A Frying Pan, a 3D printer, and a Keyboard…

I’ve been absent from blogging for a couple of years now, but I’m still making things and would like to share some of what I make. There won’t be any recipes in this post, but I assure you–they’re coming. I’ve been cooking up a storm.

Where have I been? I’ve been making things. I did eventually finish the long fan fiction story I had been writing back in 2016, and started another long one which many chapters later, is also now done. There may have been some short stories in between as well.

Where I didn’t make much progress was on writing original fiction. It’s still my plan and dream to hone those skills, and I’ve been reading some writing guides and I think I’m starting to get a better understanding of where my original stories are floundering. I’m working on another fan fiction right now (surprise, I know), that’s very different from anything I’ve written before. I’m hoping that when I finish that–it begged to be written–I’ll be ready to face one of my original projects again with a little more mindfulness.

I’m still 3D printing. I want to dive in more on the design side than I have so far, but in the meantime, I’m excited to still have the opportunity to print cool things other people have designed. I also want to take our laser cutter and vinyl cutter for a spin on some upcoming projects.

On the cooking front: I’ve cooked a lot of delicious, fabulous food over the last few years. It was tasty to eat and I loved it. It has not been kind to my waistline (or my poor knees that have to carry the rest of me around). One thing you’ll notice as I go forward in sharing my recipes–I’ve started veering away from potatoes and sugar and dishes that dirty every plate in the house. No single diet is perfect for everyone, but for me, I’ve found low carb to be one of the more workable solutions. I may still share some of my favorite carb-heavy recipes here, but it’s not the direction most of my cooking is going. There’s another direction my recipes are taking as well.

I work a lot of hours. I knew what I signed up for. One of the side effects is that by the time I get home at night, I’m too tired to want to spend forever standing in front of the stove cooking something. And that’s a shame because I like cooking. This led to eating out a lot and making delicious rather than healthy choices.

Last year, I bought a sous vide machine, and it has been a serious game changer for me. I use this one but there are so many options out there. For me, this one works because it heats and cools; I can set my dinner in the Mellow in the morning and it will keep it cool until it’s time to start cooking and the meat will be ready when I get home. Again, there are a lot of options out there, but this has been the game changer for me on getting healthy and making cooking fun again. About once a month I go out and buy meat; we bag it up into a 1 meal serving, freeze it, and put in the sous vide each day as needed.

Having the meat already cooked when I get home and just needing to season it and cook my veggies has drastically reduced the time I’m spending in front of the stove at night and brought back time for writing.

If you’re not cooking sous vide, most of my recipes should still work for you–you’ll just need to add in time to cook your meat, or use pre-cooked meat.

A few words about my flavor tastes before we start:

• I hate mustard; you won’t see any recipes that call for mustard, but I might make a serving suggestion for mustard because someone else in the house eats it
• Green onions are a favorite of mine
• I love sweet potatoes, but NEVER add sugar to them. I like to spice them up!
• These are some of my favorite seasonings that I keep on hand

Anyway, if anyone is still reading, I hope you’re ready for some tasty recipes and cool projects, because I’m going to make stuff.

Erin

Still Printing

I’ve recovered fairly well from my sprained ankle and went back to work, and kept printing.

Once I turned on the brim option, I managed to get a unicorn that turned out pretty well. He does have a bit of a beard, but you can’t have everything right? It makes him look distinguished I think. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Somehow, designing my earring chest files in the middle of the night was not the best way to ensure accuracy. I thought I had run the numbers correctly for all of my shelves on the large piece to be the same size. I was wrong.

I printed the drawer first, and then the insert to go inside of it. It wasn’t quite the right fit, and I hadn’t thought to make the legs of the insert short enough to be practical.

I edited the insert a little–smaller dimensions over all, and then shortening the legs–and, success!

Now, I just had to print the shelves to hold the drawers (and print some more drawers and inserts), and  I’d be all set. A relatively complicated, multi piece 3D printed object. I was excited about this milestone.

The truth is, I wasn’t quite there yet.

Somehow, I had ended up with 3 shelves that fit my existing drawer design, and one shelf that was just too short. Rather than print a whole cabinet for it, I was going to content myself for the time being with printing one more drawer that would fit the smaller height on the last shelf, and call it a day.

I didn’t quite manage the perfection I was hoping for, but I’d call this a decent success for my first attempt at something this complicated.

The mixed success did slow me down a little in my design ambitions, but I’ve still been having lots of fun printing. This napkin holder I printed (designed by TanyaAkinora) turned out beautifully (slow down your bottom layer speed to a crawl for something like this).

After nearly 6 weeks of writer’s block, where I only managed a few thousand words, last weekend I managed 5K in a night and I feel like I may be over my block.

I’ve also started going for walks. The weather is gorgeous–there’s turtles, birds, and squirrels out in abundance. It’s good for the mind, body, and soul.

Functional Prints

I’ve been holed up with a sprained for a couple of days and was feeling the urge to make something. I pulled out the 3D printer (and had to chase the cat out of it while trying to set it …

That Duck Burrito Video…

Writer’s block still has me in it’s grip, which means there’s plenty of time to experiment in the kitchen.

Duck is one of my favorite meats. It’s tender and delicious. I’ll panfry it, rotisserie it, chop it up for stir fry, coat it in almond flour…I’ve yet to find bad way to cook it. Shredded duck meat in butternut squash soup? Check. Confit? Check. (Note: I haven’t made duck confit, but I’ve had it out…totally fabulous.) Peking Duck? I haven’t had it in a few years, but I thought it was delicious.

I also have a severe weakness for tortillas. I’m not a big fan of eggs, but put them in a tortilla and I’m ready for a breakfast burrito.

When I saw this video on Buzzfeed for a Peking Duck inspired burrito yesterday, I knew I had to make it. I made a few substitutions here and there, and I wasn’t sure the duck would be filling enough on it’s own, so I made my quinoa version of “fried rice” to go with it. We ended up with way too much food, but at least there’s left overs for lunch tomorrow.

Here’s my adjusted recipe for the Peking Duck inspired burritos. It was easy and delicious and way too much food for two, but perfect for dinner and a lunch!

Ingredients

• 1.5 pounds of duck breast meat (breast off-cuts work great and are affordable if you can find them)
• scallions
• cucumber (a few slices)
• soy sauce
• Mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine)
• garlic (6 cloves)
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil
• sesame oil
• Hoisin sauce
• Flour tortillas

I marinated the duck breasts with a splash of soy sauce, Mirin, and a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic, and I let the breasts sit while I cooked my quinoa and veggies.

I poured a splash of sesame oil and olive oil into a frying pan on medium high heat and put the meat in the bottom of the pan for a few minutes before turning it over and cooking the other side.

While the duck cooked, I sliced scallions and cucumber into thin strips. I’m not a huge fan of cucumber and next time, I would probably just trade it for extra scallions, though as I mentioned before, that might be because I’d put scallions in absolutely anything.

I heated up the tortillas in the microwave for about 15 seconds, and my duck burritos were ready (some assembly required).

For my quinoa stir fry, I cooked more or less the same vegetables as I did earlier this week, except I substituted ginger for the bell peppers tonight. When the duck was done, I threw the quinoa and veggies into the pan where the duck had been cooking and scraped the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

Delicious.

Once we got to the table, we assembled our “burritos.”

1. Slice pieces of duck into manageable bites.
2. Spread a little Hoisin sauce over the warm tortilla.
3. Put a little scallion and cucumber on either side of your meat.
4. Roll up and enjoy!

The original recipe called for rice in the burrito, but I’m not the world’s biggest fan of rice (and it comes out terribly when I cook it). I ended up with fairly small flour tortillas at the store, so it worked out perfect to put my quinoa and veggies on the side.

This dish is definitely going to be repeated. Happy Friday!

 

Quinoa and Keyboards

This post was very nearly called “Cooking with Quinoa and Avoiding the Keyboard,” but I didn’t quite have it in me to put it right in the header. In February, I wrote a lot of fan fiction. I went on …

Spring is Coming

As mild as this winter has been around here, I have to admit, I’m ready for spring. Naked trees and dead grass just never quite feels right to me.

I haven’t updated here in a while, but that’s mostly because I’ve been busy making things.

I will admit, that the original story I’m working on hasn’t quite been receiving the love that it should. I think I’m going to try writing some short stories set in the same world to help me flesh out the world my characters are playing in. I absolutely love the world I’m exploring there, I just haven’t discovered everything there is to know yet.

My kitchen has been missing me the last few weeks. After a disastrously bad butternut squash soup, I’ve been a little afraid to venture forth into experimental cooking again. I’m going to admit it: I improvised and it went badly. I was out of the chicken stock that the recipe called for, so I substituted beef broth. A normal butternut squash soup made with chicken broth has a lovely, appealing orange color. Butternut squash soup made with beef broth tends to look like something I’m not sure I’d even feed to my cat. And in my attempts to doctor it up and make it more appealing, I added cayenne. Not just a little cayenne, or a moderate amount of cayenne, but so much that in the few spoonfuls of soup I attempted to power through and eat required several glasses of water and still left my mouth burning. If anyone wants to recommend another butternut squash soup recipe, I’ll give it another try. I’ve had it out at restaurants and thought it was fantastic, but my own missteps have made me a little wary.

While I haven’t been cooking lately, I did go back and add an epilogue onto my first Dramione story and make a lot of progress on other stories in my queue. The other thing I’ve been doing is getting back into 3D printing. I can take apart and reassemble a 3D printer like it’s nobody’s business, but I haven’t spent a whole lot of time developing my CAD skills.

To easy myself back into the printing process, I scoured YouMagine.com and Thingiverse for some designs that looked fun. I have to tell you, I’m going to have the BEST Christmas ornaments next year. I found a lot of useful tools like an SD card organizer, and some slightly less than useful tools like the tape dispenser I printed. In all fairness, the dispenser printed beautifully, and fits great with a roll of tape. The edge just isn’t quite sharp enough for cutting tape. However, I like it so much, I’m half-tempted to put some sort of blade on the edge and keep it on my desk.

One of the things I find most fascinating to print are the articulated models that print as a single piece but actually have moving parts.  There’s a heart-shaped box that opens up that you can see in the picture up top, and an elephant whose legs and head all move. The elephant was really amazing–it needed absolutely no clean up and moved fine as soon as I’d pried it off the glass bed. If you want to see the little fellow in action, here’s a short video clip of me moving the legs and head. I’ve got a whole bunch more things I want to print this week, so stay tuned.

I also did finally brave the CAD world. My results aren’t exactly going to win me any design prizes, but it’s a start. I started playing around with TinkerCAD, which is so far the most intuitive of the free CAD software I found. I used it to make a flat bottomed butterfly.

You could use the butterfly by itself–maybe put a magnet or hairpin on the back of it if you wanted to do something useful with it. In an effort to find something to do with my butterfly, I remixed a basic business card holder that was under the Creative Commons license and used MeshMixer to put my butterfly on the front of the business card holder and voila! A new thing was born and available for download.

I’m going to try braving some of the other CAD programs and see what I come up with. Wish me luck!

New Year Update

Well, it’s been two months since my last post. Time to check in and see how things went.

I did manage to write 50,000 words in November. Unfortunately, almost none of them were on the original novel I had planned to write that month. It was on the Dramione story I’ve been working on. I’m glad that that story is going so well, but it’s frustrating that I didn’t succeed in making progress with my original novel. I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong–why I can write several hundred page fan fictions, but that I can’t seem to find the steam to move forward on my original stories.

I’m not sure if it’s a motivation issue, a world building issue, or plot.

When I post fan fictions, the characters I’m writing about already have a big following, so I get lots of feedback as I go along, and it spurs me on to keep writing. I’ve archived over a million words of fan fiction and constantly have new ideas for more.

Maybe it’s a world building or character creation problem. Writing fan fiction is easy for me because I take characters I like and know well, and put them in a situation I’ve dreamed up (no magic for Draco, a terrible law, etc.) and respond in the way that feels natural for the character. Maybe I just don’t know my own characters well enough before I try to write an original novel?

Or maybe it’s just the sort of plots I’m trying to write. Most of my fan fictions have an overarching plot, and a slow-burn friendship into romance over the course of the story. When I tried to write the original novel I came up with this fall, I tried to write something entirely without romance, and never assigned a gender to my main character. Maybe I’m just better at writing romances? Should I just admit that that’s what I’m good at? Or is there a way to improve my skills?

The stories I loved best growing up–the Prydain Chronicles, Artemis Fowl, The Lord of the Rings, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and even Harry Potter, didn’t put romances front and center in the story. The stories I liked best were about changing (or saving) the world and finding out who you were. That’s the sort of story I’d like to be able to share with the world.

Goal one: In 2016, I want to improve my writing skills and write an original novel. It doesn’t have to be finished, or perfect by the end of the year, but I want a story.

I also want to do more hands on crafts this year. 2015 was an amazing, crazy, wonderful year. Our business grew from 8 to 26 employees. This year, I stayed home all of Christmas weekend, and relaxed and had a wonderful time with my husband. Last year, we were working long days, 7 days a week. Now, I’ve got more time for hands on crafts again.

This Christmas, I made a Christmas stocking for my stepdaughter. Can you guess which one is hers?

Goal two: In 2016, I want to keep working on hands on projects and learning new skills. I want to sew, and crochet, and learn modeling software to 3D print things.

One of the pitfalls of working long hours and having no time, is that I ate a lot of food that was terrible for me in 2015. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed most of it. But whereas in 2013 and 2014 I experimented with a lot of new recipes and had fun with them on my YouTube channel, in 2015, I ate out. Fast food, restaurants, take out, you name it, a lot of days, I was too tired to cook.

However, now that I have more time on my hands, I’m committed to cooking good food and eating healthy. In the last month, my husband and I have cooked everything that we’ve eaten. I’ve dropped 10.2 pounds as of this morning. I cut out refined sugars, alcohol, caffeine, wheat, dairy, and corn. Whole grains, veggies, fruits, meat, and healthy fats are now the rule of thumb in the house. My husband has come up with some fantastic recipes. For example, look at this beauty from Christmas night:

Quinoa, with yellow squash, onions, mushrooms, and bell peppers, and a a piece of duck breast with almond flour, cooked in a little olive oil. It was amazing. Absolutely brilliant. (Seriously, how have I never discovered Quinoa until now? It beats rice hands down.)

A month into eating this way, we feel better, have more energy, and our clothes fit better. While I might relax a little–a slice of cake or glass of wine now and then won’t kill me–I feel so much better eating real food that I want to keep doing it.

Goal three: In 2016, I want to keep experimenting with new cooking recipes and fabulous new food that’s good for me. 

Well, there’s my start of the year update. What are you looking forward to in 2016? How was your 2015? What changes do you want to make in your life? What do you want to keep the same?

2015 Recap, and Pre-NaNoWriMo Update

Well, it’s been a while since I was here. Did anyone miss me?

It’s been a year and a few months since I last updated here. I post to Twitter very occasionally and have started avidly updating my Fan Fictions again. I didn’t manage to stick with the Flash Fiction challenge for more than the first few weeks last year. What did I do all year? Here’s a recap:

Well, not long before my last update, my (then) fiancé and I started a business together, which has now grown to a couple of dozen employees in the last year and a half after starting out with just the pair of us. It made for some long day days, but it’s been an amazing year and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m doing all sorts of things I never imagined I could do before, in so many ways. I feel more capable and more confident in myself and I can’t imagine not having taken this path. In other life news, we were married this October. I’m sure it sounds like a cliche, but it was absolutely magical. After the wedding, we escaped off to the Galapagos and Peru. Photos absolutely don’t do Machu Picchu justice. All I can really say is that this was an amazing experience, and that of course I’ll share photos of adorable sea lions and giant tortoises.

I don’t know how closely related to cats sea lions are (aside from the fact that they’re both mammals, but really, look at that attitude. Total cat.

And watch his brother on the next island curl up, totally cat-like.

I think one of the things I liked about the yellow warbler was that he was easy to spot and recognize.

Yellow Warbler, Santiago/James Island

Just to put it in prospective, this lava flow wasn’t on this island when Darwin came for a visit. It’s younger than Darwin.

The black lava is flow is about 135 years old. The red is from a lava flow 1000 years old. The iron has oxidized and once it’s broken down, it becomes very fertile soil. Give it another few hundred years.

The pictures really do a poor job giving you the scale of these tortoises. You’re not allowed to go within 8 feet of any of the wild animals. Admittedly, sea lions frequently decided our path was the best place to nap and we’d have to edge around them. Most of the tortoises we saw were about 3 feet by 4 feet and weighed a whopping 400 or 500 pounds.

Pictures don’t do it justice.

I could go on about Machu Picchu for a while if anyone is interested–I was absolutely blown away. I’d also take suggestions on reading about the Pre-Inca cultures in the region if anyone has any suggestions.

The blue footed booby and pelican in this picture are just hanging out. As long as animals don’t compete over the same food, they don’t seem to get too territorial here. We frequently saw marine iguanas, sea lions, boobies, and pelicans sharing a rock together.

Marine iguanas have longer tails than their land cousins and can slow down their heart rate when they dive down to feed on algae below water. Unfortunately, El Niño is taking it’s toll on these creatures as the water temperature isn’t right for the algae they feed on.

Last November, I couldn’t fathom the possibility of even trying to do NaNoWriMo. There weren’t enough hours in the day. This was a stark contrast to 2013, when I wrote 50K on a novel and about 25K of fan fiction during November. I’m excited to feel like this year, there might actually be enough hours in the day to attempt it. And even better? While we were away on honeymoon, I actually came up with a story idea I’m exceptionally excited about. It’s been a long time since I was excited about a story idea other than fan fiction.

Admittedly, I do also still adore writing fan fiction. I’m working on my second Dramione story at the moment, in which Draco loses his magic for a year as punishment for his war crimes. In February this year, I finished Law and Marriage, which was my first Dramione story, and ended up being 400-odd pages.

I haven’t done much in the way of big cooking projects this year, so there haven’t been any new YouTube videos on my channel in quite a while. Generally by the time I got home, I was ready for something quick and easy–which is a shame when I don’t like most frozen foods. I did discover an amazing company in upstate New York that makes authentic British meat pies of various sorts. I absolutely love them, and it was so good this year to be able to put a pie in the oven when we got home late and have half an hour to sit and rest my feet rather than half an hour of standing and chopping at the stovetop. I don’t know why meat pies aren’t more of a thing in the US. Absolutely delicious. I am hoping to try out some new recipes this year and will gladly take suggestions.

I’m also hoping that now that I’m not doing hands on screwdriver work during the day, I’ve got my wrists and hands back in good shape for working on sewing and crocheting projects this year.

Let me know if you want to see more pictures from my trip–I have plenty, and tried to restrain myself in posting tonight. I love my life and am enormously happy right now, and am excited to face on the NaNoWriMo challenge this month.

Cooking with Baby Bellas

Well, I’ve been pretty busy making things lately. I’m making 3D printers pretty much every day. I’ve tried a handful of new recipes including marinated mushroom and sweet potato tacos this week and baked mushroom baozi earlier in the month. I’ve managed to update my fan fiction and am finally writing the crucial scene I know many of my readers have been waiting for. I’ve also finally gotten myself to write another flash fiction for ThanInVain‘s Flash Fiction Challenge. The prompt was just too good to pass up and I found myself with a little time tonight, so let’s start with that.

Prompt: A woman’s cat goes missing. Two days later she receives a ransom note.

Catnapped

Ellen Helmsby shrugged out of her overcoat and settled into her chair, heedless of the layers of cat fur. She squirted a little hand sanitizer into her palm to her to rid her hands of the metallic smell of dealing with other people’s coins all day.


She clucked her tongue behind her teeth and waited for Tire to materialize for their pre-dinner cuddle. She’d tell him about her day and he’d purr and life would be just a little bit better. Then she’d open a packet of food for him, and put a TV dinner in the oven for herself.


But cluck and call as she might, Tire didn’t come. She got down on her creaking knees calling out to him under the bed. Finally she was reduced to swearing at the damn cat to show up. He didn’t. She sat in the chair all night.


The next day, cars honked as she gave people the wrong change or or her mind drifted. Her supervisor thought the exhaust fumes might be getting to her head and sent her home. A note, in purple crayon, was wedged under the door.

Deer Cat Lady,
My bruther loves your cat. He wants it, but can’t rite. He’s 4. If you give me a bazillion $ I’ll steal it back. But it has to be a bazillion or I can’t, cuz he’ll cry when I take it.

Ellen heard the hedges rustle and saw the grubby six year old from next door watching her.

Being a cat person myself, I couldn’t resist the prompt and I’m glad I gave it a go. It feels good to be writing.

I’m trying to lead a more healthy life-style, and building printers all day is certainly a lot more physically active than my last job. I’m also trying to be mindful of healthier new recipes and fewer sweets. So far, it’s working. However, there’s an amazing frozen custard shop not far from where I work, and I want some…right now. However, I’ve got some very good motivation for wanting to get healthier right now. I’m looking forward to a long life with the man I love, and I want to be healthy.

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The marinated mushroom and sweet potato tacos were absolutely delicious. I’m not going to lie, I ate several and they were all gone before I could take a picture of them. One lingered on someone else’s plate (the tortilla got a bit burnt) and I did manage to snap a picture of that before it too disappeared. 

I cut and cooked the sweet potatoes the night before, so they weren’t as crisp as I could have hoped, but they were delicious and it saved me an hour of prep-time right before dinner, which was good since by the time I get home, I’m pretty hungry. I used baby bella mushrooms and topped it all off wit a little cheese, sour cream, and green onions. I always keep a container of sliced green onions in the freezer to add to meals. They keep for ages and defrost almost instantly when I add them to any dish.

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A few weeks ago, I watched the new reboot of Sailor Moon that just launched. I then followed it up by indulging in a few of the classic episodes as well. I remember watching the original episodes on television as a kid in the morning when I got ready for school. I think there’d usually be an episode of Sailor Moon for me in the morning, and an episode of Mighty Max for my brother. Eventually Sailor Moon only aired on cable, and my family didn’t get cable until I was in middle school, so I missed out on most of the later seasons.

Watching it recently I was surprised as how much I remembered and still felt familiar, but I was also delighted by what I didn’t remember. I’d forgotten that Serena/Usagi tends to eat a lot. One of the things she was snacking on was stuffed pork buns, which I remember as a delicious treat from my time in Taiwan. 

Usually stuffed pork buns are steamed, but as I don’t have a steamer at the moment, I specifically wanted to find a recipe for baked buns. I toyed with the idea of barbecue baked pork buns, but the recipe I found was for mushroom baozi, and I am so glad I found it.

I don’t have much experience baking, particularly with making dough from scratch. This recipe called for me to make the dough and give it an hour or two to rise, but I was going to be working and didn’t want to delay dinner by two hours or more once I got home, so I made the dough and let it rise over about 8 hours in the fridge (it turned out great).

It still took longer than I was expecting when I got home to roll the dough out into pieces and put the filling inside, but it was totally worth it. Most of the baozi I made were the mushroom recipe I found on the website, but I also made a handful with shredded pork from the crockpot and barbecue sauce. 

The mushroom ones actually turned out best (I didn’t use enough barbecue sauce, so the pork ones were a bit dry). I wasn’t real sure about being able to seal them up well, so I put them together upside-down. 

I also should have rolled out the dough a bit thinner, and maybe added a little more salt, but I will definitely repeat this recipe. 

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So, there you have it. I haven’t been blogging as much as I should, but I’ve certainly been making things, and more than keeping busy. There’s always more to get done and more to learn. Are there any other recipes you’d suggest using mushrooms? Baby Bellas are my favorite. Any advice for loosening hand muscles after building something all day? 

Making Changes

Friday was my last day of work as an administrative aid at a major university. As of yesterday, I’m officially making stuff for a living.

Pretty cool, no?

I disappeared from blogging pretty thoroughly in January because we’d been given a test shipment of printers to assemble and all of my energy went to learning how to do that as best I could in a short time frame. I had never built anything more complicated than an Ikea bookshelf before. Two weeks ago, I put in my two weeks notice at the university, and Friday I said goodbye to my coworkers and students. It was hard getting everything wrapped up so that I could leave, but it was even harder to say goodbye to my coworkers and the students we saw every day. 

I’ve probably made every mistake that can be made while putting together a 3D printer, but now I know what mistakes can be made and how to fix them. A word to the wise: test everything thoroughly, and double-check it twice.

I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m excited to be doing something new. I know how far my abilities have come in the last few months and I intend to keep seeing them grow. I wish I could say more right now, but this is as much as I can say right now.