Rice pudding for two

1 cup cooked white rice
dash of salt
1 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup milk
scant 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Bring rice, salt, sugar, and dairy products to a boil in a heavy-bottomed pot, then reduce to low and cook, stirring frequently, for about half an hour or until the mixture is very thick. Add vanilla and cook a few minutes more, then serve.

I’ve read that rice pudding is generally eaten cold or at room temperature. But I learned to eat rice pudding in Thai restaurants, so I like it nice and hot.

Matar Paneer

butter, oil, or ghee
8 oz paneer
1 small onion, chopped
scant 1.5 cups green peas
1/2 cup yogurt
1 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes

Spices:
cayenne pepper to taste
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon garam masala
salt to taste

Cube the paneer and fry it in a few tablespoons of ghee or oil until it’s golden brown. (I used a mixture of butter and oil.) Remove it, and fry the onions until they’ve started to brown. Add the spices and stir briefly. (I never have any ready-made garam masala hanging around, so I use cumin, coriander, black pepper, cloves, and cinnamon to taste.)

Add the tomatoes. To satisfy the prejudices of the household tomato-hater, cook until they are an indistinguishable mass. Stir in the yogurt, and simmer for about ten minutes. Add the peas and paneer.

A note about the paneer: it’s available from Appel Farms in the farmers markets, and it’s also easy to make your own with milk and lemon juice or vinegar. If you make it yourself, press it or twist the cheesecloth for a good firm paneer, or the cubes’ll fall apart on you.

A note about the ginger: I peel mine and preserve it with sherry in the fridge. Adding a little sherry to this dish with the tomatoes gives an extra shot of gingeriness and also brings out some flavor in the tomatoes.

Propping myself up in a comfy chair was not as comfortable as I’d like, so I went googling for home remedies for heartburn. Turns out that licorice is one such remedy. As it happens, I had a package of Zagarese licorice tronchettini which I’d bought not for their herbal properties but because they’re weirdly delicious. It’s an acquired taste. They’re small pellets of licorice extract with a little added citrus flavor. This sounded a heck of a lot more pleasant than breaking out the baking soda, and therefore worth trying.

I will be damned. It worked, and it was fast about it. After ten tronchettini and five or ten minutes, about 90% of the discomfort is gone, which is easily enough to let me go back to bed. Hooray! Goodnight!

(But first, let me note that herbs are not necessarily safe. Licorice in particular should probably not be used by people who have high blood pressure or heart disease or who are pregnant, unless under medical supervision — and even then I’d wonder. My blood pressure tends to be quite low, but still I personally would not indulge in genuine whole licorice extract every day for more than a few days. You likely know or can guess all this stuff, but I feel I should say it anyway. Blah blah, natural doesn’t mean safe, blah blah.)

I used to call them to say, “Hey, where was your truck?!”; eventually I gave up on even that. My donations go elsewhere: thrift stores, the wonderful Sharehouse, the Jubilee Women’s Center, even the NW Center’s own clothing donation bins.

Inspired by the news that I could stop getting the weekly fistful of ADVO flyers in the mail, I’ve gone on another round of de-junk-mailification around here, and that includes the junk from the NW Center. They may not pick up our household’s donations, but they’ll send us beg letters and pester us with recorded phone messages. How about they go away?

So today I called the NW Center to say, “No more phone calls! No more mail!” and very briefly explained why I’m not interested in donating to them. I had to call back after the sighing, dull-voiced receptionist transferred me to customer service — after a couple of minutes of being on hold there, my call was disconnected. (Are these people completely useless?) With any luck, the message will get to somebody who can take me off the lists.

If you too would like the NW Center people to take you off their lists — phone, mail, or both — you can try calling them at (206) 285-9140.

I called Seattle’s Shopwise subsidiary and got the number of the office that’s responsible for taking me off mailing lists: 1-888-241-6760, open 8 to 5 eastern time. You can also cancel online.

I do occasionally check out grocery circulars, but only on the web.

According to the Center for Development of Recycling at San Jose State University, “Individually, an average of 41 pounds of junk mail are sent to every adult each year, 44% of which goes to a landfill unopened.” I’m pretty sure we’ve gotten that much from American Express alone.

But I’m going to have to take a second look at its construction. A similar model has caused hummingbirds to get stuck and sometimes die. Some simple modifications can make the feeders safer.

One of these days I’ll get the hang of folding fitted sheets. Lately I’ve been solving the problem by owning only one set of sheets that fits the bed.

Our soil is about the worst possible garden soil short of contamination. Six inches of sand overlay a whole lot of very compact rocky clay. Some of the rocks are very attractive — there are some fist-size rounded quartzite cobbles — and I’m glad to have them available for use elsewhere in the garden. It’s fun to see them unearthed. The clay I’m not so fond of.

So I got tired enough to talk funny, and I did not disappoint. My favorite today:

The Simpsons quotation: “I’m cold and there are wolves after me.”
What I meant to say: “I’m old and there are wolves after me.”
What I did say: “I’m old and there are worms after me! Words after! Wolves! Agh!”

Some good stuff about our local geology is available from the Pacific Northwest Center for Geologic Mapping Studies. Check the Popular Downloads page for some of the coolest maps.

I used and abused my Diggit weeder until it twisted. I can’t remember how, but I remember that I was doing something stupid with it. Trying to find a replacement was a pain. (As things like that almost always are for people who don’t drive.) I settled for a long-handled weeder, at twice the price and half the usefulness, but I kept the beat-up tool around figuring that I could someday walk into a hardware or garden store and announce, “I want one of these.” It wasn’t until yesterday that I noticed the tiny url on the blade. Turns out it’s made by a local company.

This time I’m going for the extra-high-strength version.