Not very fond of bulldozers, thank you.
July 30th, 2003
I am feeling so virtuous today. I have been tackling portions of the house which have become giant dumping grounds. I will freely admit that sometimes all I do is move all the accumulated crap to another location, which will then be "sorted later" (my Mum suddenly looks up from her house in Almonte and is seized with the urge to guffaw and doesn't know why) but in most cases I have really made an effort to get rid of clutter and make things have their own proper place instead of being thrown around in the nearest convenient location.
Yesterday, I finished organising the Niklas shelving unit from Ikea that sits in between the two computers. Before, it had become a giant stack container. It was festooned with paper, dust, stereo equipment, the new printer, game CDs, game manuals, my graphics tablet, you name it.
Now it is gorgeous. I went through all the papers and recycled the non-important ones. I put things in binders. The rest I divided between those white pasteboard metal-bound boxes you can get from Ikea (Cassette I think?) It looks so so sooooo much nicer now. Let's see how long it lasts.
* * *
I am still a bit headachey this morning, so I thought I might try to sleep in a little. I have already been sleeping in somewhat, as Chris arises at 6 am and I have been getting up closer to 7. Today I was going to try for 8. I should have known that this is an impossible dream because the bulldozers start at 7:15ish on the dot. I abandoned all thought of sleeping in, and here I am. It's a little after 8:30am right now, and the house is shaking from all the bulldozers in the field behind us. I don't know what they do all day, it just looks like they drive around pushing dirt from one end to the other. We haven't seen services go in, or the roads mapped out or anything. I guess that is yet to come. I'm going to go get a cup of tea and I'll be back later.
* * *
Here is the shelving unit, all clean. Below where you can see are two more shelves. One holds the printer and the router, and the bottom one has binders full of class notes, research data and the phone book.
My camera isn't reproducing colours all that well, because the walls of this room are more the colour of a lady's mantle flower, a kind of light yellowy green. I love how the little touch of red from my thesis note folder sets off the rest of the stuff in the unit.
The top two boxes have memento type things in them. Photos, ticket stubs, things we want to keep that I may put into a scrapbook one day. Below that are two thin boxes, which will probably be filled with misc papers soon. One contains two of the examiner copies of my thesis that I want to take a look at when I work on my journal article for publication.
The two small square boxes hold game and music CDs that are currently in rotation. Beside that is a copy of my thesis, my thesis notes, and some raw data. Below that are thesis research articles, miscellaneous peripherals that don't get used very often, thesis source articles and a box full of game manuals from the games that are currently in rotation.
And now that I have completely bored everyone to death, I bid you all adieu for the evening.
On the Plate:
This is a recipe from James Barber's Peasant's Choice book that I have modified slightly. I don't know what makes it particularly Milanese, but it tastes good, and that is all that matters. This will be supper tonight (actually I made something else....I'll include the recipe tomorrow).
Milanese Risotto
Soak a few saffron threads in a little bit of hot chicken stock (about 1/4 c). Melt a bit of butter and olive oil in a large frypan (I use a large shallow saucepan) and saute a finely diced onion until it becomes soft. Add 1 c. of rice (I use arborio or canaroli, pretty much any short grain rice will work) and the stock and saffron, stirring well to coat each grain of rice.
Turn the heat down to med-low and stir the rice constantly, adding a little bit of chicken stock (about 1/4 c. each time) to the rice. Stir gently until the stock is almost absorbed, then add another 1/4 c. You should use about 2 1/2 c. of stock all told. You want the rice to be tender, but still firmish in the centre. Not raw, and not soggy.
I then add sliced mushrooms, a slug of sherry or white wine, baby spinach if I have some, and keep stirring until the wine is gone. Then I add lashings of parmesan cheese and put some chopped parsely on top. Sometimes I add some cooked sliced chicken or turkey or pork sausage as well. Or, you can take out the mushrooms, saffron and the sherry and add broccoli. It's pretty versatile.
Approaching Kilter is on a little hiatus because I haven't been on the bike lately due to some knee problems.
Books I have Read Lately:
(All links go through Amazon.ca because of the affiliate program with The Usual Suspects. I spend so much time on there, that this is the least I can do.)