Links of Awesome, Friday Edition

The Kitchn: Advice for Eating on a Very Tight Budget

(we ate lots of rice and beans, and "splurged" on condiments when they were on sale. To this day you can see that echoed in our condiment selection, which is, ah, extensive).


Via M.C.A. Hogarth: Russian Scientists Build Monument To Honor Lab Rats

Now I want to read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH again...


And FROM MCA Hogarth: Now Available: Not in Need of Quests, a Men in Fantasy Coloring Book!

You have GOT to look at this! It's beautiful!

Recipe Try-outs: A quick review

So, we bought "PBFit," powdered peanut butter, because we had a coupon at BJ's club (A big-box/buy-in-quantity style-store) and wanted to try it.

And I was craving peanut butter cookies, so I did some googling, and found this:

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/1026723/how-to-use-powdered-peanut-butter

If you scroll down, there's a recipe for "Easy chocolate chip peanut butter cookies recipe."

It's a bare modification to the (halved) Tollhouse recipe - 1/8 c less flour, 1/4teas less salt, and then add powdered PB (yes, I have the Tollhouse recipe memorized).

It tasted... good. Not peanutty enough, although replacing the chocolate chips with pb chips might have helped. Not quite the right mouthfeel for peanut butter cookies, though adding a bit more pb fit might help.

Short sum: tasty, will cook again, but will modify next time to be tastier.

Goatback or Not, a continuation of Reiassan for the Giraffe Call

After With the Goats

Liegya hadn't meant to be a census-taker.

She'd meant to be a show-rider, a fancy-goat-dancer, a parade-trick-acrobat.

And she was good at it, good with the goats, good with the acrobats, good with the showmanship.

She still was. But parental push had been harder than she'd expected, she'd gotten very good marks in counting and accounting in school, and the position in the census bureau had come with a very nice salary and a house she only saw once a year.

And it came with her pick of goats, and being with the goats 9/10 of the time, even if she'd rather be counting other people's goats than the people themselves.

When the villagers told her about "oh, Lazhman, probably out with the goats..." She had to go look. At the goats, of course.

And maybe at another soul who'd rather be with the four-legged than two.

---

Reiassan has a landing page here (and on LJ).

Want more words, or just really like this post? Drop some money in the tip jar!

The Week In Alder

The Highlights

Edally Academy has its own website!

Some Stories
Beating Around the Idiom Bush
Gender Funk Test story-beginning (two stories of Spaaace)
Trek-Style Geek, for Three-Word Wednesday

Feedback Requested
Prompts Wanted: Demifiction for Circled Plain (Inner Circle)
Edally Academy is on Muse's Success! Please review!

My Serials
Edally Academy Chapter Nine: To Our Successes, May they Be Written Forever
Jumping Rings Chapter Six: Valran

My Life
Timehop of my own: 4 years ago today
Recipe try-outs: a quick review

Other People
Now Available: Not in Need of Quests, a Men in Fantasy Coloring Book! by M.C.A. Hogarth

( The Rest of the Week )

Bunking Arrangements, a story of Space Accountant for Ladies'Bingo

This follows after: Taking Chances, Betting on it, Betting Time, and is before Accidental.

It fills the "Sleeping arrangements" square on my ladiesbingo card and was prompted by kelkyag.

559 words by MSWord.

“There have been, ah, some changes in arrangements.” As openings went, Genique had done better. But this was the Quartermaster. “I need to change my bunking arrangements, that is.”

Genique was growing familiar with all of the officers on the pirate ship, but she had not yet entirely figured out Marist Irio, the Quartermaster.

For instance, the way the woman was looking at her now, on Genique's home planet, would have been a leer. But there was something about it that seemed almost innocent, compared to the way, say, Genique's older brother had once leered about a gentleman caller.
( Read more... )

Icon Flash: Order

"You're totally OCD, you know."

Winter's new co-worker sprawled on the edge of Winter's desk, poking at the pens Winter had lined up parallel to the edge of said desk. "I can see why you work in a law library."

"I like order." Winter moved the pens back into line and allowed himself to look the new co-worker in the scruffy face. "It helps with my work, yes." He noticed the twitch above the man's left eye, and the nick where he'd likely cut himself shaving. "And why are you working in a law library, Darrel?"

---

Useful setting information: The strands, in this 'verse, connect everything, and are created by connections between people or between things.

Want more Stranded World? Check out the landing page here.

Written in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons djinni has drawn for me.

Family Secrets and Cat Secrets, continuation of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call

This is wispfox's commissioned continuation of Cats & Grannies. and Cat's in the Attic.

Radar appeared to approve of the center box of the nine - although, perhaps out of consideration to Aunt Bea, he wasn't talking. Beryl, armed with the gloves the cat had suggested and a scarf tied over her nose and mouth, moved everything with the care usually taken by museum archivists.

(She wondered, very briefly, what a historian or archaeologist would make of the family archives, such as they were. Had anyone in the family ever studied archeology?)

“Aunt Bea...” Her voice was muffled by the scarf, but Aunt Bea's hearing was still sharp. “Do we have any historians in the family?”

“Oh, the family doesn't tend to go that way.”

“Aah.” Beryl noted the tone, and wondered what Aunt or pushy Granny had inculcated that idea into the family. “I think it might be fun to do a study of all this, that's all.”

“Well, but who could you show it to?”

“Aunt-” She hefted the box out of its spot and set it, carefully, on a clear patch of attic floor “-Evangeline. Or maybe one of the cadet branches - hey, how come they're the cad... never mind. Thanks for letting me take this, Aunt Bea.” That was Dangerous Territory. People Beryl's age weren't supposed to worry about Dangerous Territory.

“Don't worry too much about the politics, honey. It'll sort itself out, it always does. And be careful with what's in those boxes - I mean, tell Eva to be careful.” Was that a wink, or just a trick of the light?

~

Beryl had earned the privilege of a locked door with her fourteenth birthday, and was very grateful for it as she and Radar sat down with the box. Not that she thought her mother would exactly object, but her mother would talk to her sisters, and her cousins, and they'd talk to their mothers, and their aunts, and so on, and soon Beryl would find herself buried in Grannies again.

She turned up the music nobody else in the house liked - just loud enough to be audible if one stopped to listen, not loud enough to get her yelled at by anyone else - triple-checked the lock, and made sure The Necklace was wrapped in silk and locked in a stone box. “All right, Radar.” She popped the lid and stared inside. “What am I looking for?”

“It's going to be a journal.” Radar jumped into the box, growing smaller as he did in a show of power he almost never exhibited. The kitten-size fit much better among the paperwork. “If I recall, it was bound in leather - brown and green - and wrapped in ribbon.”

“There's so much stuff here.” She lifted out a folder labelled Family Photographs, 1910. The handwriting was a long, spidery script she'd seen more than a few times before. “And what's dangerous about photos?”

“In your family? Everything.” The cat pushed aside a yellowed book of sheet music; Beryl had never heard of the composer, but she could smell the magic still coming off of it like dust. “Here it is. Careful, girl, it's old.”

Old didn't begin to cover it. Beryl stared at the cover of the book, with its flaking gold-embossed name. “Is that...”

It had to be. The family, for reasons of clarity, did not repeat names. But she had to ask again, anyway. “Is that...”

“The secrets have been lost for a long time indeed, child. Take it.” Radar pushed the book towards her. “You're going to need it.”

Aunt Family has a landing page here (and on LJ).

Family Secrets and Cat Secrets, continuation of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call

This is wispfox‘s commissioned continuation of Cats & Grannies. and Cat’s in the Attic.

Radar appeared to approve of the center box of the nine – although, perhaps out of consideration to Aunt Bea, he wasn’t talking. Beryl, armed with the gloves the cat had suggested and a scarf tied over her nose and mouth, moved everything with the care usually taken by museum archivists.

(She wondered, very briefly, what a historian or archaeologist would make of the family archives, such as they were. Had anyone in the family ever studied archeology?)

“Aunt Bea…” Her voice was muffled by the scarf, but Aunt Bea’s hearing was still sharp. “Do we have any historians in the family?”

“Oh, the family doesn’t tend to go that way.”

“Aah.” Beryl noted the tone, and wondered what Aunt or pushy Granny had inculcated that idea into the family. “I think it might be fun to do a study of all this, that’s all.”

“Well, but who could you show it to?”

“Aunt-” She hefted the box out of its spot and set it, carefully, on a clear patch of attic floor “-Evangeline. Or maybe one of the cadet branches – hey, how come they’re the cad… never mind. Thanks for letting me take this, Aunt Bea.” That was Dangerous Territory. People Beryl’s age weren’t supposed to worry about Dangerous Territory.

“Don’t worry too much about the politics, honey. It’ll sort itself out, it always does. And be careful with what’s in those boxes – I mean, tell Eva to be careful.” Was that a wink, or just a trick of the light?

~

Beryl had earned the privilege of a locked door with her fourteenth birthday, and was very grateful for it as she and Radar sat down with the box. Not that she thought her mother would exactly object, but her mother would talk to her sisters, and her cousins, and they’d talk to their mothers, and their aunts, and so on, and soon Beryl would find herself buried in Grannies again.

She turned up the music nobody else in the house liked – just loud enough to be audible if one stopped to listen, not loud enough to get her yelled at by anyone else – triple-checked the lock, and made sure The Necklace was wrapped in silk and locked in a stone box. “All right, Radar.” She popped the lid and stared inside. “What am I looking for?”

“It’s going to be a journal.” Radar jumped into the box, growing smaller as he did in a show of power he almost never exhibited. The kitten-size fit much better among the paperwork. “If I recall, it was bound in leather – brown and green – and wrapped in ribbon.”

“There’s so much stuff here.” She lifted out a folder labelled Family Photographs, 1910. The handwriting was a long, spidery script she’d seen more than a few times before. “And what’s dangerous about photos?”

“In your family? Everything.” The cat pushed aside a yellowed book of sheet music; Beryl had never heard of the composer, but she could smell the magic still coming off of it like dust. “Here it is. Careful, girl, it’s old.”

Old didn’t begin to cover it. Beryl stared at the cover of the book, with its flaking gold-embossed name. “Is that…”

It had to be. The family, for reasons of clarity, did not repeat names. But she had to ask again, anyway. “Is that…”

“The secrets have been lost for a long time indeed, child. Take it.” Radar pushed the book towards her. “You’re going to need it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/810539.html. You can comment here or there.

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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.

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