Loads of Food Pics
Nov. 5th, 2020 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39How's everyone doing with this election BS?
Don't want to talk about it? Very cool.
I'm going to just start with how my week went.
This was my all-onsite work week. It's always a bummer because I lose sleep and daylight hours to the commute, but one week out of every month still isn't so bad. I did my best not to fall asleep or lose my mind.
My training sessions have been going well. I think soon most people will have been trained, so my groups will get smaller and smaller.
In stenography/court reporting, I've started speedbuilding. Supposedly I should see an improvement in speed of 20wpm every eight weeks or so. It's hard to imagine but I've made it this far!
On Halloween night I had planned to make caramel apples and roasted pumpkin seeds, but there just wasn't enough time.
Carving our pumpkins took over an hour, plus the cleanup, so by the time I got the seeds cleaned and boiled it was almost 10pm. I laid them out to dry and put our pumpkins outside for others to enjoy :) This year we have a little bone-colored Jack Skellington, A Jason mask (Jameson's design), and my little toothy guy with Pokemon-like eyeballs.
They stood guard over our socially-distanced pre-assembled candy bags. We put everything in front of the Ring so we could see any trick-or-treaters and give compliments on costumes.
Sadly we didn't get any trick-or-treaters this year, but that wasn't surprising. We live in a vacation rental neighborhood, so last year we didn't get any either. More candy for us! How sad! :p
We did get some visitors though! Some of Jameson's friends came by to say hello and steal some of our goods!
They brought their dog so imo they can have as much candy as they want!
We stood in the doorway and chatted for a bit. Socializing really feels like a special event now.
It was cool of them to drop by, made our Halloween!
We watched M. Night Shyamalan's "Devil", which was pretty good! Then we went to bed. Happy Halloween to us.
After work the next day the seeds were nice and dry, so I seasoned them with butter, garlic salt, and pepper and roasted them in the air fryer. They turned out excellent.
A while ago Jameson ordered us some "magic puzzles", and they finally arrived!
This was a kickstarter so I'm not sure if they're available in stores yet, but they will be at some point.
We got three puzzles, 1000 pieces each. Each puzzle has distinct artwork and they all look beautiful.
I won't be posting many pics of our progress because I don't want to spoil the "magic", whatever that will be, for anyone. But I can tell you that putting these together is an intriguing and fun experience. These are definitely not your standard puzzles. Each piece has beautiful details and miniature art within art. The pieces range drastically in shape and size too. Can't wait to see how the finished piece turns out!
It seemed like a long week, but I made it to Tuesday and the start of my work-from-home shifts again. Yay! I've felt very tired again this week, maybe from physical inactivity, or from the extroverted energy required to put on presentations. Or maybe because Jameson has been really down lately. His friends lost their jobs last week, and this week two of his friends passed away. Plus this election. And then he thought he had a good gig to look forward to in coming months, but it's turning out to be a fail because some members of the band are unprofessional and disorganized. As a musician, I can't even begin to describe how frustrating it is when a paying gig is ruined due to the people in your band acting like children. Jameson is already struggling with so much, and this experience just makes him not want to be involved in music any more. I hate to say it but I can relate. Part of the reason I stopped being a musician is because I couldn't stand how other musicians behaved...either jaded, or immature, or unprofessional, or all three. It's not sustainable, and now with the whole live music industry grinding to a very serious halt you would think that musicians would buckle down and do their best on every gig. Sadly, I guess not.
Anyway, on Tuesday I got a nice surprise when I checked on my plants. My cranberry hibiscus has bloomed!
I love the beautiful crimson flowers. Plus, you can make a tasty cranberry-esque tea from the flower petals! I'm looking forward to trying that!
The rest of my garden is doing well. The weather finally, truly cooled down this week and now we're seeing highs in the 80s rather than 90s. As a result my pepper plant has finally started producing. We've got at least four jalapenos in the works and many more flowers blooming. The tomatoes are not as productive as last year but they are trying. The lemons are getting more yellow every day, but they're not quite ready yet. Here they are with a store-bought lemon for context.
The pollinator garden looks like trash, I'm hoping it's just the time of year.
After my work was done we went for a walk around the neighborhood. I actually had goosebumps, the breeze was so cool. It felt so nice. Back home we had dinner and worked on our puzzle while studiously ignoring the vote count. I'm afraid to think about what will happen either way. It seems like there are no good choices any more.
We actually ended up finishing the first magic puzzle! I won't post pictures because I don't want to ruin the surprise, but it was very cool and fun. I'm excited to work the other two puzzles as well but I'll be sad when they're all done. We'll have to take our time and pace ourselves!
On Wednesday I was happy to find that my little butterwort is beginning to put out papillae, sticky little "taste buds" that catch gnats and other small bugs. It is beginning to sparkle just like the sundew.
Jameson had a video shoot this morning, he and his band are wrapping up the footage needed for their Christmas single.
So I got to enjoy the sexy black button-up shirt again. Rawr.
After he left I drove to Whole Paycheck for some cod and some phyllo dough for Thursday's dinner, then came back home and finally got to work on the caramel for caramel apples. I've been feeling really intimidated about attempting homemade caramel, but the only way to do something is to do it.
First I boiled some water, sugar, a tiny amount of corn syrup, and lemon juice on the stove.
Eventually this started to change color. I kept an eye on it until it was almost the color of honey, then added heavy cream.
The mix sputtered and bubbled but soon quieted down. I now had a caramel-colored fluid which I was supposed to "stir frequently until temperature reaches 246F, about 10-15 minutes".
30 minutes later I'm still standing here stirring like an idiot, having turned the burner almost to high again in an attempt to get this thing to reach 246. It probably took about 40 minutes in total but eventually we got to about 244. Close enough (hopefully).
As soon as I hit the correct(ish) temp I removed the caramel from the stove and transferred it to a large bowl, burning my arm in the process because the candy thermometer toppled out of the saucepan and lashed my arm with scalding hot caramel on its way down. ARGH. But who cares because the caramel looked absolutely perfect. I added a little butter, vanilla, and salt. Oh my gosh you guys.
Did you know that I used to work in a candy store? One of our first tasks every morning was to make fresh caramel apples. We had huge bricks of premade caramel that we'd melt in a big industrial food warmer, stirring carefully until it reached just the right consistency for dipping apples. I wish I could remember the temperature we always kept it at...I want to say 180? But anyway, I tried to recall my caramel apple skills. I waited until the caramel was cool-ER but not too cool, thick-ER but not too thick. When I felt it was ready I rolled an apple into it, careful to coat all sides, and continued twisting the apple as I lifted it out of the caramel. I wiped the excess off the bottom of each apple with a spatula. Boom.
For some reason the caramel didn't want to stick to the green apples. I tried to dip one of them again but remembered last minute that doing so would cause ALL the caramel to slide off. Most of them still turned out fine! And there was TONS of caramel left over. What to do but put it in a sheet pan, sprinkle with smoked sea salt, and put in the fridge to set!
By the time all that was done and I had finished cleaning up, Jameson was nearly done with his video shoot. I got to work on dinner, just a simple bolognese but the sooner you get that on the stove the better flavor you'll get out of it. I had a nice glass of wine and felt proud about the caramel until Jameson got home, then we ate dinner.
Throughout the day I'd been messaging back and forth with my friend Tim who was in town on business. We both play trombone and we're both from PA, so we used to compete against each other in the high school band competitions and eventually became good friends. He wanted to hang out and initially I said yes, but then covid-brain kicked in and I realized, where are we going to meet? How long should we be in the same room? Would my workplace require me to quarantine because of this? So I ended up backing out on him, and while he was very understanding and gracious I still felt terrible. The ONE time he's in town and I won't even spend a few hours in a room with him. But, yeah. I won't. Or with anyone else, unless I have to. That's just how it is. Someday soon things will get better, I've just got to believe that.
Tim still came over for a little bit and we had a good chat, standing on Jameson's front step. It was weird, but I was just glad to see him and hear how he's doing. He brought me a vintage Ringling program that he found in the attic of his new house, which he bought at an estate sale. Even though it's from the 70s, it felt nostalgic to flip through. It was good to see my friend today, even if only for a little bit.
On Thursday we woke up late. Jameson had classwork to do, and I wanted to tackle the caramel. Sadly, it seems because I didn't bring it up to the correct temperature, it was too soft to cut. The good news is, it's possible to fix caramel! I scraped it all back into the saucepan and brought it up to 248, held it there for a solid 30 seconds, then poured it back into the pan. While it chilled for several hours, I got to work food prepping for my work week, doing laundry, doing a little cleaning, and going on a nice walk with Jameson. It was hotter today, but it was still good to get out of the house (and away from any news sources).
When we got back home I was eager to try the caramel again. It was MUCH better, but still softer than I would like and difficult to handle. You can't tell from these pictures but after cutting it still wasn't keeping its shape very well. I might need to calibrate that candy thermometer, not sure what else could have caused it to be so soft. Maybe Florida humidity? Regardless, I'm by no means disappointed. For a first time caramel I think it turned out really damned good.
I wish I could bring it to work to share, but I'm not sure how I could make it covid-safe to handle. It's so soft that wrapping individual pieces is out of the question, and asking people to reach into a tub and touch only one piece of a very sticky caramel seems really not good. Also we're not supposed to be bringing food to work to share. Sigh. Maybe I'll just take the container and people can risk it or not.
For dinner I made cod with quinoa and snap peas, kind of ho-hum but still a healthy meal. But Jameson recently found a recipe for spanakopita, which I've never had but it looked and sounded good. Why not! The filling was easy, just spinach, feta, cottage cheese, lemon zest, egg white, and some herbs and spices. The phyllo was delicate, but I was very careful and honestly found it pretty easy to work with. I layered four thin sheets of it, brushing each with a little olive oil, then sliced it in to seven strips (it was supposed to be eight but I measured wrong). Then I put a tablespoon of filling in the corner of each strip and folded it up like a flag. Into the air fryer they went. Tada, spanakopita!
It was really delicious! I'll have to make these more often!
After dinner Jameson had class and I had to clean up, pack a lunch, and make sure I had everything ready to go in to the office because apparently our servers are down and none of the supervisors can access any of their work. So until they get it fixed I'll be captioning, I guess? Who knows. I'll find out tomorrow.
And hopefully we'll have election results soon before this country self-destructs.
Don't want to talk about it? Very cool.
I'm going to just start with how my week went.
This was my all-onsite work week. It's always a bummer because I lose sleep and daylight hours to the commute, but one week out of every month still isn't so bad. I did my best not to fall asleep or lose my mind.
My training sessions have been going well. I think soon most people will have been trained, so my groups will get smaller and smaller.
In stenography/court reporting, I've started speedbuilding. Supposedly I should see an improvement in speed of 20wpm every eight weeks or so. It's hard to imagine but I've made it this far!
On Halloween night I had planned to make caramel apples and roasted pumpkin seeds, but there just wasn't enough time.
Carving our pumpkins took over an hour, plus the cleanup, so by the time I got the seeds cleaned and boiled it was almost 10pm. I laid them out to dry and put our pumpkins outside for others to enjoy :) This year we have a little bone-colored Jack Skellington, A Jason mask (Jameson's design), and my little toothy guy with Pokemon-like eyeballs.
They stood guard over our socially-distanced pre-assembled candy bags. We put everything in front of the Ring so we could see any trick-or-treaters and give compliments on costumes.
Sadly we didn't get any trick-or-treaters this year, but that wasn't surprising. We live in a vacation rental neighborhood, so last year we didn't get any either. More candy for us! How sad! :p
We did get some visitors though! Some of Jameson's friends came by to say hello and steal some of our goods!
They brought their dog so imo they can have as much candy as they want!
We stood in the doorway and chatted for a bit. Socializing really feels like a special event now.
It was cool of them to drop by, made our Halloween!
We watched M. Night Shyamalan's "Devil", which was pretty good! Then we went to bed. Happy Halloween to us.
After work the next day the seeds were nice and dry, so I seasoned them with butter, garlic salt, and pepper and roasted them in the air fryer. They turned out excellent.
A while ago Jameson ordered us some "magic puzzles", and they finally arrived!
This was a kickstarter so I'm not sure if they're available in stores yet, but they will be at some point.
We got three puzzles, 1000 pieces each. Each puzzle has distinct artwork and they all look beautiful.
I won't be posting many pics of our progress because I don't want to spoil the "magic", whatever that will be, for anyone. But I can tell you that putting these together is an intriguing and fun experience. These are definitely not your standard puzzles. Each piece has beautiful details and miniature art within art. The pieces range drastically in shape and size too. Can't wait to see how the finished piece turns out!
It seemed like a long week, but I made it to Tuesday and the start of my work-from-home shifts again. Yay! I've felt very tired again this week, maybe from physical inactivity, or from the extroverted energy required to put on presentations. Or maybe because Jameson has been really down lately. His friends lost their jobs last week, and this week two of his friends passed away. Plus this election. And then he thought he had a good gig to look forward to in coming months, but it's turning out to be a fail because some members of the band are unprofessional and disorganized. As a musician, I can't even begin to describe how frustrating it is when a paying gig is ruined due to the people in your band acting like children. Jameson is already struggling with so much, and this experience just makes him not want to be involved in music any more. I hate to say it but I can relate. Part of the reason I stopped being a musician is because I couldn't stand how other musicians behaved...either jaded, or immature, or unprofessional, or all three. It's not sustainable, and now with the whole live music industry grinding to a very serious halt you would think that musicians would buckle down and do their best on every gig. Sadly, I guess not.
Anyway, on Tuesday I got a nice surprise when I checked on my plants. My cranberry hibiscus has bloomed!
I love the beautiful crimson flowers. Plus, you can make a tasty cranberry-esque tea from the flower petals! I'm looking forward to trying that!
The rest of my garden is doing well. The weather finally, truly cooled down this week and now we're seeing highs in the 80s rather than 90s. As a result my pepper plant has finally started producing. We've got at least four jalapenos in the works and many more flowers blooming. The tomatoes are not as productive as last year but they are trying. The lemons are getting more yellow every day, but they're not quite ready yet. Here they are with a store-bought lemon for context.
The pollinator garden looks like trash, I'm hoping it's just the time of year.
After my work was done we went for a walk around the neighborhood. I actually had goosebumps, the breeze was so cool. It felt so nice. Back home we had dinner and worked on our puzzle while studiously ignoring the vote count. I'm afraid to think about what will happen either way. It seems like there are no good choices any more.
We actually ended up finishing the first magic puzzle! I won't post pictures because I don't want to ruin the surprise, but it was very cool and fun. I'm excited to work the other two puzzles as well but I'll be sad when they're all done. We'll have to take our time and pace ourselves!
On Wednesday I was happy to find that my little butterwort is beginning to put out papillae, sticky little "taste buds" that catch gnats and other small bugs. It is beginning to sparkle just like the sundew.
Jameson had a video shoot this morning, he and his band are wrapping up the footage needed for their Christmas single.
So I got to enjoy the sexy black button-up shirt again. Rawr.
After he left I drove to Whole Paycheck for some cod and some phyllo dough for Thursday's dinner, then came back home and finally got to work on the caramel for caramel apples. I've been feeling really intimidated about attempting homemade caramel, but the only way to do something is to do it.
First I boiled some water, sugar, a tiny amount of corn syrup, and lemon juice on the stove.
Eventually this started to change color. I kept an eye on it until it was almost the color of honey, then added heavy cream.
The mix sputtered and bubbled but soon quieted down. I now had a caramel-colored fluid which I was supposed to "stir frequently until temperature reaches 246F, about 10-15 minutes".
30 minutes later I'm still standing here stirring like an idiot, having turned the burner almost to high again in an attempt to get this thing to reach 246. It probably took about 40 minutes in total but eventually we got to about 244. Close enough (hopefully).
As soon as I hit the correct(ish) temp I removed the caramel from the stove and transferred it to a large bowl, burning my arm in the process because the candy thermometer toppled out of the saucepan and lashed my arm with scalding hot caramel on its way down. ARGH. But who cares because the caramel looked absolutely perfect. I added a little butter, vanilla, and salt. Oh my gosh you guys.
https://instagram.com/p/CHLh93uA9BX
Did you know that I used to work in a candy store? One of our first tasks every morning was to make fresh caramel apples. We had huge bricks of premade caramel that we'd melt in a big industrial food warmer, stirring carefully until it reached just the right consistency for dipping apples. I wish I could remember the temperature we always kept it at...I want to say 180? But anyway, I tried to recall my caramel apple skills. I waited until the caramel was cool-ER but not too cool, thick-ER but not too thick. When I felt it was ready I rolled an apple into it, careful to coat all sides, and continued twisting the apple as I lifted it out of the caramel. I wiped the excess off the bottom of each apple with a spatula. Boom.
For some reason the caramel didn't want to stick to the green apples. I tried to dip one of them again but remembered last minute that doing so would cause ALL the caramel to slide off. Most of them still turned out fine! And there was TONS of caramel left over. What to do but put it in a sheet pan, sprinkle with smoked sea salt, and put in the fridge to set!
By the time all that was done and I had finished cleaning up, Jameson was nearly done with his video shoot. I got to work on dinner, just a simple bolognese but the sooner you get that on the stove the better flavor you'll get out of it. I had a nice glass of wine and felt proud about the caramel until Jameson got home, then we ate dinner.
Throughout the day I'd been messaging back and forth with my friend Tim who was in town on business. We both play trombone and we're both from PA, so we used to compete against each other in the high school band competitions and eventually became good friends. He wanted to hang out and initially I said yes, but then covid-brain kicked in and I realized, where are we going to meet? How long should we be in the same room? Would my workplace require me to quarantine because of this? So I ended up backing out on him, and while he was very understanding and gracious I still felt terrible. The ONE time he's in town and I won't even spend a few hours in a room with him. But, yeah. I won't. Or with anyone else, unless I have to. That's just how it is. Someday soon things will get better, I've just got to believe that.
Tim still came over for a little bit and we had a good chat, standing on Jameson's front step. It was weird, but I was just glad to see him and hear how he's doing. He brought me a vintage Ringling program that he found in the attic of his new house, which he bought at an estate sale. Even though it's from the 70s, it felt nostalgic to flip through. It was good to see my friend today, even if only for a little bit.
On Thursday we woke up late. Jameson had classwork to do, and I wanted to tackle the caramel. Sadly, it seems because I didn't bring it up to the correct temperature, it was too soft to cut. The good news is, it's possible to fix caramel! I scraped it all back into the saucepan and brought it up to 248, held it there for a solid 30 seconds, then poured it back into the pan. While it chilled for several hours, I got to work food prepping for my work week, doing laundry, doing a little cleaning, and going on a nice walk with Jameson. It was hotter today, but it was still good to get out of the house (and away from any news sources).
When we got back home I was eager to try the caramel again. It was MUCH better, but still softer than I would like and difficult to handle. You can't tell from these pictures but after cutting it still wasn't keeping its shape very well. I might need to calibrate that candy thermometer, not sure what else could have caused it to be so soft. Maybe Florida humidity? Regardless, I'm by no means disappointed. For a first time caramel I think it turned out really damned good.
I wish I could bring it to work to share, but I'm not sure how I could make it covid-safe to handle. It's so soft that wrapping individual pieces is out of the question, and asking people to reach into a tub and touch only one piece of a very sticky caramel seems really not good. Also we're not supposed to be bringing food to work to share. Sigh. Maybe I'll just take the container and people can risk it or not.
For dinner I made cod with quinoa and snap peas, kind of ho-hum but still a healthy meal. But Jameson recently found a recipe for spanakopita, which I've never had but it looked and sounded good. Why not! The filling was easy, just spinach, feta, cottage cheese, lemon zest, egg white, and some herbs and spices. The phyllo was delicate, but I was very careful and honestly found it pretty easy to work with. I layered four thin sheets of it, brushing each with a little olive oil, then sliced it in to seven strips (it was supposed to be eight but I measured wrong). Then I put a tablespoon of filling in the corner of each strip and folded it up like a flag. Into the air fryer they went. Tada, spanakopita!
It was really delicious! I'll have to make these more often!
After dinner Jameson had class and I had to clean up, pack a lunch, and make sure I had everything ready to go in to the office because apparently our servers are down and none of the supervisors can access any of their work. So until they get it fixed I'll be captioning, I guess? Who knows. I'll find out tomorrow.
And hopefully we'll have election results soon before this country self-destructs.
