Impromtu
Reasons I haven't been updating Midnight Crackers as much:
I was busy crafting a small Christmas tree and ornaments out of felt for Simon
I've been binging Jessica Jones
I've been knitting
I've been binging Jessica Jones and knitting
Some terrible performance anxiety left over from my AP English class has made me fearful to attempt writing anything without a solid theme or some crap like that.
But I never liked my AP English class, so screw it... y'all are gonna grade on a curve, right?
Random Stuff About Russia
Food Stuff
I really wanted to do one whole post about food and food only because I figured there'd be lots to discuss... but... uhm... that's not where my head's at right now. Here are a couple of things:
The granulated sugar here is all the lovely sparkly kind you'd have to buy special in the cake decorating aisle in the U.S. and I feel very fancy every time I use it. It made for a lovely coating on the orange-cranberry shortbread cookies I baked for Thanksgiving. They were very tasty, but not what I wanted. I wanted shortbread. What I made was a big batch of mistakes.
You see, at home I usually use Ina Garten's recipe for shortbread, which calls for 3/4 pound of butter (If you can't muster up your own heart attack, store bought is fine). My ridiculous-ass brain never remembers the quantity used, I always just remember to buy a full pound of butter if I'm making shortbread and the error is corrected once I re-read the recipe.
So when I read this different recipe I'd never tried before and read, "1 _____ of butter" I was just like, "Yes, 1 pound of butter. That's correct."
Narrator: It wasn't.
It was supposed to be only a cup of butter and I realized my mistake far too far in to the dough mixing, retroactively added flour and such, lost count of how many cups of flour I was adding because we have a wee measuring cup that's about a half cup? We think? Fucking metric system. Anyway, it went screwy and the dough was very melty and I ended up with... not shortbread. But they were fucking excellent with tea.
And BLESS this fatty Russian butter! It's so yellow and lovely and how will I ever go back to Land'O'Lakes/Kirkland brand?
I WONT. THAT'S HOW.
YOU HEAR THAT, IAN? WE BUY FANCY BUTTER NOW!!
"...K."
Ice cream here is sometimes sold in block form, wrapped in foil, like bricks of cream cheese. Simon gets a kick out of being served cubes of ice cream.
Wildlife
If we needed more proof that I am, indeed, Linda Belcher, I have a silly fascination with the crows here. Some of you might not find that shocking as you may recall that I kept regular tabs on the wild turkeys that roosted in the trees in front of our house back in California. But, like, was I keeping tabs on the turkeys, or were they keeping tabs on me? I was just in my house doing human things and those goofy living dinosaurs would walk up to our windows and hop around on our roof and sound the gobble-alert daily. Yes, I named some of them, what of it? I miss Hazel, Craig, Lady Hazel, and Fifi.
Anyway. We have the all black crows we know very well back in the States, but there are also hooded crows here. The first time I saw one I was all excited, like when the white turkey, Hazel, showed up. "Oooh! An anomaly!" But no! Hooded crows are common here and they're lovely and I want to be friends with all of them.
Also there might be ravens here in the city? Ian and I were walking and we saw a group of FRIGGIN HUGE black birds. I didn't get a good look at them to be able to make the distinction, but I'm going to assume they're ravens and not crows because they were about as big as a chicken and it's NUTS for a crow to be that big.
Weather
We've been getting a steady supply of snow. The snow plows are a little different than in the US. They have a plow in front and a large rolling sweeper brush on the back which actually seems to undo a lot of the work of the plow. Like, swoosh, it's all nice and cleared away and then this filthy roller brush full of slush churns out some disgusting snow slop. To what end, Russia? TO WHAT END?
Another sight Simon and I were amazed by the other day was the view from our apartment windows. We looked down to the five story building across the street to see workers atop the sloped metal roof. They were shoveling the snow off it.
I've never seen that. I've never seen people tether themselves to a ridgepole railing and shovel snow off a roof. I've never seen that.
In Conclusion
This is tremendous content.
I was busy crafting a small Christmas tree and ornaments out of felt for Simon
I've been binging Jessica Jones
I've been knitting
I've been binging Jessica Jones and knitting
Some terrible performance anxiety left over from my AP English class has made me fearful to attempt writing anything without a solid theme or some crap like that.
But I never liked my AP English class, so screw it... y'all are gonna grade on a curve, right?
Random Stuff About Russia
Food Stuff
I really wanted to do one whole post about food and food only because I figured there'd be lots to discuss... but... uhm... that's not where my head's at right now. Here are a couple of things:
The granulated sugar here is all the lovely sparkly kind you'd have to buy special in the cake decorating aisle in the U.S. and I feel very fancy every time I use it. It made for a lovely coating on the orange-cranberry shortbread cookies I baked for Thanksgiving. They were very tasty, but not what I wanted. I wanted shortbread. What I made was a big batch of mistakes.
You see, at home I usually use Ina Garten's recipe for shortbread, which calls for 3/4 pound of butter (If you can't muster up your own heart attack, store bought is fine). My ridiculous-ass brain never remembers the quantity used, I always just remember to buy a full pound of butter if I'm making shortbread and the error is corrected once I re-read the recipe.
So when I read this different recipe I'd never tried before and read, "1 _____ of butter" I was just like, "Yes, 1 pound of butter. That's correct."
Narrator: It wasn't.
It was supposed to be only a cup of butter and I realized my mistake far too far in to the dough mixing, retroactively added flour and such, lost count of how many cups of flour I was adding because we have a wee measuring cup that's about a half cup? We think? Fucking metric system. Anyway, it went screwy and the dough was very melty and I ended up with... not shortbread. But they were fucking excellent with tea.
And BLESS this fatty Russian butter! It's so yellow and lovely and how will I ever go back to Land'O'Lakes/Kirkland brand?
I WONT. THAT'S HOW.
YOU HEAR THAT, IAN? WE BUY FANCY BUTTER NOW!!
"...K."
Ice cream here is sometimes sold in block form, wrapped in foil, like bricks of cream cheese. Simon gets a kick out of being served cubes of ice cream.
Wildlife
If we needed more proof that I am, indeed, Linda Belcher, I have a silly fascination with the crows here. Some of you might not find that shocking as you may recall that I kept regular tabs on the wild turkeys that roosted in the trees in front of our house back in California. But, like, was I keeping tabs on the turkeys, or were they keeping tabs on me? I was just in my house doing human things and those goofy living dinosaurs would walk up to our windows and hop around on our roof and sound the gobble-alert daily. Yes, I named some of them, what of it? I miss Hazel, Craig, Lady Hazel, and Fifi.
Anyway. We have the all black crows we know very well back in the States, but there are also hooded crows here. The first time I saw one I was all excited, like when the white turkey, Hazel, showed up. "Oooh! An anomaly!" But no! Hooded crows are common here and they're lovely and I want to be friends with all of them.
Also there might be ravens here in the city? Ian and I were walking and we saw a group of FRIGGIN HUGE black birds. I didn't get a good look at them to be able to make the distinction, but I'm going to assume they're ravens and not crows because they were about as big as a chicken and it's NUTS for a crow to be that big.
Weather
We've been getting a steady supply of snow. The snow plows are a little different than in the US. They have a plow in front and a large rolling sweeper brush on the back which actually seems to undo a lot of the work of the plow. Like, swoosh, it's all nice and cleared away and then this filthy roller brush full of slush churns out some disgusting snow slop. To what end, Russia? TO WHAT END?
Another sight Simon and I were amazed by the other day was the view from our apartment windows. We looked down to the five story building across the street to see workers atop the sloped metal roof. They were shoveling the snow off it.
I've never seen that. I've never seen people tether themselves to a ridgepole railing and shovel snow off a roof. I've never seen that.
In Conclusion
This is tremendous content.
 | ||
| Guess which one Simon helped with? |
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