(no subject)

[the_rck]

I don’t have a headache this morning. I’m not quite awake, but my head doesn’t hurt. I have no idea why not given that I didn’t sleep all that well. If the headache stays gone over the next few days, I’m going to feel stupid for having emailed my doctors about it, but it had been going on for so very long, that I really think I had to.

We’re running a lot later this morning than I’d hoped. I think it’s Scott’s usual unwillingness to hurry when he doesn’t have to. He’s been up for more than two hours but has only just started doing anything beyond playing XCom 2. He’s made pancakes, and he’ll also take at least another hour before he’s ready to go. I think we’ll be lucky to get out of here by 1:00, and we’ll likely need to get food somewhere while we’re out.

Still, not doing the Apple Store means that we can get all of our errands done in a much shorter time. If we leave at 1:00 and take two hours for all of our Carpenter Road errands, we’ll still have two hours before Great Clips and the pharmacy close and three hours before the library closes.

I’ve been looking at recipes for beans in the pressure cooker. Excluding recipes that call for tomato ends up eliminating almost everything (and one of the remaining recipes called for ketchup, so). Pretty much everything I see that I actually could do and that all three of us could eat is just beans and water which… I can’t imagine that tastes all that great unless one really, really loves beans. I mean, not even salt? I guess I’ll start from the water and beans instructions and improvise a bit.

I never did open that interlibrary loan book that can’t be renewed. I think I may need to schedule some time for reading books every day and not let myself do anything else during that time. I renewed a bunch of other things. I actually do want to read all of this stuff. I’ve just been so very tired and putting all of my available energy into writing.

Speaking of writing, I need to put some effort into bridging the gap between sections that is currently marked with a '[stuff happens here]' note. I’m currently not very interested in what happens there. It’s just that it’s a jump of three years forward to the next section, and I think there needs to be something in there. Maybe not a lot but something. The characters actually change during that gap.

Comments

[dancingdragon3.livejournal.com]

Im glad to hear you dont have a headache today. I hope you continue to feel better and get all your errands done.

Lol, Im glad to know Im not the only one who has to leave those little "add awesome action here". I read/heard some famous writer got away with that being in his summary pitch to his publisher, and they accepted it based on his track record.

Good luck getting some writing or reading done!

[the_rck]

Usually, those notes say '[insert description here]' when I'm trying to write quickly. '[insert fight scene here]' also comes up occasionally because that's something else that I find hard to write.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

What kind of bean dishes do you like when you cook them on the stove, or use canned beans, or eat them in restaurants? Or are you looking at pressure cooker recipes after years of not eating beans at all?

I like black beans with onion, butternut squash, and a soy-based sausage that seems predominantly flavored with garlic and paprika. (You might want to add some garlic and paprika directly if you aren't using any sausage, even though I don't put very much sausage in a pot of beans.) I make it with the canned beans from Goya, rinsed in hot water to rid of the canning liquid, and frozen squash. You might use dried beans and raw winter squash in the pressure cooker. You could probably put a whole onion in the pressure cooker with the beans, and then not eat it. Either throw it away after it has flavored the beans, or put it on Scott's plate.

You could cook white beans with bay leaf, thyme, oregano, basil, onion, garlic, mushrooms, and/or bell pepper. (I don't remember if you can eat bell peppers.) This is enough like minestrone that I think it would be good with parmesan cheese grated on top. Or maybe broad white beans with dill and mushrooms, and add a spoonful of sour cream after cooking.

If you like chickpeas (I love them), you can cook them with cumin, mint, parsley, onion, garlic, bell pepper, or lemon slices. I like chickpeas with spinach, but I think the pressure cooker turns greens to mush. You might need to find a recipe with tomatoes to find the timing, and do something like opening the cooker partway through to put in the greens. Or cook a package of frozen spinach in the microwave in your big serving bowl, and dump your beans + onions + herbs from the pressure cooker into the bowl, so all you need to do is stir.

[the_rck]

I tend to like beans in general-- refried, baked, bean salad (vinegar based), soups.

Scott doesn't generally care for them, so I'm not at all sure why he bought six bags of different kinds. He won't eat anything with vinegar flavoring, so I can't go toward the bean salad end. Neither he nor Cordelia will touch refried beans because of how they look.

Bell peppers (all peppers, actually), black pepper, paprika, mint, oregano, basil, cumin, and a number of other herbs and spices are completely off the table because of one or all of us being unable to eat them.

Scott also has digestive issues that lead to things like me being stuck as the only person who can eat a particular dish that he made as an experiment. (I think I'll be eating the pulled pork with schwarma sauce for weeks yet.)

Cordelia is okay with vinegar flavors and with many teriyaki sauces. Any other sauce we try, there's only about a 20% chance that she'll be willing to eat more than a bite. She always tries things; she just hates most of it. Garlic and onions are sometimes okay with her and sometimes not. Ginger, which Scott and I both like, is never okay.