School's starting up this week, which means that everyone is waking back up and getting busy after the long sleep summer. And I'm once again looking for language learning resources.

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I really should know better than to assume that I can make toffee well on the first try.
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I've been trying for about a year now to create some edible form of black beans and rice. Well, previous attempts were edible, but nothing I was especially eager to finish off. Thing is, I bought a bag of dried black beans back when which is still only half empty and it's another one of those running on the dregs of the cupboards weeks because there won't be a grocery run in a while. So last night I pulled out my crock pot for the first time ever and the black beans.

Most of the prep was done last night. Dried black beans soaking in a large bowl of water, one frozen chicken breast in my tiny crock pot, along with half a chopped onion, cumin, garlic powder, and paprika. This morning (~9am) beans joined the chicken et al, along with maybe two cups water and a bit of left over tomato sauce. (Really ought to have used chicken stock as the liquid - and much less, one can would have been plenty. But, no stock at the moment, so the flavor suffered some.) Then I let it cook on low for 8 hours. There really was far too much liquid, so I drained it and used it to make the rice. No noticeable difference in flavor, but the surface of the rice is an odd shade of red brown, from the paprika and black beans.

Black beans, by the way, leave their color on everything. So the chicken breast became a rather odd diffuse purple brown on the outside. But who cares! It was so tender that just stirring the pot with a wooden spoon shredded the meat wonderfully, leaving me with a thick, chunky mess of beans and meat - with onions camouflaged somewhere in there, along with half a tomato and half a bell pepper I had added later in the cooking, in an attempt to avoid the uniformly brown effect. 

It's ok on the rice I made, partly because the rice didn't cook properly in my tiny sauce pan, but delicious on corn chips. Tomorrow sounds like nacho day. :)

Amusingly, they were doing maintenance on my apartment this afternoon. So while the maintenance guys wandered in an out, they all commented on how hungry the smell of my food made them. Apparently cumin, garlic, and paprika smells like fajitas. Which yes, it is a very common spice blend...

I really will need to make a grocery run on my own. :( I have no bread (or yeast with which to make more), little tp, and need a good dozen other things. Including the staples of flour, sugar, and rice. A trip to the farmer's market this morning helped, though, so I have potatoes, tomatoes and squash to go with my leftover bits of sliced turkey and sausage. 

http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/ is one of the more amusing things I've seen this week. British humor - or at least I think it's meant to be. ^^

One of these days I will have to make Welsh cakes, since I keep seeing recipes for it (and I need to copy that recipe for bara brith that measures in mugs.) That's just the trouble though: Brit recipes almost always measure by weight. Americans only ever use volume. So while calling for x oz makes more sense than having to specify a packed cup or a heaping teaspoon, it's a bit inconvenient when I don't have a kitchen scale. Guesstimating... might work.

I've been drinking Sunday tea (Earl Grey + lavender + rosemary) for the past few days and it is lovely. I bought more at the farmer's market Saturday, but I haven't been able to find it since. Sadness, but I really haven't a clue what I did with it. So, just plain PG Tips for now.

I love the new infuser tea pot I've been using to make above tea, but my largest pot might get more use if anyone around here other than me drank the stuff. :(

I've been reading fanfic silliness near constantly for probably longer than is good for me. Definitely longer than is good for my sanity. Then a fic (Lending Libraries, or a Bibliography of the Avengers Initiative , very cute and worth a read if you like Avengers and literary references) mentioned the Leatherstocking Tales, by James Fenimore Cooper. I've sort of always been vaguely aware of them and meant to read them ages ago, but never got around to it. I used to be a voracious reader growing up, but I've sadly neglected the dead tree library since acquaintance with the internet.

Thankfully Project Gutenberg exists. As does wikipedia, for the ever necessary context. So I look up the first story in the collection on Project Gutenberg and start reading and just... oh. I love fanfic, but I've been reading silliness for so long that I forgot what good writing, the style of the last century's classics, was like. 

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I know I've read through the better part of a fandom when I've already read most of other people's favorite lists. 

I'd forgotten how much I used to like the things I wrote. Happened to be reading a fic on fictionpress and looked up my own username and works - which I haven't touched in about 5 years. Surprising perhaps, but I like them still. The title of this entry is the same as ficlet I'm currently focusing on, text below:

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So I get mildly obsessed with things. Magic Kaito. Lampwork beads. crochet. These are things I can back to when I'm bored for more than a year. Octopi, this week.

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Now would be a good time to imagine me purring like a happy little kitty. Any morning that starts with a lazy wake up, hot sweet tea, and scones with whipped cream makes me very happy. 


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So apparently the limit of my tolerance now for internet and little else is 4 days. (Exams ended, work requires more time than thought, what did you expect me to do?) That's not to say that I'm finding other things to do just yet  - the day I don't have a list of projects in progress has yet to come. It just means I'm getting twitchy and headachy while not actually accomplishing anything. The to do list is as long as ever, I just haven't shifted myself out of 'free time must catch up on fic' mode to 'hey, I have time - let's use it'. That's in tomorrow's plans.

Anyway, upshot of the above, I've been going back through old favorites. Last week's Homestuck obsession ran its course, then somehow I was reminded of Magic Kaito, so all of mischif's and joisbishmyoga's fics have been revisited, in between snippets of ciceqi, and I finally found Ellen Brand's Magic Kaito/Detective Conan/Danny Phantom series again. Just worked my way through those. "Three Thieves", as lovely as it is, is a little beyond my attention span at this point - same deal as vathara's epics.

Maybe I will just sleep now, though...