Sorry about the downtime issues — the IAM server just keeps overheating. It will almost certainly have to be taken down for a period later in the week to either move the existing internals into an improved case, or the software to a totally new box. I'll post information here of course but I'd recommend that if you have things like phone numbers stored only on IAM that you save them in case you don't see a notice (although I'd recommend that in general anyway).
I made a shrimp nasi goreng today, one of my favorite meals from childhood… I was recently asked how much these meals cost me, I guess in part because there's always decent seafood in them. I buy large shrimp, but I peel it myself of course, so at $7.99 for a big big of them it's probably about $3 a meal (so $1.50 a person) in shrimp, and then the veggies and everthing else, even if I'm lazy and use pre-made sauces, rarely brings it past ten dollars, so $5 a person…
Seems like a good deal to me. I actually ordered food yesterday — sushi — and it was terrible, and of course cost far more, and the wait to get it was much longer than cooking a meal from scratch… I felt really ripped off and probably won't bother with that again.
Crepes are crazy easy (and fast) to make, but given that you can buy them flat packed at the grocery store for $8.99 a pair or something ridiculous, I'm guessing some people don't know that… Here's how I make them…
Flour and milk, 1:1 ratio. One egg per cup of flour. Spice with a dash of salt, some sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon.
Ladel the mixture into a medium hot frying pan that's been buttered (and I butter it between crepes as well to make them nice and buttery-crinkly). Flip it after about a minute and a half (you'll be able to tell by looking at it, at least after a couple tries).
It's an easy recipe to make vegan because it doesn't need a binder (just take out the eggs basically, or use egg replacer if you prefer), and the recipe is really variable in general. If you want lighter crepes, cut the milk to 50/50 with water. Add more eggs or take away eggs. Spice it however you'd like… Some people put butter into the batter directly rather than frying it. Some people add a little baking soda to make them fluffier. You can adjust the flour/liquid ratio depending on how thin you like them. So many ways to make them, but any time I ask “what do you want for breakfast” this is always the answer I get, and they're always wolfed down.
A while back I posted a picture of a bamboo picture frame that I'd made. When I'm done this blind lizard painting, I'm going to finally get around to painting the tikikaiju, so I did a sketch for it this afternoon. Something like this I think…
Saira came over to say hello to Nefarious and bring over the doll her and Michael got her on their trip to Cuba, so we cooked three pizzas for supper. Nefarious made the dough (with some help of course) and we each decorated our own pizzas. Pizza is super simple to make… Not that this is a recipe, but I don't use recipes, especially for something as simple as this. Even if you've never cooked before in your life you should be able to make pizza…
A couple cups of lukewarm water with a little sugar or honey. Some yeast. Let it activate, say four or five minutes. Add some flour. Spice the dough if you want to… today I used sea salt, pink pepper, dried sweet pepper, paprika, chives, and various other things. Or nothing if you prefer. Mix in more flour, switch to kneading when needed, adding more flour as required to make it a solid doughball. Knead it until it's not sticky and if you push your finger into it, the depression mostly bounces back out. Let it rise for a couple hours. Roll it into a pizza shape and put it on a pizza tray, cookie tray or whatever. Preheat your oven to about 400 degrees. Put whatever you like on your pizza. Put it in the oven, preferably on a stone, but no big deal if you don't have one. Bake it for 15-20 minutes. Eat it.
I've been hearing more and more about how Iraq is intended to be a neverending war… to say nothing of upcoming war with Iran, and who knows what with Russia as tensions increase with Russia again flying nuclear bomber missions at the edge of EU territory. Insane. Just insane.
Like I posted a few days ago, if the major nations of the world simply cut back about 25% of their defense budgets, every person could have free food, free healthcare, and free university education without raising taxes. It's mind-bendingly sad and frustrating to think that we've collectively decided that pointless war is more important than food, health, and knowledge.
There's so much wealth on this planet. If we just stopped fighting over hording needlessly large scraps of it for ourselves, squandering the resources in the process on something that benefits no one, every person in this world could live in luxury…
I cooked something a little different today — scallops in a cheese sauce with dill, green onion, and pea sprouts on rice. The cheese sauce was basic — a few tablespoons of butter with a few tablespoons of flour dissolved in it, and then about a cup and a half each of milk and grated cheese (add the milk to the butter/flour over medium heat and stir in the cheese when it starts to thicken), and the scallops were pan fried for a few minutes in a little lemon with the dill, green onion, and sprouts added about half way through the cooking. When finished this was added to the cheese sauce and then that was poured over the rice. Very simple…
Nefarious didn't like it very much because she doesn't like scallops (if it had been just veggies or shrimp she'd have wolfed it down — I might just make it again with broccoli or cauliflower or something), but other than that it was a success. I certainly enjoyed it!
We did some painting before supper as well…
Work is progressing well on my new painting, The Blind Lizard.
Another three or four hours and the base coat will be done. I'm not sure yet what kind of top coat I'm going to prepare for it… I'm probably going to do another experimental glaze because I really enjoy the way they look, even though it's kind of a gamble because you never know if it's going to wreck all the work you've put into it.
Other than that I'm going to try and get to bed early today so I can get lots of work done on ModBlog tomorrow (among other things), having taken a short break from posting there.
PS. Along those lines, I love this song, which as a point of trivia is one of the songs sent to outer space on the Voyager Probe… Good choice, but I wonder how alien civilizations will interpret it — especially alongside whale songs and the other tracks we decided were representative of the Earth's audio landscape.
