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I ordered 8 pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs from Baldor, which is the smallest amount they sell. They substituted 20 pounds (at a lower price per pound, but this was a sub in the order and not a mistake in the delivery). My first reaction was good lord, that's a lot of chicken.

I parted it into 20 oz portions and stuck half of them in the freezer, figuring I'd plan out what I was doing with them all and then freeze a few more to cover everything I wasn't going to use right away.

Turns out we can go through a lot of chicken when we put our minds to it. Two of the packages I put in the freezer are right back out of it defrosting.

Good thing larb and chicken tikka masala make such good leftovers, because we're going to have a lot of both of them very soon.

I am drinking mint tea, made with the spent mint from making mint simple, which was made with the stems (and some leaves) left over from a package of mint most of the leaves of which went into tonight's larb gai, which in turn was made with the cilantro stems left over from using the leaves to make ceviche for dinner on Tuesday.

I made my own garam masala for the first time. I knew this day was inevitable two years ago when i started writing Indian food recipes, but also writing a garam masala recipe is an ... ambitious undertaking. I have figured out what some of the questions are. I have no idea what any of the answers are. The initial result isn't better than store bought, but it does avoid an allergen for a near future guest.

My boss is back from a two month leave of absence. Lately it has not been a given that people would return from such things, so we were all very excited that he had actually done so. One of his lieutenants organized, and the other provided, some cheesecakes to celebrate. I love cheesecake, but I can't eat the ones you find in most grocery stores. And I had some mascarpone cheese taking up space in my fridge, and (finally) some weather cool enough for baking cheesecake.

At first I thought I was just going to make a little mini cheesecake in one of my 4" springform pans. This would be one egg worth, though the recipe I use is very flexible and fractions other than quarters are quite possible even though it calls for four eggs. Then it was two minis. But ultimately I realized that I didn't have a plausible plan for what to do with the rest of the mascarpone if it didn't all go into cheesecake, so I made a full (or technically very slightly more than full, see above re: flexible) batch in a 9" pan.

I sort of had a plan to get this to work on my bicycle, but only sort of. And I took longer getting out the door than I'd intended. So when miss_chance suggested I drive as she didn't need the car, I realized I could get a bunch of other car related work errands done at the same time and not have to worry about serving delicious cheesecake soup to my coworkers.

Our group recently moved locations in the building and there isn't a collective bookshelf in the new space. I'd offered to bring something in, and in the meantime had found a suitable bookshelf being given away curbside and brought it home for this purpose. Into the back of the car it went.

I have a shredder, but it doesn't do thick items like CDs or credit cards. The shred box at work can handle these no problem. I keep a small pile of things to take to work to shred, and into my backpack that went. We also had some e-waste, and that went into the backpack too. None of this was too big to fit into my panniers, but it was still nice to have it out of my way.

We have a bike cage at work, to encourage people to ride in. Sometimes, though, folks will ride in and then for whatever reason accept a ride home from a coworker. Usually said coworker can't get their bike into their car, so the rider's bike is stuck at work and now they need some other way to get in the next morning. I have a large number of trunk-top bike racks and got permission from the facilities people to put one of these in the bike cage for general use. But these are awkward to carry on a bike, so into the car it went, too.

Speaking of awkward to carry on a bike, a while ago biking to work I came across a large collapsing delivery bag lying in the middle of the bike lane. I moved it out of the way -- and then, not seeing anyone whose bag it might be, folded it up and carried it, rather awkwardly, to work with me. It has been sitting there ever since, waiting for me to come in with a better way to carry it. Now it's in my basement, with a bunch of other (mostly non-folding) packing totes and containers.

I'd hoped that doing all this in a car would also keep me from getting rained on. But as it happens the driving I did wasn't in the rain, or even on particularly wet roads. That's a pity, because we need the rain.

Since the start of the pandemic I've been organizing group orders from Baldor Food, a local restaurant-focused food distributor. There are a few things they do better than anyone else, or which are otherwise hard to find, but lately I and the other folks involved have had more options for the non specialty items so we're not ordering as often or leaning on them as hard as we once did.

This has exaggerated a funny effect of ordering as a group: sometimes we all want the same thing, so we can go in on a truly enormous quantity of something. But at the same time there will be some small quantities of things. Fewer of those now that they're pivoting away from the residential market, but it's still possible to buy, say, one avocado.

Or, say, 150 pounds of flour.

Went on a lovely 30 mile bike ride with Andy P-C this morning. I showed him my favorite roads for tricking myself into doing high quality intervals, and we did a bunch of those. It was a ton of fun and I think we'll do it again soon.

It was Ingress mission day, which used to mean getting game credit for traveling a few hundred miles to go for a few specially chosen pleasant walks. In pandemic times the traveling part is gone and you have more choice of walks to do, so I got another hour or two of outside time.

Last night I put up some Chicken Tikka to marinate, and this evening I cooked it up into some absolutely perfect Chicken Tikka Masala. I adjust all of my recipes on an ongoing basis but I think this one is done.

I made the Food Network's mascarpone cheesecake last night (minus the topping) and it is *amazing*.

This recipe has a subtle flavor balance and changes to it should be undertaken carefully. I did make three small changes: sliced almonds instead of slivered which I thought would toast up better, a little more butter in the crust (perhaps 1.5-2 tbsp instead of 1 tbsp), and a longer cook time (maybe 75 minutes instead of 65) as suggested by some of the reviews on the web site.

The texture is perfect and I credit the mix of cheeses: 8oz Organic Valley cream cheese, 8oz Natures Promise organic cream cheese, and 16oz Galbani imported mascarpone (they also make one in the US which is a completely different cheese). Not wanting to throw off the balance of the recipe I measured out 16oz of the mascarpone from the 500g package. I was also careful to do absolutely as little stirring as possible after the eggs went in, as the recipe suggests. My fears of an uneven texture from that were unfounded.

ctate, I once had a cheesecake of yours that was even better than this. I don't think I have had any others that beat it.

Meanwhile I have to figure out what to do with an ounce and a half of leftover mascarpone cheese.

I am at the start of two weeks of reduced social interaction, even compared to my usual fairly isolated baseline. This made a good time to do a great big grocery shop: it can't increase the risk to anyone I saw up to yesterday and isn't likely to increase the risk to anyone I'm seeing two weeks from now. Stop and Shop was emptier than usual as I did my slow walk through every aisle, stocking up on lots and lots of anything shelf stable. Towards the end it was tricky to get any more items into the cart. There was enough that I made sure to bag the fridge and freezer stuff separately, so that it could get put away before I unloaded the rest of it from the car. It will be a long time before I need to shop in a store at all, and when I finally do it'll be quicker, lower risk in and out trips.

I'm reminded of my grandfather's place in rural New Hampshire, half an hour's drive from the nearest real supermarket. Shopping was a big production and he built himself an enormous pantry (with an extra fridge) so he wouldn't have to do it as often. I have some friends here on DW in similar situations, too. Dealing with food logistics is weirdly satisfying in the moment, but I miss the times when I didn't have to think about it so hard, and recognize how fortunate I was for that.

I order green coffee to roast every few months, when the previous order is getting low. Usually this is between 12 and 20 pounds of coffee, since it lasts so much longer before it has been roasted. This last batch lasted longer than usual because I had some things distracting me from roasting coffee, but a week or two ago it was finally time to order more.

I just got some email from UPS saying that fifteen pounds of coffee had been delivered. That's good, because after pulling myself a shot or two this morning we're down to the last two ounces of roasted coffee.

I've got a bunch of little bits of yummy things none of which are enough to make a whole dinner out of. So, I'm going to make crepes. But all these yummy crepes taken together will be more than aroraborealis and I can eat. So, anyone who wants to come over and help us eat them is welcome. If you have a little bit of some particular delicacy you'd like to bring along, feel free, but it's by no means necessary.