juliannechat

Wednesday

General Context: in Australia - first Wednesday in May

Sleep: Since last posting, one good night, one too short

Publicly shareable things accomplished: Mounted the transponder and cleaned up the resulting mess; replenished our store of garlic.

Culinary high points: I put some of the older celery in blue colored water, and will eat all the ones that turn even a bit blue; no matter how many times I do this, it's still fun

Dark chocolate: bought some, as an emergency sort of thing, but so far have only looked at it

Exercise: forgot to mention that I helped exercise a friend's dog yesterday, and got some exercise in the process; planning to escalate :)

Cinco de Mayo

General Context: still in Australia - but every day is a holiday somewhere in the world

Sleep: Difficult weekend schedule but lots of sleep yesterday, feel almost caught up 

Publicly shareable things accomplished: More financial and admin stuff, sold a stove on eBay, and am finishing an afghan for a school charity. (Each girl in the class knits these diamond shaped things and then "someone" has to put it together.) My attempts to teach essay writing were not as fruitful. Still praying for everyone everywhere. 

Culinary high points: used up all the garlic in the house; feels weird to be without garlic, will be remedying that today.

Dark chocolate: abstained this weekend, but had a few Ferrero Rocher last night while afghan-ing

Exercise: cutting the grass and taking out the trash - still need improvement

Risotto with chicken, bacon, mushrooms...

Risotto with chicken, bacon, and mushrooms

I've often seen risotto cooked but never managed it all the way by myself until tonight. In support of Australian hog farmers (pictured in great distress, holding sweet little piglets, on the front of today's Sydney Morning Herald) I have added bacon to our usual recipe. 

A few chicken breasts

Some bacon

Some onions

Some garlic

Some mushrooms

[All of the preceding cut in pieces, with fat removed if appropriate]

2 liters of packaged chicken stock

3 cups of arborio rice

Parmesan cheese (grated)

Oil of your choice

Seasonings of your choice

Maybe a splash of cream?

In a big pan on the stove, cook the chicken pieces with garlic and a bit of onion; set aside. Then cook the mushrooms; season to taste and set aside. Now put in bacon and the rest of the garlic and onion, and some oil; cook/fry this until the bacon is done and the onion is cooked as well. Pour in the rice and stir/cook until the rice is translucent. 

Meanwhile, bring the chicken stock to a boil. Once the rice is clear, add the stock to the rice mixture gradually, stirring constantly, trying to get the flavour of the stock (and bacon and garlic and onion) into the rice. Stir and cook until the liquid is absorbed, then add some more. When the rice has expanded and turned white again and the liquid is almost completely absorbed, put the chicken and mushrooms back in the pan... [At this point I called my friend and she stirred in a splash of cream and then we served it, with a dusting of grated parmesan on top.] 

May Day

General Context: still in Australia - worrying about all my flu-susceptible friends around the world - and of course humming 'Solidarity Forever'

Sleep: Doing well, going to sleep on time. If I don't get 8 hours at night, I have a nap.

Medical news: I have to do an entire post on the teeth sometime. It was just indescribable. I hope MM was right and that it was millimeters (previous post). Also, as a newly old person, today is my second day on "multifocal" lenses (what used to be called bifocals) because I had begun having problems reading. I love the new lenses (and to save money we used my old frames).  

Publicly shareable things accomplished: [this feature will return next time]

Why did I skip a month of blog updates: With apologies (because this health/sanity check is very important to me, and I'm sorry I fell off the wagon), at the beginning of April I volunteered to be in a health study that required me to take notes every day, and at first the notes seemed to suck up the blog-posting energy, but they aren't a replacement, so I am now doing both. (I'm halfway through the study and I'm in one of three groups and I hope to heck they learn something - but because I've done research like this myself I'm being fairly careful to comply.) The study is at University of New South Wales and all I had known about it previously was that its "roundhouse" is one of THE best places in Sydney to hear a band with a passionate fan who is under drinking age...

Culinary high points: supporting Australian hog farmers (in this time of panic over whether people should eat pork - didn't they pay attention in biology class) by adding bacon to tonight's risotto (next post)

Dark chocolate: I was off it for almost three weeks because of the study (it's so true that writing down what you do changes behaviour a bit, just because you're writing), then backslid a bit, now back to "almost completely off it" :)

Exercise: walking, but still need to do better