I haven't been feeling super inspired in the kitchen lately, but here are some recipes I made & liked:

roasted pork loin with roasted potatoes & onions

Peruvian chicken with green sauce

quick ramen noodle stir fry (I added some bell pepper and carrots to stretch it a bit further)

crunchy baked pork chops with roasted broccoli & carrots

BLTs & grilled cheese sandwiches (on different nights)

"breakfast biscuits" that turned out to be chocolate chip cookies with some extra nuts & cranberries

hashbrown breakfast casserole (no real recipe for this one, but I used hashbrowns, breakfast sausage, onions & peppers, colby jack cheese & green onions)

TV shows

With R: 
BBC Ghosts s1: This is a generally funny, sweet comedy about a young couple who inherit a huge, rundown estate and the ghosts who haunt it. We tried a bit of the US remake and didn't care for it, but enjoyed the British version. 

Travel Man (various): The premise is Richard Ayoade traveling (mostly around Europe) with various comedians. It's a slightly irreverent and mostly enjoyable take on the travel genre. 

Severance s1: I find myself somewhat reluctantly engaged by this show? We've only seen the first fourish episodes and I'm curious to see where some of the plotlines go. 

Obi-Wan s1: Speaking of reluctantly engaged, I have been annoyed that this show even existed since it was first announced--and I take it back. With one major spoilery reservation, it was everything I want from Star Wars and the finale was such a great wrap up of the series arc. And I'm still having emotions over the found family arc with Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru. 

Derry Girls s1 & 2: Rewatching because we love it so much and the 3rd season will hopefully be available to US audiences soon. We watched the last episodes of s2 last night. 

On my own: 
CQL/The Untamed: Yes, I am rewatching it again and enjoying myself hugely. 

Joy in Life: I'm try to also watch something new! I'm only 2 episodes into this one, but the premise is interesting so far. 

movies

Turning Red: We both really, really loved this one! I was surprised by how much R enjoyed it, to be honest, but he thought it was great. I will admit that I cried a little bit too. 

Rogue One: After we finished Obi-Wan, we were both in a Star Wars mood, so we rewatched our favorite of the new movies. Also, I looked up Jiang Wen (the actor who plays Baze) and he has a fascinating biography. 

music 

I've mostly been in a relistening mood lately. My usual summer mix: First Aid Kit, House & Land, Valerie June, Mountain Man. 

I've been thinking lately about how my world and ambitions seem to have shrunk over the past few years. I used to be excited about traveling and I used to want to be known for something. These days, it seems like I just want to make it through. I don't know if it's been the trump years + pandemic, or what, but it's a definite shift for me and I'm not sure yet if it's a positive or negative one. 

Anyway, we both have covid and it stinks! We're fine, not serious cases, but the last two months have just been one thing after another. I'm slowly starting to feel a bit better so hopefully we'll both continue to improve. We've basically been lying around the house since Friday. Ugh! Hoping that June is a little less intense.

Sprouting:
- bachelors buttons
- beets
- carrots
- nasturtiums
- beans
- peas

rhubarb is growing another stalk! blueberry bush is growing some more leaves! tomatoes show signs of blooming!

R & I transplanted some more of the lily/iris mystery plants over the weekend. they'r'e looking a bit peaky, tbh--I hope some of them perk up!

nothing is quite ready for thinning or harvesting yet, but we're getting there!! it's been abnormally rainy this year and I'm hoping we get some warmer weather/sun soon. 

updated garden album

I've made many, many, many kinds of chicken soup over the years, but this is my current no-recipe favorite, for its sheer versatility. Leftover cooked chicken? toss it in! homemade broth? great! store bought? also great! 

As the name implies, this is a meal I make quite often around grocery day, as it's great for clearing out that last little bit of broccoli from the back of the fridge. After you find your base ingredients, you can also play around with seasonings and etc--pop in a bit of cheese rind, or some chili garlic sauce, or a tablespoon of pesto.

My basic formula is:
- broth (probably chicken, but you could certainly use what you have on hand instead)
- some kind of starch
- vegetables
- something rich
- an acid
- herbs
- meat, optionally
- seasonings

Quite often I'll roast a chicken and make stock from the carcass and then use the stock + leftover chicken to make this kind of soup, but I've also used frozen chicken strips, raw chicken (sliced thin and cooked a bit longer), and no meat at all.

Starches can be rice noodles, pasta, rice, potatoes, etc--or you could leave this out for a lighter soup.

Vegetables are truly whatever you like to eat and want to use up, fresh, frozen, or pre-cooked. Cooked vegetables will break down quite a bit unless you add them right at the end, but you could of course go the blended soup route and have a perfectly lovely veloute. 

While not strictly required, I do often add a cheese rind, a bit of Parmesan, or a little dairy to give the soup a richness. And I love to add a squeeze of lemon, lime, or vinegar--but do be careful if also adding dairy or it may curdle! 

Tonight, the soup is very vaguely Italian, with a bit of cheese, a ton of parsley, some leftover cooked chicken breasts, and most of a Napa cabbage. I squeezed a little lemon in and added a clove of garlic as I took it off the heat. 

I almost always end up serving this soup with some hot, buttered toast, because it fills out the meal a bit and is just very satisfying. 

If you use this, I'd love to hear what you end up making!

I decided to delete the (very very out of date) list that was here and just give you a link to my actual TBR list, which is a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Variations on these eggs have been going around the blogosphere this year, but I actually found a slightly different version last year and bookmarked it to try. The instructions seemed clear and simple, if not entirely easy.

This Sunday was Orthodox Easter (Pascha) so on Friday, in between services and baking, I made the eggs.

I had forgotten to get the beets when I bought the other ingredients, so I planned to make three colors: orange, blue, and green. I also used fresh herbs from our garden (we had such a mild winter, they're already taking off). I chose oregano, fennel, chamomile, and thyme. As you'll see, I got a fairly different result than the original and I'm not sure why. We're on well water, so there may be minerals or other deposits that changed things, even though I used the filtered tap. I didn't quite have enough spinach, so that may have been a factor. And I also may not have added enough vinegar, which acts as the mordant for the dyes here. However, I'm still pretty pleased with the results and plan to fiddle around with it next year, to see if I can get them a little better.


The blue (red cabbage) was definitely the best of the three colors, as you can see. The orange stained all sorts of other things, but didn't stick to the eggs very well--a bit mottled. The green--well, the green only stuck around the edges of the herbs, creating an effect I actually like quite a bit, but wouldn't know how to reproduce. It's a bit eerie, like a ghost-imprint of the herbs on the eggs.


Of the four herbs, the thyme created the prettiest patterns, I thought. Here's the "green" version on top, with the "green" oregano just below it. The two in the background are the orange chamomile and blue fennel.


From a different angle, here's the "green" thyme and the blue thyme. Again, you can see the difference in coloration--the blue and that particular orange egg turned quite well, while the other orange eggs are duller.

It was a fun project and, since you put the eggs in the refrigerator for hours, fairly simple. Also, it's nice to do natural dyes.

And then I swear, I am done. At least for awhile.

So yesterday I re-read it. Yes, the day after I read it the first time. This was mainly motivated by the fact that I had read it in three hours the first time and I felt like I had missed something. I needed to go back and be thorough. What follows here are my notes, somewhat ramble-y. They should be separated by chapter, and all quotes have the page number (obviously from the hardback edition) attached. A few notes:

* Feel free to disagree with any of my theories. Just remember that I reserve the right to delete comments if they're mean. And by mean, I refer to anything which calls me names, calls MWT names, is profanity ridden etc.
* I've followed Sounis-the-community's abbreviation conventions throughout. So MWT=Megan Whalen Turner, MOW=Minister of War (Gen's father), KoA=King of Attolia, QoA=Queen of Attolia, both of these last referring to books rather than characters. I don't think I refer to Conspiracy specifically, but I tend to abbreviate it as CofK.
* Obviously, there will be spoilers. There will also be lj-cuts. The spoilers are more severe than for my previous spoilery review, because they will be more specific. Consider yourself warned.

( Prologue-ch. 5 )

( Ch. 6-10 )

( Ch. 11-15 )

( Ch. 16-20 )

( general comments )

I just finished my first (but by no means last) read-through of A Conspiracy of Kings, the fourth in Megan Whalen Turner's series (which, for the record, I now think should be called the Basileus series). Since I know people out there are trying to avoid spoilers, this post will be a very general non-spoilery one. The next one (with an lj-cut) will be chock full of spoilers.

I LOVED IT. Okay, yes, it did leave me wanting to read the next book now, but still. LOVE. Sophos has grown so much as a person, and I loved that his sense of humor and Gen's are so entirely different, and yet they mesh so well. I loved several of the minor characters and so many of the major ones too. I don't think I was left unsatisfied, or even exactly with questions. It's more that I have a sense of story not yet told that I didn't have at the end of the previous books. I can't wait for the next installment.