inquiring minds want to know...well, rather a lot this morning, actually.

[qe2]

1) Food query: This week's CSA installment included a small pumpkin. (By "small" I mean "about the size of a child's bowling ball".) The pumpkin is very cute, and another person might possibly use it for, say, a centerpiece. I don't decorate with food, however - not since that incident with the exploding blender, anyway - and I would prefer to make

Comments

[thefourthvine]

You look set on the pumpkin, but if you want more recipes, I have loads of pumpkin soup and pumpkin pasta ones, including some quick and easy stuff. (All vegetarian, since I do not know from cooking with meat, and many of them swiped from the great bible of vegetarian cooking.)

For the friends-only post, I'm pretty sure you either use a journal style that lets you do a text thingy at the top or (more commonly) you post something with a date waaaaaay in the future. And you know about LJSec, right? Because that's the easiest way I know of to change all your old posts over, if you want to do that.

[qe2]

I will take any recipes you can give me, darlin', and welcome them v. much, not only because they are from you but because they are vegetarian, which I am as well.

Date waaaaay in the future sounded right, but I wasn't sure and didn't feel like trolling through LJ's increasingly user-confusing interface to find the how-to there.

I do not know about LJSec. Please to enlighten me?

Pumpkin Pasta

[thefourthvine]

Oh, man, now I'm kind of bummed. I was all excited because if you're a vegetarian and you're in a CSA (I am, and we are), then there's this cookbook you should really have, and I thought I could send it to you. And it's OUT OF PRINT. That is so wrong. But if you get a chance, ever, pick up a copy of The Passionate Vegetarian, by Crescent Dragonwagon (I know, I know). Her recipes are awesome (I seriously have never had a disappointing meal from her book, and even though I'm kind of a not-recipe-following cook - I tend to modify on the fly a lot - I use her actual recipes more than any other book), she's health conscious without being excessive about it or sacrificing taste to it, her writing is surprisingly enjoyable, and the book is incredibly useful for people who never really know what produce they're going to have in any given week. There are whole sections for most vegetables and fruits, and there are so many recipes in here that you can almost always find something to do with the random stuff from your box

Re: Pumpkin Pasta

[fanofall]

(Psst. It's available on Barnes and Noble's website -- www.bn.com -- and it ships within 24 hours.)

LJSec

[thefourthvine]

LJSec is a program that allows you to modify your posts' security levels (among other things). I think LJ also has a means of doing this now, but LJSec gives you more control and makes the process faster. LJSec + LJArchive are the two essential LJ backup tools for Windows. (If you have a Mac, I believe there's a program for you, too, but, um, I don't know what it is. I can find out, though.)

I have happily used both programs for quite some time now, although oddly I mostly use them for off-label purposes - like, I use LJArchive to keep a copy of my posts and comments resident on my hard drive, yes, but actually I mostly use it for the convenient journal search. (In other words, did I rec this story already?) That kind of thing.