The Pros and Cons of Orlando

House Hunters is in Orlando, looking for some unrealistic house (it's always an unrealistic house in some way) for a couple, and it has me thinking about that city. I lived there for over a decade--and I hated it. So this list is going to be skewed toward the Cons already. But I also don't like how negatively I feel toward it, and I wanted to challenge myself to be not-so-hateful and see if I can make myself feel better about it.

Pros:

• Disney is there. I love Epcot most of all, but they're all great. Especially at the Food and Wine Festival or the Festival of Lights or the Flower Festival.
• There are freshwater springs not far away, and a few of them have very nice long rivers to float along in a canoe for hours.
• I do still have a few scattered friends who live there.
• ICFA, my favorite conference of all time, is there.
• MegaCon, my first and most consistently-attended convention is there.
• There are enough famous people who live there or who go through there, that you can meet a few randomly almost every year.*
• Rennaisance Faires start way early there because the warmth of spring comes in, like, March.
• They do have a very well-functioning and extensive public transport system that was rarely late or closed.
• Access to fresh, local produce year round because there's three separate growing seasons--though you do have to go looking for it, since it's not really that high a priority outside of the rich parts of town.
• You can literally grow anything with a seed there; gardens are lush and wild even when you don't really take much more care than watering them through the summer.

Cons:

• The place is a wreck and has been since the 70s--just a little outside the specifically touristy parts of town and it's all falling down.
• Crime is getting bad, and when I lived there, there were three separate really bad ghettos, one of which I lived in, and one of which had people living in houses with no rooves because they were THAT poor off.
• The separation between the rich people and the poor people there is ghastly and dehumanizing, and there was less and less middle class because almost all the jobs you didn't need training for were service industry of the worst sort--theme parks or hotel staff--and the ones that weren't were in such high demand that I don't know anyone who wasn't considered replaceable and treated as such.
• The schools were a joke. Colleges were better, but too large for someone like me who doesn't handle being lost in a crowd well.
• Government there was just hateful. All old rich dudes who hated that a large portion of the population were immigrants and worked specifically against them, or who were so old that they didn't care if they were explicitly screwing over the next generation, or who were so isolated that they had no idea of the reality of living there.
• Alligators. Everywhere. No joke.
• Mosquitoes year round.
• Killing heat in the summer--people literally died. I saw people just drop dead or have strokes every year.
• Killing light--so much sun that both my parents wound up with skin cancer.
• The worst allergies I've ever had because nothing ever stops blooming + the wetness, between humidity and rain, means there's lots of mold.
• Snakes, spiders, chiggers, scabies, racoons, rats, snapping turtles, turkey vultures, more alligators, sea gulls...
• Living in a middle-to-lower-class life in a tourist town is too unstable--tourism dips for a year or two and everything you have falls apart because pay goes down, hours go down, shops close, restaurants fail. 
• Also, the roads are a mess because they're choked with people who have no idea where they're going and are driving in unfamiliar cars on roads that are always under construction; the accidents were rampant, and at least one year, Orlando was in the top three worst places to be a pedestrian--in the world. The year I was hit by a car, a friend was hit by a semi and my mom got whiplash from an accident.
• Frequent water restrictions because so many people are living off one old aquifer that can't support them.
• Lots of lakes, but they're mostly watered-in sink holes or manmade, and are too gross to swim in unless they're really big or away from the cities. The water looks like dark tea in most of them because of tannins from the oak trees; I like that, but it always grossed my sister and brother out.
• Sharks at every nearby beach, year round.
• The city is sweltering. So many buildings, so much pavement, means there's weather disruption and a lot of the daily storms and cooling winds have been diverted or cut off, and for more than half the year it's like walking around in a moist oven with no shade.

Reasons I'd Move Back:

• Dire circumstances--like, Day After Tomorrow dire, where literally everywhere else is not an option.
• Sudden extreme richness, where I could live there only when I wanted to, and could escape at any time to somewhere much less objectionable.
• It's suddenly a utopia where everything works well, everything is clean, the government cares about you, and they've somehow tamed both weather and allergies.

NOTES:

* Personally, I met Jamie Farr on the floor at a Con when I literally walked into him in the crowd; I met Babyface at a movie; I had my seat taken from me at a different movie by Marilyn Manson and Twiggy and a million bodyguards; I went to school with Joey Fatone in a school where Wayne Brady had gone and where Gallagher's daughter attended, so that sometimes we saw him pick her up. My dad got to hang out with Bruce Springsteen once, my best friend was always running into sports stars and met Danny Glover once.

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Weekly Weigh In - 162!

Officially 162, still down from last week! But on Sunday I was as low as 160.9, which was very good to see!

I've been on the GF diet for almost two months straight without breaking it, and this past week, I've gone back to counting calories. I've also decided to keep carrots, celery and apples in the house, and to just dip them in those yummy yogurt dips, hummus or if I'm feeling naughty, a proper serving of the knock-off Nutella that I love so much. I think having carrots and hummus or celery and yogurt dip for lunch has been good--I feel virtuous eating vegetables, you know? Like, the opposite of feeling all greasy and gross after eating junk food?

I don't know if it was part of the success here, but I also started trading out a few of my many cups of tea during the week for green tea or oolong. They're supposedly both good for weight loss, but mostly I did it because I get tired of plain black tea (though I have never yet actually gotten rid of tea itself!).

It's just so encouraging to see the timbers ticking down!

Notes:

Pic was taken in the Reflex app, the square was added in the Tangent app, and the words in A Beautiful Mess.

Weekly Weigh In - 162.5!

Half a pound down from last week! Whoo!

Although with this Polar Vortex BS means we're shut in and we're all not keeping to our diets, so we'll see if it holds up!

My actual financial goals

- Be able to afford as many awesome geeky shirts as I want, even when I just bought one on the previous day's special

- Be able to afford AbbyShot coats patterned after all my favorite fandom-men's outfits

- Be able to afford my own top of the line computer and wifi and Internet-based file backup

- Be able to afford a house or something whatever

I Made This - Earring Holder and Display

So I have a million earrings (approximately). And they've been living is a bowl since I moved up here--it's a great bowl, but it's not the best way to know what earrings you have or whether you still have two of the ones you're looking for.

So I made a thing!

Yay!

It took somewhere between and hour and an hour 1/2, and here is how I did it:

Supplies:

- a wood picture frame. I got this one from the As Is clearance section at the craft store without glass or a back for cheap.

- A ruler

- Flat thumbtacks or furniture embroidery tacks

- Scissors or pliers with wire cutters

- Wire; this is floral wire because I wanted it lightweight.

- Pencil or pen

- Cat getting in the way is optional

And this, which I forgot about until I needed to use it:

First: decide how far away you want your wires and mark them out:

Next, figure out how to get your pins in. I pushed the first few, but that made my fingers hurt so I switched to the hammer; that also required me to move to the kitchen floor because its the only place in the house that isn't carpeted, and therefore the only place where the frame didn't rebound when I used the hammer.

NOTE: Thumb tacks are not meant to be hammered. I squashed a bunch flat and had to start over. I bashed my fingers a lot before I started holding them in place with my scissors and wishing I had needle nosed pliers after all.

ALSO NOTE: Don't hammer them all the way in:

Go all the way around on all four sides. Replace pins that flatten, break or pop out as you go.

Start wrapping the wire. I started on the long side and went up and down first, wrapping every other or so around more than once to hold the wire in place as I went:

NOTE: Floral wire kinks easily and also breaks easily, so try not to twist it up too much or force it. I used the spool like a shuttle and only unwound about six inches or eight inches at a time to avoid damage to the wire.

Once the whole thing is wired:

Hammer those pins flat to hold the wire down. Replace any that you break or mash in the process:

Then do the other direction, weaving in and out so that the wires hold each other up and form a really loose sort of mesh:

This is where things might get tricky as you run out of space. Thankfully, feet are useful for holding:

Them you hammer in those pins, wipe off fingerprints and floor-dust, hang the whole thing on the wall and get those earrings where you can see them!

Of course, a rectangle of window screen or some chicken wire would make this much easier, but I didn't have any of that. You could also paint the frame or use a fancier one, but I liked the cleanness of the black. 

What do you think? How do you organize your earrings?

Dear My Future Husband #6

Big bouquets of flowers are great. We know they're expensive and everyone dreams of being the one the delivery guy stops at. But for me, the enjoyment is short lived--because the flowers are. It's better, if you know me, to bring me flowers with roots on them so I can keep them and they'll come back later. So they'll become part of my garden and part of my life. So you're proving that you think beyond the present moment and want a future. Also so you show you're showing through actions that you're practical--with money and with knowing me.

Ps: I like roses, lilies, daffodils and any flowers I can eat.

Ninja is caught in the act

GF Experiments - All-corn cornbread!

Hey, look how these are not TOTALLY horrible pictures! I'm learning, little by little, to make them better.

Anyway, this is all-corn cornbread! Naturally gluten free and super-simple to make, and totes tasty. I found the recipe here at Plan To Eat, and I made it to a tee--no changes, so I'll not repeat it here in case that's stealing or something. But I AM going to give lots of notes.

The first time I made the CB, I made it in an 8x8 glass baking dish (the same one I used for the Crispies, actually), and I used yellow corn meal because that's what's usually used for cornbread, and it was tasty--but the grind was coarser than something I would strictly call 'flour'. It was much finer than grits, but not so powdery as flour usually is, and the heavier bits of corn sank down to the bottom so that the bottom was denser than the top, a little polenta-y, and the eggs sort of floated to the top and formed, like, a custard skin. It was tasty as all get-out, but it's so not what I intended and it's not at all what the recipe said.

I ate that one with butter and syrup instead of having a waffle when we had Breakfast For Dinner. I think it would be amazing with, like, green chilis and cheese mixed in, and maybe roasted red peppers; they'd sort of float with the eggs and milk and make it like a quiche-cornbread.

This time, I made it with the white corn, because it was a finer mill, and cooked it in a muffin tin. They came out of the oven puffy, but by the time they were cooled enough to come out, they had all sunken down in the middle--and you know what, that's fine. Because now they're like little yum-shells. The same dense, corn flavor, though a little milder with the white corn, and none of the separation that happened with the yellow. These are good with sweet and savory fillings--I did blackberry jam, nutella and cream cheese--are chewy without being weird, warm up beautifully, are dense but not hard or hard to eat, and two or three make a perfect mid-morning mini-meal.

Because they're made of mostly eggs and milk (the recipe is two cups of milk and two eggs), they're loaded with protein and really satisfying.

I used honey the first time, like the recipe says, and brown sugar the second, and didn't detect any difference in sweetness; they're barely sweet at all, really.

There's leavener in here, but no gluten to hold the fluffiness in; I'm thinking of subbing some of the corn flour for, like, brown and sweet rice, maybe, and see if that lightens it up more. Although, being this dense makes it a perfect base for heavier things like chili or stew or ratatouille or something--I think I'll make a batch in the jellyroll pan and see how it comes out baked in a thin slab for putting dinners on. Or I'll bake it in a bread pan and then pan-fry the slices and top THEM.

mmm, saucy things on top of starches...

The recipe says you can make it with water instead of milk to make it vegan, and that has my wondering if I could sub in other liquids. Like, can I make it with juice? I think orange juice with orange zest would be good. Apple juice would probably be good, too, and I could add cinnamon and some chopped nuts. Could I make it with two cups of strong tea and more sugar, and call it a literal tea-cake? I bet lemon and milk would make a sort of lemony buttermilk thing that I could add zest and poppyseeds to, also...

One of my favorite things ever is a simple recipe because of questions like these, questions that boil down to "how versatile can I make this stuff, and in how many different flavors?"

Do you have a favorite cornbread recipe? Share it in the comments! What would you do with this one?

Video - Benedict Sherlock Counterbatch on Sesame Street

I may or may not have giggled like an idiot while I watched this wonderfulness.

GF Experiments - Peanutbutter Crispix Bars

Look! It's one that worked! And like all my hand-made recipes it's vague! And that's why I'm unlikely to write a cookbook!

Okay, so I needed a dessert one night because dinner was light and I was hungry, and what we had were Crispix, giant marshmallows, margarine, Peanutbutter, and an 8x8 pan.

I've made rice crispy treats a million times and so I sort of knew how to do it. I only had a little pan to melt it all together and I knew I didn't want a six-cups-of-cereal start, so I did this:

Buttered the pan within an inch of whatever life a Pyrex baking dish has.

Put somewhere around a half cup of peanutbutter (we had honey-roasted) in the saucepan with a few tablespoons margarine, and melted it down.

Measured four cups of the cereal into the baking dish while stuff was melting.

Plunked in four of those enormous campfire toasting marshmallows (which would maybe be ten regular sized ones?), and melted those down, too, and the second it was a smooth sauce of deliciousness, drizzled it over the cereal. Mixing was easy, but the flattening wasn't, because I forgot to keep the napkin I used to butter the dish with around and the spoon was sticky. But it went fine.

I let it six for an hour or two, and then cut it into sixteen pieces and proceeded to eat two at a time.

It's sweet, sticky but not overly so once it set, not hard to cut or to get out of the dish, and had just a little sweet peanuttyness that I love.

Notes for next time:

- I think I'll add just a pinch of salt next time, just to balance the flavors a little--or will use salted butter instead of margarine

- I'd like to try to make it with natural peanutbutter, which should make it more nutty, and maybe with any of the slew of chocolate-and-nut butters that are on the shelves now.

- I'd maybe like to add a layer of chocolate ganache to the top like the way my elementary school did with the rice crispies they had.

And that's about it! They were delicious and I don't want to change all that much!

How would you make em? Share in the comments!

Leftover Love - Turkey Soup OR, what to do with the Thanksgiving Carcass

Months ago, at Thanksgiving, we had a huge turkey and it looked like we picked it clean-- but I know better! I also like to use up as much of something I buy that was killed for me to buy it as I can, since I am both cheap and too poor to waste things, AND concerned about the fate of the animals I decide to eat.

Note, though, that if you don't eat animals, you can skip the making-broth-from-bones part and fill the pot with all your veggie ends* and use the resulting vegetable broth instead.

So here's how you do this:

After thanksgiving, take that picked over bird and put it in your biggest pot. Full it with as much water as will fit. You can put in seasonings, bay leaves, garlic, whatever, but note that the more you put in at this end, the less options you have when you go to use it later.

Cover it. Boil that baby. Boil it a lot. Boil it until all the bones de-articulate and the broth gets as golden and delicious as it will get. For this broth, I Cooke it for about eight hours, then let it sit on the stove overnight to cool and sort of steep like meat tea.

When it's cool enough to handle, strain or scoop out everything that isn't broth. Pick through the solids and remove all the meat that's been revealed. I got several pounds, after adding the wings and drumsticks--almost four full ziplock bags full of Hidden Meat revealed by cooking it down! 

When you have your pile of meat, do that--put it all in zippies or in some other container, and freeze it. Then do the same with your broth--scoop it up, package it, and freeze it for later. I got six zippies from it that one bird. Each of those had three or four cups in it, so that's A LOT of broth taking up a lot of space in my freezer... Which is why the next step is to make stew!

The pic above shows the steps I took, but some notes:

- We forgot to buy carrots this round, though they were a key part of the first round.

- All of this made two huge pots of stew for us, but it could have made three reasonable sized ones, or maybe four if less people were eating from it.

- Basically, this is an excuse to use up leftover veggies with your saved broth and stuff.

Here goes:

Chop up half a bag of potatoes

Chop up some onions

Chop up some celery

If you remember carrots, chop big ones or open up a bag of minis

Drain a can of beans and a can of peas

Open a can of tomatoes (I use the fire roasted ones for almost anything) and keep the juice

Gather minced garlic, salt, pepper, bay leaves, olive oil, poultry seasoning or your favorite fresh herbs**, a few teaspoons or tablespoons of each, to taste

Grab one or two bags of your picked meat and two or three bags of your broth, or the equivalent if you aren't in love with ziplock like I am***

Throw it all in your biggest pot, cover it, and put it on medium until the frozen stuff is no longer frozen, then bring it up to boil on a moderately higher heat and boil until all the veggies are soft. It actually improves if you cool it maybe a half hour or hour longer than you strictly have to, though, so once things get close to done you can lower the heat again and let it simmer happily for ages so long as you keep it covered so it doesn't dry out.

Remember to check seasonings as it cooks and adjust before serving--better under-salted, and more added later than too salty at the start and it getting worse.

This is a totally basic and wildly customizable recipe. The best sort of recipe! You could:

- Add minced greens toward the end

- Serve with rice, cheese and sour cream, maybe some salsa

- Change the beans to mung or adzuki, switch the herbs and olive oil for soy sauce and a lighter oil mixed with a little sesame oil, and have an Asian version. You could even add a little miso at the end, but if you do, remember to under-salt beforehand, because miso is salty and there's already soy sauce there.

- Switch the root veg for parsnips and winter squash, and change the seasoning to rosemary and sage for a winter version

- Add more tomatoes, some little pasta, and basil, and then add summer squash and spinach and have some Italian Summer soup

- Use chicken, or a big ham bone, or a beef bone, and change the whole feel of it; you could even use fish if you like fish stew!

- Thicken it with flour or cornstarch or whatever, and make it heartier

How would you make this your own? Share in the comments!

Notes:

*The basic veggies for a vegetable broth are onions, celery and carrots, and that alone will be delicious. I also like to add piles of garlic, because I like to add piles of garlic to everything. You can also save leek tops and throw them in, and maybe add a little bit of brassica--the stems from broccoli or cauliflower or cabbage, I'd say--but it'll take over the flavor, so not too much. If you're really fancy, you can throw in sweet or hot peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, a corn cob, bay leaves, whatever. Whatever you throw in gets strained out and goes to the compost anyway!

**All my herbs died and I haven't gotten the new ones going yet, so yup, jarred. This brand's poultry mix is pretty delicious.

***But why wouldn't you be? It's the easiest way to put ANYTHING in the freezer!