- entry 2025/08/23

Depressed...

What do I do when I feel down? I fire up the oven.

Cooking stuff

Some baked things.

Some caramel fondant that is wrapped and ready for freezing, and some biscuits. I was planning on making a cake, but I discovered that the butter was two weeks beyond its use by date. It seemed okay, no weird smell or anything, so I used it to line the baking tins, but afterwards tossed it into the bin. That far gone, it might have a less than lovely taste, so I'm not going to make a cake.
I did have a crack at making some biscuits replacing the 50g of butter with 33g of sunflower oil, based on the theory of "melted butter is less" so I guesstimated that it would be about ²/₃ by weight. The biscuits that came out were functional but kind of crumbly. Well, lesson learned. ☺

Since the oven was on, I made myself half of an American Snack Box from Picard. Onion rings (that were lovely), ham and cheese balls, and cheese and chili sticks. To accompany, a squirt of Heinz Chili sauce.

Snacks.

Something in that has given me heartburn. I don't suffer from that much, so... Still, I'm going to tolerate it. Mom used to pop Gaviscon like a troubled ADHD child popping amphetamines (no, I'm not joking, that's what Adderall is!), but I will grit my teeth and bear the discomfort. The reason is because I tried a Gaviscon once and I very nearly threw up. The taste, the texture...I'm not sure which was worse, all I know is that I'd rather suffer the heartburn than to take one of those pills.

Something else I didn't do that I had thought about was to try a Red Bull. I didn't do anything that required that degree of get-up-and-go. The reason for the concern is because I am not entirely certain what it would do to me. Would I be running around screaming like a possessed squirrel on speed, or would it have the opposite effect? I can list two unusual reactions that I'm aware of.

The first is red wine - back in the days before I realised that I actually had an intolerance to alcohol. Drinking white or rosé could make me feel a little silly. I've only drunk "a little too much" once, because I don't believe there's any point in being drunk. It was white wine and... I guess it drastically slowed my sense of time perception. I was out at a restaurant in Châteaubriant with mom and a friend and, well, I was completely engrossed with watching the birds fly around the church because it seemed like they were whizzing around at high speed. Also the people walking by were going like high speed power walking. It was all quite amusing really.
But one time I had a single glass of red plonk offered by the French woman that lives up the road. It was a no-label bottle so I have no idea what it actually was, but it was what they were packing away and it would have been rude to refuse.
Seeing that I wasn't looking great, mom made some excuses and took me home. It took about half on hour for a crashing headache. It wasn't a migraine as it was on both sides. Not long after that, I feel into a deep sleep, utterly zonked.
It was such a bizarre reaction that the next time I went out, I got a cheap bottle of red from Lidl. And had a glass...and shortly regretted it.
So while I can drink the Battenberg of wines, red will put me down.

Coffee. Coffee either makes me feel quite sleepy, or it has the peculiar dichotomy of perking me up and making me feel tired at the same time. I'm not sure what sort of coffee is which - if it's like Arabica does one thing and Robustica does the other. I don't much like the taste of coffee so I drink it very weak and very rarely, and mostly just to mix things up a little to exercise some different taste buds.

So as you can see, my concern with throwing stupid amounts of caffeine into me. I might get hyper. I might have my first panic attack. Or I might pass out and sleep the entire day away.
Well, one thing you can say about ADHDers is that we're great at procrastinating, so this can be something else "to do some undefined time later". ☺

A final bit of mowing

A new pasta shape

My pasta jars (plus semolina and porridge oats).

I made a mixture. I was thinking of linguine (my go-to comfort food) but I need to restock. I only had the bronze-cut and I wasn't planning on having any sort of sauce. So, like I said, I made a mixture.

A pasta assortment.

If you're a person like me, you'll understand that these are not the same thing in different shapes. They even taste just a little bit different.

For the shells, I like that they remain firm. The ribbing on the outside (hence the "Rigate" in the name) is pleasing, with a frequency more or less the same as the penne, but slightly more pronounced. Then you can flip it over and wiggle your tongue into it, and it'll gently hold on until you push it over to the molars and bite down, where it is just the right amount of chewy.
So while I've seen this shape for years, I've hesitated because, well, because I'm very picky about what I eat.
But this? This was, eventually, a good choice. So one more jar in the collection.

Lock screen

I came to awaken the machine, and thought that the combination of the music playing plus the randomly selected backdrop was just a really pleasing thing to look at. The whole look and feel is, to me, so much more welcoming than Windows ever managed.

My lock screen at 8.12pm yesterday.

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jgh, 25th August 2025, 00:08

I've been crawling hands-and-knees clearing out the weeds from my back lane over the last two weeks. mdfs.net/pics/2025/08. I got the rampant buddlia out of next-door's steps yesterday, and started on the weeds on the other side of the lane, working my way back. At teatime I worked out I had about 30 metres left to go, so about six hours spread over two or three days.    I left the flat this morning to go to the local country fair.... and somebody had finished the weeding! Ok, I started nitpicking, they've just knocked the standing weeds out and swept them up, they haven't dug the roots out, or dug out the grass between the paving slabs.... but, the first time in ten years, somebody else has done some weeding!    From the electoral register, I'm the only occupant of this little row of nine houses.

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