01.31.09

A study in failure : Taiwanese meatballs

Posted in Cooking tagged at 12:19 am by kyrias

I spent about 5 hours today trying to make Taiwanese meat balls or Ba Wan.

As the title might have tipped you off to - it was a ton of fail.

What’s even more aggravating is that I have no idea what went wrong. The sites that I got my recipe from had vague instructions which led to what I can only call shenanigans.

For example, when making the skin of the meatballs — you cook the starch and the water “until it forms a thick paste”. Alright, but how thick a paste? Pourable? Spreadable? Or malleable like dough?

Some of the meatballs came out with the skin a bit too starchy, but they more or less looked like what I was going after. Then some of the latter experiments where I made a second batch of batter using the same recipe — they either refused to set, or they were so fragile as to tear when I tried to unmold them.

Bah. This little adventure reminds me of why I sometimes detest cooking.

I can deal with spending 5 hours in the kitchen and triumphantly emerging with the spoils, but to spend five hours and have it all go to waste is just a bit too much.

For those of you who care,  I think when they say “thick paste” they mean “one step away from becoming dough”, sort of like the dough used for cream puffs. Mine turned out lumpy because it suddenly started congealing all at once when it was still liquid for the longest time, even though I was stirring it over a medium fire. I beat the heck out of it until it looked like a pot of whipped potatoes, but slightly thicker in consistency. The meatballs made with that worked much better than the meatballs made with a more liquid batter. The liquid batter, of course, is much easier to deal with and manipulate, but it refused to gell.

Oh well. I’ll try again some other time, with my mother’s ingredients.

01.29.09

Unabashed self-promotion and laziness to boot

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:26 am by kyrias

I’m trying something new.

I’ll be posting snippets of writing on another blog, linked here. The theme template is behaving oddly and I need to kill the empty links, but for now it’ll do.

I’ve been slacking off on the fictional writing, and hopefully some semblence of accountalibity, even something as masturbatory as self-publication will help on that front.

Critiques and suggestions always welcome.

01.27.09

Condo living - sucks to be you

Posted in Comfort tagged , at 12:01 am by kyrias

The tenants are insisting on deducting the money from next month’s rent. Honestly, I’m not too thrilled with them. I just can’t help but think that they must have bullet-proof skin or something — I know I’d be way too ashamed to carry on the way they have been.

At the behest of my parents, I sent the condo management company an email telling them that because our tenants were seeking restitution from them, we were going get ours from them.

They sent back a politely nasty email saying that we have no right under the law, under any circumstances, to withhold our condo fee. If we tried, they will charge us a $25 late fee. She actually said, “Do so at your peril”.

As a writing aside, has anyone else actually heard someone not in a book say that before?

I shot back an email telling them that perhaps we have no right to withhold our condo fees, which honestly considering how low-handed they have been all this time, I’m not really wanting to trust her on — but it’s certainly within our rights to sue the company for their illegal actions.

We shall see how she’s going to respond.

It’s getting uglier by the second, and frankly I’m not enjoying myself here, but she’s infuriating me.

If she’s right that we have no right to withhold condo fees for any reason, then let this be a warning against living in one. I can’t get past the helplessness of having someone else decide whether or not they’re going to fix something as vital as heat.

01.26.09

Yeasted waffles, take one.

Posted in Cooking tagged , at 12:58 am by kyrias

After the Hodgson Mills fiasco last time, I decided to hunt down a waffle recipe online.

I’ve heard good things about yeasted waffles, and I’ve always found yeasted versions to be better than their baking powder/ soda counterparts.

I found a recipe that looked promising on David Lebovitz’s site, which is from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Of course, never one to just let things lie, I fiddled with it a bit.

Yeasted waffles - adapted from Marion Cunningham’s recipe

1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
1 packet yeast
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
2 large eggs

Mix the yeast with the warm water. After letting it stand for about five minutes, mix it with all the other ingredients except for the eggs. I added one more tsp sugar because I wanted the waffle to be a bit sweeter, and next time I might add a bit more. I’m aiming for a waffle that’s tasty enough to eat on its own without maple syrup. Perhaps with a bit of butter.

The original recipe actually calls for baking soda also, but I didn’t end up using that when I made this.

Once everything has been beaten into a smooth batter, you can either choose to leave it out overnight or put it in the fridge. Our house was around 65 degrees, so I left it outside.

For the record, I got hungry about an hour and a half after mixing this up, and I poured half of it into another mixing bowl, beat in an egg, and it was tasty enough as is.

The rest of the batter I put into the fridge because I didn’t want the yeast to exhaust itself. It was still good the next morning, although I didn’t remember the baking soda.

This recipe results in a waffle that was crispy on the outside and light as a cloud on the inside. Mom actually thought that it was too “insubstantial” so next time I make it I’ll probably try to add some whole wheat flour to see if that helps matters.

I suppose I’ll be adding in some of that Hodgson Mill’s stuff to see if I can get rid of it that way.

01.25.09

Heating requirements by law

Posted in Uncategorized tagged , , at 12:54 am by kyrias

Or otherwise titled: Of things that belong on passiveaggressivenotes.com

My parent’s tenants sent me an email 3 days ago at 11:45pm informing me that because they have been living without adequate heat for nearly three months, they were going to deduct a certain amount from next month’s rent.

Needless to say, I was appalled.

No heat? In sub-freezing weather?

Turns out that the boiler supplying heat to their side of the condo needed to be replaced and the condo management people have been dragging their heels on it for an indeterminate period of time. I say indeterminate because the tenants didn’t inform me of when this problem first started and I’m not sure they themselves are even sure.

I sent an email back asking why exactly they didn’t mention this earlier, say even as late as a month ago, and telling them that I would get on it as soon as I could. They replied with some more details, but didn’t mention rent again.

The next day I called the condo management company and got fobbed off with some lame excuse about how the condo board was dragging their heels and she didn’t know when the situation would be fixed. I reminded her that we were paying condo fees and we expected results soon, wished her a good day, and ended the call.

Enraged, I looked up information on what is legal and what isn’t in this sort of situation.

For everyone who doesn’t know, your landlord or condo management company is required by law to keep the premises heated sufficiently. It is illegal for them to not supply adequate heat between September 15th and June 15th. This is defined as 64 F between 11:01 pm and 6:59 am and 68 F between 7am and 11 pm.

Armed with this knowledge, I called The Albert Corportation back, got sent to voicemail, and left a sweetly polite but nasty voicemail. I essentially informed them that it had been brought to my attention that what they were doing was illegal, listed out the law for them (see above), told her that if she couldn’t tell me when the boiler would be fixed then she should refer me to someone higher up who could “because lawsuits are such a nasty business”, wished her a good day, and hung up.

Caesura informs me that the last parting shot of “lawsuits are such a nasty business” was rather over done, especially when delievered in such a saccharine tone, but it got results.

The tenants emailed me soon after, informing me that they got an email from the person I called telling them that they would get a space heater and the boiler would be replaced next week. In that same email, they thanked me for what I had done and I assumed that everything was just peachy.

Today, I got another email wherein they state that they feel that $200 off the rent would be acceptable for their having lived without adequate heat for the past few months. My patience snapped, and I sent back the following email:

xxx,

If you feel that deducting the $200 from next month’s rent is fair, then please do so.
However, I would like to point out that I have not received any emails from you or anyone else in the apartment complaining on this before 3 days ago, on Jan 21st. Perhaps it was my negligence in assuming that everything was fine, but I would also like you to take note that when I emailed you on Nov 4th asking whether the mice/heater problems had been solved, I didn’t get a response from you. Maybe the email escaped your notice at that time, but I do not think that we are fully to blame for your living without heat for the past nearly three months.
In the future, please inform us before things have gotten to this point. We are more than willing to help you when you need it, but we cannot help you if we don’t know there’s a problem. Also, please note that we are paying the condo management $375 per month for keeping the apartment heated and so such. If we wish to withhold a portion of said fee from them because of their incompetence, we’ll need documentation from day 1 of when things are going wrong so we can keep tabs on when we made our requests and their reactions to our requests. We cannot legally withhold our payment unless we have such things documented.
I have forwarded your email to them and have informed them that if they do not have the boiler fixed in a timely fashion, we will not be paying next month’s condo fee. I also told them we would be considering taking further action against them if they delay further. So please keep us updated on the heat situation.
Coincidentally, our pipes broke today and we are currently also without heat. We are very much in sympathy with your situation and will do everything we can to pressure them to move forward with the repairs. My parents will be paying them a visit on Monday.

-Kyria

Now the ball is in their court.

01.24.09

Seeing fanfiction through the lens of this writer

Posted in Writing tagged , at 12:08 am by kyrias

I write.

Perhaps I don’t quite qualify as a writer yet, but I do have my worlds, my characters, my plots, and a burning love for all of it.

Caesura thinks that fanfiction is, ultimately, no matter what comes out, flattering.

I’m not sure I agree.

Like him, I think I would be beyond flattered if a fan community sprung up around my work. Unlike him, I’m not sure I could stop myself from obsessively seeking out all the fanfiction and going through it with the metaphorical red pen.

“No, no, no! They do not end up together, don’t slash X and Y together.”

“Wait, did you just change the entire course of history in one fell swoop?!”

“Oh for the love of the gods, if you’re going to twist it that much, oh my gods…”

I love the fanfiction that fills in the blanks, finds a niche and populates it. I love the fanfiction that looks at what happens after the author says, “I’m done.” I love how sometimes they fill in entire books between the lines.

For example, regardless of how Anne Bishop does not want people fanfictioning her work, I think it would be beyond cool if someone wrote a series of stories about the time when the coven was growing up. Not that I advocate going against her wishes — but it would be fantastic and I’d totally make it my new guilty pleasure.

That said, if someone decides to take my universe, my characters, my plot, and utterly change it all so that the only recognizable portions are the names — what is the point of that?

It feels like they’re trying to capitalize off my work because it is the easy way to get a captive audience.

For me, also, there’s a fine line between your valid re-interpretation of my world and my characters and, to put it in a drama-queenish way, you desecrating it.

Sorry to any HP fans who ship this combination, but Snape and Harry just squicks me out. On multiple levels.

I have no idea what I might do if someone did something like that to my characters.

Not that any of it matters right now anyways. :) All in the hypothetical, of course.

01.23.09

Porn, a drabble, or just fancrap.

Posted in Writing tagged , , , at 12:01 am by kyrias

I’m speaking of fanfiction.

I’ll state straight out that I find the mindset of fanficcers utterly alien. I do not comprehend what it must be like to want to ship some other person’s characters or to spin offshoots from their story.

Partly, I suspect because the roots of capitalism run deep in me.

Partly because when I truly started identifying as a writer, I was hip deep in a vibrant, incestuous, terrifyingly prolific community of women. We egged each other on, critiqued WIPs with no regard as to whether it was a “hole” that was never going to be filled, and dreamed endlessly of being published.

It is that last that confuses me about fanfiction.

Why would you not want to be published? Even in small-press epublishing — why and how do you not want your words to be recorded in some tangible form that coincidentally has a price tag associated with it?

Even when I was writing furiously because I had to, I wanted to, when it was a fever in the mind that needed to be purged by the clean lines of words, even when I had all the audience I ever wanted, being published was still a deep yearning that would not go away.

All that said, I do not disdain fanfiction.

Thene brought this topic up by linking this post to me.

I have to say, that friend in publishing nailed some of my prejudices right on the head, saying that “it’s derivative and it keeps women poor”.

To me, it smacks of what have been happening to women for millenia : doing something that’s painstaking and creative, yet ultimately dismissed as worthless.

What’s even worse, is that I have never before met a fanficcer who would stand up straight and own up to what they were doing. Thene referred to her WIPs as “fancrap” and in the post above, it was mentioned that women would refer to it as “just porn” or “just a drabble”.

For me, I often feel like the well-meaning but utterly clueless rich woman who goes around trying to rehabilitate the “deserving poor”, the “good whores”.

This is especially clear when I caught myself trying to come up with ways that fanfiction could be regulated.

Thene asked me who would be doing the regulating, and why there was a need in the first place.

I closed my eyes, kicked myself in the head, and decided to drop the topic. Yes, I was trying to make fanfiction respectable again.

But honestly, perhaps it’s not that fanfiction needs to be changed to regulated in order to go mainstream. Maybe it’s the publishing industry that needs to have a good long look at what’s going on and see if there’s a middle ground.

There is a demand and there is a supply — why not capitalize upon it?

And then perhaps women can quit referring to their work as “crap”.

01.22.09

Flailing at fail.

Posted in Environment tagged , at 4:12 pm by kyrias

Zack broke my mother’s New Year’s present. It was a pair of retractable chopsticks and he put them into the dishwasher. The chopsticks said “blargh argh I DIE”.

On a slightly related note, I’m so tired of people loading the dishwasher wrong.

For the record, you are just wasting water if you pre-wash your dishes before putting them in the dishwater. Don’t do it.

Also, stacking bowls on top of one another means they don’t wash properly. Putting them and glasses in right side up is also a bad idea.

Speaking of glasses — after you’ve had a drink of something that’s non-greasy — does it REALLY need to go into the sink where it gets greasy and then go into the dishwasher? And if it goes directly from your hand to the dishwasher — is that truly necessary?

Honestly, I can see where using the dishwasher is more efficient.

Greasy plates, bowls, and silverware? Go for it.

Non-greasy items that are stuck in the sink until they get greasy? WTF, mate.

Non-greasy items that could easily be cleaned with a soapy sponge and rinsed out — why are you allowing it to take up space in the dishwasher that could be used for bowls instead? The entire top section of the dishwasher is often full of glasses, which just boggles my brain.

Meh.

The tree-huggers of the world cry non-genki tears of rage.

Toilet training the cat = good idea. Y/N?

Posted in Environment tagged , at 12:18 am by kyrias

I remember reading a Grist article about cat litters a while back, thought it was informative and interesting, but just not relevant because I didn’t have a cat.

Right. Now we do.

So when Azora mentioned that it was my turn to buy cat litter, I thought about it, then realized we were using the clay stuff.

The stuff obtained through strip mining and which then sits in landfills for a couple eons. The stuff which also might contain silicon particles which is a potential carcinogen.

Wonderful, no?

So then I started looking into more eco-friendly alternatives such as those made from wheat, corn cobs, used newspaper, etc.

Then someone mentioned that cats are toilet trainable.

ORLY?

Apparently they are. The results vary from two weeks to this one woman’s truly epic journey that spans two years.

I read that, thought about it, and decided that I really didn’t want to be responsible for cleaning up after the cat if the cat decides that it really objects to this idea. After reading about two years of “little piles of protest”, my motivation and desire shriveled away somewhat.

Still harboring some optimism, I asked Azora, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

Azora, very firmly, “No.”

Considering that Caesura also doesn’t think the idea has merit, because he thinks it will make the psychotic cat more crazy, I think I shall abandon this idea for now because I really don’t want to be the only person cleaning up the cat’s punishment for me.

When we have another toilet in the house, perhaps we shall see again about this idea.

On how to toilet train your cat

01.20.09

No thanks, I’m not food.

Posted in Uncategorized tagged , , at 9:57 pm by kyrias

I’ve never understood the allure of vampires.

Never.

They drink blood and they usually think of humans as food. How is that even remotely attractive? Not even going into the realm of wonder if I’m going to end up as his midnight snack if he ever loses control — I didn’t find the idea of erotic breast-feeding arousing, so the idea of feeding my lover/husband with my blood is hardly going to make me cream my panties.

Also, they’re dead. As a doornail. Asides from my raging biological clock that would, pardon the pun, clock me in the face if I hooked up with a hunk of dead meat that can’t give me babies — what part of one small step away from decomposing is sexy?

Then there’s the age difference. When you have this cool, sophisticated man who has seen more than I’ll ever see — what exactly can we find in common? There’s already plenty of documented evidence that marriages where there is too large an age disparity plus experience disparity frequently leads to disillusioned divorces — I’m not going to buy that a man 20 times my age and I are going to be just peachy together.

Besides, all that aside, how does one get along with someone who can’t tolerate sunshine? Only being able to go out in the dead of night has to be a drag. And all the traditional honeymoon spots are definitely a no-go. Imagine if I had Seasonal Affective Disorder — then that’d be a ton of fun.

By the way, for all those people who might want to bring up the horrifying stupidity that is Twilight to “prove” that you can have a romance with vampires? The concept of sparkling vampires is retarded, not to mention cheating. The no fangs bit — did Meyers ever get around to explaining how exactly they drank blood then? I’ll just go full out and say the entire series of Twilight is just one disturbing bit of Mary-Sue. Don’t want to take my word for it? Take it from the person who played Edward then, he should know. Supposedly Jeffrey Wells is giving S. Meyers a cultural demerit for thinking that Rob P ’s performance in “Twilight - the movie” is Oscar worthy. I say he’s not looking at the true problem. She needs to be given ten cultural demerits for what she wrote.

On a tangential note, I never knew the internets could make me want to cry until I found this wikiHow for “How to Look like a Twilight vampire“.

And finally, thank you Stephenie Meyer for finishing what Anne Rice started and utterly revealing the retards amongst us.

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