Fall Doings
Oct. 22nd, 2023 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39Thursday was another early morning, I pretty much tied myself to my computer and did data entry for as long as I could stand it.
In the afternoon I practiced the trombone, but otherwise was glued to my computer for the whole day.
Even so, I am behind, and will not get a weekend this week.
Not that it matters because only about 12 days left until I go on tour.
After dinner I made us some individual apple tarte tatin.
A "tatin" is, very simply, any pastry in which the fruit has been caramelized before baking.
In this case, I chopped up two Granny Smith apples and cooked them on the stovetop with butter and lemon juice.
Then I made a quick stovetop caramel with a few tablespoons of sugar, lemon juice, water, butter, and salt.
Put the caramel in two ramekin dishes, then layer the caramelized apple slices on top as tightly as you can.
Then top each one with a circle of puff pastry, and bake for 25 minutes.
Here they are fresh out of the oven, bottoms-up.
Here they are after cooling a bit and being inverted into dishes. How neat and golden and sticky-good the apples look!
I topped each one with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then drizzled it all with the homemade butterscotch sauce that I made ages ago (it had been in the freezer for just such a moment as this)
It was amazing. The apples were warm and soft and spiced, almost preserve-like.
And of course hot apples with cold creamy vanilla is one of the best texture and flavor combinations you can enjoy.
The puff pastry was good, I especially liked how it got chewy around the edges from the apple juices and caramelization in the oven. But the hot apples and ice cream were definitely the highlight. If you don't have time for an apple pie, this is an incredibly easy and quick dessert that only takes about 30 minutes and looks a lot fancier than it is.
(Hey, I finally made something edible this week!!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, Jameson had rehearsal in the morning again so I was up at 6:45 like always to do my data entry.
I posted this to Facebook:
This is a lesson that my job has taught me this year.
I am constantly amazed at how highly EVERY nursing home resident rates their friendships, even the most cantankerous, nasty people. Even people who have been hurt or abused. Even people like me. It's making me rethink my own relationships, and the way I shove people away and avoid building close friendships.
The thing is, though...how do you get to a point where you can TRUST someone?
I seem to rarely get to that point. I know that humans are just humans, we're all going to mess up and hurt each other even with the best intentions. That's ok, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how when I try to connect with people, I'm often looked at like I'm an alien because of my background. Everyone certainly finds "worked for the circus" and "plays the trombone" interesting. Everyone wants to hear what it was like, and see food pictures and elephant pictures and whatnot. But their interest in me never/rarely extends beyond entertaining themselves with the novelty of my life before moving on.
If I stopped posting here, how many of you would reach out to see if I was ok?
And how many of you would just seek out another blogger to entertain you without a second thought for Me As A Person?
I know the answer, and it's why I don't have friends.
How do you find GOOD friends? Like, people who care about YOU, and not your CONTENT or what free stuff or entertainment they can get out of you before discarding you like a used napkin?
Anyway, I don't know that I can ever have Real Friends. But I've promised myself to make a stronger effort at socialization on this tour, mostly based on these nursing home interviews and the apparent importance of frienships. We'll see if anything comes of it.
Two hours of work, then breakfast, then another hour before going to Publix because I was out of coffee, fruit, and oatmeal. Then lunch and I took myself for a walk (finally, why do I only get to exercise once a week, I hate Florida.)
No pictures because I was hustling, just wanting the vitamin D and the exercise.
Back home I cleaned up and three more hours of work, but I'm still an hour behind, argh, but I couldn't sit in front of a screen for one more minute. Jameson came home and we had dinner, then he went to a friend's house so I vacuumed, cleaned out my car in prep for vacuuming it, cleaned the small bathroom, wiped our sliding patio doors down, researched Airbnbs for a possible sibling visit in February, and worked very hard on Foodie Finds (which is more screen time but at least it's DIFFERENT screen time.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, I treated it as a weekend and didn't set an alarm.
Because I busted ass with data entry yesterday, I only have to do an hour today, and I'll get to it when I get to it.
First, coffee and the bag of apple scone mix that I got for free from World Market.
Apple scones are a Fall flavor, and I don't want the mix sitting around through next Fall.
Then a little computer time before getting out the ingredients for my famous homemade caramels :)
These are for my family, I promised to make them caramels this summer but it was so F*CKING hot out that I didn't trust they'd survive shipping. Now it's cooler outside of Florida so at least they should arrive mostly intact. Yeah, it was back up to 86°F/30°C today. Bullshit. Sorry for all the swears but I WANT FALL.
You've seen this process before but I guess it never gets old.
Here's the sugar mixture just as it's turning the right color (I call it "weak iced tea.")
When you add the cream it looks like melted butter! Then it foams up and you gotta keep an eye that it doesn't boil over.
Eventually it thickens up, and you need to constantly stir it so it doesn't scald.
The temperature plateaus for me around 240°F, so I poke the heat up little by little until it starts going up again.
This time I turned it up too fast I think, because the bottom scalded right at the end.
The flavor is fine, there are just darker brown bits mixed into the caramel (not burnt just darker) so the visual is not as good.
Also, I don't have the lovely vanilla bean paste that I'd normally use because it's currently $20!!!
Vanilla extract, even the real stuff, is not nearly as good as the paste. But it can't be helped for this batch.
It's still certainly good enough to share.
After that I practiced for a while, then washed my slide out because it needed washing.
Jameson went to give his car an oil change, so I went outside to cut down the dead bush out front that I'd failed to dig up a few days ago. In case you don't remember that, it was like this:
But then I realized that the ground was a lot drier today, and thought that maybe the roots had dried out more since I last tried to remove the trunk. Dry roots might be more brittle, easier to break or cut. So I attacked the bush again, shoving it back and forth by the trunk, using my whole wimpy 123lb momentum, and was rewarded with the sound of muffled snapping and cracking beneath the soil. I ran and grabbed the hand saw and alternated between chopping at the roots I could see, and using my weight to push the trunk back and forth above the root ball.
Finally the whole thing broke free, and I pulled it straight up. I WIN!
Had to take those goofy pics to send to Jameson :P
Now we have a hole in the front, but you can't see it because of the hedge.
I am thinking I might move a banana tree there and see how it does.
After that I got cleaned up and treated myself to an apple scone and some decaf coffee.
We had Mexican for dinner, and I worked on Foodie Finds. I'm still stuck on Chicago research.
You have to understand, Chicago has AMAZING food, and The L train which gets you across town quickly/cheaply, and we're there for six days, and we are within walking distance of no less than five food halls, never mind all of the restaurants and cafes and specialty grocery stores and cultural districts.
We're only a mile from Eataly for God's sake.
And did you know that Chicago's Chinatown has it's own Chinese version of Eataly?
A three-story Chinese grocery with a bakery, housewares section, and food court. 80,000sq ft of deliciousness.
In a city like Chicago I can barely decide what *I* want, much less pick and choose for a group of people that I haven't even met yet!
Looking at all the options makes my stomach growl in anticipation.
Chicago is at least five months away though, so I'd better chill out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday I got up at 7:30 for data entry, but lost some time responding to emails and responding to questions that came my way.
After breakfast I cut up the caramels. The soft little cubes always look so satisfying.
There were enough to send 12 pieces to people without kids, and 8 pieces each to people with kids, and I think that works out such that I don't have to make a second batch if I don't want to. I'll think about it.
That took about an hour, so then I had lunch and practiced and did a few more hours of work.
Before I knew it it was dinner time, we had grocery store sushi and watched The Fall of the House of Usher, which is incredible BTW if you're looking for spooky season stuff to watch.
TMI I had terrible gas today for unclear reasons (anxiety? IBS? constipation? something I ate?) so I am buying a bottle of Devrom to try. It's freaking expensive so I hope it works (or maybe I hope it doesn't so I won't have to spend money on it.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow (or today depending on where you read these) Jameson starts another week of intense rehearsal, and his workload at home is doubled because he's covering for someone else.
I've got a lot to do this week, the last full week before I go on tour.
Here is my to-do list, we will see what I manage in no special order:
I'm probably forgetting things...I "should" take the car for an oil change, for example.
Anyway, I'll still be working, practicing, packing, and exercising during all of that too.
(Yes, I plan to go for a walk every other day this week.)
Here goes.
In the afternoon I practiced the trombone, but otherwise was glued to my computer for the whole day.
Even so, I am behind, and will not get a weekend this week.
Not that it matters because only about 12 days left until I go on tour.
After dinner I made us some individual apple tarte tatin.
A "tatin" is, very simply, any pastry in which the fruit has been caramelized before baking.
In this case, I chopped up two Granny Smith apples and cooked them on the stovetop with butter and lemon juice.
Then I made a quick stovetop caramel with a few tablespoons of sugar, lemon juice, water, butter, and salt.
Put the caramel in two ramekin dishes, then layer the caramelized apple slices on top as tightly as you can.
Then top each one with a circle of puff pastry, and bake for 25 minutes.
Here they are fresh out of the oven, bottoms-up.
Here they are after cooling a bit and being inverted into dishes. How neat and golden and sticky-good the apples look!
I topped each one with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then drizzled it all with the homemade butterscotch sauce that I made ages ago (it had been in the freezer for just such a moment as this)
It was amazing. The apples were warm and soft and spiced, almost preserve-like.
And of course hot apples with cold creamy vanilla is one of the best texture and flavor combinations you can enjoy.
The puff pastry was good, I especially liked how it got chewy around the edges from the apple juices and caramelization in the oven. But the hot apples and ice cream were definitely the highlight. If you don't have time for an apple pie, this is an incredibly easy and quick dessert that only takes about 30 minutes and looks a lot fancier than it is.
(Hey, I finally made something edible this week!!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, Jameson had rehearsal in the morning again so I was up at 6:45 like always to do my data entry.
I posted this to Facebook:
This is a lesson that my job has taught me this year.
I am constantly amazed at how highly EVERY nursing home resident rates their friendships, even the most cantankerous, nasty people. Even people who have been hurt or abused. Even people like me. It's making me rethink my own relationships, and the way I shove people away and avoid building close friendships.
The thing is, though...how do you get to a point where you can TRUST someone?
I seem to rarely get to that point. I know that humans are just humans, we're all going to mess up and hurt each other even with the best intentions. That's ok, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how when I try to connect with people, I'm often looked at like I'm an alien because of my background. Everyone certainly finds "worked for the circus" and "plays the trombone" interesting. Everyone wants to hear what it was like, and see food pictures and elephant pictures and whatnot. But their interest in me never/rarely extends beyond entertaining themselves with the novelty of my life before moving on.
If I stopped posting here, how many of you would reach out to see if I was ok?
And how many of you would just seek out another blogger to entertain you without a second thought for Me As A Person?
I know the answer, and it's why I don't have friends.
How do you find GOOD friends? Like, people who care about YOU, and not your CONTENT or what free stuff or entertainment they can get out of you before discarding you like a used napkin?
Anyway, I don't know that I can ever have Real Friends. But I've promised myself to make a stronger effort at socialization on this tour, mostly based on these nursing home interviews and the apparent importance of frienships. We'll see if anything comes of it.
Two hours of work, then breakfast, then another hour before going to Publix because I was out of coffee, fruit, and oatmeal. Then lunch and I took myself for a walk (finally, why do I only get to exercise once a week, I hate Florida.)
No pictures because I was hustling, just wanting the vitamin D and the exercise.
Back home I cleaned up and three more hours of work, but I'm still an hour behind, argh, but I couldn't sit in front of a screen for one more minute. Jameson came home and we had dinner, then he went to a friend's house so I vacuumed, cleaned out my car in prep for vacuuming it, cleaned the small bathroom, wiped our sliding patio doors down, researched Airbnbs for a possible sibling visit in February, and worked very hard on Foodie Finds (which is more screen time but at least it's DIFFERENT screen time.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, I treated it as a weekend and didn't set an alarm.
Because I busted ass with data entry yesterday, I only have to do an hour today, and I'll get to it when I get to it.
First, coffee and the bag of apple scone mix that I got for free from World Market.
Apple scones are a Fall flavor, and I don't want the mix sitting around through next Fall.
Then a little computer time before getting out the ingredients for my famous homemade caramels :)
These are for my family, I promised to make them caramels this summer but it was so F*CKING hot out that I didn't trust they'd survive shipping. Now it's cooler outside of Florida so at least they should arrive mostly intact. Yeah, it was back up to 86°F/30°C today. Bullshit. Sorry for all the swears but I WANT FALL.
You've seen this process before but I guess it never gets old.
Here's the sugar mixture just as it's turning the right color (I call it "weak iced tea.")
When you add the cream it looks like melted butter! Then it foams up and you gotta keep an eye that it doesn't boil over.
Eventually it thickens up, and you need to constantly stir it so it doesn't scald.
The temperature plateaus for me around 240°F, so I poke the heat up little by little until it starts going up again.
This time I turned it up too fast I think, because the bottom scalded right at the end.
The flavor is fine, there are just darker brown bits mixed into the caramel (not burnt just darker) so the visual is not as good.
Also, I don't have the lovely vanilla bean paste that I'd normally use because it's currently $20!!!
Vanilla extract, even the real stuff, is not nearly as good as the paste. But it can't be helped for this batch.
It's still certainly good enough to share.
After that I practiced for a while, then washed my slide out because it needed washing.
Jameson went to give his car an oil change, so I went outside to cut down the dead bush out front that I'd failed to dig up a few days ago. In case you don't remember that, it was like this:
But then I realized that the ground was a lot drier today, and thought that maybe the roots had dried out more since I last tried to remove the trunk. Dry roots might be more brittle, easier to break or cut. So I attacked the bush again, shoving it back and forth by the trunk, using my whole wimpy 123lb momentum, and was rewarded with the sound of muffled snapping and cracking beneath the soil. I ran and grabbed the hand saw and alternated between chopping at the roots I could see, and using my weight to push the trunk back and forth above the root ball.
Finally the whole thing broke free, and I pulled it straight up. I WIN!
Had to take those goofy pics to send to Jameson :P
Now we have a hole in the front, but you can't see it because of the hedge.
I am thinking I might move a banana tree there and see how it does.
After that I got cleaned up and treated myself to an apple scone and some decaf coffee.
We had Mexican for dinner, and I worked on Foodie Finds. I'm still stuck on Chicago research.
You have to understand, Chicago has AMAZING food, and The L train which gets you across town quickly/cheaply, and we're there for six days, and we are within walking distance of no less than five food halls, never mind all of the restaurants and cafes and specialty grocery stores and cultural districts.
We're only a mile from Eataly for God's sake.
And did you know that Chicago's Chinatown has it's own Chinese version of Eataly?
A three-story Chinese grocery with a bakery, housewares section, and food court. 80,000sq ft of deliciousness.
In a city like Chicago I can barely decide what *I* want, much less pick and choose for a group of people that I haven't even met yet!
Looking at all the options makes my stomach growl in anticipation.
Chicago is at least five months away though, so I'd better chill out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday I got up at 7:30 for data entry, but lost some time responding to emails and responding to questions that came my way.
After breakfast I cut up the caramels. The soft little cubes always look so satisfying.
There were enough to send 12 pieces to people without kids, and 8 pieces each to people with kids, and I think that works out such that I don't have to make a second batch if I don't want to. I'll think about it.
That took about an hour, so then I had lunch and practiced and did a few more hours of work.
Before I knew it it was dinner time, we had grocery store sushi and watched The Fall of the House of Usher, which is incredible BTW if you're looking for spooky season stuff to watch.
TMI I had terrible gas today for unclear reasons (anxiety? IBS? constipation? something I ate?) so I am buying a bottle of Devrom to try. It's freaking expensive so I hope it works (or maybe I hope it doesn't so I won't have to spend money on it.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow (or today depending on where you read these) Jameson starts another week of intense rehearsal, and his workload at home is doubled because he's covering for someone else.
I've got a lot to do this week, the last full week before I go on tour.
Here is my to-do list, we will see what I manage in no special order:
- Ship caramels to family
- Power wash the pool deck
- Clean the dishwasher and garbage disposal
- Do a deep dust (i.e. take everything off bookshelves and dust them, do the baseboards, etc)
- Vacuum the car
- Clean both showers
- Cancel BetterHelp and hopefully find something else, cheaper
- Find a roll of quarters for laundry
- Power wash the pool deck
- Cook one final week of meals
- Haircut
- Dust, vacuum, and clean bathrooms one last time
I'm probably forgetting things...I "should" take the car for an oil change, for example.
Anyway, I'll still be working, practicing, packing, and exercising during all of that too.
(Yes, I plan to go for a walk every other day this week.)
Here goes.
