Eyes Wide Shut
Mar. 18th, 2013 12:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdStayed up way too late last night, totally forgot there was a memorial service I wanted to go to, stayed in bed till 10, played fetch with Kaan after I made it clear that we don't play with tie wraps and he brought me his pretzel toy. Did some stuff online till 12:30, was falling asleep at my desk so shut down the computer and took a nap. Woke up at about 2 with my left hand on Domino and Kaan just out of reach on my right.
Forced myself to pretend it was a nice day, I should be outside at least a little. Drove to the Mercado, thinking to grab an outdoor seat at Starbucks, but hunger won and I went into Subway and got a pastrami sandwich in honor of St. Schwartz's Day. It was as close to corned beef as they had. Finished 90% of it till it started making me sick. I rarely go into Subway, much prefer Togo's. But I did sit outside while eating, and reading another chapter on the Kindle from The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius which I am enjoying very much. Each chapter is a short story by a different author, and so far there have been no clinkers, not even the one from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanan_mcguire. :-)
And then the Kindle gave me a low battery message, and I trundled over to Starbucks where there was a huge line and nowhere to sit inside or outside. So I relocated to the lesser-known one near Lucky's on Mathilda. My apartment is about halfway between the two. Got a good seat, stayed a couple of hours, kept forgetting to look up from the laptop to check out the eye candy.
Was searching for a convenient mailbox service, but the only one I found had a negative rating on Yelp from about 20 people. I have a bit of a dilemma, and that's that I don't know if the sale of Moto will mean a move for us. Boss' boss says he doesn't think it will, and has been lobbying against it, but OTOH he as put plans to upgrade the labs on hold until after the sale, when he can ask the new owners what they have in mind. Most of what I order online is UPS or Fedex, so just a PO box won't do. I may get one anyway....
Some of the stuff I did online today included ordering a GoPro camcorder, which will be for cats at first, and this summer I may take it on bike rides. There will be no theater projects this summer, I want to enjoy the sunshine.
Also ordered a half dozen bottles of dried kafir lime leaves. I'm tempted to get a small lime tree for the patio, but not yet. Anyway, the leaves are amazing for Thai cooking. Any cooking, actually. Soups, stews, curries, etc.
Emailed the headboard people and told them their canned "pack it up, put a return label on it and bring it to UPS" solution is not feasible. I need the piece of junk picked up and repacked. And I need a 1-hour pickup window.
Did my taxes in TurboTax, and e-filed both federal and state. I may need to amend the cost bases of a couple of stocks, one which split 1 for 7 and then lowered the price by 90%, which makes the math convoluted.
But that's the last time for that - I've sold all my stocks and am now invested only in a small sampling of tax free bonds and cash reserves. If I retired today, that would buy me lunch for weeks.
Today's cooking project was one last go at Tod Mun Pu, Thai style crab cakes. I mostly followed a recipe I found online, with some minor changes. One thing I learned is these need to be fried in oil on high heat, not medium as my recipe book author friend recommends.
1 lb of crab meat
1 dozen shrimp
4 tbsp fish sauce
½ Tbsp green curry paste (more if you want spicy instead of tasty seafood goodness)
2 eggs
3 Chinese long beans
1 bunch of cilantro
4 scallions
1 slice of white bread (or equivalent bread crumbs)
Enough cooking oil to fill a cast iron skillet to 1"
Throw the seafood in a food processor and use the chopper blade to make a paste
With the food processor still running, Add the fish sauce and curry paste
Add the eggs
Add the bread
Continue processing until everything is completely mixed
Transfer this paste into a medium mixing bowl
Chop the green part of the scallions and the Chinese long beans into small julienne pieces
Pull the leaves off the cilantro and discard the stems
Add these to the paste and mix with a wooden spoon. Hand mix, an electric mixer will just jam.
Heat the oil in the skillet for about 4-5 minutes, on high heat. Turn on your hood fan and open some windows and disable the fire alarm if you can. Or make this outdoors.
Wet your hands - it makes the following so much easier - and form bits of paste into a flat round pancake about an inch in diameter and slide it into the oil. It will sizzle a LOT. You should be able to make 6 of these at a time. When they are golden brown, flip them over, and in about 15 seconds transfer them to a paper towel-covered plate. Repeat till all the paste is consumed.
Note: The higher the heat for the oil, the faster these will cook. You may need to lower the heat if #1 is done before #6 is in the pan.
Makes about 3 dozen.
Serve with sweet chili sauce (Thai egg roll sauce)
Ate about a dozen for dinner, while watching Channel 4's I'm Witless News.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Patelco CU - close account
Rehearsals - two more scenes where I am just a warm body.
P/U a delivery at the 7-11 Amazon.com locker
Forced myself to pretend it was a nice day, I should be outside at least a little. Drove to the Mercado, thinking to grab an outdoor seat at Starbucks, but hunger won and I went into Subway and got a pastrami sandwich in honor of St. Schwartz's Day. It was as close to corned beef as they had. Finished 90% of it till it started making me sick. I rarely go into Subway, much prefer Togo's. But I did sit outside while eating, and reading another chapter on the Kindle from The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius which I am enjoying very much. Each chapter is a short story by a different author, and so far there have been no clinkers, not even the one from
seanan_mcguire. :-)And then the Kindle gave me a low battery message, and I trundled over to Starbucks where there was a huge line and nowhere to sit inside or outside. So I relocated to the lesser-known one near Lucky's on Mathilda. My apartment is about halfway between the two. Got a good seat, stayed a couple of hours, kept forgetting to look up from the laptop to check out the eye candy.
Was searching for a convenient mailbox service, but the only one I found had a negative rating on Yelp from about 20 people. I have a bit of a dilemma, and that's that I don't know if the sale of Moto will mean a move for us. Boss' boss says he doesn't think it will, and has been lobbying against it, but OTOH he as put plans to upgrade the labs on hold until after the sale, when he can ask the new owners what they have in mind. Most of what I order online is UPS or Fedex, so just a PO box won't do. I may get one anyway....
Some of the stuff I did online today included ordering a GoPro camcorder, which will be for cats at first, and this summer I may take it on bike rides. There will be no theater projects this summer, I want to enjoy the sunshine.
Also ordered a half dozen bottles of dried kafir lime leaves. I'm tempted to get a small lime tree for the patio, but not yet. Anyway, the leaves are amazing for Thai cooking. Any cooking, actually. Soups, stews, curries, etc.
Emailed the headboard people and told them their canned "pack it up, put a return label on it and bring it to UPS" solution is not feasible. I need the piece of junk picked up and repacked. And I need a 1-hour pickup window.
Did my taxes in TurboTax, and e-filed both federal and state. I may need to amend the cost bases of a couple of stocks, one which split 1 for 7 and then lowered the price by 90%, which makes the math convoluted.
But that's the last time for that - I've sold all my stocks and am now invested only in a small sampling of tax free bonds and cash reserves. If I retired today, that would buy me lunch for weeks.
Today's cooking project was one last go at Tod Mun Pu, Thai style crab cakes. I mostly followed a recipe I found online, with some minor changes. One thing I learned is these need to be fried in oil on high heat, not medium as my recipe book author friend recommends.
1 lb of crab meat
1 dozen shrimp
4 tbsp fish sauce
½ Tbsp green curry paste (more if you want spicy instead of tasty seafood goodness)
2 eggs
3 Chinese long beans
1 bunch of cilantro
4 scallions
1 slice of white bread (or equivalent bread crumbs)
Enough cooking oil to fill a cast iron skillet to 1"
Throw the seafood in a food processor and use the chopper blade to make a paste
With the food processor still running, Add the fish sauce and curry paste
Add the eggs
Add the bread
Continue processing until everything is completely mixed
Transfer this paste into a medium mixing bowl
Chop the green part of the scallions and the Chinese long beans into small julienne pieces
Pull the leaves off the cilantro and discard the stems
Add these to the paste and mix with a wooden spoon. Hand mix, an electric mixer will just jam.
Heat the oil in the skillet for about 4-5 minutes, on high heat. Turn on your hood fan and open some windows and disable the fire alarm if you can. Or make this outdoors.
Wet your hands - it makes the following so much easier - and form bits of paste into a flat round pancake about an inch in diameter and slide it into the oil. It will sizzle a LOT. You should be able to make 6 of these at a time. When they are golden brown, flip them over, and in about 15 seconds transfer them to a paper towel-covered plate. Repeat till all the paste is consumed.
Note: The higher the heat for the oil, the faster these will cook. You may need to lower the heat if #1 is done before #6 is in the pan.
Makes about 3 dozen.
Serve with sweet chili sauce (Thai egg roll sauce)
Ate about a dozen for dinner, while watching Channel 4's I'm Witless News.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Patelco CU - close account
Rehearsals - two more scenes where I am just a warm body.
P/U a delivery at the 7-11 Amazon.com locker
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