ceruleancorvid

I’ve been cooking a lot this summer, and I thought I would document some of it before I go back to school and lose kitchen access in the fall. Here’s the first update!

A lot of the recipes I make come from Deb “smittenkitchen” Perelman, whose blog I love because of her focus on reproducibility (great for me, a lazy perfectionist) and the fact that she has a lot of recipes that are good for my attempts to eat heart healthier (veg focused, grain salads, etc etc) among the wide variety of things she posts.

Lately I have fallen in love with these black bean tacos. Which is weird, because her commentary on them is basically “eh, they’re ok, they’re pretty good, they’re not amazing.” But, add some garlic to those mashed beans? Some pickled red onions maybe? They are very good. I just have to get a couple cans of beans, some tortillas, and some Trader Joe’s coleslaw mix, plus the ever-present green onions that are always slowly dying in our veggie drawer, and bam!! Filling and crunchy and good. I have many ideas for riffs on these.

Pictures!

catskill trip failures: was sort of hoping my chrysalides would come out while we were up here bc it seems like a nicer place to live, but they remain stubbornly opaque. adventure sync got turned off for a while so half my hiking didn’t count towards egg-hatching. did not make the pear-chocolate cake i really wanted to try because we lacked 1) baking powder and 2) good pears

catskill trip successes: read two more books of the raksura (please tell me there’s fanart for these!), plus the luminous dead which i recommend if you like the idea of Fraught Gay Sci-fi Caving Horror, plus borrowed and selectively bookmarked two cookbooks. walked a lot. saw many cool rivers, trees, butterflies etc. did a jigsaw puzzle with my family and also talked to them wayy more than when we’re at home and busy. cupcake went on her first off leash hike! also, we met a delightful cat at the catskill mountain country store. all their cats are named stuff like Ivan Terrible and Pebble Latte. this one, for some reason, is named Mexican Hat.



miss hat let me pick her up and purred. when she saw the dog she hissed, but then she came on the porch anyway and flopped down under my dad’s chair.

like all the employees came out to fawn over cupcake, which was wonderful.

also i found a couple geocaches, but then while going off by myself to look at the first twenty feet of a trail for the last one, i tripped over my skirt and stumbled directly into a deep muddy stream. RIP.

ETA: realized i maybe should clarify the chrysalides remark, since this is not in fact tumblr! basically my mom brought me three swallowtail caterpillars off a customer’s parsley plant and i’ve been raising them. their names are martin, jasper and beatrice, and at one point i could mostly tell them apart, but after eating a shit ton of parsley, pooping constantly, going into Escape Mode and then setting down to make their chrysalises, they now look identical. i brought them upstate with us in case they eclosed in this four-day period, but no such luck. all i can ask for is that it’s not WHILE we’re driving home!

in unrelated news, the fanworks for secret samol 2019 (a FATT exchange) are out, and while i didn't participate, i have been delightedly rolling around in them for the last couple days. special recommendations for the third death of hella varal, aka "knight shit but gay and weird" by dearest friend sarah luckydicekirby, and hell, overall, a five times helladelaide fic full of absolutely delicious dream sequences. *3*

 I have not posted a lot lately because I went back to college and it's wild! Like, good, but also I vastly underestimated how long it would take me to write up these geometry proofs and I've been doing a math marathon literally all day and have covered >15 sheets of looseleaf. But... it's kind of fun! Even though it's due tomorrow! 

So I'm taking a moment to eat chex mix and check in with y'all before I return to staring at these trees of max degree 3 trying to do induction at them. 

(I feel a little bad because two people from my class are literally downstairs from me trying to tackle these problems, and I think I'm significantly further along than them, and traditionally what I would do in this situation is go help, but I am restraining my tendency to do unpaid TA work because I got behind on my own work and I'm already very tired.) 

i made this for the second day in a row, cuz i had scallions left over, and it’s … tastey. thanks deb. i’m a sucker for “”bowls”” and also for crispy fried eggs ala smitten kitchen (although the new frying pan stymied me and the yolk was harder than i’d like.)

( food picture )



i’m pleased because this is the first time i’ve felt like i’ve had the energy to cook in like, months. and i might as well get some cooking done while i can! no easily accessible kitchens at college. ): it was so much easier to cook* at boarding school, which seems wild because i was FOURTEEN

*which here means, watch my more motivated friend cook and occasionally listlessly chop a vegetable, but there WERE cooking amenities, is my point

 Today's mood is: exasperated about administrative incompetence in re returning to college. You would think the person whose job is to advise me could at least read my email instead of answering different questions than I asked, but, no. Anyway, instead of complaining too much about that, here's a 

CAT RUNDOWN

(with pictures all taken today, so they're not the most flattering portraits.) 

THE SUNROOM GANG / THE OLDS

1. Abba. Clingy baby; nicest cat in the house, will come sit on your lap instantly after you arrive. May also turn her head so your fingers go into her eye socket, which is unsettling. (She had surgery about a year ago, for cancer in her eye, but she's recovering marvelously.) Source of alarm when she drags herself onto an unexpecting lap with claws fully extended. She and Emma are Abyssinians, and sisters, or so we were told; they're both hot messes because of their Bad Purebred Genes. 

2. Emma. Tiny, skinny, unexpectedly pointy, blind as a bat, will walk directly in front of your feet as if on purpose. She started the Sunroom Gang by being confined to one room because she kept getting lost in the house at large and Yelling. She mostly hangs out in her basket, but will happily sit next to you and get scritches, and goes NUTS for baked goods. I don't know why. Anything with butter. 

3. Romeo. A horrible gross old man who I love. Thinks he's a baby and WILL try to suckle your clothes. He's so handsome and so, so dumb. He also has a huge terrifying hiss which he deploys at anything that startles him, inc. his own tail, a toy, a person sitting down two feet away from him on the couch and very slightly jostling him. He's also on cat anti-anxiety meds* to stop him from getting stressed out and spraying in the house, which unfortunately makes him even dopier. He and the dog chill on the couch together because they both love my dad, and they're both so chill that my dad has a whole collection of adorable pictures of them lying on each other/etc. 

THE BEDROOM GANG / THE SHY CATS / THE FOSTER FAILS
These three were all adopted in similar circumstances: my mom had just started doing cat rescue but didn't have the contacts yet to find homes for cats that were still skittish and weird. They will all run away if someone walks towards them, but if I lie down on my parents' bed they'll all run over and start rubbing their faces on me immediately. 


1. Yuki. Literally showed up on our literal doorstep one day, just a tiny albino kitten (she's got the blue-red eyes and everything) that, okay, to be fair, I think my dad and I were the driving force in adopting. Named by me in my weeb phase; her full name is Yukihime. Known for: habitually grimy face, small head big body, looks like opossum, hides under blanket. She's also a shoe fetishist. 


2. Snickers. Puffy baby. Likes the catio the most of all our cats and can often be found voluntarily chillin outside, even in the winter. Known for: round. She and Gremlin are frenemies and wrestle constantly in the hallway while waiting for dinner. 


3. Gremlin. She's really pretty and this picture doesn't do her justice! She was adopted while I was at boarding school, and my dad painstakingly socialized her into loving him, and then I came home and stole all her affection and now she Only Loves Me. If I sit down in the bedroom she will squeak excitedly and then leap in between me and whatever other cat I might be paying attention to. Very sweet and soft except that she LOVES to bite my fingers right when I think we are getting along great. 

MISCELLANEOUS OTHERS

1. Nicky. Distinguished by her square, boxer-y face, constant murderous look, actual extreme sweetness (except to other cats), and the fact that she was almost dead when we got her and now she's mostly healthy and just keeps getting denser and denser. Not bigger, just. Heavier. Earned the epithet "greasy grandma" from my friend because, uh, well. It's accurate. I have to brush her a lot. When she was first here and living in a crate she would "vacation" in my usually cat-free room, so now she takes any opportunity she can get to come sit on my bed and purr very loudly. 

2. Poncho. Ankle-biter. Devil cat. Horrible gremlin. I am trying SO hard to be her friend but her behavior is VERY hard to decode. Lives in the basement because she is not fit for society; frequently escapes and runs around causing chaos until she sees the dog and runs back downstairs. 

3. Hamilton. Round smug ball of outdoor cat. We trapped him and got him fixed, but haven't gotten him inside. He frequents our house and at least two others on the block for food, but likes sleeping in the cave my mom made him out of this deck chair. Does NOT like when I unexpectedly lift up the blanket to look at him (he only lets her touch him, and only sometimes). Unexpectedly good pals with the dog, and often runs up to her to rub on her when she goes outside. Oh, he also used to be Snickers' "boyfriend" (according to my family) because they would headbutt the glass door and roll over at each other. 

there are also some fosters but i'm not including them in this post because they're temporary. ok gotta go eat dinner good night



* his cat anti-anxiety meds are actually just human prozac; my mom jokingly suggested i should change my prescription so we could get my meds from the vet too. 

I was trying to get a picture of Romeo holding his mouth open (he has a bit of a cold, and whenever he breathes through his mouth he looks SO shocked) and instead I caught him mid-very slow open mouthed sneeze pointed directly at me.



Meanwhile, Nicky had some catnip and ascended to a higher plane, or at least her head did.

TODAY: I spent my Sunday in a weird way, i.e. went into the city and saw a concert performance of Monteverdi’s 1610 vespers (or, this is what i was told it was.) It was my friends’ choice, and the singers’ voices were beautiful. I did almost fall asleep because it was hypnotically slow and repetitive and I do not speak Latin. But it was still a lovely day.

Got distracted before AO3 came back up and forgot to write the rest of this post! 

( the unbeatable squirrel girl )

( baru cormorant )
( left hand of darkness )

( murderbot diaries ) 

( charm of magpies )

( oceans 8 )

( machineries of empire )

... you’re reading some weird as hell but unexpectedly good fic and you’re scanning the kudos trying to decide if you’re brave enough to leave kudos logged-in when you suddenly see someone you know



except instead of “same hat” it’s like “same weird porn” or “same RPF set in stardew valley”

Sarah luckydicekirby has also described this feeling as meeting a fellow traveler in the weird but cozy cave system of AO3 ... which is evocative and a nice image to go to sleep thinking of.

Here is an excerpt from the Goblin Emperor, which might have incorrect punctuation or formatting because I only have the audiobook on hand right now and had to transcribe it, but which I love very much:

( csevet making a point )

(wipes away a tear) maia/csevet good