Blog Without A Name

Yesterday, I made the second HelloFresh dinner — the seared steak with tomato-olive ragout.  The process of putting the meal together was fun, but there were a few glitches.

First, the provided bell pepper had a very nice mold garden growing around the stem.  I am a wimp when it comes to mold on food, despite the fact that I (briefly) made my living as a cheese trimmer, back in the bad old days.  So, out went the pepper.  Usually, I have chopped pepper in the freezer, but — not yesterday.  Lima beans turned out to be my substitution of choice, and worked surprisingly well.

The other glitch was the steak.  Steve and I are Those People.  You know Those People who go to a steakhouse with a group of friends and order salmon?  That’s us.  On the very, very rare occasions when we do eat steak, we’re not fans of blood; a little pink, OK.  Freely flowing red juices. . .not so much.

I followed the directions provided by HelloFresh.  In retrospect, this was a bad idea.  I should have sliced the steak, seared the slices and then put them in the oven.  What happened was that I seared the steak as a unit, as directed, put it in the oven for the longest suggested time, at the end of which — freely flowing red juices.

Long story short, I ended up doing what I should have done in the first place — sliced the steak and put it back in the oven until it was faintly pink, and, in our opinion, edible.  It was tasty, and next time I’ll know to vary.

The construction of the ragout, even given the Tragedy of the Green Pepper, was pleasant, and easy, and the dish tasted great.

We have one more meal to make — peas and risotto, which sounds yummy.

So, that.

Yesterday, Steve and Sprite did a Skype-in at BayCon, chatting with about ten very dedicated and patient Liaden fans.  Thanks to Jon del Arroz for making that possible.

With the exception of fixing dinner, my yesterday was All About the Writing, and I’ll be getting back to it in a couple minutes.  Today should see the end of the read-through-deep-edit of the second chunk.  Then, comes the reordering of the chapters, and then I can get on to writing new stuff.  Yay! Writing new stuff!

Ahem.

As mentioned around here previously, Necessity’s Child by Lee and Miller is a finalist for the Maine Literary Awards.  Here’s an article about the awards.  We’ll be attending the ceremony in Portland on Thursday.  Which reminds me that we have to write an acceptance speech, just in case.

Speaking of literary matters,  Edgar Allan Poe House is back in business, so if you find yourself near North Amity Street in Baltimore, stop by.

For those following the latest in the long line of Amazon publisher abuse, here’s a link to an essay about Jeff Bezos and the building of Amazon.

And, wrapping up the Link Salad portion of this blog, just how well do you know your brain?

See y’all later.

Today I learned that, if you push in the MPG rod on the dashboard of the new car, and keep pushing, you can flip through several layers of information, including what the average MPG on A is, what the average MPG on B is; how many miles I have yet to drive until I need to stop for gas, and! what my average MPG is Right This Minute.

I have failed to find the back window defroster, but I suspect it’s been rolled into the front window/side mirror defroster, and took a stab at the paddles but failed to bond.  I do so love, love, love having the intermittent windshield wipers, which Argent has, but the little green Subaru lacked.

I also had a nice chat with one of Waterville’s street people, who had found a couple tubes of brand-new tennis balls in one of the trash cans.  She offered to give me one for my dog, showed me the price tag on the bottom of one of the tubes and sociably crossed the street with me, chatting about dogs and cats. When we reached the other side, she asked, slipping the question easily into the chatterflow, if I had a buck this morning.  I allowed as how I didn’t; she told me to have a nice day, and we parted ways.

Inside the gym, one of my acquaintances admired my moose sweatshirt, which she does every time I encounter her while wearing it, and told me, as she also does every time, that she has several just like it, only hers say Ogonquit instead of York Beach.  This time, however, she added new information — that I could find not only sweatshirts, but t-shirts at the “main store” in town and also at the store on the way to Pine Point, next to Jackie-O’s, and “back underneath,” which I gather means there’s an arcade building next to Jackie-O’s.

Now, I have some errands to do here at the house, an appointment this afternoon, and. . .work this evening.

This Just In:  Steve has announced that he will be taking Quicksliver, out to novel length on the Storyteller Bowl model that we used to publish Fledgling and Saltation.  More news as we have it.

So, I’ve been reading the owner’s manual for the new car, trying to figure out what some of these, um, improvements are.  Honestly, some of the differences between the little green Subaru and Kineo couldn’t be vaster if Kineo did, indeed, fly.

For instance. . . The little green Subaru had a PRNDL stick  (Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, Low); the new car has a PRNDM stick (Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, MANUAL), and two paddles on the steering wheel from which I am to manage my manual driving.

Can someone please explain the point of this to me?  I mean, I have what’s supposed to be a Perfectly Good automatic transmissioned vehicle.  Why would I want to put it into “Manual” and then shift it like a motorcycle?  It seems like a really good way to screw up the transmission, in my view, besides being utterly useless, but I’m willing to learn better.

In other news, I have finished my final pass through the DetCon programming survey, and the coffee is gone.  In a few moments, I’m off to the sofa, with a red pen, a blue pen, a yellow pad and the printout of the Epiphany.  I expect, at some point, to acquire Feline Assistance.  And coffee.  Definitely coffee.

Today’s blog post title comes to you courtesy of Warren Zevon.  Here’s your link.