Beer Caramel!

I was given this beer caramel the other day.  Beer caramel?  What?  THAT HAS TO BE AWESOME, I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself.  It does have a subtle beer flavour while still retaining the yummy of caramel. It’s pretty good!

Postcards

I collect and send postcards.  I’m a bit of a postcard addict.  I’ve always sort of liked looking at them, and flipping through them, but my own collection (and love of sending them) is rather new.

In winter 2004, while on JET, CLAIR sent out promotional postcards, for free, to JET participants.  The photos were all shitty amateur crap by people with dodgy camera skills, but free postcards man! Yeah, I’ll send those.

And I did! I hit up everyone I knew to ask them for their addresses so I could send them postcards.  When I ran out, that was fine.  But the following year, the same thing happened, and I leaped on the chance to send postcards again.

Fast forward to Winter 2008, and a friend told me about Postcrossing.  I started sending cards through it and that was fun.  It was a pain to always run out and look for individual postcards when I drew a new address though, and so I started to pick up postcards when I went places, so that I’d have some on hand.

Fast forward to today, and I have 180 postcards that I’ve received through Postcrossing and from friends, and I have nearly as many blank cards on hand to send to others.  I went to Loft in Shibuya earlier this month, and dropped 10,000yen on postcards.

I think I may have a problem.

In related news, Japan (as most countries, I reckon) often has special issues of stamps, commemorative editions, collectors’ shizzle, and whatnot.  Currently, I’m using these Naruto stamps when I send postcards.  Oh, how nerdy!

Do you do Postcrossing? What do you think of sending postcards?

Delicious chicken soup, ready for next week's lunches.

This week’s lunches will be Chicken Soup.  I’ll share my recipe with you.

This is intended as a guide, and your soup may have different values.

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Davallia Mariesii / 忍

Just a brief one this weekend, as there’s not been too much which is noteworthy.

Avocado

First, my avocado is doing really really well.  It just keeps shooting up, and it’s a joy to watch every day.  I’m not sure if it’s going to do well in a chilly apartment over the winter, but we’ll see, I guess.

I’m still not sure what’s going on with my jade plant cuttings.  The one in soil has started to shrivel, but I dunno if it’s rooting or not; the one in water hasn’t changed in forever, so I dunno what’s going on there, either.  Oh well, patience, patience.

My sago palm had some brown spots on its fronds earlier this week, and when I looked closer, I noticed TINY MEALYBUGS.  What the hell man, where did you even come from? I MURDERIZED YOU ALL.  So I’m back to being vigilant and watching for them, and spraying with the soap/wine/oil/water mixture.

Jade plant

Finally, my christmas cactus cutting!  I got it back in mid-September, I think, and it’s been in water every since.  There’s been no change at all forever. Every once in a while I’d have to top up the water in its shot glass, but yeah, no changes forever. No roots, no rot, nothing.

The other day while topping up the water with my little watering can, my hand jerked because I’m a spaz or something, and the two leaves went flying to the floor.  I quickly picked them and returned them to the water, convinced I’d fucked them up.

Christmas cactus

THE VERY NEXT DAY they started to root. One is rooting faster than the other, but there is no doubt about it: both of them have now started to root.  What’s the deal with THAT?

In other news, I keep seeing little tree-like things at garden centers or flower stores or the 100yen shop, and think I should pick them up, but then I decide not to.  Whether its little orange trees, or those… things… with the… i dunno what they’re called and I can’t describe them, but they look awesome! or the Silk Jasmine at the Daiso, I kind of want.  Don’t really have the space though…

Lots of bleeding crotons everywhere. Fucking hate crotons.  Bloody awful looking things.  HERE IS A HORRIBLE TREE WITH THE MAIN TRUNK CUT OFF AND SEALED WITH TAR ISN’T IT ELEGANT? Get out.  But anyway, I digress.

Now that’s actually getting colder, I wonder how any of my plants will do.  The ones in windows will necessarily have to be moved elsewhere but where would work, I wonder?  Away from the windows and they’ll get nearly no light.  Ah well, we’ll deal with that when we get to it.

Magic Spice Soup Curry Caramel

At work today, one of the teachers kept offering me all manner of odd foods.  First, some sort of senbei (rice cracker), which I’m not generally a fan of, but which I accepted anyway, because it would be impolite to do otherwise.

Then she’s like, “Oh! Do you want caramels? I have a bunch of random leftover ones.”

“Um, yes please!” I replied.  That’s more my taste, you see.

She rocks up with this. Soup curry flavoured caramel.  “It’s kind of spicy! Be careful!” she warned me. It was bizarre. It was sweet, like caramel, and textured like caramel, but it had a strong curry taste as well. IT CONFUSED MY HEAD AND MY MOUTH.

The package says that it will “wake up your brain cells”.  It certainly did that, but only through the power of WTF that it exercised on me.

I missed my regularly scheduled Wednesday update. I’m braindead and I can’t write anything.  Hopefully I’ll be on track for Friday.

In the meantime, do enjoy this.

Yeah. Have a go at THAT.

Mushroom Barley Soup

At work, they make me eat lunch, and I’m not gonna eat their lunch, so I have to bring my own, and it’s ever so troublesome, but whaddya gonna do.

I decided this week to try making some soup ahead of time, freeze it, and have enough for lunch every day. I’ve not made soup before, and I’ve not frozen soup I’ve made, soooooo this is a first!

Mushroom Barley Soup

Blend in a soup pot over high heat:

• 50ml of oil
• 15ml of butter

Add:

• 680g of mushrooms
• (I estimated, so I may have used too much, and it was consequently more shroom and less soup) (I used white button mushrooms, brown button/chestnut mushrooms, enoki, nameko and dried shiitake.) (Let the dried shiitake soak in hot tap water for 20 minutes to rehydrate. Save the water.) (You can use whatever mushrooms you like, though.)
• 120ml of chopped shallots

Cook, stirring often, until the mushrooms are wilted, about 5 minutes. Add:

• 50ml of wine
• thyme

Reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring and scraping brown bits off the bottom of the pot, for 5 minutes. Stir in:

• 1L of beef stock/consommé
• (if you’re using dried mushrooms, and you saved the water, mix your stock powder/goo/cube with the saved mushroom water for SUPER MUSHROOM BEEF BROTH WOOOO)
• 180ml of pearl barley
• (大麦 in Japanese, find it in the ‘stuff to stir in to your rice before you cook it’ section of the supermarket)
• salt and pepper, not too much

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the barley is tender, 45 minutes to an hour, depending on your stove, your pot, your barley, etc.

I’m not sure how it ought to be. As I mentioned, I may have over shroomed, and desoupied the soup. Alternatively, the nameko may have served to thicken the soup. Either way, it was quite thick and chunky, but that’s how I like it. Sticks to the spoon instead of my shirt.

Anyway, give it a go! It’s really quite delicious.

Aloe Aristata

Sunday Sunday Sunday! Houseplants go!

Cycad: New Growth?

I suppose now that it’s getting on autumn and the temps are cooler and the days are shorter, even houseplants are gonna stop growing a bit, etc.  I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much in the way of progress.  Nothing’s dying, so that’s cool!

I don’t know much about cycads / sago palms.  My cycad, which is now completely mealybug free, doesn’t appear to be growing. Or maybe it is, I don’t know!  If a cycad dies, does it very CLEARLY die? Or does it just look healthy until the end of time, even though it’s friggin’ dead? I dunno. At any rate, it still looks fine, and there may or may not be new growth.

A. Nobilis Cuttings

The avocado is still growing well, too!  Lots of new leaves!

My aloe nobilis cuttings are kickin’ around and not really changing, but I think that’s okay. They tend to take forever, so it should be okay.  My jade leaf is doing the same dealio, but I dunno, it may be fine.

Spider Plant

Finally, I’ve gotten around to transplanting my spider plant out of it’s little water bath into hydroculture.  Got a little foofy and added some coloured beads for fun, but whatever.  Also have it in a cute little jar from the Daiso, with leaves and ladybugs on it. ^_^  I hope it does well~

How about you? How are your houseplants doing?  What plants do you keep? What do you want to try keeping?

Dragonfly

There were a jillion dragonflies at my Friday school. They were everywhere. One of the kids was like, “uwaa, it’s like a dragonfly typhoon!”  They’d land on your hand if you put it out. It was kinda magical.

Two more pictures after the jump.

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Sunset.

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