Discoveries + Sunday meal prep [gardening, food]
More house projects today, during which I made several discoveries.
First, the bloom spike on the Sharry Baby chocolate orchid:
I got the spices organized to a point where I was able to finally flip the wine box shelf vertical in the kitchen, instead of leaving it horizontal on a shelf in the dining room:
Note that this is only a fraction of our spices, the rest of which are above the kitchen sink and in a kitchen cabinet. When I moved this shelf into the kitchen, I discovered that the small piece of wood veneer that I'd bought at AxMan Surplus was stuck on the back of the shelf. I'd been looking for that piece of veneer for some time. I am hoping to use it some day to repair a section of the dining room table.
One of these days I will write out a list of all of the different kinds of dried pepper items we have. Off the top of my head: Aleppo, Szechuan, New Mexico Chile powder, Ancho chile powder, smoked paprika, generic chile powder, cayenne pepper, gochugaru, red pepper flakes, puya peppers... that's probably most of them.
I also repotted a couple of house plants, motivated in good part by my hatred of plastic plant pots. When I went down to the basement to rummage through the pots stashed down there, I discovered that the saffron crocuses were indeed alive and well, thankyouverymuch, but would probably like to have some light someday.
So I gave them a pot upgrade, too, and put them on the front porch where they will get some actual light for a while, to the extent that there is anything that can be called actual light in upstate NY in the winter. I am so glad to see them.
I also discovered that one of the pepper plants I'd hastily stuck in the garage as dead still had a tiny little green leaf-bit on it, so I brought that in and put it out on the front porch, too. There's also a volunteer baby black petunia in that pot.
While putting some miscellaneous things away, I also finally discovered that I'd stashed my smallest sketchbook in with the cat quilt project over the summer. It was a relief to find that sketchbook, as I've been missing it for its handy size.
So altogether, I feel slightly more like I have my head on straight again, finally.
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Meal prep for the week consisted of cooking up a pot of black beans and baking a Ukranian poppyseed cake (Moosewood Cookbook). At one point when we lived in AZ S bought a 16-oz container of poppyseeds. At that time I recall reading that poppyseeds can go rancid fairly quickly, so I set out on a mission to use them up. While working to consolidate spices recently, I discovered that we had two containers of poppyseeds, so it was time to use one up. I'm generally all right with having relatively large amounts of spices around, but I'm sensitive to the fact that spices don't keep indefinitely, so I'm hoping to adjust our stored spice quantities to amounts that get used up before they go stale or rancid. As far as poppyseeds go, some day I will make hamantaschen, but until then I've found the Ukranian poppyseed cake to be an effective and delicious way to use up and eat large amounts of poppyseeds.
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This week is going to be a grading week. Bleah. I am ready to be done so I can work on a hundred other things.
This entry was originally posted at https://rebeccmeister.dreamwidth.org/1506229.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
First, the bloom spike on the Sharry Baby chocolate orchid:
I got the spices organized to a point where I was able to finally flip the wine box shelf vertical in the kitchen, instead of leaving it horizontal on a shelf in the dining room:
Note that this is only a fraction of our spices, the rest of which are above the kitchen sink and in a kitchen cabinet. When I moved this shelf into the kitchen, I discovered that the small piece of wood veneer that I'd bought at AxMan Surplus was stuck on the back of the shelf. I'd been looking for that piece of veneer for some time. I am hoping to use it some day to repair a section of the dining room table.
One of these days I will write out a list of all of the different kinds of dried pepper items we have. Off the top of my head: Aleppo, Szechuan, New Mexico Chile powder, Ancho chile powder, smoked paprika, generic chile powder, cayenne pepper, gochugaru, red pepper flakes, puya peppers... that's probably most of them.
I also repotted a couple of house plants, motivated in good part by my hatred of plastic plant pots. When I went down to the basement to rummage through the pots stashed down there, I discovered that the saffron crocuses were indeed alive and well, thankyouverymuch, but would probably like to have some light someday.
So I gave them a pot upgrade, too, and put them on the front porch where they will get some actual light for a while, to the extent that there is anything that can be called actual light in upstate NY in the winter. I am so glad to see them.
I also discovered that one of the pepper plants I'd hastily stuck in the garage as dead still had a tiny little green leaf-bit on it, so I brought that in and put it out on the front porch, too. There's also a volunteer baby black petunia in that pot.
While putting some miscellaneous things away, I also finally discovered that I'd stashed my smallest sketchbook in with the cat quilt project over the summer. It was a relief to find that sketchbook, as I've been missing it for its handy size.
So altogether, I feel slightly more like I have my head on straight again, finally.
-
Meal prep for the week consisted of cooking up a pot of black beans and baking a Ukranian poppyseed cake (Moosewood Cookbook). At one point when we lived in AZ S bought a 16-oz container of poppyseeds. At that time I recall reading that poppyseeds can go rancid fairly quickly, so I set out on a mission to use them up. While working to consolidate spices recently, I discovered that we had two containers of poppyseeds, so it was time to use one up. I'm generally all right with having relatively large amounts of spices around, but I'm sensitive to the fact that spices don't keep indefinitely, so I'm hoping to adjust our stored spice quantities to amounts that get used up before they go stale or rancid. As far as poppyseeds go, some day I will make hamantaschen, but until then I've found the Ukranian poppyseed cake to be an effective and delicious way to use up and eat large amounts of poppyseeds.
-
This week is going to be a grading week. Bleah. I am ready to be done so I can work on a hundred other things.
This entry was originally posted at https://rebeccmeister.dreamwidth.org/1506229.html. Please comment there using OpenID.