I am, you know. I'm very good.

Purely for your benefit, I have invented the curried crouton.

Should you ever find yourself in a position where you've made a potful of curried vegetable soup, but there just doesn't seem to be enough curry in it, and you're thinking about going through the whole frying-onion-with-curry-powder thing again, because you'd rather not add the powder raw to the soup?

Nil frettibus. Just olive oil in pan, curry powder in pan, sizzle sizzle, bread cubes. Curried croutons. Om-nom-nom.

Also, curried apple. Just the same way, and toss that too into the soup.

Right. Now that I have brightened your lives, I'm off out to take in beer and football and art and food and music. And rain. Lots of rain.

Curried vegetable soup for lunch, then, as the bastard boys have eaten all my ham. (Actually there would probably have been soup for lunch anyway, only with fried ham croutons, but I'm not telling them that.)

Couple of parsnips, couple of carrots and a leek, all sliced and simmering in incidental lamb stock. With a single brussels sprout, that I found lurking at the bottom of the bag. That'll make all the difference, 'spect.

It's good to have a veggie bag. And sourdough.

ETA: I was just frying up an onion and ginger and garlic for the curried element, and thinking about spices, and reaching automatically for the chillies - and stopped. Realised I actually didn't want chillies in it. When I make curried soup, turns out I want the curry-taste from my childhood, which means just a couple of spoonsful of curry powder. Which I keep pretty much for this purpose only, bar an occasional shake into a wokful of noodles.

God, but it's grim up north. Out there. Grey and vicious from one horizon to the next, not just raining but hurling rain against the windows, hard enough to splash; and given that those windows all face north, that betokens ice in the wind.

I don't wanna go out in that. Haven't, yet. Have to later. *huddles*

One unexpected - and unexpectedly abiding - benefit of jetlag: it has reset my body-clock, such that I have rediscovered the art of lying in. Not to teenage levels; certainly not to my young-man nocturnal attitudes, when I used to go to bed at dawn and rise at three pm; but still. At nine-thirty I was cozy in bed and listening to the rain and just rolled over, never a thought of getting up. Yay.

Now I am here, and Barry loves me for I have turned on the gas fire in the office. He doesn't deserve it, for one or other of the cats broke into the fridge overnight and ate all my ham and it might well have been him if it wasn't the other one (I do not believe their stories of a big cat who came and did it and then ran away), but nevertheless. There is fire, and hot cat.

Yesterday I made a sourdough ciabatta, which turned out pretty well all things considered; though it might've ruined the apocalypse cake, if dense fruit cake weren't quite so forgiving. My cooker has two ovens, one above the other; I bake in the lower, larger one. I left the cake in its tin & paper in the upper one to cool overnight - and then forgot about it, and ran the lower one at top heat for ninety minutes or so to bake the bread, so that it must've got all hot again up above. The top is perhaps crispier than it was, but I don't think it's taken any harm else. I have drenched it in brandy and wrapped it in foil and put it away in the cool, and promised it many more drenchings before the apocalypse. I have no idea how much brandy a cake can actually absorb, but the poor thing deserves the chance to learn.

What Bryan Said: "Y'know, it's actually quite hard to draw a badger in a bowler and make it look serious."

Techtree.com India > Reviews > Entertainment > LCD TV > Samsung UA46B7000 7 Series: 46-inch LED TV

Our new baby.

HH and I are the proud parents to this gorgeous tv! <3 the only other tv I've owned was a 14inch Sony Wega, so its a huge jump! <3

I will have NO surprises under the tree or in my stocking this year. I know everything I'm getting. I'm something of a traditionalist and I refuse to open any of the gifts until 12/25! I guess I'm a freak like that! So this year's "booty?" Well, the Xbox 360, a Blu Ray player, a new thumb drive and a new, bigger memory card for my camera. (I'm pretty sure I heard my wife say she got me some blue rays too, though I don't know what specifically.) Pretty good haul.

I'm shopping for the wife and Nat in the coming weeks and have some ideas of what I'm going to get them, but I'm free wheelin' it. (I know one gift for the wife for SURE, but the others I'm playing by ear.) I kind of want to go NUTS for my wife this year, since she gets the shaft sometimes. This year I vow that she will not! (She's definitely getting that...I just called on it and found a good price.)

I should have an announcement concerning my "tease" this week perhaps. Got some of my "people" working on it this morning and hoping that it all works out for the best. I think it will. And it will mean a very busy December for Johnny Ebenstone. Anyway...

I'm thinking about 2010 and what my writing goals are....without making any proclamations yet, I am determined to FINISH Sisters of Khoda. I think I have a really good book in it, I just need to refocus on it. In addition, I've decided to really hammer out Spring's Tempest at some point and some new stuff as well. I've got to find all my planning notes that I made and adjust them appropriately for what I've got in mind for the series. I'd like to try and hammer out at least 4 books next year...depending on some things. That's probably insane...hell, it is insane. But if you think about it...even if the books are high word counts which they aren't...1k a day=360k...90k per book. Sound right. IF I challenge myself, could I do a YEAR of HALF A MILLION WORDS???? Again, when you think about it, that's less than 1400 a day...but then again, I couldn't keep up with Nano! But I'm inspired. It'll take some planning and some serious organization on my part, but it's possible. Most definitely. Anyway, I'll make my plans public closer to Jan. 1...until then, I'm concentrating on other things.

Shower time...going to get my eyes rechecked for new glasses (YAY!) and maybe do a little Christmas shopping.

Speaking of which....I'm going to do the 25 Days of Ebenstone Christmas this year...enjoy!

Later skaters.

Geek Stuff 4 U - For Geeks By Geeks Kohjinsha Dual Screen DZ Series




I thought this was pretty awesome and LOL:)

Japanese PC maker Kohjinsha has taken its dual screen notebook concept it showed off at last month's CEATEC show and made it into a production PC. The DZ6HKE16E is the first of the DZ-series of notebooks, and comes with a 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 CPU, 1GB of RAM. There is also an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics chipsets to drive the two 10.1-inch displays, each with 1024x600 resolution and an LED backlight.

Please read this and sign the petition. Please pass it on, too.

http://www.fourwaystospeakout.com/

Aaaaaand the modded SwD School A makes his debut, just in time for the weekend. This is Aino:



I'm on a Finnish-names kick, for some reason, and apparently "Aino" means "the only one," which a modded head certainly is. ;-)

( Click for more of the pretty samey-samey. )

• 08:34 I have my tea. Glad to be working at home instead of the insanity at the mall. Toy store open at midnight, Mall stores opened at 4 am. #
• 08:40 Also? Just bought Mansfield Park and Mummies and Chenda and the Airship Broffman on Amazon. Black Friday online small press books FTW! \O/ #
• 14:15 My McDonalds fries have a photo of a sack of taters on the front. I guess that's so we know what we're supposed to be eating. #

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Words written: 1074
First line of the day: He squatted at the side of the stream, dipping his hands into the water.
Today's theme: musings on dreams, and the introduction of a key character (Cadog).
Diversions: 10 minutes spent scouring my academic shelves for WATU (Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units), one of those reference books you need maybe once a decade, but then *really* need. But which no-one every reads (it's a list. With some maps).

Skirt of the day: black flouncey

Question of the day: Why do I like Raja Hindustani so much (other than the music. The music is splendid and obviously likable)? But the film: I mean, I really shouldn't. The level of violence towards women is worrying and the hero's uncontrolled temper is scary. And yet I love it dearly.

And yay, our boiler is fixed and no longer leaking and the house is less freezing that it has been. (The two may well, I feel, be connected.)

Random thought of the day:
People vote every day with their time and money.

Also, don't forget about the Bride of Tranquility holiday promotion.

Now, on to the fiction:( Read more... )

This whole Thanksgiving thing? It seems very alien, to an English sensibility. Counting your blessings in public, and marking them with a feast - it's kinda lovely, but oh so foreign. Our nearest equivalent would have been Harvest Festival, when in our tradition we gave food away rather than om-nom-nomming it. Which is kind of a pale version of a festival, all that self-denial and chilly church. It lacks rumbustiousness.

One of these years, I shall cook a turkey and require friends to eat it - but I've been saying that for years now, and never got there yet.

So: there it went, yesterday. Today, in the spirit of perversity, I am cooking. The cake is in the oven, but right now I'm more interested in lunch. Jerusalem artichokes so fresh & crisp I might have eaten them raw - yay for veggie bags! - but in fact I steamed them lightly, and am going to fry them now in olive oil with chunks of ham. Which I will then mix in a mustard-and-lemon dressing, and call it a salad of sorts. Om-nom-nom.

Also, my window is fixed. Yay for blond windowfixers.

• 19:10 At wal mart with mom in law. OMG this place is a zoo! #
• 19:23 If I don't make it out alive, I regret nothing! #
• 10:54 No Macy's in Arkansas. So the Thanksgiving parade isn't inspiring me to go shop there. #
• 12:09 Surprised grandma by getting to thanksgiving early. She gets ready fast, though. #
• 12:13 We drive farthest. Why are we here first? #

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'Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.' ~E.L. Doctorow

If I asked nicely enough, do you think I could have a double to do the day job while I write? That's what I thought.

Sound Off!

It has been suggested to me - on more than one occasion, actually - that I am entitled to a little downtime, even when I can't afford it.

Actually, right now I don't have the choice. I can't sit here without cramping up. So: this is me, going down. Going downstairs. Making comfort food and giving up.

Lunch, oddly, was vampire chicken caesar salad (which, for the curious, is the residue of Mary's vampire chicken salad - that's chicken and beetroot and pine nuts and melon and red pepper and parsley and iceberg, largely - refreshed with crispy sourdough croutons). Dinner will be my standard pork-belly chilli (with carrots and mushrooms and onions and garlic and smoked paprika and such) on rice (with cabbage and more mushrooms and onions and garlic and such), but I'm also baking a post-apocalypse cake, for I am a survivor (as we all are, until that moment that we cease surviving). This is intended for those bleak winter days after Christmas, when everyone else has had a surfeit of fruitcake and I have not. So: whatever dried fruit I had in the house is now soaking with grated apple and orange juice-and-zest and lemon juice-and-zest and marsala, and tomorrow I will add spices and flour and ground almonds and such, and bake something slow and dark and gorgeous. I used myself to be slow and dark and gorgeous, but no more. Ah, those whirligigs of time...

Now: a marathon of Kill Bill, vols one and two. With chilli, and a bottle of wine, and a toast to Jay Lake's health, ongoing and improving and such.

PS - if a DVD is jumping and breaking up and such, is this a faulty DVD or a faulty player, most likely? And would a better newer player (for this one is very old) overcome any incipient faults in the disk, most likely?