Rice Pudding in the Crock Pot

I don't recall eating rice pudding when I was growing up so the fact that I've been craving rice pudding lately is kind of strange.

I made a very small batch of it in the crockpot this weekend and it was great.

Recipe:

1/2 cup medium-grain rice, rinsed
2 cups nonfat milk
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
pinch salt

1 egg
vanilla bean paste

Butter the crockpot liner and add all ingredients except for the egg and vanilla bean paste.

My 1.5 quart crockpot has 1 temperature setting:  ON.  I cooked it for 2 hours, 15 minutes and it was perfect.  When the rice is tender and the pudding is the right consistency, beat the egg and temper it with some of the hot pudding. Add that back into the crockpot and whisk well.  Stir in some vanilla bean paste and serve hot, cold or at room temperature.

Vintage Mister Donut.

I was so excited to find this vintage coffee cup. My very first job was frying donuts at a Mister Donut. I wore an orange apron with an embroidered Mister Donut on the chest.   

Everybody said I'd probably never want to eat another donut in my life after that job, but that didn't happen.

How is it possible that I missed out on this incredible film until now.

soy votive candles (basil, sage & mint).

Melt the soy wax in a double boiler.



First pour.



Adding the wicks.



Expected sinkage.



Second pour, capping them off.




Finished candles.

sourdough starter.

Despite the fact that our bread instructor at SFBI told us not to forget our sourdough starters in the chiller when the 2-week class series ended, I left my sourdough starter in the chiller. That was about 7 years ago.

Last weekend in one of those -I need to do this random thing that occurred to me right now- moments, I decided to get a sourdough starter going to replace the one I left at the school.

I made 2 starters - whole wheat and rye.

Day 1 (whole wheat)



Day 6 (whole wheat)



One week later

whole wheat



rye



They really do have their own personalities. The whole wheat took off immediately, doing its thing and eating me out of house and home and unbleached white flour. The rye started very slowly. At one point I thought it was dead, but on day 6 it sprung to life and now appears to be slightly more active than its whole wheat partner. They're both very healthy and smell like sourdough, which makes me really happy because I have a backup in case one of them goes in the crapper.

At this point, I'm just maintaining them at room temperature with twice-a-day feedings, and I'll keep doing this for another week, at which point they'll go in the fridge for long-term storage.

to hell in a handbasket.

Red beret, blue hair, fabulous.

Bush St. & Scott St.

December 31, 2011 will be the last day of my 365 project. What I've learned so far is that most of my 365 days is spent commuting to & from the office on a packed bus. Or, if I'm not actually on the packed bus, I'm walking to or from it which is really the only time I have to take a photo because it's too busy in the office and not that interesting anyway. Not that commuting is exciting, but I spend a lot of time doing it.

I'm always looking for pictures to take. This project didn't change that. What it did do, is highlight the fact that I want to be taking a lot more pictures, but there isn't time, so I need to figure out how to snap quickly & on the fly.

Yesterday, I was driving from Point A to Point B when I passed this building.

I was on a mission to do 12 other things, but life is short & all the rest of it so I made a quick detour around the block to see if there was a shot.  That turned out to be a little more involved than I expected due to one-way streets, lots of fast street traffic, no parking and nowhere to double-park for a few minutes while I got out of the car and scoped out the situation. So I just took a quick photo of it from my car.

Today I did something I've done only rarely. I went back on foot to try to get a decent shot of the building. I walked all 4 corners of the intersection and settled on the one diagonally across from it.

 

The end result wasn't terribly exciting, but I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere that I'll work out on a mind-numbingly boring bus commute. I also took some shots with the Argus, because I'm still trying to figure out how that camera works.  I have a growing log of Argus F-stops on my iphone.

misc #40.

'The operation was successful,' Dawlish said as though explaining to a child.

I said, ' The operation was successful but the patient died.'

'You mustn't ask for too much.  Success is just a state of mind.  We don't get called in until there has already been a failure somewhere.  The trouble with young people nowadays is that they worship success.  Don't be so ambitious.'

Moved!

I moved! And I love my new apartment!

There is nothing better than change and although I'm pretty exhausted right now, I'm happy. This move happened pretty fast, but that's because everything was (for once) falling into place and much more rapidly than I could process. I had no choice but to just go with the flow.

Graduating from a studio to a 1-bedroom means I'm going to have to buy some furniture now. I'm in the market for some key pieces and at the top of my list is a dining room table that can double as a worktable and storage for my sewing things. I don't have much of a fabric stash and I plan to keep it that way, but I've got to get the notions, thread, tools and all the rest of it stored neatly away. That means saying goodbye to the last of my cake tools because I don't want the sewing tools to have to compete anymore.  The vintage cake carrier and milk glass cake stands in the photo above are staying though!

The building where I live now was built in the 1950s and the owners have kept it immaculate. There are a lot of period details, including an incredible brass door chime. I'll have to take some pictures of all the wonderful surprises in this apartment. It really is true that they don't make them like this anymore and I'm so glad the owners kept these small details intact.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an endtable at lushpad.com. It was there that I found (and fell in love with) this credenza and end table set--

I marked the credenza dimensions with painters tape in the sewing room (the end tables would go in the living room) and it fits perfectly. It was only after sending a link to Dennis the Menace that I noticed it's for local pickup only in Los Angeles. We have friends in LA who could go pick it up, but I still have to haul it up here to SF. I'm still weighing the pros and cons & logistics of making this happen. I figure if not this set, at least I know what I'm looking for now and something else will appear at some point in the future.

I want to avoid going 100% Mid-Century Modern with this apartment, but I think it would be great to own just a few cool pieces in this style.

misc #39.

Since all this business with moving began a few weeks ago, I've been making my way through some music. First-- I finally found *the* apartment and it was:

But there was a bit of competition for the lease & some seriously fancy footwork with the finances to make it happen:

Then I got the lease (don't ask me how I managed that), which meant I was really, seriously going to be moving from the place I've lived for a long time to a completely new place.

In 2 weeks.

Look- change was obviously not coming to me any time soon, so I forced it to happen myself. I'm getting exactly what i wanted (and then some - I can't believe I got this apartment!) but you can't help but reflect on the past a little.

and

Last weekend was music-free because some friends of mine came over and helped me pack absolutely everything up in these boxes which are great by the way. Green moving aside, the boxes are delivered right to your doorstep. They're all the same size and stack up really easily. No putting together with packing tape, no collapsed sides, no broken goods. You just throw your stuff in the box, close the lid & you're done. Why didn't someone think of this sooner? It was a long, exhausting weekend but due to the kindness of friends, we got all of my belongings over to the new place.

The movers are coming in a few days for the furniture. I've dealt with most of the loose ends of utility switch-overs and cable/internet appointments.  It will all be over soon,  so I'm currently in the--

--phase (Government Hooker!) because it's finally dawning on me that in a few days I'll be moving to a place that has TWO parking spaces. I can't believe I'm not going to have to drive around the neighborhood looking for parking anymore. This is a big deal, people & that's not the half of it. The place is enormous with tons of closets, big picture windows & a dining room that I can use as a sewing room.

YEAH.

misc #38.

Apropos of my upcoming move -> Winding down the old to make room for the new is not without its stumbling blocks. Or, as I like to say, dealing with complete and utter bullshit that I seriously don't have time for:

There was a communicating door in one corner of the room and from behind it came the third movement of the Mozart, which was working itself up to that frantic minor-key Turkish routine which I've never thought a good enough ending for such a great beginning; but then that complaint went for just about everything in my life.

misc #37.

She was still at the age when honour, bravery and loyalty outweigh result.

Falafel Burger with Tzatziki.

In a food processor:
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
1 egg

Process till smooth and combined, but not pureed.

In a medium pan:

Saute 1/2 cup of finely chopped onion and 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil until onion is translucent. Add 1 tsp each cumin and curry powder and stir until fragrant.

In a medium bowl, combine garbanzo beans mixture and onions. Add: 1 Tbsp whole wheat flour, 1/4 tsp baking soda and 1/4 tsp salt. Make 4 patties, put on a plate and refrigerate 30 minutes.

In 2 Tbsp olive oil, fry patties about 3 minutes per side (or until golden brown) and heated through.

Tzatziki

1 english cucumber, peeled and pureed in a food processor. Drain in a mesh strainer over a bowl for at least an hour. Mix cucumber puree with 1/8 cup olive oil and add:

1 cup greek yogurt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Argus C3 (1950) - 1st set of photos.

Trippy double-exposure



Top 3 pics are of the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute in Las Vegas. It was Dennis the Menace's suggestion that we go there for pics.

Next two are of the Las Vegas World Market Center which is across the street from the Brain Institute-

Brownie Reflex - 1st set of photos.

After all that, it worked. I can't believe it, but it did.

Composing shots on this camera isn't easy. The viewfinder is distorted, sort of like one of those old-fashioned TVs with the curved screens. I had no idea how much of what I was looking at through the viewfinder was going to show up in the resulting photo and it was hard to gauge distance or depth or whatever the proper word for what I'm talking about is. Plus, you're looking at a mirror image which you have to ignore and your only means of focusing is swaying from side to side or taking a step forward or backward. So these photos are great from the standpoint that there is something to look at, but not great otherwise. Composing issues aside, I'm still impressed. The camera is 70 years old and I was convinced that the amount of film wrangling I did in that changing bag would've eliminated all hope of producing even a single picture.

**Vegas







**San Francisco

Argus C3: 1950.

Here's the Argus C3 aka the backup plan for the Brownie Reflex. According to this, my Argus was made in 1950.

I used both the Brownie Reflex and the Argus last weekend in Vegas. The Brownie Reflex is a simple point and shoot situation, whereas the Argus requires focusing through the rangefinder and determining the shutter speed and aperture setting.

I'm so used to taking a ton of pictures with my digital camera and then deleting the bad ones later, that I wasn't totally prepared for considering each shot carefully to decide whether or not it was worthy of an exposure. This was especially true with the Brownie Reflex. Getting that 35mm film spooled onto the 127 spool was a hell of a lot of work, so I wanted to make sure every shot counted. But even when I did decide something was worth it, it often lost its punch when I looked through the viewfinder (Brownie) or rangefinder (Argus). The end result is that I ended up not taking a lot of pictures in Vegas.

In terms of getting this film developed- I'm keeping the bar really low by expecting 2 rolls of nothing. It's just that there are any number of things that could have gone wrong along the way. Maybe I mangled the 35mm film when spooling it onto the 127 spool; I used all the wrong settings on the Argus; the cameras aren't working properly. But no matter what, it's an adventure and I'm antsy to get this film developed. It stopped raining today and we had some radical clouds--



-- so I took the cameras out to snap off the rest of the film. Then it was back into the changing bag with the Brownie for phase II of dealing with the film. When you get to the end of the roll, you have to spool the 35mm film off of the 127 spool & back into the 35mm canister it came from. This is a challenge, but not nearly as tricky as phase I. You use a bottle opener to lift the lid off the 35mm canister (very carefully. you don't want to mess up the rim because you have to crimp that lid back onto the canister after you get the film spooled back in).

Both rolls of film are now ready for developing.

Cool.

I wonder how many times I'm going to have to watch this video before I get the sleight of hand that makes this look so easy.

Brownie Reflex (1940-1942).

I realized I didn't know anything about shooting film (digital only so far) and, considering how much I love to take pictures, I felt it was high time to expand my knowledge base right now. That's usually how it is with me. I need to figure it out right now, in the midst of a sprained ankle, my car getting broken into, filing my taxes, fighting a bogus parking ticket and shopping for 1-bedroom apartments.  I'm convinced my habit for taking on overly complicated projects I know nothing about during stressful times, is some sort of coping mechanism for the 90%.