Events of the last few days, and pictures
Nov. 18th, 2002 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterWell, it's been a while since I've written anything here...been a while since I've been in the mood to. I'm sure you can understand, given my last entry.
Still no movement on the job front; I've talked to the father of a friend who is highly placed at the local university; he seems impressed with my skills. If anyone can find me something, he can.
In other vaguely job-related news, my traffic court date for the second accident was today. I dithered until literally the last ten minutes, then put it in the hands of a traffic attorney for $75. Maybe I shouldn't have spent that much money, being unemployed and all, but I've already been through traffic school and at this point, I think I'm going to need all the help I can get to keep those points off my license. Sigh, driving doesn't seem quite so much fun anymore...
Recently, I was moved to try my most ambitious ever foray into the world of kitchen chemistry. It actually happened that I was roleplaying a character on-line who liked to cook, and had him making a beef pot pie—one of my favorite dishes—for his friends...and darn it, it made me crave a real home-made beef pot pie myself, the kind that I had heretofore only had from my Mom & Dad, who make the best pie-like stuff ever. So the next day, I took the recipe I found online, and went out to buy up all the necessary ingredients and utensils. And, that night...I made beef pot pie. (As you can see, I got out my little cheapie Yahoo Digital Camera to chronicle the event.)
As I said, it was the most ambitious thing I've ever tried to put together—my culinary efforts had heretofore been limited to spaghetti, chili, sloppy joes...you know, the Things Made Of Ground Beef food group. It was kind of fun, in a way...until I got to the point where I had to roll out the crust and slap it in the pie pans, which drove me to utter distraction. It took talking to my parents on the phone to calm me down enough that I actually could get some semblance of flat pie doughosity in there.
As you can see there was enough pie-stuff for two 9" pies and one skillet-pie...I made a triple dough recipe. I think that in the end, I got too much crust on the pies, and next time I'll hold it down to a double recipe and see if I can make all the filling go into two pie shells. But that aside, I consider the pies to be a marvelous culinary success. They taste homemade, in that way that's so hard to quantify but that storebought pies simply don't...the texture of the fresh-cooked vegetables, the tang of the browned meat chunks, the flakiness of the crust. It keeps well in the fridge, and warms up well in the microwave; I've already eaten my way through the skillet pie and one of the others.
Since I had the camera charged up and I was in the mood anyway, I started taking some pictures with it again—including a couple of Gumdrop, the humongous orange cat of the neighborhood. I think you can see, from the photo at right, why I call her that.
The camera isn't too great, but at least it gets a decent likeness.
One of the other amusing things to catch my lens was the neighbors' teeny tiny part-Chihuahua dog, Gidget, who likes to streak around the neighborhood like a comet, and interact with the other neighborhood animals. Here she is annoying the cat I call Kim and the neighbor calls Gato, in perhaps the best action shot I've yet snapped.
One other thing for which I used the camera was to take some snaps for Bookcrossing releases. Some for the heck of it, and one, The Thief Lord, for a contest Bookcrossing was running. I had a fellow customer in the Salvation Army take my photo with the camera. Unfortunately, since it's such a cheap camera and since the viewfinder lies like a dog...well, see the results for yourself.
Still no movement on the job front; I've talked to the father of a friend who is highly placed at the local university; he seems impressed with my skills. If anyone can find me something, he can.
In other vaguely job-related news, my traffic court date for the second accident was today. I dithered until literally the last ten minutes, then put it in the hands of a traffic attorney for $75. Maybe I shouldn't have spent that much money, being unemployed and all, but I've already been through traffic school and at this point, I think I'm going to need all the help I can get to keep those points off my license. Sigh, driving doesn't seem quite so much fun anymore...
Recently, I was moved to try my most ambitious ever foray into the world of kitchen chemistry. It actually happened that I was roleplaying a character on-line who liked to cook, and had him making a beef pot pie—one of my favorite dishes—for his friends...and darn it, it made me crave a real home-made beef pot pie myself, the kind that I had heretofore only had from my Mom & Dad, who make the best pie-like stuff ever. So the next day, I took the recipe I found online, and went out to buy up all the necessary ingredients and utensils. And, that night...I made beef pot pie. (As you can see, I got out my little cheapie Yahoo Digital Camera to chronicle the event.)As I said, it was the most ambitious thing I've ever tried to put together—my culinary efforts had heretofore been limited to spaghetti, chili, sloppy joes...you know, the Things Made Of Ground Beef food group. It was kind of fun, in a way...until I got to the point where I had to roll out the crust and slap it in the pie pans, which drove me to utter distraction. It took talking to my parents on the phone to calm me down enough that I actually could get some semblance of flat pie doughosity in there.
As you can see there was enough pie-stuff for two 9" pies and one skillet-pie...I made a triple dough recipe. I think that in the end, I got too much crust on the pies, and next time I'll hold it down to a double recipe and see if I can make all the filling go into two pie shells. But that aside, I consider the pies to be a marvelous culinary success. They taste homemade, in that way that's so hard to quantify but that storebought pies simply don't...the texture of the fresh-cooked vegetables, the tang of the browned meat chunks, the flakiness of the crust. It keeps well in the fridge, and warms up well in the microwave; I've already eaten my way through the skillet pie and one of the others.Since I had the camera charged up and I was in the mood anyway, I started taking some pictures with it again—including a couple of Gumdrop, the humongous orange cat of the neighborhood. I think you can see, from the photo at right, why I call her that.
The camera isn't too great, but at least it gets a decent likeness.One of the other amusing things to catch my lens was the neighbors' teeny tiny part-Chihuahua dog, Gidget, who likes to streak around the neighborhood like a comet, and interact with the other neighborhood animals. Here she is annoying the cat I call Kim and the neighbor calls Gato, in perhaps the best action shot I've yet snapped.
One other thing for which I used the camera was to take some snaps for Bookcrossing releases. Some for the heck of it, and one, The Thief Lord, for a contest Bookcrossing was running. I had a fellow customer in the Salvation Army take my photo with the camera. Unfortunately, since it's such a cheap camera and since the viewfinder lies like a dog...well, see the results for yourself.