claudine_c

This was pressed on me by the infamous quarsan, and his efforts have been duly rewarded; I really enjoyed it. It is a fairly short novel, told in fragmentary, disjointed style (150 chapters in 135 pages) about the narrator's investigation of the disappearance of the head waiter of his favourite Indian restaurant. He spends a lot of time stuck down a well, in hospital, and musing on the precise nature of the vindaloo, the biryani and other Indian recipes. It is a real classic of surreal style, very funny in places. Interested to note that it was originally published in blog format earlier this year; the hard copy costs 10 and comes from amazon.de among other places.

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/004126.html

O Morning Star, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. Today’s antiphon addresses Christ as the morning star, the rising sun, the dawn. Whichever translation is...

http://community.livejournal.com/lobcomic/5120.html?mode=reply

It's funny because it was true.

A product having the word 'sham' in it's very name HAS TO TELL YOU SOMETHING.

THINK, America, THINK.

It is not against the law.

On a related note, Windex does SHIT for windows.

( Please help... )

My acne is absolutely out of control.

I'm thirty years old and have struggled with severe acne since my teens. But a year before I went vegan, my dermatologist and I finally found a combination of treatments that resulted in much, much better skin. I went on Aviane birth control pills, I took Doxycycline daily, and I used Tetronoin cream daily as well.

After I went vegan, I dumped all of those medications. The Aviane is totally not vegan as they contain animal hormones. The Doxycyline capsules have gelatin on them, and I don't know about the ingredients in the Tetronoin cream, but all three are FDA approved and therefore have been tested on animals countless times.

I can't remember where I'd read it. I think it was on here, but nobody tagged it, so I can't find the post. Someone suggested washing your face with salt to draw out the infection, then applying tea tree oil and lavender oil. I've been doing that, but I'm an absolute mess.

Does anybody have any other ideas of what might help? By the way, my skin is on the dry side. After being oily for years, I guess age caught up with me, and I'm drying out like a mummy.

Thanks in advance for any advice y'all might have.

Poll #1501556 Todays Poll .
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

Did you/Are you attend(ing) your top choice

FAQ 95 on userpic keywords says this:

"If you want your style to display your userpics alongside your entries on your Recent Entries page, you will need to use keywords to select the images when posting and customize your style."

I know you don't need to select a keyword in order for the userpic to display on recent entries. I think most styles will display them without the user going out of their way to make it happen, and I don't think Support gets a lot of questions about how to include userpics on recent entries, so it seems like this is no longer something that needs to be addressed. But definitely the part about the keywords is incorrect.

There was a recipe posted here this week for butterscotch fudge and now I can't find it. Am I really dense or is it no longer posted? I was excited to try it for Christmas and ended up ordering the butterscotch chips for it. Can anybody help or am I s.o.l.?

http://kattekrab.livejournal.com/60671.html

Originally published at KatteKrab. Please leave any comments there.

Scone Muffins = Scoffins

I had an idea of trying to make scones with polenta (course corn meal) using a cream scone recipe.  The dough ended up being a bit too gloopy, probably because the polenta is not as absorbent as flour, and so I spooned the mixture into a muffin tray to bake them, instead of rolling and cutting as you normally would with scones.  I was quite surprised how well they turned out, although I do believe they needed another 5-10 mins baking - so I've added that extra time below. You may need to vary this a little depending on your oven.

1 cup polenta
1 cup self raising flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
200 mls pure cream (avoid thickened cream, as it usually contains gelatine or vegetable thickeners)
up to 1 cup of milk

Pre-heat oven to 200c

Grease a 6 cup muffin tin, and line with a little extra corn meal

Sift the flour, then mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Pour in the cream and stir through quickly, then pour in a little of the milk at a time until you reach a gooey doughy  consistency. But don't stir it too much, you're aiming to just combine all the ingredients, not create a smooth dough. Spoon the mixture into the muffin moulds, and bake for 20-25 mins, until a test skewer comes out clean, and the tops are burnished golden.

Eat them with chutney and creamy cheeses, or sliced meats. Chutney and brie works surprisingly well as a replacement for the jam and cream you might usually have with a scone.

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I was munching on a carrot in my cab, number two on the Manuka rank. Reading Further Tales of the City and just chilling.

So I was surprised when a passenger opened the door and got in. "What about him?" I asked, indicating the cab ahead.

"I didn't want to wake him up," she said, and gave me a destination on the further side of the city, an easy forty dollar fare.

I take the position that if a cabbie is asleep on a rank - especially at five in the afternoon - then he's too weary to drive safely.

Sleep management is an important part of a cabbie's life. The average rate per hour is so low that if a cabbie wants to make serious money, he's got to drive serious hours. In theory, I drive a thirteen hour shift each weeknight, and other drivers, especially those who own their own cabs, will drive even longer hours to make the money needed both to pay the huge costs of operating a cab and make some sort of living.

While a cabbie's shift isn't continuous driving, and it's a sight more interesting than the highway driving of long-haul truckers, it's still a long time to be awake and alert. A good cabbie, even if he's not actually driving, will be waiting for somebody to walk up and get in, or for the chime of an incoming radio job. He'll be watching the stats screen to work out where the work patterns are flowing best, and he'll be cleaning the windows or shaking out the floormats when there's nothing else to do.

Or he'll be chatting to other drivers, reading a book, doing the crossword puzzle, listening to the cricket... There's a lot of idle time in a cabbie's life.

What he shouldn't be doing is sleeping. Other cabbies will take his passengers, he'll miss out on radio jobs, he'll lose income.

In an ideal world, a cabbie gets eight hours of good, solid sleep, drives his twelve hour shift, and has four hours left over for recreation. Not much of a life, but, as I always tell the passengers, "It beats working!"

In the real world, it's hard to get a solid chunk of uninterrupted sleep, especially for a night cabbie like myself. There's the unavoidable noise and activity of the rest of the family waking up and going to work or school. There are traffic noises, horns honking, construction vehicles rumbling. There are phone calls. In summer it's hot, and there's always the problem of too much light seeping around the curtains.

I'm lucky if I get three hours of sleep in a row. I'll take a nap in the early afternoon before starting work at three, but somewhere around midnight, I'll be running down. With the last planes landed at the airport and streets full of cabbies competing over the last few fares, it's an ideal time for me to take a nap before joining the die-hard taxidrivers serving the empty city. There's always work around at two in the morning on a weeknight. You might have to drive a bit further to pick up a passenger, but in a city the size of Canberra with a floating population of students and parliamentary staffers and public servants staying a few nights for a course or a convention, there's always someone in the wee hours who needs to go somewhere.

I don't pump myself full of energy drinks or pills to stay awake. I know other cabbies do, and I've tried some of those pills many years ago, but it's an artificial alertness, and while the body stays awake, hands gripping the steering wheel, the mind goes off in strange directions. I know that everyone expects cabbies to be a little bit crazy, but I don't want artificial assistance in that direction.

But I can't drive when I'm tired. I start making mistakes. I'll give out the wrong change, I'll take an inefficient route, I'll miss out on fares. And, worst of all, I'll drive in an unsafe fashion. There are only so many traffic lights you can misjudge, only so many Stop signs you can roll through, only so many Give Way signs you can ignore.

Or I'll begin to microsleep.

When that happens, I'll stop work and take a nap immediately. I usually stop well before I get to that point, but sometimes when the flow of work on a busy night doesn't give a natural break, I'll find myself whipping down the Monaro Highway, long and straight down to the far suburbs of Tuggeranong, with eyes that don't want to stay open.

I've got my own private map of quiet little corners of the city. Dark and deserted at midnight. Parks, sporting fields, carparks. What I need is something off the streets, not too much light or noise. I'm lucky in that Canberra has many such places. In fact there are four excellent carparks right in the middle of the Parliamentary Triangle in Federation Mall that are dark and deserted. Telopea Park and Haig Park have some good spots. But there's always somewhere.

I park the car facing my best exit route, I lock the doors, turn off as many lights and displays as I can, crank the seat right back and zonk off. Even a five or ten minute powernap is good, but sometimes I'll doze for an hour. I don't set any alarm, because I figure that I'll wake when I feel rested.

Usually what happens is that I get woken up by an incoming radio job after fifteen or twenty minutes. I can ignore it if I want, but generally I take the job and get back to work, good to go for those last few hours before I hand the car over to the day driver at four in the morning.

An alternative strategy, one my wife prefers, is that on a slow night I finish early. Like most other night cabbies. Trouble is that if every cabbie did that, then there would be no taxis on the streets to cope with the small demand at that time, let alone the unexpected load of a delayed flight or a late bus or a big function going late. There are always people to be shifted around the city and it is at these times that I feel most useful, saving people a long wait or a long walk. And making myself a few quid getting them home safely and comfortably.

This coming Saturday I am going to fly to Paris to visit with my dad for a week and a half (he's over there for work for a few months). He's pretty much a vegetarian, so he won't mind eating vegan for dinner, but I am going to be making it. His wife will also be there, and I am assuming that there will be plenty of underhanded snipes about my choice of diet.

So, I need some recipes or cookbooks that will be easy to make in Paristhat will just knock their socks off. So basically just whole foods that I will be able to easily find in a city that doesn't care too much for vegans. He has a stove and an oven and a fridge, but he doesn't want leftovers.

Any help?

Basic Instructions gave instructions on how to listen to a boring story. And it managed to use the perfect example, since nothing is more boring than bored people.

I, and many people I'm close to, are often self-conscious of being boring. And I think a common assumption is that the topic plays a big part: how many people have heard their co-workers talking about their route to work and wanted to chloroform them? And yet, there are people out there who can make you interested in any topic. For example, I hate celebrity gossip, but somehow I enjoy Kathy Griffin's comedy specials. I never watch sports, but somehow when Adam Carolla talks about any sport, it makes sense. Also, watch any TEDtalk.

Then I read something that tied it all together. "A boring person is one who takes away your solitude, without giving companionship in return." I'm not sure of the source, or even the exact wording; it's not on Wikiquotes. Somehow the name Ambrose Bierce comes to mind. But the key words stuck, and since then, the world makes a little more sense.

It's not quite obvious yet how I can improve my conversational skills, but maybe that will happen unconsciously.

I'm trying to make a coat for this winter, but I'm having trouble finding a vegan yarn that's really warm. The closest I've got is Blue Skies Cotton; does anyone have a suggestion?

Thank you!

I've been working at the same place for almost 2 years so everyone knows I'm a vegan.  Recently a couple of female co-workers, one of them 3 weeks ago and the other just this week, each told me that they are going to become vegetarian/vegan...citing a movie or something that showed animals being slaughtered...and asked me about my diet.  But, when I offer to share an excel spreadsheet with them and help them to figure out what vitamins, proteins, & other nutrients they will need and how to find out what foods satisfy those requirements they act very uninterested and don't even mention it afterwards.

It makes no sense to me...anyone care to enlighten me?