some random

 I made adzuki beans from dry beans yesterday, and it took forever, but it was worth it.  I also made sushi rice with the sugar and rice vinegar and white sesame seeds mixed in.  More on the adzuki beans in a minute.

Today, I just made some spicy egg salad, to go with the leftovers from yesterday.  I haven't been out to the garden and really expected it to rain all day today - like it did yesterday - it has been overcast and cold, but not much rain.  Everybody is playing on their games, and I intend to do Japanese on one profile and French-to-Spanish on the other sometime today.

The egg salad : 4 to five eggs, boiled and peeled.  A tablespoon of real mayonnaise, a big squirt of brown mustard, a half? teaspoon of paprika, and whatever other seasonings I wanted today (I used garlic parmesan seasoning this time), and a little extra salt. 

One of our chickens has been laying huge double-yolk eggs - it is one of the green eggs, and it is almost double the size of the others.  Poor girl!  This is the third time we've gotten one of them, and they've all been green, double-yolked and very good inside.

The problem I've had in the past with the adzuki beans was :

Last time, I had let that other bag sit for a very long time before using them, which made it more difficult to bring them back from being older and drier?  I can't really control that, as there is only a single place around here that even sells them and it is an hour drive to Camden.   Because this is a forseeable problem with it, and I had some in the cupboard left, I decided yesterday was a good time to attempt the endeavor, which ended up taking me about three hours total.  

I had not thought about it the night before, and I did not soak them overnight.  This makes them take longer, when I have not thought about it beforehand.  I compromised and soaked them for about an hour and a half on the stove, thinking I would take a look at them and decide if they were going to be cooked in the afternoon or the evening.  I chose the afternoon, and a longer cooking time.

 After you've soaked them (or forgot) and drained the water, then cover them with new water and bring it to a boil, then let to rest for a little bit, and then bring the pot back to a boil and turned to a simmer for about 40 minutes.  If they have not been soaked beforehand, this could be much longer - more than an hour.  That makes for a very long prep time.  

I put a tad bit of baking soda in the water this time for the first boil and rest - which I had read could help break them down.  When I brought them back to the second boil, I put in a teaspoon or so of the rice vinegar, and that turned the water a different color immediately - so something was going on there.  They turned out really good this time - I took one out every once in a while and smashed it on a plate with a spoon until I found that they were well-cooked, then drained and smashed them all up into the paste with a bit of mirin and a small spoon of brown sugar mixed in.  Then I layered it hot into my glass dish and smeared a little bit of salt with a spoon all over the top of it.  Since I am intending to put this in the center of rice bowls for the week - it works really well. 

 The harbor outpost with the railroad started.  I didn't have enough to make powered rail, but by sitting in the cart and hitting the ground it will go up small bumps enough that I can make it from this harbor to the inland place where the road splits to to of the other cities.  It is the first railroad I've made in the game.  The other thing I had to look up was to push the left shift and the left mouse button to pick up the cart instead of just hitting it and making it move.  That took a few tries to get it right!

I had intended to move in Minetest from the small outpost I had made on the sea, near three other farms I had made before that were a bit further inland - two of them which did not have harbors - and then make my way to where the cocoa farm is and see if I can hang around long enough to make it produce.  But I never made it to the cocoa farm today.

I had this bright idea that I would dig down and collect some stone and coal for a little bit, harvest the garden there a few times in between, and then go on my merry way.   And then I broke into a cavern that was a geological wonder - three geodes (huge glass/crystal rooms surrounded by three layers of different material in a spherical fashion, and lots and lots of iron, copper AND tin scattered everywhere.  That pretty much pushed my 'only 100 ingots of iron in the entire world' to over 500 - and now the world is definitely in the 'Iron Age'.  

So I spent most of the morning there, and then played with the railroad a little, as I had made enough iron, and then made a second outpost nearby that was needed on the map between two points, and had a bit of a mining expedition there, too - but not for any of the ores, just lots of different minerals in a huge network of above-ground caves that I explored there.  I ferried a lot of crops and saplings from the one mining place to the other and got them both working very well so that I can spend a good long time there making food, lumber, paper and other things in between mining expeditions.

 

The minimal mining post - all around in these hills (and the ones behind me) are small caves that have a multitude of different minerals in them - I've filled a chest's worth of slots already with small amounts of different things.  Sygilite, Ivite, Howlite, Covolite, Chrysophase, Yellow Travertine, White granite, Black Granite, Grey Granite, Lapis Lazuli, Pyrite, Chalconthite, Crocoite, Jade, Tuff, Pumice, Columnar Basalt, Quartz, Smokey Quartz and so much more.
 

 I also found something called 'glow ruby' and 'glow ruby ore' but there are no recipes using them - and I think it is just one of those hanging loose end 'pretty' things someone put in the game.  They were in the caves underneath the volcanic sulfur environment - although I hadn't meant to dig that far underneath there from the place I was.  There was also a 'mold' environment there underground, and I just poked at it and said 'no thank you' and left all that stuff there.

 I verified that sand, stone and ores all burn at a ratio of 13 of the item to 1 coal.  I don't know why I hadn't thought to check that before, and it is the sort of thing I just check out instead of going to look up.

 

 

Fire slimes!

 

This was me saying 'no thank you' to the fire slime.  I think they are attracted to torches - it would make sense.  I did a small test and held a torch out and it turned towards me and started coming towards me - but stopped when I held up something else.  I put out a few torches and it followed them down the sand - leaving fire in it's wake.  I climbed out of the mine back the way I had come and came back later - and the torches were gone and the slime was back to playing in the lava flow.  I smacked one a couple of times with the iron sword and it didn't faze it, so I ran away.  That worked well on the bears, btw. the iron sword over the stone sword.  I might have to avoid these for a while, even though I'm armored up now.