Italian-stuffed poblanos

This recipe started with the wicked stuffed blog's version, but I ran into a couple problems. First, banana peppers aren't in season in early April in Texas, so... poblanos. Also, doesn't take as much stuffing as they call for.

Italian-stuffed Poblanos

2 pair nitrile gloves (optional, but makes handling cut peppers and seeds so much easier!)
10 Poblano peppers
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 lbs mild country sausage
1 onion
2 tsp fennel
1/2 tsp black pepper
pinch red pepper
pinch garlic powder
2 tsp herbs de provence
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1/4 cup wine
8oz shredded mozzarella
1 cup marinara sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Don gloves, and set out two baking sheets with either silicone baking mates or aluminum foil
Pour olive oil into a bowl you can reach into to get oil all over your hands (but don't oil up yet.)
Cut off tops of poblanos & deseed.
Oil hands, and rub down the outside of the poblanos.
Put knife you used in the sink, then remove gloves & throw away.
Bake pobalos for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook sausage over medium heat. Add fennel seeds, black & red pepper, cook until browned. Add onion & salt (if you think it needs salt, cook until onions translucent.
Add herbs de provence, and deglaze the pan with the wine.
Set sausage mixture aside to cool.

When peppers come out of the oven, let cool until merely warm to the touch.
Don second pair of nitrile gloves, open cheese packet.
Cut each poblano in half, then strip out the pith and seeds you missed earlier.
Lay poblano halves back on baking sheets, skin down.
Crumble the sausage & onion mixture even finer if needed, and heap onto peppers.
Layer cheese on top of sausage mixture. Toss gloves, have still clean hands.

If you let everything sit to room temperature, pop trays back into 350 oven for 5 minutes or so. If not, skip this step.
Turn on broiler, and broil peppers until the mozzarella is bubbly and browning. Swap baking trays & broil other one, too.
While broiling, stick marinara sauce in microwave on reheat power, stopping to stir occasionally, until steaming hot.

Serve marinara on side with ladle, and trays of peppers laid across the burners on the stove, with a spatula. Is tasty, not fancy.

Biting off more than I can chew

I'm about to graduate from Physical Therapy. Unfortunately, I already know this song and dance: I'm not 100%, I'm just to the point where I don't need to be supervised in order to safely get there. I know the exercises, I know the routine, I have the equipment... go forth and get the last 10% back, and better tan that, on my own time.

Sadly, my brain still wants to say "You're 100%! You're graduating! You should do ALL THE THINGS! And do them now!"

Well, I can get the bathrooms cleaned, three loads of laundry folded (and two more washed), and dinner made. But I can't get those last two loads folded, and even dinner's going to require a while on the couch recuperating before I get up to tackle the last stuffing the peppers and sticking them in the oven bit.

Our writing group is going low carb. This is awesome, because it means I get to try out low carb recipes that are just far, far too much work for two people. This is a whole lot more work than my shoulder likes, because I'm using it as an excuse to learn the dark arts (chemistry and physics) of low-carb baking.

Today's recipes will either be wonderful or be the kind of disaster that sends us out to a nearby restaurant. Among other things, I figured out that the "lemon custard" for the tart was really just a sweetened hollandaise sauce... right as it split on me. Thank goodness for the internet, because I'd clean forgotten how to repair split sauces!

now I just need to mop the kitchen and dining room, vacuum the couch and cat tree (Maine coon kitten - when it comes to shedding, he's definitely the malamute of the cat world!), mow the back lawn, clean the place up, fold the last two loads of laundry, and...

Maybe I'll just sit here and have some tea.

Relearning the basics

It's a truth and a truism that you don't necessarily go to experts to learn the very basics: if you want to learn to paint, you'd better learn a bit about gauche vs oils vs watercolor and what brushes, or brushstrokes, do what, much less how to mix pigments, etc. before you do a class with Franzetti, Whelan, De Royo, Sam Flegal, or Melissa Gay.

This is because experts at doing are much in demand to do instead of teach, so their teaching time is limited and best saved for going from good to really good and need a lot of practice with the new techniques you just learned, eh?

Except... (there's always an except) When you learn from someone who's very good at what they do, and they're taking the time to start at the utmost basics, you can learn a heck of a lot faster because you get to skip a lot of guesswork, learning wrong, and having to unlearn the wrong way in order to relearn the right way.

And a surprising amount of what goes wrong at the mid level, preventing you from getting to great, has to do with needing to go back and fix / perfect the basics.

I've been lucky, or unlucky, enough to receive basic flying instruction in several different environments, from Palo Alto to Alaska Oklahoma to Appalachia. This was partially a function of running out of money for instruction before achieving the license several times, and partially a function of relearning after physical therapy. When your muscles no longer pull with the same amount of force or pressure that you used to have, it's a good idea to go over the basics of how much push, pull, turn, and twist to do before you get into a tight spot where you really need the airplane to do what you think you told it to do.

I like the crusty old curmudgeons, the quiet guys in the battered ballcaps, because the experience they can impart and the standards they hold me to are priceless. Each one had something different to teach me, and some extra experience to learn, over and above their local knowledge. Some things I learned in offhand comments in conversation would later save my life, or prevent me from getting into a fix that required greater skill than I had to get out of.

Now I'm back in physical therapy (and I'm probably going to pick up a local flight instructor when I'm done, at least for an hour or two.) But I'm tackling another physical sport... shooting.

Now, my dearest darling husband wisely absented himself from teaching me, because husbands teaching wives is... fraught. But OldNFO and LawDog consented to drag my carcass out to the firing line, and start with the very basics: stance, grip, how to carry the gun on and off the range, where to focus, how to sweep the safety off, etc.

Those two gentlemen are very good shots. OldNFO is an extremely patient teacher. And I... I try to be a good learner. Tell me what you want, and I'll do my best not to have to be told twice. (Though I inevitably miss some things on the first round. I aspire to make different mistakes, instead of the same ones over and over!)

Now, when LawDog is demonstrating where my elbows should be when carrying the pistol, in order to make maneuvering in the stack and fighting a hostile who's going for the gun easier... Yeah, that's the thing with learning from experts. Their tangents are fascinating, even when your skill level is nowhere close to being able to apply it.

Like Paul Claus muttering about having to rock the floats for a curving takeoff on glassy water, because the suction with no waves will increase the drag and lengthen your takeoff run significantly otherwise. Or... shoot, I don't remember which author it was now, but explaining that writing to length was a matter of writing the story, then if you needed to pad 10-20 thousand words, you added another character, 20-30K another subplot, and if you needed to cut, see prior. Or Mr. Buckland noting that boredom kills, so if you're likely going to get stuck under a slow-moving low pressure front, make sure you have a good thick book you wanted to read and some handicrafts in the plane. "I think I'll go see if I can make it" is the cause of a lot of heartache.

But make sure you get the basics down first.

Getting better

I know I'm getting better when the symmetrical physical therapy exercises are a challenge to the uninjured side of the body, too.

...or more out of shape? Um, let's stick with getting better. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Low carb flan

Still working on the syrup at the bottom, but I've got the proportions worked out for the custard.

Syrup: next time I'm trying
1 Tbsp Truvia powder
1 Tbsp blackstrap molasses
2 Tbsp water

Custard:
1 cup cream
1 cup half & half
6 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp truvia

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Find a pie plate that fits inside a baking dish.

To make syrup: combine ingredients in bowl.
Spray pie pan with nonstick cooking spray & pour mixture in.
Microwave on half power for 4 minutes.
Place pie pan in large baking dish.

To make custard:
Whisk together all ingredients, and pour over syrup in pie plate.
Place baking dish on oven rack, trying not to slop custard over the side.
Add water to baking dish, trying for up to the level of the flan, but not in danger of slopping over on the oven bottom or in the pie tine when you put the oven shelf in so it can bake.
Bake for 45 minutes or when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. (65 minutes on my last try.)

When finished, if you turn the sink into a room-temperature water bath and plunk the flan in it, it'll cool quickly. Otherwise, let cool however and cut into eighths. Serve with clotted cream for pure decadence.

Spell check problems

Alma and I had a hilarious conversation the other month, in which we pontificated upon the theoretical problems of spell check in a world where magic works, and auto-correct might try to substitute shrubbery wrath (like the shining) vs. Shub Niggurath...

She now has the result up for free on her blog! Go forth, and giggle!

https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/tuesday-tale-second-editions/

The real interesting part...

So, over at a friend's tonight, and he had the Oscars on.

One of us was definitely watching for the costuming. I kinda was, too, though I was playing "spot the costume mistresses fixing everything for photo ops."

But four of us were really playing "spot the security in tuxes." My goodness, that place was swarming with security! So we were counting the number of people in dove position, and spotting the security guy in tennis shoes instead of shiny black wingtips that aren't so good for hauling butt, and the security guy who clearly neither knew nor cared that his bowtie was askew... (I kept expecting a costume mistress to make him twitch by running up and fixing it, but the camera wasn't catching it.)

There were some celebrities there, too. I didn't recognize most of 'em, so they got labelled manbun-boy, concentration-camp-vampire woman, unhappy-child-bride, etc. But who cares about them, when there are costumes, costume mistresses, and security to watch?

Apparently appendix carry was really popular this year, because most of 'em weren't printing on the tuxes.