It's been another week went by and I'm not even sure where it went. Did some things this week - gardening, shopping, going to work and the feed store, of course. About to make some classic banana bread that is sort of between what I make for 'well I'll eat it anyway' banana flan stuff and madeleines with banana in them.
I made 'mac and cheese' last night with gruyere and mini penne pasta. Esme said it wasn't that different - just pasta and cheese, right? And I reminded her that one has to make a bechamel sauce first with butter, flour and some of the pasta sauce, then add the cheese into it. Mark says if I can make it with white cheddar and American cheese he'll try it.
I made a pot of lentil soup first thing this morning. It was cold, and my stomach hurt from eating a fast food ice cream yesterday - while finishing up our postal route and things were very early etc. I told Esme that I had to think 'what did I eat that WAS NOT food, yesterday, and then .. oh yes, that' So I was up at three am even on my day off, but took a bath and drank more coffee, did the dishes and the laundry - and then my stomach felt better after a bit, enough to cook lentil soup, and then get ready to go for shopping in town.
Frozen grated carrots and ginger from a few months ago, frozen onions, 1 cup or so of lentils, some herbs de provence, some black pepper and salt, and some beet greens - all cooked down and then ran through the blender. I needed that. There is enough for a few more lunches, too.
Now to go throw my floor rugs in the dryer and make that banana bread, before I decide not to as dinner will be coming up - but I've already had the butter and eggs waiting on the counter bringing up to room temperature. I had poked the butter a half hour ago and it was not ready yet.
Chopped up a bunch of yellow summer squash and red bell peppers and onions (all from the store), harvested a few more strawberries and sorrel leaves, checked on other things. Have been studying French and Czech lately on duolingo, with some Greek and Lithuanian (and Czech and French) vocabulary on baba dum.
The banana bread recipe says :
2 cups mashed banana (ha, you'll get what I've got, which is two small mashed banana)
1 full stick of butter, softened at room temperature
2 large eggs, brought to room temperature
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups flour (that seems a bit excessive, we'll see)
1 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp of vanilla (yea, no, we do one teaspoon, this is strong stuff)
and it gives no baking time or temperature, so I'll wing it at 375 and watch it for when it turns brown, stick a fork in it and see if it comes out clean
I've also been playing Mineclonia Minetest, with the Wine Mod and the plant based foods and x farming, 'get comfortable' furniture mod and a few other things - some of the mods clash - Esme says the barrels from the Wine Mod (which also makes cider, beer, rum, coffee liquer etc.) look so out of place. I like the way the barrels on end make something like cabinets or armoires when stuck on top of the tables. The get comfortable thing clashes with how I make roofs on my buildings, so I have had to learn a new way to get around it by putting dirt blocks and then placing the stairs on top of the blocks and breaking them back out from underneath. This has monsters on, and hunger, and the snow biome nearly killed me last night because I fell through the powder snow and didn't know how to get back out with it all falling on me and doing damage -- dig down, and then reach rock, so you can stand on something, and then find a way to get out one direction or the other, always standing on rock and never on snow. Scary though.. like having a whole ceiling of sand and gravel fall on you in original Minecraft.
One of the other things that has happened is the nearby pillager crew has come out with their bannerman to stare at me. I put up a two high fence around my area between their huge watchtower and me, and also lined the other side of it with sweetberry bushes, which they will take damage from them. We'll see if that works.
