elvenjaneite

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I keep most entries here locked to friends/access filters only, but I'm happy to add new friends! If I know you from elsewhere, please let me know who you are if it's not obvious.

I decided to start doing a monthly cookbook focus because we have a lot of cookbooks and sometimes I get overwhelmed by the options and need some help narrowing down ideas. This month was the Budget Bytes cookbook! I made:

breakfast parfaits
avocado egg toast
chai spiced almonds
the real deal chip dip
chocolate mug cake
no knead focaccia
one skillet lasagna

Of these, the one skillet lasagna, chocolate mug cake, and chai spiced almonds were clear favorites. I didn't love the no knead focaccia, but the rest were fine.

Others

rosemary parm nuggets +
stiffkey cakes

cinnamon loaf with espresso butter

lavender scones +

leafy salad with poppy seeds & yogurt dressing

finnish sunday rolls +

chicken with feta, dill & lemon

soy braised chicken

provencal vegetable soup

soy sauce fried noodles +
peanut butter frozen yogurt pops
thick pork chops

spring feta flatbreads
vegan lemon cake +
potato meatloaf
no cook strawberry sauce
fluffy waffles
three bean salad

These were all good! The ones I marked with a + were especial favorites.

It's Summer Reading, finally!!! We literally spend 6 months planning a six week program and then it goes by in a flash. Anyway, we're BUSY. I had 30 at storytime yesterday, which would have been a good turnout in 2019, and our summer lunch programs have also been well attended.

There have been a lot of developments with my biggest work stressors, mostly positive. I'm cautiously hopeful that things have reset enough to not cause these huge headaches later on.

The garden is overall doing well! We're dealing with some pests munching on things and I'm not experienced enough to know what they are or how to address them. But we have been getting some amazing peas, and everything else is growing, flowering, and getting ready to harvest.

We went to see the new Spider Verse movie on Saturday and both loved it. It didn't have the elation and joy that I found in the first movie, particularly the Danger sequence, but it went really deep into themes of belonging and identity. I love how 15 Miles is in this one.

I've been making some good food lately but I think I'll post that as a separate entry when I'm not typing on my phone 😂

Garden news

YES! GARDEN NEWS!

Garlic and daffodil bulbs are sprouting & survived the cold snap of late January
I planted onion seeds last week and the most wee, tiny, pale green shoots you can imagine are just appearing
I planted thyme, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (red and green), and peppers (bell and paprika) on Saturday

I went out today and worked on putting down cardboard and leaves where all of the garden beds will be. I'm going to try to do a no-till garden as much as possible, although in the places where the beds are new, I may end up doing a bit of digging to get the grass and sod up. We'll see!

I also went through and drew my little diagrams to figure out layout and companion planting and basically I'm one giant excited puppy waiting for spring to arrive and things to really get going. PLANTS! I love them!

Other stuff

I made a just-because chocolate yogurt cake tonight & it smells delicious. I'm being a good spouse & waiting for R to get home before cutting into it
working on a sweater for R, although it's somewhat slow going because the colors he picked are pretty dark and hard to distinguish. I think it'll look nice when it's done, though!

book blog post: My Top 2023 Releases

We did a lot of tv & movie viewing this month!

Andor (through e4): loving it so far!

Fellowship of Ring rewatch: it was time

Glass Onion: I really enjoyed it! Especially Janelle Monae’s performance.

Upstart Crow: this is a silly British show about Shakespeare; I enjoyed it overall, although the last few episodes weren’t my favorite

Abbott Elementary: I love it so much

Rewatching The Office, Kim’s Convenience

Cdramas

Love Between Fairy & Devil: this continues to be great!

Who Rules the World: I only watched a few episodes of this one but I’m still delighted--and Xuan Lu just showed up! I love her character already

Word of Honor: rewatching; I’m up to episode 12 & having a great time

CQL: watched episode 26 & 27; reactions here

Music

Fruit (The As)

Palomino (First Aid Kit)

Lady Music, new folk, & writing playlists on Spotify

Philharmonics (Agnes Obel)

Looking Glass (Alela Diane)

Apple Tree (Katie Herzig)

Spell Songs II

katharhino asked: When did you learn to knit?

My mom taught me when I was about 6! I know we had moved to Columbus by then, so somewhere between 6-7. She had a very Waldorf-influnced style of elementary education and learning to knit was definitely part of that.

Later on, I kind of re-taught myself in my teens, resulting in what I’ve been told is a fairly unique knitting style. I’m still learning new techniques and patterns, though!

Here's an album of some of my recent knitting projects.

________________

And that's it for the December posting meme! This was a fun challenge, so thank you all for coming up with topics to ask!

kiriel123 asked: What's one of your favorite memories from this year?

It’s really hard to pick! This year has had a number of really great moments (as well as some very tough ones). But I’m going to go with the Abigail Washburn & Wu Fei concert we were able to attend in February. It was one of the first times I was in a crowd since 2020 and that aspect made me nervous, but masks were required and that made me willing to go.

I’m glad I did, since it was absolutely magical. I love their album and they played basically the whole thing plus some extra songs that aren’t included. Wu Fei did this experimental guzheng piece where she turned it on its short edge and sang into the back. It was wild! It was also just really fun to see their camaraderie--they’re clearly close friends and it enriches the musical exchange, I think.

We have internet again! Hooray!

Recent Recipes

I attempted an Indonesian meal for the first time last week! I had to make some substitutions based on what we had available, but everything was delicious.

Also made:

pineapple-ginger glazed chicken & carrots, orzo, and salad
breakfast burritos
upside down shepherds/cottage pie (baked potatoes with cottage pie filling on top)
pasta bake (to freeze)

I don't really have recipes for any of these as I mostly winged it.

Holiday baking

Since our St Louis trip was delayed until this coming weekend and R & I celebrate Christmas on the "Old"/Julian Calendar (January 7), I have not yet truly embarked on Christmas baking. Tonight is also Old Calendar Santa Lucia Day, but since I work I don't think I'll manage to bake anything. Maybe next year!

My plans are a mix of family traditions and new recipes:

Birthday cards

I need to get a wiggle on for 2023 birthday cards! This year I'm going to try to make all of my cards at once so I don't lose steam in, say, March.

Ornaments

I made some felt ornaments for my family's Christmas presents this year and was happy with how they turned out. I have the pieces to make some more and might try to work on them over the year so it's not a rush in November and December, aka my worst months. I have a lot of leftover felt so I'll have to think about what I want to make with it.

Knitting

My recent knitting has also been very focused on family presents--I made potholders and coasters for my mom & siblings. The coasters were linen stitch and I'm really pleased with how they came out! I do want to pick up the sweater that I've been working on for R soon. Although I'm still not happy with the way it's turning out and the needles I got in Oregon are a pain to knit with (the yarn snags on the join between the plastic curve and the wooden needles).

2023 plans

I'm trying to find the balance between my desire to do everything and try everything and my need to not overwhelm myself and burn out. I do want to try to make some different decorations for the house, new recipes, and gifts for people. So we'll see how it all goes!

sunshine304 asked: Which book has made you laugh the most, which one has made you cry the hardest?

I’m actually not a huge reader of humorous books, but I have a distinct memory of trying to stifle my intense laughter while reading Hilary McKay’s Exiles series late at night. I had also forgotten how funny PG Wodehouse’s Psmith books are until a friend group started talking about them recently and reminded me of Baxter's lemon colored pajamas.

Honorable mention to the scene in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance where ImpSec slowly sinks into the ground.

Prior to 2012, the book that made me cry the most was undoubtedly A Tale of Two Cities, which I sobbed over while lying on our scratchy green couch at age 13. (And then yelled at my siblings because they were bickering and punctured my Mood.) Post-2012, the answer is Code Name Verity. For quite awhile, a single phrase was enough to make me well up.

That being said, I am definitely a weepy person and cry at all kinds of books and stories. I sometimes like crying because it releases some kind of internal tension valve. Other books I have cried over include: The King of Attolia, all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Ancillary Mercy, and so on.

I got a bit behind, so this post is two answers for the price of one!

salamandras asked: What are your favorite plants to grow?

I consider myself still very much a novice gardener! So this is not a particularly exciting answer. I really enjoy beans, tomatoes, and carrots, because they all grow well in my region, are relatively hardy and easy to grow, and taste so much better than the storebought versions. I'm not one to ever shame people for doing what they need to in terms of getting food on the table, so this isn't a "farmers market only" post--but homegrown tomatoes straight from the garden are one of the best things in the whole world.

Actually, according to my mom, when I was about 2 and she was working in the garden with me in a baby carrier on her back [this was the 80s, my parents were hippies], I would reach over her shoulder and pick tomatoes and then snack away on them. So I guess I started young!

forestofglory asked: your favorite fried foods

Ooh, I have two answers for this, an at-home version and an eating-out version.

At home: I don't deep fry food at home that often, but when I do, it's almost always a cutlet. Put a little seasoning and dredge it in some breadcrumbs, eat with mustard (for dipping) and salad. Amazing.

Eating out: crispy potatoes. Fries and hashbrowns are my favorite, but they must be crispy and well seasoned and hot.

As we reach the end of 2022, I thought it might be helpful to give an overview of what libraries are facing right now and some ways for individuals to help out. As you might be able to guess, this is not cheerful or light reading; take care of yourselves <3

( The state of things )

I know this is pretty bleak, and that’s because it is pretty bleak right now. Having said that, I want to give some tools to recognize the language used in these scenarios and some ways you can personally push back.

What it looks like

( Read more... )

What you can do

( Read more... )

____

If you’ve read all of this, thank you <3 This is my personal opinion and others from different backgrounds may have other perspectives. If you have experiences or suggestions you’d like to share, I’m leaving the comments open for now.

stultiloquentia asked: Tell me about a piece of fic that impacted the way you think about fandom, or writing, or your own aspirations.

FYI: This post does talk about an HP fic

So, despite the fact that CQL/MDZS is by far my most-read fandom, I think that the clearest influence on my own writing is The Way Down by lettered.

When I was noodling around with the structure and atmosphere of singing through the dark, I kept going back to the repetition embedded in The Way Down and how it changes throughout the story. That’s the kind of poetic flourish I love using in prose work and I think it shifted my thoughts about what’s possible in fic.

While it most clearly influenced the structure of singing through the dark, that line of thinking was also part of how I built the structure of on a long journey. Throughout that story, I wanted to echo the way poetry often holds different lines and stanzas in tension and builds meaning through sometimes hidden connections.

In a lot of ways, singing through the dark and on a long journey have been my most technically ambitious stories to date, and they both owe a lot to the way The Way Down influenced my writing brain!

ilip13 asked: What are some books that have stayed with you? Why?

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: A part of me is always unflyable, stuck in the climb. I actually was a hipster E. Wein fan, but CNV hit me harder than anything since my first read of A Tale of Two Cities at age 13. The way the story unfurls, the narrative structure, and above all the characters are just amazing.

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery: The Blue Castle is a delightful zinger of a book that definitely rewards rereading as an adult! I first read it as a teenager and it quietly made me aware of a certain kind of longing for freedom. As a bonus: rereading The Blue Castle together was the impetus for the formation of my beloved librarian book club! <3

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor: This is the first book I remember reading about characters whose cultural background was very different from mine. I loved the everyday details of the sisters’ lives (the library! The button game! The broken cookies!) and the warmth and affection that shine out from the story.

I largely did not enjoy the Ladykillers (Coen Brothers remake of the 1955 film) but the scene when Tom Hanks’ character requests “Waffles, forthwith!” at a diner is a family slogan.

Anyway, waffles!

Eggnog Waffles: Made these mostly as written, though I subbed a little whole wheat flour and left out the rum.

Rich Buttermilk Waffles: Also made these mostly as written, with yogurt & oat milk rather than true buttermilk, and subbed some whole wheat flour. I also accidentally added some cinnamon and have no complaints.

Oat Waffles (Crabtree & Evelyn): this recipe made a very nice tender oat waffle that we enjoyed a lot! Would make again for sure.

Healthy Oat & Nut Waffles (Breakfast with Beatrice): Beyond a small nibble, I haven’t actually tasted these yet. I’m curious to see if R will like them, as he’s sometimes dubious about texture combinations.

Late with this, but feel free to ask a question & if you want a specific date! Can be books, libraries, fandom, cooking, crafting, or anything else you're interested in.

Dec 7 - While travelling, what was the nicest and/or most memorable encounter you had?

Dec 9 - Name something you've always wanted to write in fic (ship, trope, plot point, etc) but haven't yet.

Dec 10 - What are some books that have stayed with you? Why?

Dec 13 - Tell me about a piece of fic that impacted the way you think about fandom, or writing, or your own aspirations.

Dec 15 - What are your favorite plants to grow?

Dec 18 - your favorite fried foods

Dec 22 - Which book has made you laugh the most, which one has made you cry the hardest?

Dec 28 - What's one of your favorite memories from this year?

Dec 29 - When did you learn to knit?

Now that we have an additional freezer, I'm attempting to do some more batch cooking / baking, starting with breakfast standards. First up: muffins!

* Gingerbread Muffins from Home Baked by Yvette Van Boven: these are not super gingerbready and mostly have a nice taste/aroma of spices that goes really well with the season. They were the batch I left out for us to eat last week and they are all gone!

* Whole Wheat Apple Muffins from The Kitchen Sink (defunct recipe blog): these are not my platonic ideal apple muffin, but since those involve significantly more time investment, I made these. I added some lemon zest to the original recipe & served them last night at R's board game night / birthday party. Everyone seemed to enjoy them!

* Marmalade Muffins from Crabtree & Evelyn: I've made this recipe a number of times, usually not with actual marmalade. This time, I used the last of a jar of homemade apple blackberry jam.

* Cranberry Sauce Muffins made up / adapted from several recipes: notes below, but the corner I nibbled was very good.

( Cranberry Muffin Notes, for posterity )

TV
- Abbott Elementary s2
- Ghosts (BBC) s2

Cdramas
- groupwatch of Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty finished up last week
- Who Rules the World episode 5
- Word of Honor episode 8

I'm enjoying Who Rules the World so far and spotting Sect Leader Yao from CQL was a trip.

Capture of Cerberus / Incident of the Dog's Ball read by David Suchet, reread

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, reread

Penric’s Fox by Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grover Gardner

Heaven Official's Blessing (TGCF) vol 2

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe, read by the author

Haunted House by M.C. Beaton

Love, Sugar, Magic by Ana Meriano

Deadly Dance by M.C. Beaton

Perfect Paragon by M.C. Beaton

Love, Lies, and Liquor by M.C. Beaton

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, read by the author

Penric's Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grover Gardiner

Kissing Christmas Goodbye by M.C. Beaton

Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones, reread

Busy Body by M.C. Beaton

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, read by Adjoa Andoh, reread

Spoonful of Poison by M.C. Beaton

There Goes the Bride by M.C. Beaton

As the Pig Turns by M.C. Beaton

Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

Affinity by Sarah Waters

I cannot overstate enough that the Agatha Raisin books are not good, but are exactly the kind of thing that makes my brain calm down before bed.

TV

What We Do in the Shadows s4--we both agreed that this season was a bit of a let-down compared to the first 3
Abbott Elementary s1 rewatch & s2
Reservation Dogs s2
Obi-Wan rewatch

cdramas
CQL rewatch
Joy of Life--I got about 5 episodes in and didn't feel compelled to go on, so I'm stopping for now
Word of Honor rewatch
Who Rules the World

Music

Mariee Sioux, especially Faces in the Rocks
Other than that, a fairly typical rotation of my favorites: Sarah Jarosz, Alela Diane, Valerie June, First Aid Kit

Cucumber relish adapted to what I had available (added an apple, left out celery salt, swapped sweet peppers for a jalapeno)
Black Pepper Tofu and Eggplant with cucumber salad
Baked Salmon and lemon sauce with sauteed turnip greens and rice
Milk braised pork chops adapted from Food52 (added sage and parmesan to the sauce) with pan-fried grapes and salad
Steak sandwiches with cabbage and apple salad
Stuffed vegetables adapted from a Greek version (added ground beef, baked with tomato sauce) and served with flatbreads and curried lentil soup
Buttermilk biscuits
earl grey blackberry iced tea
plum upside down cake

Want to make soon
Turnip green and carrot rice
Napa Cabbage Soup
mushroom rice pilaf

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elvenjaneite

August 2023

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Summer Reading, having a...blast?

made & making: 2/6/23

December 2022 media round up

December posting meme #8

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made & making

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Librarians are not okay + what you can do to help

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