Didn't even have to use my AK

[greyface]

I gotta say, it was a pretty good day:

1. Was reassured that I didn't offend a boss-like-type a few weeks ago when I vomitted from excessive wine-drinking, at his table, by being invited out to drink with him again tonight. He even paid for my beer.
2. Finally tried using a plunger on my chronically slow bathroom drain. To good effect, I'm 99% sure I can

Comments

[peterjford]

You should send your curry recipe to Shannon.

[greyface]

If you buy preprepared curry roux (which I do), it's stunningly easy.

Peel and cut vegetables as needed and desired (in Japan the baseline is potatoes, onions, and carrots), put in a put, boil until cooked, add curry roux.

Then there are other bonuses you can add, cooking some meat and throwing it in at the same time as the roux. Pre-cooking some of the vegetables so they flavor differently than when they boil (of special interest here is garlic and onions). Adjusting the seasoning from the basic roux flavor is the simplest sort of ad-hoc cooking.

Last night's load-out was:
2 medium/large satsumaimo (a kind of sweet potato)
4 small potato
2 "packs" of mushrooms
3 carrots
1 bunch of spinach
2 bunches mizuna (a type of mustard green)
3 pre-browned onions finished with about 300 grams of beef
a fistload of dried red-pepper (spicy)

With the satsumaimo and the carrots the curry was in danger of being scary-sweet, but grilling the onions to near crusty black and the neutral spicyness of red chili peppers kept us in balance.

[queuebert]

I had been meaning to try a plunger on that drain for a few months, but got around to it today.

That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me frustrated with myself about procrastinating. "WHY didn't I do this three months ago, exactly? Too busy playing mock-Oblivion to make my life better?" Mock-Oblivion is where I play Oblivion but I just go around killing people or knocking their books off their shelves, and then not saving it.

How'd your pickles turn out, by the way? I saw a rather large pickler on sale at Nagasakiya today for half the price of the small one I was more or less intending to get. They both seemed to have the same features so it's just a question of whether I want to afford the extra fridge space. It goes in the fridge, right?

[greyface]

The first run didn't go great. They were edible, but not especially tasty. The second run didn't discard the brine, added another tablespoon of salt, and was only coarse-cut cucumbers. Much better.

I put it in the fridge, I'm totally unclear on whether or not that's supposed to be necessary. I'm sure if you're doing a shallow-pickling, or pickling in a non-preservative brine it should be.

I wonder what it tastes like if you boil seawater for an hour and then try and pickle stuff in it...

[soliton]

As a fellow long-hair type, I've found that a slow running shower drain is usually fixable with a screwdriver, needle-nose pliers, and a strong stomach.
If you lack the strong stomach, replace screwdriver and pliers with drano.

[greyface]

I am totally incapable of reaching the location of my hair-build-up, wherever it is, though I'm sure there has been plenty. The bathroom is a strange kind of plastic inset to the home. The shower/bath and sink both connect to the same drain-pipe, which also has a hole in the bottom of the floor (which, I believe, is so you can just hose off the inside of the bathroom as a prelude to cleaning it properly, and then just hose down all the chemicals involved). So, there's these 3 drains that all connect somewhere, in pipes out of reach of screwdrivers.

Japan's water treatment system hasn't needed to buy disinfectant for months, because of the quantity of chlorinated gels I've poured down my shower hole. Though, basically speaking, I don't shirk the foulness of pulling up my own filth-glommed old hair.

[the_jenny]

Bathroom plungers are totally over my head. I mean, I know how to use them, and I get that they cause suction, but I just don't get how they make the drains run. I mean, its not like the plunger every brings anything out, or that the suction of the plunger could tear apart any hair clogs, or that said supposed clog is otherwise destroyed as one assumes when a clog is physically removed or dissolved with chemicals. At the most, it should clear things up until the next time you use the drain. But no! It really seems to work! Crazy thing, plungers.

[greyface]

I'm not a plumber, but I believe what happens is you're pushing DOWN on the water, forcing the grody stuff over the edge towards the real down-spout (after the gas-trap).