lillilah | Entries tagged with food

Yesterday was better (brain-wise). Today is worse. However, it isn't so bad as sometimes. I finally got the podcast posted, which is one thing off my plate. I also processed the remaining lemons, so the marmalade ingredients are simmering away on the stove. They were getting old, so that absolutely needed to be done. I finished a painting, and now that we have stamps, I was able to just pack it up and put it aside for Joel to drop off at the post office. I will get started on the next one today. I'm behind, but I think I can catch up a bit, as I have plans for some (hopefully) quicker paintings in the near future. * crosses fingers *

Today, I took half the lemons that I picked off the tree yesterday and made them into lemon marmalade today. It took hours to process the lemons, but I got to listen to the rest of the Dresden Files book. I'll try to get the rest of the lemons processed on Sunday.

I like to eat precooked things from cans and jars. I think it is because I'm so often freaked out or stressed out or exhausted that I just want to put my food in my bowl and be done with it. I've added more grains to my meals, but since I mainly eat something like soup, I can usually just dump them in with the rest of the soup. However, I eat some amaranth after dinner (since I don't eat other grains with dinner and want to make sure I have enough carbs to get me through the night), and I don't care for putting it into a pot to cook it every night. especially since it is to make about half a cup of cooked food. A while back, I had started putting raw chicken into jars and then putting them in water in the multivarka (like a fancy rice cooker) and then cooking them for half an hour or so, as if I was canning them. Except, of course, you can't can meat that way, although you can cook the meat that way and then put the jars into the freezer or fridge and have cooked meat all ready in a jar for when you need it with minimal washing of pans. It occurred to me that I could cook the amaranth the same way, and it works! I put the grain and appropriate amount of water into jars, put the jars into the multivarka (although a pot on the stove would work just as well), and cook it for half an hour. The amaranth is cooked, and I just put it into the fridge to take out when desired. (Obviously, it will eventually rot, so I don't leave it in the fridge indefinitely.) I'm so pleased with it!

Well, it seems that either I quickly got used to walking on the treadmill, or else having Joel home was enough to settle me down. Generally, when he isn't home, I'm more wound up, eat everything in the house, and stay up an hour or two later than I normally would. So, I'm guessing that it was the lack of Joel. While it isn't awful, it is nonetheless a bit like I'm a housepet that chews the furniture when he is away. It is annoying.

In other news, I started some apple cider vinegar fermenting. I had saved up a bunch of apple cores in the freezer and finally got myself together to put everything together. Yay! We'll see if this actually works. Right now, all the frozen apple bits are floating, which isn't what we want. I'm going to have to find some way to weight them if they don't sink soon.

Joel made roasted pumpkin seeds again. I think he soaks them in a brine first, then roasts them, then sprinkles salt and pepper over them. I think they taste like popcorn. Joel, who actually can eat popcorn and has done so within the last decade, doesn't agree. Anyway, for some reason, I'm just absolutely starving, so Joel gave me a bowl of seeds and I immediately ate all of them. I feel a bit odd now. * laugh *

I like eating turkey from a whole bird that has been cooked, but I don't really care for cooked turkey breast made from sliced raw meat. It isn't just dry. There is no flavor. It is just meh. This year, though, all that Joel could find was sliced raw turkey breast. I looked for recipes online, but as usual these days, I was only finding sliced turkey breast from a whole, cooked turkey. Not helpful. So, I went to the AI, and it came up with a recipe. I brined the meat, then dried it, and cooked it on a bed of herbed, pre-roasted onion, celery, and squash with some water in there too. I only cooked it for a little bit, as the meat was really thinly cut. It was delicious. As always, I understand why people don't like AIs. However, I really like that I can say, "I have .63kg of meat and a 2 liter jar to brine the meat in, can you change the quantity of brine to fit in the jar?", and it will do so. I also ate some banana pudding, just like the pudding I made for Halloween from chia seeds, banana, and coconut milk. It was tasty and fun to eat. Also from an AI recipe. And just like with this recipe, I had looked online and not been able to find what I wanted. With the AI, I explained my constraints, and it came up with a solution.

I finished the monthly budget. One less thing that needs to be done. I said I would make some banana bread for a party tomorrow, so I need to do that. I will be happy to have done it.

The AI and I worked on recreating some herbal tea that I liked decades ago, but the roasted chicory root that I got was too bitter. It turns out that I need to grind it up with the mortar and pestle. I can do that, but not today.

I spend a lot of time last night and this morning going over podcasts from Portuguese public broadcasting and have found some that are sort of comprehensible. Over time, I should figure out what I'm hearing. I also worked on talking to Claude.ai in Portuguese. At first, it didn't work, because my headphones were plugged in (don't know what the issue was), but unplugging them fixed it. My pronunciation is okay, but not good enough to not occasionally cause problems for the speech to text program. However, that shows me my problem words. Even just basic ones, like "yes" and "I" aren't quite right, so I'll work on fixing that.

Now, I really must go vacuum. It has been forever.

While I'm sure you can find all kinds of raisins in the US if you look, I mainly remember "raisins" and "golden raisins". I really didn't like golden raisins. Regular raisins were okay. Today, I was discussing with a friend the different kinds of raisins here and thought I would write about it.

I started considering eating raisins, because sometimes my blood sugar is too low and doesn't go up easily (no, I can't just eat a bunch of sugar, as that will make my blood sugar spike and then crash). I especially have trouble with low blood sugar when I'm trying to lose weight, which I am doing now. So, I asked Joel to get me some raisins, and he came back with a bunch of different kinds for us to try.

Type of raisin	Taste	Texture	Smell
Sultana preta	Rich and complex	Slightly granular	Dark and chocolatey
Sultana clara	Mild and raisiny	Slightly granular	Little smell
Sultana dourada	Like dried pineapple	Very granular, like dried pineapple	Like dried pineapple
Uva passa Moscatel	Rich and fruity	Plump and chewy	Rich and complex
Uva passa	Like fruit leather	Varied, some moist, some leathery	Like dried figs
Uva passa dourada	Like dried apricots	Plump and chewy	Light and sweet with slight notes of rancid oil

Joel ate most of the bag of sultana dourada (sultanas are all made from sultana grapes) in an afternoon. If someone had blindfolded me and told me that they were dried pineapple, I would have believed them. My least favorite is the sultana clara, because it lacks the interesting features of the others. It is super fun, though, to get to taste all these different flavors. Also, they are pretty cheap, which I really like.

Well, I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to nettles. When I eat my breakfast soup, I immediately start coughing and sneezing. When I stop eating the soup, the coughing and sneezing goes away. I'm not shocked that I'm allergic to them. I'm allergic to nearly everything else, after all. Now, at least, I can focus on pulling them out of the garden without feeling guilty about not eating them.

I'm feeling moody again. I knew I should have made some fried lentil things to eat. Wait! Stand by.... Okay, now I'm back. Instead of whining about not feeling well because my calories were too low, I went and made some fried lentil things. They are so delicious that I want to eat a lot more, but last time I did this, the effects lasted several days and I still managed to lose some weight. So, I'll control myself. Anyway, today was pretty good. I painted a planet (Mars) into my closet box starscape, did a bunch of writing, and generally dealt with things that needed to be done. Tomorrow, I'm going to see my regular doctor to see if I can get flu and Covid shots. While it is definitely good that we are getting a ton of rain, I'm hoping that it won't rain on me too much on my walk there.

Well, two different friends pointed out that reading a book that I dread is not a way to be happy. I took this to heart, read the summaries of the books on Wikipedia, and moved on. It was absolutely the right choice. Now, I am listening to a ridiculous mystery that is part of a long series that I very much enjoy and am much happier. Thanks, friends!

In wonderful news, Joel went by a Bangladeshi bulk foods store and found that they have both split peas and red lentils for very good prices. So, now, I can stop worrying about finding a source of peas. Phew! I still need to order baking soda in bulk, bu it is much less of an emergency.

I went to see a doctor today, and that went quite well. My goal was to tell the doctor what I wanted to do and not ask permission for what I wanted to do. I did so. It was good. Tomorrow is the endocrinologist, so hopefully that will go well. * crosses fingers *

I send birthday cards to friends, because it is fun. However, the actual buying of the cards is not the fun part. So, to make it more fun, I am going to paint the cards. I will start by just going through a bunch of online tutorials, because that will be something fun to do. After I have played around with that for a bit, I think I'll try painting specific things. One thing that I would really like to learn to paint is cute little animals. I took a cool sunflower painting tutorial a few years back, so maybe I could pull out those skills again. And, of course, skies and clouds, starscapes, and forests are all other options too. If I don't find the tutorials I like on YouTube, I could go back with SkillShare for a while, since they had some great tutorials. Anyway, I have plenty of time before I need to think about that.

I'm still trucking along. I kind of remember that the last time I tried taking magnesium it made me dizzy. I think it lowers my blood sugar. It is also calming me down, though. At least, I haven't experienced any really serious panic flareups (although when I start feeling dizzy, I get a bit anxious). Anyway, I might need to eat more lentils. Every once in a while, I go through one of these periods where I have to eat increasing amounts of apple. Eventually, I give up an increase my lentils. I could totally do that, unless I can come up with something else to eat instead of split peas, maybe. I think last time I tried beans, it didn't go well. Maybe chickpeas. I could try. Hmm, maybe not. ChatGPT says that chickpeas are related to beans. Supposedly, I am allergic to beans. I hated pigeon peas. I guess I could try oats again. It would obviously be super convenient. I would have to do it on a day that I will be able to stay home all day, in case I break out in hives, have some other kind of allergic reaction, or go nuts from all the carbs. Maybe I could try it after next week. On the flip side, I do love lentils, so I would be fine to eat more.

Today, I ended up with more free time than expected, so I spent some of it watching videos on painting. I got some good information on blending colors and how to mix human skin tone colors. It is much more complicated than the colors I use for trees or a landscape, for example. I'm guessing that this is because we are _so_ familiar with the colors of human skin.

In other exciting news, this morning I was thinking about food and decided to try and make a lentil crust for my dinner fish. I just put about 1/4 cup of red lentils, some black pepper, and salt into the coffee grinder and ground it up. Then, I poured it onto a plate and pressed the fish into it before frying it on a hot pan with lots of olive oil. Previously, the fish had stuck a lot (when there was just fish and oil). With the lentils, it didn't stick at all. I have no idea if it is the lentils or if I did a better job of preheating the pan this time. However, so far, I plan on doing this when I cook fish. (My intestines could still rebel, but so far, I'm okay.)

Still no news. The buyer's agent is going to call the inspector tomorrow to find out what is going on. Probably they are just slow. However, I worry that they didn't get the money (the systems are different here for paying).

Today's big accomplishment was ordering a bunch of food to be delivered tomorrow and the next day. The place where I normally get my split peas doesn't have them right now (no idea if this is permanent), so I had to hunt around to find another place. I finally found one, which is more expensive but not twice as expensive. However, you needed to buy 50€ worth or they charged you a lot for delivery, so I bought like 20 pounds of split peas. That will last me about 2.5 months (Joel guessed 3 months, so he was really close).

Friends gave me some Portuguese poetry recommendations, but my poetry database hasn't been updated in a while, so it is still suffering from the PHP8 upgrade blues. It is also using old functions, so it is time to upgrade it (I'm at a part of the address book upgrade that I don't find fun, so I was procrastinating on that anyway). I haven't looked at this code in quite a while, so I'm not sure how outdated it is. Luckily, the stuff I am doing is pretty simple, so I don't think it will take tons and tons of work. I think.

I have to laugh at myself. I was kind of worried, but it turns out that I really like the taste of ground flax seed, which I should have known, as I used to eat it all the time. It is kind of woody/grassy. Also, it is full of calories, so I'm hoping that eating 10g every day will make up for taking out the cheese without making me gain weight. Of course, I'm fine with eating less of it, so if I do start gaining weight, I can cut back. Of course, this means I need to get more organized and start weighing myself again, although honestly, it seems like if my blood sugar is over 5, then it means that I'm gaining weight. So, probably, I'm doing okay right now. Still, I should check. It would be easier if it wasn't so darn cold here. I'm not uncomfortably cold, but I'm also wearing a long sleeve shirt, a hand-me-down cashmere sweater, and my puffy bathrobe. And a scarf. Anyway, I don't think we have much more than a week left of this chilly weather. I hope. It is chilly, and the outside world smells like wood smoke at night.

In other news, Joel has my cold, so we're heading back to bed shortly. There is something I meant to add to my to do list, but I can't remember what it was, so it will have to wait. I did get a bunch of little things taken off it, though, which is nice. Of course, there are always other things that I need to work on. Hopefully, I'll manage to get some of those recurring things worked on tomorrow. If nothing else, I have gotten permission for a bunch of songs for my podcast, so I have several months of podcasts planned. I'm really hoping that I can get enough potential episodes organized that I will only have to ask for permission once a year (although, that would still mean sending out dozens and dozens of requests). I had planned to calculate how many requests I send out vs the number of positive responses that I get, but I haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I will at some point, since that would make it easier (maybe) to figure out approximately how many songs I need to request. I also wanted to calculate how much music I listen to and what percentage of those songs I think aren't something I want to hear again. However, that would require more organization. I wrote out instructions for dealing with my top 100 songs of the year list. Perhaps I should do that for each batch of songs I listen to. I could put all the songs into a dated directory, write down in the database how big the directory is (or how many files are in it? or both? or how many songs I put in the playlist of songs that I will listen to plus how much space they take up? Probably all of the above.), and then when I have finished with my weeding, I could write down the numbers again. It wouldn't be totally accurate, of course, since there are lots of files that come with an album of music that aren't music (although with the number of songs in the initial playlist, I would have a better idea). However, if I knew that I needed 13 GB of music to get approximately 250 requests, which would result in approximately 70 positive responses, which would let me make 12 podcasts of 5 songs each (plus a few that didn't go with the other songs and would be carried over to the following year), then I would know if I only have 9 GB that I needed to go download some more songs. Or if I had only 150 songs that I was planning on requesting, then I would need to work on finding more. These numbers are just random ones (although I do have about 13 GB of songs in each batch). Hmm... I really like the idea of having this be more organized. I'll have to work on it.

We've been waiting for news on our visas, but so far, we haven't heard anything. I emailed our immigration consultant, and she said that it is taking more like four weeks right now, instead of three. We're going to wait until it has been four weeks (next Tuesday), and then we'll email Portuguese consular services to check to make sure that we didn't miss their email.

In other news, I tried out shirataki noodles, which my brother in law recommended. They are basically just fiber. No caloric value, I think, at all. The benefit of them being just fiber is that I can eat them, because they won't raise my blood sugar. Of course, if you are looking for something with flavor, you are out of luck, as they don't have any. However, if you want something that is like a noodle but you can't eat any grains, then this is pretty good. I didn't have any unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects, so that was totally a win. I'm not going to eat tons of them, as they are expensive. However, they make a nice treat. On the flip side, I tried pigeon peas, and they were neither tasty nor without gastrointestinal side effects. So, I won't eat any more of those.

Lastly, I set up the NAS (network storage), and it seems pretty good. The assembly wasn't bad, although I prefer the hard drive bays that don't use screws. The configuration took a while, but it wasn't hard at all. Now, I have the thing copying data from an external drive. I can access the files from a PC and from my phone using an app, which is pretty nice. Supposedly, I would be able to access the files from anywhere. So, yeah, that's pretty good. I'll disassemble it to get it back to Portugal, but for now, it is nice to have easy access to those files.

I had thought about running a Minecraft server on my NAS, but my new plan is that I will run it on my home computer once the new Lord of the Rings mod comes out. There hasn't been any work done on the mod (as far as we know) since Russia attacked Ukraine, though, so who knows if it will ever come out. If it does, it would be great to play with our friends (where this means that I will build elaborate underground lairs and then give tours).

Yesterday, I realized that I could can vegetables to give myself more food options. I also asked a friend how his family preserves cabbage, since that is another option for me. It turns out that they make sauerkraut, as I had planned on doing. This morning, I came up with a list of all the things I can put in jars. Then, I got excited and ordered a pressure canner. It won't get here for a week or two (I think. The lady spoke really fast, so I was pleased that I understood as much as I did.), but I have high hopes for all the things I'll seal in jars. For the moment, though, here is my list:

As we approach the time when we may need to isolate ourselves from the infected (or if we end up being the infected), I've been thinking about what the hell I will eat if I can't go to the store for two weeks. I've come up with a plan that involved lots of pea soup and lentils, miso soup with dried mushrooms and seaweed, and some emergency foods, like whey protein. I should be able to use cabbage, root vegetables, and other winter vegetables, like squashes - if there are any at the store, to replace some of the other fresh vegetables that I eat. However, I realize now that I'm skipping two important things:

First, I will have at least a week when the fresh vegetables that I have bought will still be good. For cauliflower and cabbage, especially, I really should have plenty of time to eat them fresh. If I do a better job of storing the cucumbers, they will (obviously) stay fresh longer. So, it is time to get on that.

Second, we have a ton of jars here, and there are tons of traditional ways to preserve vegetables, even the ones I eat. I would like to try making some kind of pickle relish, sauerkraut, and Japanese pickled vegetables. Oh! There seems to be a kind of sauerkraut with beets! I don't love beets, but why the hell not try it. So, clearly, I have way more options than I thought. Tomorrow, I'll get to work on this, so that I can have a shopping list ready for Monday.

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Entries tagged with food

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No more nettles

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June 2025

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