So I'm in Portland.
It's only been how many years in the making? Maybe two, maybe three.
I'm getting my feet under me, but so far I love it in spite of some pretty dramatic weather as I arrived.
I'll see what I can do about some photos. It's really pretty here.
Do you listen to music while you work?
My last few jobs have been in open-concept offices, which are both very popular and very conducive to distraction. I'm not a fan. but I do realize that ship has long since sailed. Since I tend to work in Corporate America. and Corporate America is convinced open workspaces are positive, I tend to listen to music while I work.
My favorite working music is Groove Salad, which is a streaming channel on Soma FM. ( http://somafm.com/groovesalad/ ) I like it because the music has enough of a beat to be energizing, but it's not too driving or fast. Groove salad tends almost exclusively toward instrumental track with no lyric. I find lyrics distract me from the words of whatever I may be working on, and sometimes I sing along without realizing I'm doing so.
My other solid option is baroque music. I like Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi mostly, and for the same reasons as Groove Salad. The main difference is that I don't stream the baroque, I bring a playlist with me. If I need to establish a new routine for work, I'll set that up with the playlist because I can tie the routine and the songs together and tread that path a little more heavily in my neural network. If I'm somewhere that streaming is disallowed or discouraged, I can shuffle the playlist to stay out of the routine option, or use the playlist to help move through the morning tasks.
I know people who have to work in silence, and people who can't work in silence. I'm curious to hear what other people do and how you choose your work playlist, or if you have one at all.
Two weeks ago I received some surprising news at the office: my position was eliminated.
I've been laid off before, which is a bit of a blessing in this case. When something unthinkable happens and you live through it, it makes other unthinkable things less unthinkable. I've bounced back before and I will bounce this time, too.
I have been looking into moving back to the west coast. The timing is somewhat dramatic, but the option appeals greatly. I am working hard to leverage all my resources, and I have a little time to make a decision.
And who knows - maybe there's a cute green bungalow tucked up in the PNW with my name on it. <3
It's 95 degrees as I write this. It's September and the heat is still oppressive. We did get a break from the heat with a good storm (hello, Hermine) this past week.
I'm still trying to get myself organized and my house properly furnished. I have some decorations up, though, and enough furniture to have a couple friends come by if we choose. So that's a start.
It's weird to be thinking about fall coming again already, but here we are. I'm hoping to be more productive as the weather is cooling off. Apparently I'm only heat tolerant if the heat is dry; I think I slept half the summer.
I am also hunting for a car and saving my pennies. My Crown Vic gave up the fight at the beginning of summer. The good side is I've been walking more. The bad side is that this is not a car-free town for all things.
We are having a cooking competition later this week at work. I initially thought I'd do Paella Valenciana (because I happen to have a rabbit in the freezer) but then I thought about getting Paella anywhere on the bus, and well. Right, plan B? Still thinking about it but I'll share whatever I make.
Hope you are doing well and having a great summer.
I moved my few possessions into a new house the first of the month.
It's a pretty special little house. The grandfather of my landlady built it from a kit, back in the 1920s. If you don't know about the Sears kit houses, or if you want to find out more, feel free to dig around in the links below.
Being that it was built in the 20s from a kit, it's a gorgeous little bungalow - and yes, it's even green! The porch is deep and has a swing, too. The floors are original hardwood, the walls are board and molding. Everything is kind of old and worn and comfortable and a bit off kilter. There are no closets, only one sink, and an electric stove. It's a manual-work kind of house. I don't think I could love it any more.
I hear the train roll by on the regular, and I can walk to all the goodness downtown has to offer. I expect I will be fixing up furniture and things until spring, and I hope I'm here long enough for friends and family to visit. It's that kind of place. My kind of place.
Links
http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/
I think I mentioned some months ago that I was planning to move.
I'm in temporary-housing mode down in the Triangle, but I made it! Most of my non-work time is currently consumed with finding a house. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities.
Also the Triangle has two things Southern California mostly forgets: Rain, and Autumn. I am quite enjoying both.
I think I better get on that afghan sooner rather than later. It's already cool enough to need it, and how the heck did it get to be almost October, already?!
I posted one of my favorite recipes on Sunday, for ratatouille, and I said it was elastic. What I didn't say was how to stretch it up or down, and I thought it might be useful to do a little walk through of that in case anyone didn't catch what I meant. If you already figured this part out, you're awesome, gold star. If you didn't figure this out, you're still awesome, and here we go:
The main idea is to keep the proportions of the ingredients the same. So in my ratatouille recipe, the first items in the ingredients list are all 1 lb each: eggplant, squash, and so on. If you wanted to make half as much ratatouille, you would go with half a pound of each of these, then a quarter pound of mushrooms later. Whatever you do to the first ingredient, you do to each of the ingredients with a measurement. Conversely, if five pounds of ratatouille isn't enough and you want to double the recipe, just double each of the weighed ingredients. Two pounds of eggplant, two pounds of squash, a pound of mushrooms, et cetera.
Can we just pause for a moment here? Because five pounds is a lot of veggie. Just wanted to make sure you're with me. OK, fantastic. Let's continue.
That's the easy part, but it's not the only way you can fiddle with an elastic recipe. For this one specifically, you can tweak the vegetable proportions. Say you don't like eggplant, but you love squash? You could cut the eggplant and replace it with squash. Maybe instead of a pound of eggplant and a pound of squash, you have two pounds of squash - one green, one yellow! Or you love mushrooms, but are meh on bell pepper? Swap the amounts, and it will still work. If you make this dish in the fall, you could swap out the summer vegetables for fall vegetables and still make it pretty delicious.
My rule of thumb is, I go by the recipe pretty closely the first time I make it, and I make notes of what I like and don't like. If my cooking time varies from the recipe, I note that. If I want to try substitutions, I note that for next time. If I'm considering substitutions, I think about flavor but I also think about texture and things like cooking time and water content. Part of the reasons the specific substitutions above work, is because the ingredients are similar. The mushrooms-peppers swap is the most challenging, but even that is pretty easy to do if you're watching your food as you cook it. The texture will be slightly different, and you may find that's exactly what you wanted. Or maybe you'll never make that swap again, but either way you've learned something and given yourself more options in the future.
Is there a recipe in your stock (or family lore) that you consider an elastic recipe? How do you approach substitutions and stretches?
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