Darkoshi

"Microwave on HIGH for 1 minute 5 seconds or until hot. Turn sandwich over halfway through heating time."

So at 32.5 seconds, I'm supposed to pause the oven and turn over the sandwich.

Note to self: If they stick to the pan, don't start scraping them off right away:

Why my dumplings keep sticking to the pan?

Reply posted by Corpuscle • 5y ago
...
Preheat a stainless-steel skillet that's big enough to hold all the dumplings without crowding; a 12-inch skillet is pretty much the standard.
Add 1-2 teaspoons of soybean oil to the skillet, spreading it out uniformly with a brush.

When the oil is just starting to smoke, add your dumplings, very gently pressing them down so they get good contact with the lubricated pan. Cook for two minutes without touching them.
The dumplings WILL stick to the pan; that's why they're called "pot stickers."
During the two minutes of cooking, a crust will form on the bottom of the dumplings.

After two minutes, dump half a cup of [broth or water] to the pan and slam on the lid.
The broth will start boiling immediately, generating steam to finish cooking the dumplings.
Reduce the flame to low and allow the dumplings to cook for another two minutes.
When you remove the lid from the pan, the dumplings should be shiny and released from the bottom...

Finally, I have switched over to using the new laptop as my primary one. I am not finished setting up all my programs and settings, but the most important parts are done.

I figured out how to customize the menu colors in my Firefox and Waterfox browsers via my userChrome.css file. I hadn't planned to do that, but for some reason the browsers' menu spacing was less compact on the new laptop than the old one. While researching how to fix that, I also found out how to change the colors:

/* Make menus more compact, and change their color */
menupopup > menuitem, menupopup > menu {
	padding-top: 2px !important;
	padding-bottom: 2px !important;
	color: #00ffb2 !important;
	background: #4d056e !important;
}
menupopup > menuitem:hover, menupopup > menu:hover {
	background: #000000 !important;
}

I had a week of vacation to do it.
Besides the new laptop, I:
- baked brownies and chocolate chip cookie bars
- made cucumber salad
- cooked grits
- sewed a cloth cover on my headphone's headband after cutting off the original one which was sticky with age
- tried out the solid bike tires; returned them.
- watched some TV, including 3 more episodes of "I Don't Want to Be Friends With You".
- miscellaneous other minor things

I am not feeling rested at all. But at least I'm using the new laptop.

My allergies started acting up again lately. Yesterday while mowing leaves in the yard, I wore a face mask. My nose didn't get runny! It did require finesse, though, to situate my safety glasses to where they wouldn't fog up.

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I used this method for cooking some very old kidney beans:
Food Storage Friday - Cooking Old Beans

How old? I have no idea!*. As they were so old, I used twice as much baking soda and let them soak in the baking soda water overnight. Then I did it again today with fresh water and baking soda and a 4-hour soak. Then I finally cooked them in a pressure cooker.

It worked! They got soft.

*I'd stored the beans in a neat Korean glass jar, which is vaguely familiar to me, but which is also so old that I don't remember where it came from. The label on the jar is for hot chili paste, which I'm sure I didn't buy nor eat.

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Vegan Ready-to-bake Cinnamon Rolls! From Kroger, Simple Truth Organics brand. Tastes pretty good. I mostly got them for the nostalgia factor.

I also have fond memories of ready-to-bake biscuits. The kind with all the flaky layers that you could peel off one at a time. Maybe I'll find vegan ones like that someday. But then again, I have them still in my memory, so I don't really need to.

Vegan Ready-to-bake Chocolate Chip Cookie dough! From Kroger, Simple Truth brand. I'd seen them before, but this time the price was actually reasonable. I haven't baked them yet.

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The tongs have already proven themselves useful!, for pulling cooked pumpkin pieces out of boiling hot water. Some day I won't fathom how or why I went so long without having any. Maybe that is how my brother felt long ago when he was staying at my house, and was incredulous that I didn't have a soup ladle.

One of the reasons I don't like to cook penne pasta is its tendency to stick together while being boiled, and then the stuck-together parts taking longer to soften than the rest. The same often happens with shell pasta; multiple shells stacking on top of each other.

I thought a solution might be to put some drops of oil in the boiling water before adding the pasta, but I don't really want my pasta to come out of the pot oily. (Because greasy and harder to clean.) The first few articles I found on the topic discouraged using oil anyway, as it makes the sauce "slide right off". That's not a concern for me, as I put either margarine (I know, I know; it doesn't have to make sense) or salad dressing on my pasta, not tomato sauce.

The articles advised stirring the pasta right away for a few minutes when putting it in the water. And using plenty of salted water.

So I did that today. I also added the pasta to the boiling water a few pieces at a time while stirring, rather than dumping them all in at once. It took a few extra minutes, but it really worked. They didn't stick together this time.

This page suggests putting the pasta in the water before bringing it to a boil; I'm interested in trying that out too:
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/32040/how-to-prevent-orecchiette-from-sticking-to-each-other-while-cooking-how-to-sep

I'm annoyed at NBC, calling the election less than 1 minute after the poll closing time, with no votes even officially in yet. They'll probably end up being right, but still. I've never once even encountered an exit poll at my polling places, so how can they really know what people have voted?

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After voting, I stopped by an Oriental grocery, hoping to find some mung bean thread noodles, which I haven't had in ages. I didn't see any on the shelves, but did find some good-looking sweet potato and acorn starch noodles. In the vegetable section, I got a bag of an unfamiliar looking green, which per Google Lens turns out to be crown daisy, aka edible chrysanthemum. It now occurs to me this may be what a local Korean restaurant uses in their "Korean salad", which was always more memorable to me for the spicy salad dressing they put on it than the greens themselves.

While paying, I asked the owner if she knew where I could find mung bean noodles, and it turned out that the store had them after all. The package said "bean vermicelli" on it, which I must have mistaken for "rice vermicelli" while scanning the shelves. So then I bought that too. [ ETA: But these aren't as good as the ones I remember from the past. I prefer thicker noodles rather than these very fine vermicelli ones. ]

There was also a Mexican supermercado next door, so I browsed it too. I got a box of "shavegrass tea" (aka horsetail) because I'd never heard of it before, and some fresh epazote which is another leafy green vegetable unfamiliar to me. I'd seen the latter in dried form before, but not fresh. The leaves don't smell good, but they taste ok. I'd planned to stir-fry it, but apparently eating it all at once like that may be a bad idea.

Ingredient Spotlight: Epazote:
"Be aware that too much epazote can overpower a dish and even lead to nausea."

Epazote: Mexico’s Mystery Herb
"In very high amounts, epazote can be toxic: It is a vermifuge of the highest order, which means it will kill any intestinal parasites you might have living in your innards."

So maybe I'd be better off making a pot of beans and adding the epazote to it near the end. That could let me use up some of those ancient beans in the cupboard... but then again they are so old, they might not get soft even using the pressure cooker. I'll try it anyway; if the beans don't turn out well then I won't add the epazote.

So. Plans to cook tonight, which might be overdoing it: bean thread noodles, stir-fried or maybe blanched crown daisy, and a pot of beans which will take forever to cook. Oh darn it, they aren't even soaked. That won't work, will it?...

I know! I'll instead take all the canned beans from the cupboard, cook them with some spices and the big can of fire-roasted tomatoes... maybe add that can of pumpkin which I can't figure out what to do with... and then put the epazote in it. And then hopefully I won't get nausea or throw up from it.

I'm glad I didn't buy 2 bunches of the epazote, which I contemplated in the store. Even this one bunch must be at least 2 cups worth, while most recipes I see say to only use a few sprigs of it.

ETA: On further thought, I'll probably throw the epazote away. There's no point in mixing it up with good food and possibly ruining the whole lot, and no point in eating something that may make me feel sick. I wasn't originally planning to cook beans anyway, and to got through that trouble only to use up a couple of sprigs out of the whole bunch, which I then won't even be able to taste? Not worth it.

The stir-fried crysanthemum turned out good.

New trick: place a slice of cheese between 2 deli slices, folding the cheese corners in so they don't stick out, and microwave for ~30 seconds till the cheese melts.

Then you can put that on a toasted piece of bread, thereby having a melted cheese sandwich, without needing to microwave the bread too or needing to heat it in a pan or oven.

Of course, I use vegan cheese and deli slices.

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I thought I posted about these already, but apparently not. Excluding pepperoni, these are the best-tasting vegan deli slices I've ever had. They're good enough to eat straight from the package:
From the Whole Foods brand "365 Everyday Value", Plant-Based Turkey-Style Deli Slices, Herb Roasted.

There is also another flavor, "Applewood Smoke", which I haven't tasted yet:

Wholefoods (USA) NEW plant based cheese slices, shreds, turkey slices

(I debated about mentioning this or not...)
Be careful with the cheese from that 365 brand, though. There was mold in an unopened package I had bought not that long ago, even though it wasn't near the best-by date. That has never happened for me with any other brands of vegan cheese slices that I've had. Hopefully it's an anomaly even for this 365 brand, but thought I should mention it in case it happens to other people too. If so, it's something that ought to be communicated to the company. Otherwise, it's not worth it for me, and I don't want to hurt their reputation.

While putting away dishes yesterday, I noticed some odd irregular shaped small spots on one of the Rubbermaid plastic containers (the bottom clear plastic part, not the lid). At first I thought it was food stuck to it, but washing it again, and scratching at the spots with my fingernails made no difference. It seems to be spots etched out of the plastic.

I asked my sister what food she had in the container last; baked apples with oranges, cinnamon and vanilla (hmmm, sounds tasty). So at first I thought that maybe the acid from the apples or oranges had etched the plastic, which was surprising as I'd never known plastic to be eaten away by acidic foods.

But the below thread indicates the spots are most likely from microwaving food in the container, and having the food get so hot that it melts the plastic in those spots. That makes sense, as I never microwave food in plastic containers, but my sister and niece do.

What is this white stuff on my plastic storage container?

The spots on my container look similar to the photo at the top of that page, except mine are on the sides of the container instead of the bottom, and more spread out rather than one big splot. More like the first photo link on this comment. (But neither me nor my sister has been using the dishwasher, so it has to be from microwaving.)

A family friend gave me some vegetables from his garden. Yellow squash, zucchini, okra, and several cucumbers. I'm on vacation this week and have been staying at Qiao's house, so planned to cook them here.

Qiao bought a bunch of kitchen stuff after moving in, including pots and pans, plates and glasses, and sundries. He hardly ever cooks though, so it doesn't get much use. He mostly goes out to eat, or brings home take-out. I've used his stove only once or twice so far, for boiling noodles. It's a gas stove, which still makes me nervous (gas stoves spit out flames! fire hazard! gas hazard!). But mainly because it's easier to cook at my house (where I have all my supplies) and to bring food over, or to heat food up in his microwave or his toaster oven.

Yesterday I realized I needed a cutting board. The two smallish ones that Qiao has are wood, and were sitting behind the sink for a long time and got black mildew marks on the bottom from it being wet back there. At home I have a glass cutting board, which seems more sanitary. Yesterday I bought him a glass one like mine. I also brought over my garlic crusher, mandolin, and oil and vinegar.

At the grocery store, I bought fresh chives and dill for making a cucumber salad. Generally I slice the cucumbers, and add salt and vinegar, and sometimes dried dill and pepper or a bit of sugar. It never tastes as good as when my mom makes it, nor as good as the wonderful cucumber salad I remember from German restaurants (which tasted different from my mom's). So I hoped that adding fresh herbs would help. I figure that chives are sort of similar to onions in flavor; I don't care to cut up onions for a salad, but I can do chives.

When I look up German cucumber salad recipes, they almost always include sour cream. The ones I remember were not cream-based. They were zesty, light, and refreshing. I could eat a whole plateful if only they'd serve that much. My mom sometimes scrapes onion juice into hers; I think that is part of what makes hers special; she also sometimes adds garlic. But I tried before, and mine still didn't get that special flavor I'm looking for.

I just realized, that Qiao doesn't have a cucumber peeler. Shucks. I could leave the skins on, or I could delay making the salad to some other day.

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Oven mitt! That's another thing that's missing over here.

A duller paring knife would be good too. It's hard to peel garlic with a sharp knife.

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Note to self: Do not put raw garlic in cucumber salad (or anything else) again. It causes way too much gas.