cooking and running around

I had a huge day doing things in rapid-fire succession up to the point I decided I had probably done too much, and then let myself slowly drift down to going to bed early.  So it's 1:30 in the morning and I'm awake again.  *blinks at self*  

Got up in the morning and made rice for the week - and then took myself off to town to get animal feeds and groceries.  That was a pretty big trip, and a hundred pounds of animal feed that I had been putting off through the weekend (alfalfa oats only cost 12 dollars but they weigh 50 lbs!)....  I've got this thing I do lately where I drive up to the front of the house and then bring the snow sled up to the back of the truck, dump the feeds into it, and push them down the hill with the sled towards the garage.  It works pretty well.  I kind of hate backing up to the garage, even moreso now with the other vehicle down there off to the side.  I'll avoid it if I can... and the sled is a good tool.

Did Japanese and French, and studied Chinese characters.  I'm getting a little better at Clozemaster guessing what the proper Chinese character should be to fill in the sentence - memory from my kanji training I did last year. I wrote up my brown sushi rice article and published it.  I enjoyed some of my rice with soy sauce and wasabi.

Set out butter and played a bit of the game in French.  For some imperceptible reason I'm now playing the 'monsters on at night' mode which I've known was an option for a farm type, but I hadn't done before, and did require starting over again.  This, after I got the meadowlands ranch (which was new) up to the second year. It is tough to play the monsters ranch because you don't even get given a weapon until somewhere halfway through Spring - so you're just getting beat up and have nothing to defend yourself with.  However, fishing down at the sea I got a treasure box that had a trident inside it - and I found out that weapon is excellent for fighting bats that come at you at the farm - even better than the sword.  So my little character is now doing quite well.

Madeleines (again)

375 oven - 4 chicken eggs beat with 1/2 cup little less white sugar and about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar until very frothy, add 1/2 cup (one stick) softened butter and splash vanilla extract, mix again until well combined, add one cup (little less) flour, approx 1 tsp baking powder, good dash salt, combine again with mixer - spoon one tablespoon each into wells in madeleine pan, bake approx 10 minutes until fork pressed on top of a cake bounces back, remove from oven, use spoon to remove each cake from pan (and I put them on a plate like the picture above to stack them until I then place them in a bag with a paper towel to put in the fridge) and if desired, rub the darker sides in powdered sugar (it looks very pretty with the shell pattern) while the cake is still warm, but not hot

I had put butter out on the counter so that I would push myself over the inertia bump to make madeleines.  It is nice to have them and rice in the fridge because they count as real food over the snacks Mark and Esme like to keep - which I find easy to eat as well, and don't need to be eating.  I can taste certain things in them under the sugar that are waxes and oils that I don't really want and wouldn't use in anything I cook.  Real food is better, I just have to make time to make it.  Even so, I've lost some weight in the past months that I didn't intend to lose, and that is okay.  I wouldn't have really realized it because the shorts I wear for my postal route have a belt, and a lot of my house pants have ties at the waist, but the other ones I use for gardening and some of the jeans I have switched back to wearing now are gappy. I only mention it so I can refer back to it in a few months. ((I did finally check the number on the scale, which I do only very rarely because I'll obsess.. and it's 'normal' for me, so that is good, although 'normal' for me is always heavier than the official weight/height chart numbers, because my body insists on carrying around enough muscles to lift a horse and those charts aren't made for someone like me.  They're just average numbers.  I learned that the hard way obsessing over it so many years... and these muscles I have are always needing to be repaired so I understand it from a biological point of view, as well... //these thoughts))

Mark made dinner (spaghetti sauce on garlic cheese toasts), and we watched a bit more of the second season of Rome.  Went out and watered the garden - everything is so dry we're in that late summer stage where things are barely hanging on, nothing at all will start and waiting for the cooler months to put any more greens in.  I had started to knit something while he was cooking, to avoid taking a nap, but told myself after about five rows that my hands and arm already hurt from doing everything earlier, stirring, driving, carrying groceries, putting feed up in the garage, operating the mixer, scrubbing the madeleine pans after baking.. that I was pushing my luck, and needed to stop doing things for the route that I have to do today.

So, route today, and somehow bring the library books back.  Now it's almost 2 am, the dogs have cycled in and out and in and the cats are back out and I should try to get myself back to sleep.