A few small things [cats, bikes, food]
I. The other day, I came into the bedroom where we have a dish with a heat pad set up for Emma to sleep in. She basically lives in it in the wintertime. This time, she had pawed off the blanket that is usually on top of the heat pad, and was curled up directly on the heat pad.
Eventually I discovered a bit of dried cat barf on the blanket, so I put it in the wash. When I brought it back up, Emma was still curled up directly on the heat pad, so I set the blanket next to her on the cedar chest.
Some time later, I came back to find this:
Cats!
Here's her facial expression telling you how she feels about having her picture taken:
Sometime after that, she was back in the dish again, so I draped the blanket on top of her, and she eventually wound up back like this:
As of current writing, however, the blanket has been pawed back off again.
S says I need to knit her a sweater. I have too many projects.
--
II. Among the various possibilities for the day, I eventually settled on working on a couple of projects in the basement. First up, I finished making a compost screen for sifting the compost, because that was an unfinished project taking up a bunch of space. It was such a relief to actually get a thing done. Also, I liked using the staple gun. It worked well. No photos.
Once the compost screen was out of the way, I could get back to work on extracting the stripped brake lever bolt on Frodo.
I'd initially been trying to drill a hole to use a screw extractor, but the drilling process was going very slowly. Eventually, out of a sense of desperation, I decided to change tactics and instead try to file down sides of the bolt head to a point where I could get a wrench on it.
Over the course of that effort, I wound up having to hacksaw off a bunch of chunks of the old brake lever. Quite a task. But it at least verified for me that the file works to file away metal; I wasn't having much luck using it to file down saw teeth.
Eventually, the filing and hacksawing worked! I was able to get in with a crescent wrench and crack the bolt loose. Not much evidence of corrosion, either - this problem appears to be largely the result of effective Loctite and poor initial tool use.
And just in time, too, because I then had just enough time to think about and realize that I would need a new bolt, BEFORE the bike shop closed until Monday during working hours. I'd run out of chain lube anyway, so a quick trip was in order. I biked over there instead of walking.
I also verified that it wasn't the brake pads themselves that caused uneven wear on the previous rear rim, as I'd installed matching brake pads:
Look at this, though:
So this is the result of either the mismatched brake levers, something having to do with the impact and misalignment from being rear-ended, or both. Time will tell.
Perhaps I will get the replacement wheel installed today. Perhaps.
--
III. I also baked some buckwheat-hazelnut shortbread-type cookies yesterday, but here's a thing that kind of irks me. The cookie recipe came from a baking book that I generally like in concept, but find a little frustrating in implementation, Nourish Cakes. What irks me is that many of the recipes call for specialty ingredients that I don't generally keep on hand. It would be so much better if the recipes simply included suggested alternatives for the specialty ingredients. I can just guess and use butter instead of coconut oil, and cow's milk instead of unsweetened almond milk, but "rapinado sugar" had me scratching my head.
The eventual answer is to just use brown sugar. Now that I've done some reading on the finer distinctions between rapinado (also brand-name Sucanat in the US), muscovado, and brown sugar, I can see why this book listed rapinado sugar: I would expect it to be somewhat more nutritious than brown sugar.
But at the same time, whyyyyy?
How many people really keep that many kinds of sugar on hand?
A different recipe from this morning (from the internets) similarly called for maple sugar.
I have to imagine that maple sugar is extremely delicious, based on how delicious maple syrup and maple candies are.
But how practical is it, as a recipe ingredient? How many people just happen to have it lying around?
I believe the best counterpoint to these sugary dilemmas is this LA Times article about the conventions and standards used for recipes published in the LA times. Reading this article was like a breath of fresh air in the face of so many terribly-written internet and cookbook recipes. I wish more cookbook introductions were written like this LA Times article.
The LA Times article was also a great counterargument to a shortsighted opinion piece I read not too long ago by someone who wanted to pompously declare, "This year, I am going to follow! the! recipe!" ...without acknowledging that this depends on recipes actually being well-written.
Oh well. This entry was originally posted at https://rebeccmeister.dreamwidth.org/1439262.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Eventually I discovered a bit of dried cat barf on the blanket, so I put it in the wash. When I brought it back up, Emma was still curled up directly on the heat pad, so I set the blanket next to her on the cedar chest.
Some time later, I came back to find this:
Cats!
Here's her facial expression telling you how she feels about having her picture taken:
Sometime after that, she was back in the dish again, so I draped the blanket on top of her, and she eventually wound up back like this:
As of current writing, however, the blanket has been pawed back off again.
S says I need to knit her a sweater. I have too many projects.
--
II. Among the various possibilities for the day, I eventually settled on working on a couple of projects in the basement. First up, I finished making a compost screen for sifting the compost, because that was an unfinished project taking up a bunch of space. It was such a relief to actually get a thing done. Also, I liked using the staple gun. It worked well. No photos.
Once the compost screen was out of the way, I could get back to work on extracting the stripped brake lever bolt on Frodo.
I'd initially been trying to drill a hole to use a screw extractor, but the drilling process was going very slowly. Eventually, out of a sense of desperation, I decided to change tactics and instead try to file down sides of the bolt head to a point where I could get a wrench on it.
Over the course of that effort, I wound up having to hacksaw off a bunch of chunks of the old brake lever. Quite a task. But it at least verified for me that the file works to file away metal; I wasn't having much luck using it to file down saw teeth.
Eventually, the filing and hacksawing worked! I was able to get in with a crescent wrench and crack the bolt loose. Not much evidence of corrosion, either - this problem appears to be largely the result of effective Loctite and poor initial tool use.
And just in time, too, because I then had just enough time to think about and realize that I would need a new bolt, BEFORE the bike shop closed until Monday during working hours. I'd run out of chain lube anyway, so a quick trip was in order. I biked over there instead of walking.
I also verified that it wasn't the brake pads themselves that caused uneven wear on the previous rear rim, as I'd installed matching brake pads:
Look at this, though:
So this is the result of either the mismatched brake levers, something having to do with the impact and misalignment from being rear-ended, or both. Time will tell.
Perhaps I will get the replacement wheel installed today. Perhaps.
--
III. I also baked some buckwheat-hazelnut shortbread-type cookies yesterday, but here's a thing that kind of irks me. The cookie recipe came from a baking book that I generally like in concept, but find a little frustrating in implementation, Nourish Cakes. What irks me is that many of the recipes call for specialty ingredients that I don't generally keep on hand. It would be so much better if the recipes simply included suggested alternatives for the specialty ingredients. I can just guess and use butter instead of coconut oil, and cow's milk instead of unsweetened almond milk, but "rapinado sugar" had me scratching my head.
The eventual answer is to just use brown sugar. Now that I've done some reading on the finer distinctions between rapinado (also brand-name Sucanat in the US), muscovado, and brown sugar, I can see why this book listed rapinado sugar: I would expect it to be somewhat more nutritious than brown sugar.
But at the same time, whyyyyy?
How many people really keep that many kinds of sugar on hand?
A different recipe from this morning (from the internets) similarly called for maple sugar.
I have to imagine that maple sugar is extremely delicious, based on how delicious maple syrup and maple candies are.
But how practical is it, as a recipe ingredient? How many people just happen to have it lying around?
I believe the best counterpoint to these sugary dilemmas is this LA Times article about the conventions and standards used for recipes published in the LA times. Reading this article was like a breath of fresh air in the face of so many terribly-written internet and cookbook recipes. I wish more cookbook introductions were written like this LA Times article.
The LA Times article was also a great counterargument to a shortsighted opinion piece I read not too long ago by someone who wanted to pompously declare, "This year, I am going to follow! the! recipe!" ...without acknowledging that this depends on recipes actually being well-written.
Oh well. This entry was originally posted at https://rebeccmeister.dreamwidth.org/1439262.html. Please comment there using OpenID.