On a quick note, I might be babysitting Einstein. I was walking with the Little Bear to the park and we passed a clothing donation box I’d never noticed before. She starts saying “SHOE! SHOE! shoe shoe shoe shoe!” I turned around looking for shoes. There were none, just the words “Clothes and Shoes.” Ok, well...it could have been a fluke.... So on the way back, I passed the same box and said “Little Bear, what does this say?” pointing to the word “Shoes”. She, very bashfully says “shoe. Shoe.” Have I mentioned she isn’t even 2?!
I had a couple really cool wins this week and only one fail. The first was making pickles (cucumber). Turns out there’s a season for that (who knew?) and it’s so easy I accidentally did it right. Feel free to comment or e-mail me if you want the recipe.
Second win: Pumpkin Soup Secondary Success. So I posted a pretty yummy recipe for pumpkin soup last week. One of the annoying things about soup is that it just sits there. I got bored pretty quickly and it just so happened that PartnerPenguin made Chicky with Beer Can Up It’s Butt and dirty rice (mushrooms, chicken liver and brown rice this time...not the good version, I’ll post that some other time) for dinner because the mushrooms were turning. Next day, I threw in a helping of rice/mushrooms, shredded a handful and a half of chicken and added it to the pumpkin soup. I also added a teaspoon of some crazy concentrated ginger stuff ( It’s called “Ginger Juice" by the Ginger People I’m sure some straight up ginger or even ginger powder would work) and some Cock Sauce (it’s red chili paste, it has a rooster and the label is in a language which is not English). It was so filling and delicious!! Cock Sauce saves meals!
Third win: Ok, a bit of back story is that winter’s coming and it’s going to be flippin’ cold. PartnerPenguin and I were debating whether to get an electric blanket but Professor Lightyear suggested that I should do the calculations on rates before we bought something which used that much electricity. Good call!!
Our bill is for both gas and electricity. In my physics class, we learned about the Joule as the standard measurment of energy. They measure gas in Therms (a British unit of measurement which, like every other Imperial measurement makes 0 sense) and electricity in Kilowatt Hours, neither of which appear to be related. But if you simply multiply the amount of Therms by (number Therms)*(105,480,400 J/1 Therm) and the Kwh by (number Kwh)*(3.6 x10^6 J/1kwh), you can easily bring them to be the same units. They are freaking huge numbers though, so I see why they put the other units in.
Anyway, I added them up to get the total, then I set a ratio where on one side I had gas usage over the total and the other side I had (x/100). I found that the gas usage was 93.61% of the total usage. This meant Electricity was 6.39%. Ok. So I set up the same ratio with the gas price over the total. I found that while gas was used a helluva lot more, electricity cost 30% of the total bill. 7% usage for 30% of the total price. WHAAAAT??!
Ok, so I'm sorry for everyone who thinks that's trivial but I've never thought of it before. Actually seeing that electricity is hella expensive just..made it so much more real. So...we're looking into other options for heating besides an electric blanket. We'll see how it works.
My biggest fail of the week: I bought a $20 toaster to fix my $2 bread mistake. We didn't previously have a toaster so when PartnerPenguin saw a yardsale in the little lot up the street, I went to check it out. Ususally the stuff in that lot is...um...soiled... so my hopes weren't high. It turns out these people were just getting rid of stuff. The aforementinoed toaster was the fanciest toaster I've ever seen. The seller wanted $25 and I thought that toasters shouldn't cost more than $10. The seller admitted that he had paid $130 at Sur La Table for it. While I dileberated, some guy came up and bought a spoon. It wouldn't have been so obvious why he wanted just one spoon if he hadn't DROPPED HIS DRUGS on the ground. After that, I just felt bad for them so I talked him down to $20 and got the thing.
Albeit expensive, it does have a "a bit more" button and a "lift and look" button.
Unfortunately, it does not fix the fact that CHEAP BREAD STILL SUCKS. Putting my stale-ass cheap bread in got it toasty but not actually any more tasty.
One day, I will have enough money to buy decent bread again. :womp:
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Leek Soup
1-2 cloves garlic, depending on if you love garlic
1 medium onion
1 big leek or 2 small leeks (They look like green fans on white clubs. Kinda heavy)
4ish carrots
4-5 medium potatoes, peeled or well scrubbed if you like their skins
2 tsp Better Than Bullion, dissolved in 2 c water
2-4 bay leaves, depending how big they are
.....I should really write down the names of my spices when I buy them...
I think it was something like Italian Seasoning and Thyme. I wouldn't reccommend Oregano for this. Something savory, maybe some Rosemary but not too much.
Mince garlic. The smaller the better, this way you don't bite into it.
Cut up onion. Cool trick if you have really dull knife: stick onion in freezer for ~5 minutes. It lessens the amount you cry.
You can sautee these two if you so desire.
Cut carrots into lengths about 2 knuckles long. Cut potatoes into thin slices, about 1/3 the width of your finger, if you can. They cook faster if they're thin. They're also easier to mash, should you choose. Clean the leek well, they tend to store dirt in weird places. Cut the white part with a width of about 1/2 to a full width of your finger. You can throw out the green part, it doesn't taste very good.
Ok, two cooking options. You can dump everything in a crock pot on low (including the spices) for like...hours. Or you can put everything in a pot and simmer it for a couple hours. I did the crock-pot so I'm not sure how long for the pot option. I think it's in the 2-3 hour arena.
After it's all yummy and cooked, you can either eat it as is or mash it up in either a food processor or with a masher. If it's mashed and cooled (when you put it away) you can stir in about a tablespoon of cream per 2 cups and eat cold. That way of serving it is called Vichyssoise. Super rich that way though. It's pretty good hot or cold, unlike Katy Perry's former lover, I'm sure.
This song is dedicated to a friend of mine who got me a card once that had a picture of a rock, and a star and on the inside said "party like one." Win.
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