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Snowflake Meme: Day 8 & Day 7
Yo!
I haven't posted anything in ages, and the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
snowflake_challenge going around seems fun, so here's me jumping in. I kinda started writing this on Day 8 and was going to work backwards, but then I got distracted and it's now Day 14, so... here's Day 8 and Day 7, and I'll probably jump around from there. :P
Day 8. Talk about setting a fannish goal
The last half of 2012 was a particularly low-participation period for me. (Glancing guiltily over at angel_negra, in particular. ^_^ ). My early Mag7 high has settled into comfortable familiarity with all other squeeful fandoms of years past (i.e. I still adore it, but don't have constant FEEEEEEELS going on all the time) and nothing has really replaced it to the same degree. I've also fallen into a trap lately of starting to post some random squee, deciding it's not "interesting" enough, and just backing out of the page. For a while over on LJ, I managed to not care if posts were interesting or erudite or relevant to a theoretical reader's interests, but that issue seems to have come back. So, I think just as a small goal, I'm going to post *SOMETHING* at least once a month, even if it's just one of my bullet-point lists of "stuff I've consumed recently".
Other goals - like getting my butt in gear on the podficcing front - are also hovering out there, but I think I need to get my enthusiasm back up for fannish stuff in general before that's going to happen. Thinking about this meme seems to be helping with that somewhat, so *fingers crossed*. :)
Day 7. Share Something Non-Fannish
Ummmmmmmmm... well, I guess the non-fannish thing that's most on my mind lately is that I'm finally, after *cough*mumble-mumble*cough* years of living on my own, figuring out how to cook for myself like an honest-to-goodness REAL ADULT!
I've wasted so much food and money over the years buying meat and produce that went bad before I got around to cooking with it, or just settling for a grocery cart full of microwave meals, because the whole enterprise of shopping and cooking and cleaning up seemed way too complicated and time-consuming for me to manage very often.
I recently had an epiphany that a basic tilapia filet can go from completely frozen to cooked and ready to eat in less than 30 minutes, and tastes perfectly tasty with just a little lemon juice and Mrs. Dash... no need for 15 fancy ingredients or dirtying sixteen little bowls of mise-en-scene-type prep. It was almost LITERALLY like a lightning bolt out of the blue for me... total paradigm shift. I'd always come at cooking as trying to make the sort of meals that my mom made when I was young - the kind of thing she'd started before I even got home from school and still had an hour to simmer before we could eat. It was never going to be practical to START cooking that sort of thing when I was getting home from work at 6 PM, but that was all I really knew.
Once I had that brainflash that REAL cooking could be quick, I started really paying attention and choosing recipes that use mostly basic, long-shelf-life pantry items, and my horizons on that front have expanded like WHOA. Even grocery shopping has become kinda fun when I have confidence that I'll USE the stuff I buy. I'm now at a point where I'm trying to cook a few more complicated things over the weekend and freezing them in individual portions to make my own microwave meals during the week. It's pretty awesome.
My favorite thing I've made so far is this Hot & Sour soup recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_KbQwN45Mk
I added a few things to the recipe that I consider essential elements of a good hot & sour soup (I used tofu AND chicken where the recipe calls for one or the other, added bamboo shoots, and drizzled in a beaten egg at the end)... and it seriously tasted BETTER than my favorite Chinese restaurant's version. It was the first thing I've made that I wouldn't be embarrassed to serve to guests.
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Good luck if you decide to make it. :)