they're in trouble going forward

May. 10th, 2026 06:59 pm
musesfool: orange slices (orange you glad)
[personal profile] musesfool
Yesterday, I made both these and these lemon cupcakes. I did both with a whisk and I liked that they didn't require the stand mixer.

The first ones were quite different than a typical lemon cupcake recipe - they had ricotta and honey in them, and I used this fancy lemon honey I had and I think that was a mistake. The cupcakes domed brilliantly, but had a weird aftertaste I did not like and the only thing I can think that could cause it was that honey. I otherwise used sour cream instead of creme fraiche, and olive oil for vegetable oil, but neither of those things should have caused the weird aftertaste. So maybe I'll eventually work my way back to that recipe (chosen because I have ricotta in my fridge that needs using up) and use clover honey and see how they are.

I think the second recipe is going to be my go-to for lemon for now. The batter is a super weird texture - it looked like curdled custard, or maybe bad cafeteria scrambled eggs - but the cupcakes are moist and lemony, though I guess the real test will be how they taste tomorrow, since if I'm taking them to work, I'll bake them on Sunday and bring them to the office on Tuesday, so they have to be good for that long. I made this strawberry cream cheese frosting this afternoon, but it wasn't stiff enough to pipe (not a euphemism) since I only used 2 cups of powdered sugar (and still think it is pretty sweet), so I just dipped the cupcakes into it. (I also did not make strawberry puree, I used 3 tbsps of seedless strawberry jam instead.) The tang of the cream cheese goes well with lemon and also helps cut through the sweetness of the frosting, so it worked pretty well, I thought. Next week, though, I plan to make strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream, which is much less sweet. We'll see how it goes.

I also tried to make homemade bbq sauce but I did not like how it tasted at all, so I didn't use it. Next time maybe I will try something that has no tomato base at all. Regardless, I cooked both racks of ribs and they were delicious and I will be eating ribs all week. I also made my own cole slaw dressing again, and this time I liked it better because I added onion and garlic powder - it is mind-boggling to me that the recipe doesn't include that and the first time around I just let it go but come on. Season your food!

So this weekend was delicious but so fucking messy - I ended up with egg yolk, bbq sauce, frosting, lemonade, and hot pork juice (not a euphemism!!! the ribs cook for 3 hours wrapped in foil and then for the last hour you take the foil off and it is a precarious situation!) on my shirt, but not all at the same time, thankfully.

*

Fast block people

May. 10th, 2026 08:35 pm
schneefink: (FF Kaylee in hammock)
[personal profile] schneefink
I spent most of this weekend procrastinating when I really should have been tidying up and vacation planning and all those things. Uugh. At least I met up with LB and my mom to finally do the pottery painting we gifted her for Christmas, I went for a walk, and I finally made a little bit of progress on the massive pile of fanworks I want to comment on.

A major part of that procrastination was watching round one of MCSR Ranked playoffs season 10, that was at least entertaining.
SpoilersI can't believe Hax is out! Got swept, even! Wow. First time he's not on the podium since he first played in the playoffs in season 3. And Doogile got reverse swept. Some bad luck involved in both cases (blinding to different strongholds from the same spawner?!) but also some bad decisions and that's just how it goes sometimes. Like when BeefSalad forgot to set a bed for a death reset xD
The Infume vs HDMICables match was my favorite, Infume with very clean wins except whatever the fuck that was in round 3 (both failed the zero, Infuse choked a one cycle and HDMI missed a perch), what an End, that was great xD I'm sad Feinberg vs Lowkey had to be postponed, but I do enjoy the "Feinberg finally made it to week 2" jokes.

But I'm definitely not "in" the MCSR fandom, that would be way too time-consuming, I just like the tournaments for the exciting sports emotions. And me putting on various MCSR streams in the background sometimes doesn't mean anything. Oh no.

"Before Dorothy", Hazel Gaynor

May. 10th, 2026 07:06 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Unfortunately I'm not sure I can use Before Dorothy as a 'comp', because it managed to thoroughly get up my nose within the first few pages, in addition to being nothing like my story :-(

In many ways it reminded me a lot of fan-fic, which raises the spectre that perhaps this type of fan-fic is not, as I had supposed, merely incompetent, but is actively attempting to emulate this type of book... :-O Read more... )

The basic concept of the book is fine, and the plot, such as it is, is fine. (Not entirely sure about the Big Twist, but the author had to get some dramatic conflict out of somewhere.) The execution of those ideas is what kills it for me.

If I'd just pulled this book down off the shelf in the library out of curiosity without knowing anything about it, I would definitely have put it back almost immediately, since it doesn't meet the 'read a few random pages, care about the characters and want to know what happens next' test. As it was, I persevered through 384 pages of the stuff -- given that what I'd been reading previously was Rumer Godden, Jack London, and Barbara Hambly, the difference in prose quality was all too apparent. You know you've got a problem when you find yourself consciously having to force yourself to continue reading a novel instead of taking refuge in your Russian textbook!

It also immediately makes me want to start editing it...

Rewrite )

Tulips

May. 10th, 2026 06:11 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
The tulips have finally died down, more or less, and I can now attempt to lift and store them. As suspected, this involved uprooting practically everything else in the trough, including the garlic, a lot of field poppies on the point of flowering, a couple of self-sown marigolds, and what was either camomile or love-in-a-mist, as well as the usual chickweed and forget-me-nots. (Forget-me-nots are a pretty blue, but the flowers are pretty tiny compared with the size of the plant, and unlike the speedwell and ivy-leafed toadflax (also uprooted in the process while in full flower) the plants themselves have quite large and dominant rosettes of leaves that can easily take over a pot entirely.)

Where the foliage had died down entirely it was actually pretty hard to *find* the bulbs, given that they had been planted four inches deep and were in the middle of a mass of roots! Hence the general destruction... Read more... )

Peas

May. 10th, 2026 10:29 am
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Moved the last of the dwarf peas into its probably-final pot -- they are all flowering now. At least one of the sweet peas will need potting on further, but none of those are in bloom yet; I now have three pots of 'saved' and one of 'shop' sweet peas, which was not a deliberate ratio but may reflect the viability of the older seed :-O We shall see whether the first-generation offspring are worth keeping...

Collapsed towel-tomato )

The two tiny chive seedlings were really not thriving in their (guaranteed sterile) coconut compost, so I have tried transplanting them into a small pot of general mix, where they may or may not survive -- they had almost no root. Ironically the original tuft of surviving chives has been thickening up quite nicely, although they are now dwarfed by self-seeded flax in that same pot! The pak choi/brassica has germinated, despite the age of the seed...
svgurl: (mcu: steve/tony together)
[personal profile] svgurl
This is what I wrote for the [community profile] highadrenalineexchange

Title: (you are) under my skin
Fandom: MCU
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 10,046
Summary: Steve has always liked to draw. He finds he likes drawing Tony the most.

gift work (kirk/spock)

May. 9th, 2026 11:16 pm
svgurl: (star trek: kirk/spock tos & xi)
[personal profile] svgurl
[community profile] highadrenalineexchange had creator reveals earlier and this is what I received. :)

Title: Don't change the past
Author: [archiveofourown.org profile] Melime
Fandom: Star Trek: AOS
Pairing/Characters: Kirk/Spock
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 11,566
Summary: When Spock gets sick and the only thing that can save his life is a plant that went extinct when Vulcan was destroyed, Kirk uses the memories that he gained from ambassador Spock to come up with a desperate plan to save him, by visiting Vulcan before its end. While there, Kirk finds an injured Amanda Greyson and must make a split second decision, to save her, or to keep his word to the Guardian of Forever that he wouldn't change anything about the past. Meanwhile, Spock is fighting for his life and might not resist until Kirk returns.

I love time travel fics, especially when it comes to Kirk fighting for Spock! Plus making it possible for Amanda to live makes it even better. :D

the Touch Grass Doctrine

May. 8th, 2026 07:46 pm
marginaliana: A cat typing on a laptop. (Cat + computer)
[personal profile] marginaliana
Things:

--Two joggers went past me the other day and all I caught was the phrase 'the touch grass doctrine.' I love the idea of it being a doctrine, like a religious precept.

--Yesterday in the subway station two girls were brainstorming how to convince a friend of the merits of polyamory - which, fine, you do you, but their proposed arguments were a) when you get tired of your boyfriend you can go hang out with your girlfriend and b) hanging out with your girlfriend will make your boyfriend want to hang out with you both because you're both hot, so he will stop being annoying. This seems to me to be... not the best angle to take. Then again, if you're college age, maybe this is convincing reasoning?

--I actually like everyone from this series of Taskmaster. This seems impossible. Usually there's at least one of them that I want to punch. Very weird sensation. No one to root against.

--Relatedly, I was walking through the park the other day and saw a robin with its dinner and mentally went "I found a worm!" in a deeply self-satisfied manner.

--Wrote another little ficlet:

North (478 words) by marginaliana
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sorted (Website) RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ben Ebbrell/Mike Huttlestone, Ben Ebbrell & Mike Huttlestone
Characters: Mike Huttlestone, Ben Ebbrell
Additional Tags: take it as gen or preslash as you like, pretentious metaphors
Summary: Compasses captivate Mike.

Postscript to my previous entry

May. 9th, 2026 12:09 pm
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
Important things:

* Just as you should not read The Fortunate Fall if you want a romantic Happily Ever After, you should not read What We Are Seeking if you want a book which neatly ties up all its plot threads.

It's not quite in the same league of non-resolution as Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand (my beloved), but.

Assorted important things happen; the initial situation is radically changed; key decisions are made and alliances are formed. How it will play out is something that will clearly evolve over subsequent years and decades, but the book chooses to leave it at that moment of resolve rather than resolution, with the crucial shifts being internal and interpersonal.

* As an author, Cameron Reed may be the most "not aromantic but she believes in their beliefs" I've ever encountered.

Romantic love is a very real thing in her work, but it doesn't sway the moral or narrative universe of her novels in the way we're trained to expect (and the presence of an explicitly aro character in What We Are Seeking is not accidental).

I love this SO FUCKING MUCH.

* John Maraintha and Iren and Laura and Suddharma and Vo and Pirro and Blue Green.

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lobelia321: (Default)
Lobelia the adverbially eclectic

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