(no subject)
I didn't make it to SF for Pride this year, but I'm sure Lisa must have been there. Probably Fred, too. Unfortunately, many of my other Pride-enthusiastic friends have moved out of the area or become prohibitively busy. I used to love going to the parade, but I haven't gone in several years. It's always sort of a madhouse, but a really cool, colorful, uplifting, expressive, celebratory madhouse.
Instead, I had a relatively quiet weekend that did not involve leather chaps, dykes on bikes, elaborate hairdos, or sequined costumes. It was much less colorful and exciting, but what I *did* do was make jook. I like jook with veggies in it, so I chopped up some bok choy and carrots and threw them in ... but I threw them in too early and they ended up being sorta mushy. I'll just add some less enthusiastically cooked veggies when I reheat leftovers.
My jook recipe (which I have used a few times before, though not recently) calls for a 2-lb turkey thigh, but our grocery store didn't carry any appropriately-sized packages of turkey thigh, so I ended up getting turkey drumsticks instead, not really knowing what the difference would be. Ack! Never again! It turns out that turkey drumsticks are full of these tiny bones that break off during the boiling process, and so I've been endlessly fishing them out of the finished jook. Luckily, they are just big enough that I'm unlikely to swallow one unintentionally (or intentionally, for that matter), so a painful choking death seems unlikely.
So it was a semi-successful jook adventure, but the taste of the result is very satisfying. Yum! Jook!
Now that I'm on a rice-cooking kick, I'm wanting to try some rice pudding recipes I've seen online, because I've found some that use brown rice and most of the online recipes I've seen do *not* include egg, whereas all the store-bought rice puddings I've seen are made with those darn dangerous ovoid chicken products. Also, I like my rice pudding less sweet than many store-bought kinds, so cooking it myself would be a great way to make it just the way I like it. Also, I used to go to a Mediterranean restaurant (which my coworker and I called "The Land of Long Lunches," due to the slow service) that served their rice pudding with pistachios on top, and though I've never been much of a fan of pistachios in other contexts (though they are my mom's favorite nut and favorite ice cream flavor), in this case they were amazing. So I could add some of those, too. Or maybe chopped dried apricots, instead of the raisins included in many recipes. I'm not a big raisin fan. (When I was a little kid, my mom told me she didn't like raisins because they tasted like big, juicy, dead bugs. It probably didn't help make them seem appetizing.)
Other than that, I did quite a bit of housework, accidentally broke Shannon's favorite mug (and bought superglue to fix it, which I have not yet done), slept a lot, caught up on some email, watched some "Dexter" from Netflix, and cuddled with some cats. It was a pretty good weekend. Tomorrow our new couches are being delivered, and on Tuesday or Wednesday Ting will start building our tiny new deck!
Instead, I had a relatively quiet weekend that did not involve leather chaps, dykes on bikes, elaborate hairdos, or sequined costumes. It was much less colorful and exciting, but what I *did* do was make jook. I like jook with veggies in it, so I chopped up some bok choy and carrots and threw them in ... but I threw them in too early and they ended up being sorta mushy. I'll just add some less enthusiastically cooked veggies when I reheat leftovers.
My jook recipe (which I have used a few times before, though not recently) calls for a 2-lb turkey thigh, but our grocery store didn't carry any appropriately-sized packages of turkey thigh, so I ended up getting turkey drumsticks instead, not really knowing what the difference would be. Ack! Never again! It turns out that turkey drumsticks are full of these tiny bones that break off during the boiling process, and so I've been endlessly fishing them out of the finished jook. Luckily, they are just big enough that I'm unlikely to swallow one unintentionally (or intentionally, for that matter), so a painful choking death seems unlikely.
So it was a semi-successful jook adventure, but the taste of the result is very satisfying. Yum! Jook!
Now that I'm on a rice-cooking kick, I'm wanting to try some rice pudding recipes I've seen online, because I've found some that use brown rice and most of the online recipes I've seen do *not* include egg, whereas all the store-bought rice puddings I've seen are made with those darn dangerous ovoid chicken products. Also, I like my rice pudding less sweet than many store-bought kinds, so cooking it myself would be a great way to make it just the way I like it. Also, I used to go to a Mediterranean restaurant (which my coworker and I called "The Land of Long Lunches," due to the slow service) that served their rice pudding with pistachios on top, and though I've never been much of a fan of pistachios in other contexts (though they are my mom's favorite nut and favorite ice cream flavor), in this case they were amazing. So I could add some of those, too. Or maybe chopped dried apricots, instead of the raisins included in many recipes. I'm not a big raisin fan. (When I was a little kid, my mom told me she didn't like raisins because they tasted like big, juicy, dead bugs. It probably didn't help make them seem appetizing.)
Other than that, I did quite a bit of housework, accidentally broke Shannon's favorite mug (and bought superglue to fix it, which I have not yet done), slept a lot, caught up on some email, watched some "Dexter" from Netflix, and cuddled with some cats. It was a pretty good weekend. Tomorrow our new couches are being delivered, and on Tuesday or Wednesday Ting will start building our tiny new deck!