehicle). And we'd see how long I last before cracking entirely. The over/under is a year; I'd take the over but without much optimism.

nverland posting in

creative_cooks

Coronation Coleslaw
Prep Time 20 mins Total Time 20 mins Servings 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

1 (16-ounce) bag coleslaw mix
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 large mango, somewhat ripe to ripe
2 green onions
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons plain yogurt or sour cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons yellow curry powder
1/3 cup raisins (any kind), currants, or chopped dates
1/2 cup toasted cashews, roughly chopped
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Method

Salt the coleslaw mix and prepare the mango:
Add the slaw mix to a colander and toss with the salt. Let sit and drain for 10 minutes.
While the slaw sits, prep the mango and green onions. Peel the mango and cut the flesh off of the pit. Cut into rough matchsticks.
Trim the green onions and thinly slice. Set aside.

Rinse and drain the coleslaw mix:
After 10 minutes, rinse the slaw mix under cool water. Drain and dump out on a dry kitchen towel. Gently pat dry and set aside.

Make the dressing:
Add the mayonnaise, yogurt, lemon juice, and curry powder to a medium bowl (with enough room to mix together the slaw). Stir together until combined.

Assemble:
To the bowl with the dressing, add the dried slaw mix, prepared mango, green onions (reserving a few slices of dark green for garnish), raisins, cashews (if using), and pepper. Toss well and taste, adding salt and/or more curry powder if needed.

If you plan to have leftovers, reserve the cashews and add them just before serving. Leftover slaw will keep in the fridge for up to 2 days. Toss again before serving.

sorcyress

Iiiiiiii am at Pinewoods!

It is the...fourth? Third? Hangon, lemme see if I can check!

I can check! It is the fourth year LCFD has hosted their spring camp at Pinewoods, which means it's the fourth year I've gotten to attend! I like this session! I like this session _so much_. The highlights are obviously the people, all of whom are thrillingly attractive and carrying quite a lot of gender about them, but here are some of the highlightiest bits:

*Lindsey Dono is calling! I met her several years ago at a YDW and immediately went head-over-heels heart-eyes for her calling abilities, she's _fantastic_ at it, and really wonderful at teaching-level calling. So that's a delight, and someday I really will have to travel to her coast and visit her on her home turf!

*Many good little conversations and connections have been had with various people in various capacities. It feels like _home_ and it feels like _FAMILY_ and I am so happy about both of those things!

*The music is absolutely stunning. Cecilia Vacanti especially is just fucking _phenomenal_ in a way that keeps accidentally surprising me --I need to stop letting that happen and just embrace the fact that she might be one of my favourite contra musicians!

*Jamie asked me about my collar, and I was able to give a very happy "It's not for anyone but me, it's just been a while since I regularly wore one and this felt like a good space for it!" Which is true, and it's actually _really_ nice to have something substantial around my neck again and know that it's not going to get me into serious trouble at work.

(look, it's 2026 and society is a shitshow. The way we get joy back is by embracing and loving and being in solidarity and community with the filthy perverts who have always been the backbone of the queer community. I stand with my siblings! Or kneel, more likely! Respectfully kneel. Maybe grovel a bit.)

*I got some very good knitting-and-gossip time with Lucretia during the back half of the dance! I am so happy to see my crew friends especially! I am so excited to come join them and be a crew friend in the second half of July!

*It is unbearably humid (this is not a plus) to the point where I have _actually gone in the pond_. In early June! This basically never happens to me, I am far too unable to handle the cold to actually go into Long Pond much before Scottish sessions, usually. I am pleased about having pond access, and not exactly pleased that it is both eight hundred percent humid and not actually that hot. I mean, I'd be less pleased if it was more hot, but it feels awful being cool and sticky at the same time.

*The post-dance snax were _very_ good. A true abundance of cheese and crackers! I am a simple white people and you can absolutely control me with cheese.

*And the dancing is quite good! The floor is enthusiastically full, but not brutally so, and Lindsay is very proactive about managing placements. I am very much looking forward to the fancy dress ball tomorrow! I should figure out before lunch if I have any Talents for the Talent Show!

I hope you are having a good weekend as well!

~Sor
MOOP!

ysabetwordsmith posting in

creative_cooks

Tonight we made Chicken and Peas Stir-Fry. It turned out quite well.

"Chicken and Peas Stir-Fry"

Ingredients:

Sauce:
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon Santorini Citrus seasoning
1 tablespoon tapioca starch

Stir-fry:
2 tablespoons light olive oil
1 tablespoon freeze-dried garlic
1 tablespoon freeze-dried ginger
1/2 sweet onion, sliced
1 cup sugar-snap peas or snow peas
half a 1.25 pound package of chicken thighs
1 can bamboo shoots, drained

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

sorcyress

Hey. Don't give up. The world is slowly getting better.

It's taking me several days of background processing, but it all hit me this morning, this particular moment from Monday night at the RSCDS Boston AGM. Because in the process of thanking me for my service to the branch/exec, especially vis-a-vis gender stuff, Linda McJ accidentally let a "she" slip out.

And like a dozen? so many more than just me, resigned, half under my breath! people chanted "they" at her in response and she apologized and kept going and holy wow, there were enough voices, distributed enough through the crowd that there's no way this was just a few of my weird queer friends. This was a lot of you.

This group of largely non-queer dancers made sure to keep my pronouns correct. And yeah sure fine, some of them collectively don't always get what that means, like, I know for some people it's "Kat's a girl with a weird preference" and not actually any understanding of genderqueerness. But they're respecting that weird preference. They're taking the first step forward, the one that opens you up to being able to understand more later, and they're taking actions that respect me.

It's been a, uh, _wild_ week as we close out the school year and I haven't had space to process this proper --I don't even really have that space or time now, but it struck like a bolt as I was getting ready, and so I'm taking these five minutes to write this and cry a little.

Because maybe the hobby I love so much can actually love me back.

~Sor
MOOP!

nverland posting in

creative_cooks

Potato Green Chile Tacos
Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 1 hour Servings: 4

Ingredients

6 medium size red potatoes washed and diced into ½-inch pieces, about 6 cups worth
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon granulated garlic or garlic powder
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon chili powder optional
½ teaspoon cumin powder
8 6-inch flour tortillas
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese or Mexican shredded cheese blend
1 cup roasted and chopped green chile
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro chopped
Sour cream OPTIONAL
Salsa OPTIONAL

Instructions

Potato Roasting Instructions
Preheat oven to 400°F. Place the sliced potatoes on a large rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with oil. Sprinkle generously with all of the spices. Toss with your hands to thoroughly coat.
Roast for 20 minutes, until tender and lightly browned on the edges. Remove from the oven and stir or flip the potatoes over with a thin spatula. Roast an additional 10-20 minutes until deep golden brown.

Taco Instructions
When the potatoes are almost done roasting, warm the tortillas either in the oven or microwave. If you have a gas stove, the stovetop flame can be used to lightly char each tortilla. Place the warmed tortillas in a clean tea towel until ready to use.
In a large non-stick skillet, over medium heat, combine the potatoes, green chile, and cheese. Lightly stir to melt the cheese – as the melted cheese will assist in holding the tacos together.
Divide the potato mixture between the warm tortillas. Sprinkle each taco with cilantro and serve warm with sour cream and/or salsa if desired.

fred_mouse posting in

bitesizedcleaning

One of the requested challenges was a repeat of the February 2025 "Out with the Old" challenge, which ran over three weeks. Given it is already part way into June, I figure starting that one now, and then seeing what we might do for July--and if you have a Plan! or a small idea, please put your hand up to run a challenge, or suggest a challenge, or ask for someone to help you run one. I'm mostly copying peaceful_sand's week 1 post verbatim....

The focus this week is on the bedroom. What can you find to organise and potentially move out of the room? You can take two views of moving something out - it could be that it's still needed but better stored somewhere else or that you are decluttering in full and it will be leaving your home. If you don't need or find anything to declutter, think of this as a chance to re-organise and revitalise your environment. Don't be afraid to rearrange the furniture, or swap out how you are organising the clothes in your closet, or the things you have on display. At the moment you have a week for this to be your focus, but remember that at any time you can veer away from the comm focus and do what works for you or what you have to focus on. If things are going well but you need longer to finish a goal, don't be afraid to stick with it rather than move onto the next one. Lots of the themes throughout the year will overlap with earlier ones in some way so there's always the chance to revisit something later, or there might be one that you really don't need at all and so you can catch up on one's you've missed then.

If you need to focus on something else this weekend, tell us about your goals and how you get along.

(fred_mouse again: if decluttering is a thing you want to focus on long term, unclutter is a great community focused on slowly getting the clutter out of our homes).

vvalkyri

Otherwise Tall Sonya?
I realized at the end of balticon that I hadn't seen her and would have expected to, and looked and she hadn't posted since May 9th. There were a couple other people around who had contact info. I left a comment. She still hasn't posted since May 9th.

Is anybody in touch?

fred_mouse posting in

bitesizedcleaning

Another week, another check in. What is one small win you have had in the last week in making your house a home?

note: I'm attempting to remember to do this once a week. Last year peaceful_sands did monthly challenges, and I'm working up to repeating at least one. If there is one you found useful, or one you think would be really useful for where you are at now, let me know and I'll prioritise that.

sorcyress

It was an interesting moment just now, as I transitioned between two ways of using my hands. Because I was, a few moments ago, helping adjust the feet on Tuesday's shelf unit she's putting up, hard biting plastic that barely turns, needing help from wrench and then still feeling the edges dig into my fingertips with every turn.

And then that's properly set, and so I return to my knitting for a moment, and the yarn is suddenly so soft against me. It feels beautiful and kind and startling. I do not usually feel like I get to feel things that are soft like that.

I like it. It's probably not actually any kind of metaphor, but I still like it.

(note to self: sometime when you're back in Boston, properly write up the definitely-a-metaphor post about your doctor who scarf that's been percolating for months now.)

~Sor
MOOP!

nverland posting in

creative_cooks

Brazilian Cheese Bread
Servings: 15 small rolls Prep 15 minutes Cook 20 minutes Ready in: 35 minutes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (180g) tapioca flour (also known as tapioca starch)
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup (155ml) whole milk
1/4 cup (60ml) avocado oil or olive oil
1 large egg
1/2 cup finely shredded (56g) medium or sharp cheddar (white or yellow)
1/3 cup finely shredded (28g) Grana Padano or parmesan cheese

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line an 18 by 13-inch baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large heatproof mixing bowl whisk together tapioca starch and salt, set aside.
In a saucepan bring milk and oil to a simmer. Pour hot mixture into tapioca flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined (it will be a bit lumpy). Let cool 5 minutes.
Mix in egg (using the wooden spoon or an electric mixer), then fold in cheddar and Grana Padano. Note that dough will be tacky but it should hold a form (see note for a runny dough or a thick dough).
Scoop dough out using a 1 1/2 Tbsp cookie scoop (or two spoons and nearly a golf ball size, and drop on baking sheet spacing 1 1/2-inches apart.
Bake in preheated oven until exterior is golden brown and crisp (centers will be stretchy chewy cheesy still), about 15 to 18 minutes.

Notes

Tapioca starch can vary a bit in absorption by brand and batch. If you find your dough is overly runny you can add a little more tapioca starch, refrigerate the dough for 20 minutes, or bake the runny dough in a greased muffin pan among 12-wells. If you find dough is overly thick simply stir in an additional 1 Tbsp milk.

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The Musings of a Wandering Soul

An rud is annamh is iontach

Reading

Miami Vice Cocktail

notes from a monday morning

I never did get around to talking about my foot

gay camp gay camp!

SOLD

Coronation Coleslaw

(no subject)

Recipe: "Chicken and Peas Stir-Fry"

The hobby I love...

Potato Green Chile Tacos

June challenge - out with the old!

sennashi_dorei?

Check in!

Being useful, in ways hard and soft

Brazilian Cheese Bread

Profile

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November 2021