donutsweeper

The h/c exchange just revealed! I got a delightful Detective L story by geckoholic and I wrote for TLTR (DMBJ Reboot/Sound of the Providence):

Foundations to Lean On - Summary: Pangzi and Xiaoge know just how to deal with an exhausted and storm-battered Wu Xie. (1.6k, I'll admit it took me far too long to realize what movie they should be watching but once I realized what it should be it was SO fun to write)

Have two weeks of recthething MDZS/The Untamed fic recs:

Judge Softly by Chrononautical (32k)
Summary Snippet: Accidentally cursed, Lan Qiren is forced to live within Wei Wuxian's mind for days, experiencing his every thought and sensation. Much as he disapproves of demonic cultivation, resistant as he is to every excuse, he can't help growing to understand the young cultivator. (An interesting, hilarious and at times hot E rated post-canon fic)

do not envy the roots that hold you down eccentrick (12k)
Summary Snippet: Reincarnated as a Lan, Wen Qing lives as best she can with the knowledge—and pain—of her past life. The balance she finds is disrupted when an unfamiliar face hides a not-so-unfamiliar heart. (Really wonderful canon divergent reincarnation AU)

An Evening Well Spent by Admiranda (2.5k)
Summary: Jin Ling had hoped for a quiet evening in getting to visit with his uncles that he didn't get to see very often. Things went a bit awry. (short but sweet fic with Jin Ling discovering what LWJ is like when he has a little alcohol)

It Has You In It by rymyanna (10k)
Summary Snippet: Wei Ying considers the possibility that he had actually walked into traffic and died. That this person, with his long black hair and arresting light eyes, is some kind of a spirit or a god, here to guide him into the afterlife. Then he considers that maybe he isn’t dead, and that his first words to the prettiest person on Earth had been, “Uuuh, okay, wow.” (Cute reincarnation + more AU)

Timing is Everything by Talayse (18k)
Summary: The Lan juniors and Lan Wangji find a young man unconscious in an array in a locked cottage in Mo Manor, Lan Wangji takes the young man into his care. When Wei Wuxian wakes up later in an inn, clean and cared for, the story takes a different turn. (very interesting AU where canon diverges due to WWX being incapacitated by the summoning ritual for longer than he originally had been)

Son of Heaven and Frost General by Aki_no_hikari (series, 2 works, 7k total - locked to archive)
Summary to first fic: Though fate and circumstance, Wei Wuxian, the son of a servant, was aclaimed Son of Heaven and Emperor of China. After months fighting an invading army, his beloved general Lan Wangji returns victorious. They meet that night to catch up and celebrate his return. (Short but wonderful royalty AU)

And a terrible picture of some banana bars from a recipe I've been tinkering with:

I've been playing around trying to find a healthy dessert recipe and these have no sugar or egg and almost no added fat and I think I finally figured it out: Mash together 2 very ripe bananas. Mix in 1 tbsp oil and beat well. Mix in 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1/4C quick oats, 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking soda. Stir in 1/4 C chocolate chips. Pour into a greased 9x9 and bake at 350 for about 18 min (next time I'll try checking it a little earlier maybe though).

So rug experiment was mostly a failure, although third time was a charm in getting an actual rug out of the deal... (babble and pictures under cut)

Basically, I have a ton of old, undonateable sheets (stained or ripped) and have been making rugs out of them and decided to try combining a white and red one and doing a rectangle row rug instead of my typical oval, thinking the stains of the white wouldn't be as obvious if it was sandwiched between rows of red with a border of black I had left over so it wouldn't show dirt as much. Take one switched white/red/white/red one row per and the result was the red got swallowed by the white and wasn't noticeable so after only a few rows I pulled it out and switched to a 2-2 pattern instead... except it didn't come out even at all and even though the stitch count was the same it kept getting wider and wider and was really, really annoying as a result. I assume the issue was that even though I'd purposely tried to account for the slightly difference thickness in the white vs red sheet by cutting the red strips longer it wasn't enough.



So I pulled it all out and tried again with just the white but after a few rows it was obvious the staining was going to be an issue but I figured- no problem! I still have some blue dye leftover from my earlier experiment with dying a sheet before turning it into a rug (last August) so I thought I'd try dying after it was a rug to see how that worked. It also occurred to me that without the red the rug was going to be a lot smaller than originally planned so if I was dying it anyway I could supplement it by using the white-with-some-flowers sheet as the runner (which only slightly peeks through the knots and would mostly white anyway). The plan seemed sound! When finished you could only vaguely see that the runner was a different material (and you had to look really closely to notice).



But then I dyed it.



Ooof. Not good. Not only did the sheets take the dye differently (something I probably should have thought of) the edges were all lose and weird because I was trying to keep the runner from bunching up when there was a new row, something that isn't an issue the way I usually do row rugs where you switch the runner and knotter each row.

So... take three. I undid the 3/4ths of the rug with the floral runner and redid the whole thing with just the solid color. (I put aside the dyed floral strips, I'll see about adding them to the finished dyed floral rug in a few days.)

And it worked! Mostly. It's a slightly mottled color result due to the dye not being quite as evenly distributed since the knots don't match exactly to where they were the first time but oh well.

So I've learned that different fabric not only affects the size a lot more than I thought but also take dye differently and that I'm not the hugest fan of row rugs but they will keep their shape better when the runner is switched each row. And now I have yet another rug. Not sure where I'll wind up putting it, it's fairly small (19x22, more of a square than the runner rug I had envisioned but oh well.) The fact combining sheets might not always work well is actually kind of annoying since I mostly have a lot of single, random sheets. *sigh* Maybe they'll combine better in the oval pattern?

Have two week's of MDZS/Untamed recs from recthething:

Be Gay, Do Crime by merelydovely (10k)
Summary: Lan Wangji is pretty sure he's in love with a wanted criminal. (He's only half right.) (really fun mistaken identity modern AU)

Story-Shaped by lingering_song (14k)
Summary Snippet: Nie Huaisang knows that things in this world are rarely story-shaped. That they're more akin to ink spilled on parchment - Messy and unpredictable and rather tragic. But out of all the threads he's woven throughout damn near a decade, he had not expected the most straightforward of his ploys to go this awry. (excellent post-canon NHS and how he takes in WWX and helps opinions about him change)

At Your Side, Clear Space For Me by ChloeBYoung (20k)
Summary: Wei Wuxian's main duties at the Lan complex were as follows: 1. Minor repairs and maintenance. 2. Clean common spaces. (He'd done the floor in 56 seconds last time, and didn't miss any of it.) (Except maybe a couple corners.) 3. Deliver mail. (And food, because even Lans couldn't resist the siren song of Dominos.) 4. Ignore any weirdness. Like, cat stuff. (great modern shifter fic AU)

"It's Heating Up in the Cold Springs of Gusu Lan! You Won't Believe This Artwork Really Exists!" by Admiranda (5k)
Summary: There are many side effects of immortality. One of them is about the things you thought were lost to the past till they're dug up again. As resident most known immortal and good child, Lan Sizhui resigns himself to scouting out the exhibit of erotic art recently donated from the Lan sect to see if it's actually what they think it is. (Hilarious! Poor Sizhui)

Sect Leader Wen Qionglin by maya_brainstormed (mayachain) (2k)
Summary: Wen Ning has lived as a sentient fierce corpse for about four hundred years. Going back in time could have been an accident, but isn't. (Unusual and interesting time travel fix-it from Wen Ning's POV)

Love Song In Reverse by Author: timetoboldlygo (237k)
Summary: Wei Wuxian gasps back into life without a single memory left. His friends, his siblings, his home — all lost to the fog in his head, nothing more than a mystery slipping through his fingers. What else was there to do but carry himself around in bits and parts, trying to become whole, a letter waiting to be written? He is – he is Mo Xuanyu, isn’t he? In this body, with these people. This family. He has to be Mo Xuanyu, he didn’t know anything else, even if the name sounded wrong. That was all he had. Well, that and Hanguang-jun. Lan Wangji, for his part, has had his taste of love and lost it. In all his grieving and searching, he didn’t expect to find another.

Wei Wuxian gets resurrected, loses his memories, and falls in love. (I've been following this amazing amnesia AU fic for close to 2 years and it's finally complete so I can finally rec it! Yes, it's ridiculously long, but it's so very very good. It's canon divergent due to the summoning ritual resulting in WWX not remembering anything prior to that evening and since the Lans assume it's a result of the chaos of that night they bring him back to Cloud Recesses. "Mo Xuanyu" and LWJ find themselves attracted to one another but there's LWJ's previous lost love (WWX) looming over them and the whole mystery of the cursed dismembered body pieces and the fact MXY seems to have been a demonic cultivator... Anyway, a long, but absolutely excellent read.)

hot for teacher by attackofthezee (noxlunate) (8k)
Summary Snippet: In which Wei Ying is a young single father whose son is possibly scheming to set him up with his history teacher. (very cute modern AU)

Like a River Flows by brooklinegirl (55k)
Summary: Wei Ying has been Lan Zhan's partner for two months, three days, and seven hours. Plus or minus a handful of minutes, if you're counting. Which Wei Ying is. (Great modern cultivation casefic AU that I was actually going to rec next week but someone posted it this week so I'll just put it here to keep track of)

Made some shortbread today using this recipe. Worked well, I'll definitely make it again.

I mentioned this recipe in the Yuletide discord and there was some interest in it so I thought I'd write it up. It's quite the change from the typical apple, walnuts, sugar and wine recipe that I (and many Ashkenazi Jews) grew up with but has become a staple at my seders since I got it 26 years ago when in college. I usually double it so there's plenty for the seder and to give to people to take home and I still have some left to eat through passover.

1/2 lb pitted dates
1 C dark currants (or double the raisins)
1 C raisins
1/4 C pitted prunes
1- 1 1/4 C sweet wine (grape juice will work too)
1/2 C chopped walnuts
1/4 C ground almonds

1) Soak the fruit overnight (either coarsely chop the fruit before soaking or whir with an immersion blender once in the pan the next day). 2) Drain but reserve the liquid. 3) In a heavy pan combine the fruit, 1 C wine and 1 C of reserved liquid (if doubling do NOT double this). 4) Cook over med-low heat 4-5 hours, stirring occasionally (until the liquid is absorbed) and the mixture is thick. 5) Cool. 6)Stir in nuts and more wine if it's too dry.

(I posted this on LJ's vintage-recipes back in 2010 but wanted to have it here in case that journal ever gets deleted. I haven't made it recently since it's a lot of work, but it makes the best challah I've ever eaten.)

Chubby Bubby was my grandmother's mother. She considered having a fresh challah for the Sabbath table one of the utmost important things for a person to have so, every Friday morning (other than during Passover and the Friday she was in labor with my grandmother- a fact she NEVER let my grandmother forget) from when she got married in 1904 until she was admitted into a care facility in 1973 she got up early to start the dough.

She passed on the tradition, teaching her daughters and daughters-in-law the 'proper' way to make challah, although most wound up buying their bread instead, much to her dismay. 20 someodd years ago I called my grandmother, who luckily still had the notecard where she'd jotted down the recipe, and asked her to walk me though preparing Chubby Bubby's challah.

Getting a recipe that worked and I could understand was a little more difficult. This is how the conversation went:

G: First whisk two yeast cakes into lightly heated water
Me: How much water?
G: Oh, enough
Me: What temp?
G: Warmer than for regular bread
Me: Umm.. okay
G: Then add 3 cups fresh flour and 1 of sugar, put it in the stove to rise. While that's rising combine 5 cups flour, about a half cup of sugar and a pinch or two of salt. Then, using your fingers rub in a pound of good schmaltz until it resembles a coarse meal.
Me: Schmaltz?
G: Use butter, I'm sure you can't find schmaltz where you live. When that's done set it aside and take out the yeast mixture and beat into it five eggs and a bissel of honey to sweeten your week.
Me: A bissel?
G: More than a smidge, less than a splash, you know, a bissel.
Me: Oh right... a bissel (still had no clue)
G: Work the flour mixture into the yeast and adding extra flour if needed, but not too much. Knead and put it in an oiled bowl to rise until midmorning.
Me: How long is that?
G: Until it's risen enough. Then, when it's ready punch it down; divide and braid up three challahs as a four braid.
Me: A four braid?
G: Bubbleh always said six braids for the barimer, three for the pisher, four for the baleboose. {As near as I can tell Chubby Bubby altered a Yiddish phrase about a braggart, a fool/simpleton and a clever housewife for this} Let them rise until the afternoon, brush with a beaten egg and put in a hot oven for a bit before letting the temperature drop to a moderate oven.

Needless to say it took a bit of trial and error to turn that recipe into something that worked. After a number of attempts what I came up with was:

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To make a four braid challah:
Roll out four "ropes" of dough and lay them side by side.
Working from left to right do an over-under-over weave - rope 1 goes over rope 2 then under rope 3 then over rope 4 to be in the furthest right place.
Repeat (taking the leftmost rope, 2, and bringing it over 3, under 4 then over 1; followed by 3 over 4, under 1 and over 2) until done.
Pinch bottoms and tops shut, folding any extra dough under the loaf.

We eat a lot of bread-type foods in this house and while stuff from the bakery is awesome, it is also expensive and needs to have been bought and planned for ahead of time so isn't always feasible. When I have time I'll make rolls and bread but that can be either labor intensive or requires time I do not have (or both, like challah) so I tend to wind up whipping up my standard "Mystery Biscuit" recipe I found in an old church cookbook at a garage sale ages ago.

Mystery Biscuits
2C flour (all purpose or half AP/half whole wheat, I've never tried all whole wheat)
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
(shredded sharp cheddar or other flavorful cheese) - optional
(dash seasoning - Old Bay/paprika/pepper/whatever) - optional
1 C milk (or water+dry milk)
1/4 C Mayo

Mix it all together (dumping the mayo into the measuring cup with the liquid and whisking a bit with a fork before adding to the dry makes it easier). Drop large spoonfuls onto greased or lined cookie sheet. Bake 375° 18 min. (The temp and time can be adjusted to fit an entree that's baking, anywhere from 350-450 should work fine).

Less than 30 minutes from the 'crap I forgot a starchy side dish' to tasty goodness. And unlike most biscuits there's no cutting in butter or rolling so easy on the wrists and quicker to do.

Today I had a little more time so I tried a whole wheat stir-and-pour bread recipe I'd bookmarked ages ago and was quite happy with the result. With rising and cooking it took longer, but hands-on time was a lot less- five minutes total. (5 minutes to stir together, 30 to rise, 45 to bake, 5-10 to cool and then slice= 90 minutes or so from start to finish)

Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Bread
4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp active-rise yeast
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
dry milk (I didn't measure- 2-4 Tbsp maybe?)
1 egg
2 cups warm water (120°ish)

Stir everything together. Cover bowl with a towel and let rise 30 min. Preheat oven 350°. Dump into well greased/buttered 9" loaf pan. Bake 45ish min. Turn out. Let cool a little and slice.

Texture-wise, it's a little denser than bread usually is, probably due to the gluten not being developed via kneading but it was still quite tasty. I'll definitely be making it again.

Easy but delicious dessert I adapted from a brownie recipe probably a decade ago.

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