Potato soup!

Because I said I would.

ya need-

• 1 lb potatoes- chopped to 1cm sq. pieces
• 1 med onion- rough chopped
• water to cover (or chicken broth if so inclined)
• 1tbsp oil or butter
• salt
• pepper
• seasonings
• 1 tsp corn starch or flour
  
• 1 C (give or take) milk, or *plain* soy milk
• 1C grated cheese (cheddar or jack, or whatever) - optional
• other optional ingredients- celery, carrot rounds, other root veggies, garlic- added with the potatoes. Corn, peas, dumplings, added near the end.

put the oil or butter in a 2q pot over med/hi heat untill warm. add onions, cover, stirring occationally untill they get soft and translucent. add the potatoes and cover with water. Cook untill the potatoes start to get soft. mix the corn startch into the milk, then add the milk to the pot slowly, along with other seasonings, stirring occationally, untill it's thickened. usually takes me about 45 minutes, start to finish. Longer if I use bigger chunks of potato.

I like it with (again) cajun seasoning, or sometimes roasted garlic and carrots added.

Alternately, for roast veggie cream soup, you can make white sauce (butter, milk, flour or corn starch) that's kinda thin, and roast the veggies with some oil/salt in the oven, just dumping them into the sauce at the end, mixing them around a bit with the seasonings. Saves some time, 'cause you can do the roasted veggies beforhand in bulk and freeze them, but has a different flavor.

j.

Very important, painful thing I am learning (again) on my summer vacation.

People who don't normally drink milk should not eat/ drink things with milk in them.

Well, ok, things that *used to be* milk, usually ok- cheese, butter, things like that, ok.

Things that are still basically milk- white sauce, milkshakes, ice cream, not ok.

These things should, in fact, be avoided at all costs. When ingested by the lazy but hungry j, they cause temporary happyness followed by hours of "intestinal distress". Which I'm sure everyone wanted to know all about.

Ah, well, at least I won't be running around this afternoon- I'll have time to study my ochem. which is good, because my contact course (when all the labs get done- in one week) is just about 2 weeks away, and I really don't want to look as stupid this time as I did last time. dratted math.

j.

And then goats rained from the sky

Three posts in one day, I must be reaaally bored. or something.

So, I was thinking. I'm assuming some of you reading this are not family or friends, but people actually looking at coming to NZ for school. So I guess I should actually put in some useful information, like where to get special food (dude, import shop), and where to buy booze, and.. I don't know, how to get to and from the airport/ bus station/ train station.

So (while I should be doing my sumer school work, what's new there) I figured I could take time out of my busy CSI watching schedule to make a google map, and take some photos, and give a kinda lame tour of town. With some of the stuff you might actually need to find. Tho probably not all of it. And not today.

And the family/ friend types could actually see where I am. Since some of them (Hi mom!) don't have passports. And some of them aren't quite crazy enough to tack a 12+ hour detour onto a business trip (Hi dad!).

Oh, yeah, and the chemistry? most of it's due friday. I really gotta get to work on that...

j.

Popcorn!

popcorn is cheap, easy, and cheap. is good.

you need-

• oil
• popping corn
• salt
• pot with lid
• seasoning
• butter or spray oil

You puts the put on the stove, with about 2 T oil in the bottom. more or less...
You gets the oil hot enough that it swirls about nice-like and covers the bottom of the pot.
You dumps in about 1/4C of corn.
you swirls the corn around untill it's nice and ily and in a single layer on the bottom of the pot.
you covers the pot, and swirls it every once in a while once the corn starts popping.
you pulls the corn off the heat when the popping slows down, unless you likes the burned popcorn (blech)
you dumps the popcorn in a biiiig bowl, sprays with oil or pours on butter.
you sprinkles on salt, mixing as you goes, and seasonings, if you wants.
you eats it all and makes some more.

seasonings-
the packet from a box of mac and cheese- or part of it anyway
some ranch dressing mix
nutritional yeast (if you don't know, don't ask)
cajun seasoning! (on everything but choco cake, I swear)
random other spices
powdered tomato! (ick, ew, gross)
some of the stuff from inside a taco seasoning packet
more salt

if you feels like doing real work, you can make fresh caramel, or some other thick sugar syrup, and mix that in. I be too lazy. that be a monster clean up job, anyway.

j.

mmm, food

about 2 blocks from my place there is a corner, with lights and crosswalks and all sorts of cool stuff nearby. If I don't cross at the light, but go right instead, about 100 yards away is a huge bike store. across the big road from the bike store is a supermarket and a "mall".

lots of other usefull stuff across the streets, too, like bars, and liquor stores, and more supermarkets. But most important of all is that, by crossing to the left, I can go 20 yards and hit burger king, crossing twice I can go about 40 yards and hit this really cool place called burger fuel (home of the $20 burger/ fries/ shake meal). or I can just keep going straight, crossing only one road, and run right into a kebab shop.

This is bad. Kebabs taste good, but cost about $9. burgers also good, but again, about $9. BK, nasty, gross, no protien options for the silly veggies like myself, I can get a whole freaking meal, with onion rings *and* fries, and a choco shake, for 9$. teh suxorz.

Of course, I could just go to the grocery store instead, drop $2 and wander home with a bag of chips. Slightly healtier and much cheaper, but for some reason it just doesn't seem to happen. So yes, it is possible to burn out on junk food. And then to do it again with a different type.

So today I, lazyjayn the outstanding (healthy ego) pledge to actually cook. Like, every day. If I wants onion rings, I will damned well make them. If I wants fries, I will make them. If I wants pizza I will put in and order with.. er, I mean, I will makes it. Yeah, really. And when I wants junk food I will sit in my bed looking stupid with my stomach hurting untill I give in and find something to eat.

After all, it's not like I haven't got anything here to eat. I have piles of stuff- including enough popping corn to feed a small army. Do I use it? no. I even have easy snacky stuff, like dried fruit and nuts, which I don't eat. I've even been too lazy to make tea, for bob's sake.

Instead, I'll walk ten minutes to the grocery store, spend money I shouldn't, and walk tn minutes back. In 20 minutes, I could have had mac and cheese, even made from scratch. Or pasta salad. Or sammiches. Or pizza, if I was too lazy to let it rise. Or falafel from a box, or, or, or. It's not like I haven't got stuff here to cook with. I've filled an entire shelf with food. Like, jammed in there, piled on top of itself, overflowing to another shelf, filled.

I think i just like grocery shopping.

j.

mmm, potatoes.

potato recipe tumber nwo-

you'll need-

• plate
• microwave
• potato
• fork
• knife
• butter and or
• oil and or
• cheese and or
• onions and
• salt

Take your yummy potato, and clean the heck out of it- the ones with dirt on them are cheaper, ya know.
use the fork to pop it all over the place, so it can vent- you know, like when you do real baked potatoes.
Toss the potato in the microwave, and use the "potato" setting if you have one, otherwise put it in for about 1.5 minutes, flip/ spin, and do another 1.5 minutes. Let it sit for a minute or two in the microwave, so it can finish its strange experiments.
Pull it out, cut it into quarters or eighths, cover with whatever you happen to be using/ have (if cheese, toss it back in for a minute or so to melt the cheese) and eat it with the fork and/or knife.

yummy. Lazy. Cheap, if you stick to butter or oil and salt. Not really healthy tho. But you could always eat it with a 69 cent can of baked beans. Then it's much better. Tho not as cheap.

next, maybe, potato soup.

j.

life on the wrong side of the world

If you're anything like me, the internet is usually the best way for others to get a hold of you. No other way guarantees I'll get a message. I lose my cell phone all they time. I rarely lose my email addy and password. So, of course, reliable, decent internet is a priority of mine.

Unfortunaely, it just doesn't exist here. For $40 a month, give or take, My flatmates and I can get what is best described as a "dead rodent" speed connection with unlimited* transfer, and.. oh, yeah, limits at peak hours, and on dl's, and any time they feel you're "abusing" the network.

If you want something you can actually use, well, get ready to pay. browsing the various services offered- of which only 2 or three offer the mentioned unlimited* connection, with all it's limits, you have a rather broad choice, now that they've somewhat deregulated the dsl system and whatnot. Note that they don't actually run fiberoptics in most towns. One or two have started putting it in, but.. well, imagine if colorado was a country with the gdp of Maine, and you'll get a pretty good idea of about how fast this is going to happen.

So, you can get a relatively ok 3Mb connection, with 2Gb transfer for... um.. anywhere from $50 to $150. Only three or 4 companies offer it. You wanna game, or DL anything (like the current season of just about any show) and you'll need waaay more than that. You can get up to 100Gb transfer, from $170ish up.

Now, compared with the craptastic wireless I have now (when the signal is up, which it usually isn't) that'd be not so bad... I mean, 10gb at dead rodent speed for just me for $35 a month, or 20Gb at about 2Mb, for 1/5 of about 170. Somehow, tho, I don't think that's the plan we're getting.

As long as Skype works, and i can still play my games, I'll be ok. Oh, yeah, did I mention the insanely high ping times for games on the unlimited* plans? 'parently gaming is not "normal use". Go fig.