this was Friday

 * This is the last week to easily get things done, so I'm trying to take care of a few things. I got the new paid-parking sticker (this involves a trip to two separate offices). This morning I went out and got the oil changed and the fluids checked in the car (it was time to have the brake fluid flushed, too).

Tomorrow I am going to mow. It's finally a bit cooler so I can take care of that without worrying about heatstroke.

* I finally got around to making the "Formosan" Fried Cabbage (the recipe author notes it's not actually Taiwanese; I suspect it's German or Polish and originally had vinegar in place of the soy sauce - and that would probably be good, too

It doesn't look like much:

 It's from the More with Less cookbook - a Mennonite cookbook. It has interesting recipes that are economical and are often environmentally friendly in the sense that they use less meat.

And this one is easy to make: you cut up four slices of bacon into "lardon" sized pieces (they say you can also use sausage) and fry them. Then add about a half cup of onion that you chopped up (I used green onion because that's what I had handy). You cook those together until the bacon is done. If your bacon is very fatty you should spoon out and discard* some of the fat. Then add the equivalent of a shredded small head of cabbage (I can buy bags of "angel hair coleslaw" and I just used a whole one of those - maybe five cups?

Cook it until the cabbage is soft and has reduced down, then take it off the heat and add a tablespoon of soy sauce or coconut aminos (soy sometimes upsets my stomach and also coconut aminos are lower in salt, but have a similar flavor profile to soy sauce).

They say to serve it over rice but I'm a little "off" rice after getting some that hadn't been refrigerated fast enough after cooking and I probably got a mild case of Bacillus cereus. So I cooked up some of the narrow egg noodles I had, which aren't all that different from some Chinese-style noodles.

It was good. 

(*or put it in the can where you collect bacon fat to fry things in, I don't know)

 

* I also went out and ran some errands (mostly "fun" errands but I needed things from Target). So first of all I went to the yarn shop again

I did get some yarn - they had the right color of an acrylic for the "Bluey" dog (I didn't have the right medium-blue main body color) and I really fell for a yellow (with dark-pink and green flecks) that I think I will make a cabled pullover vest with

It's a dk so my original plan (the British School Slipover from Folk Vests) won't work, but I can probably find something, or just add one big cable down the front of a plainer vest (and add a few stitches because cables draw in). 

I am still working on Moon Moth, though - I'm almost done with the ribbing. But it's nice to support your local-ish yarn shop.

And I did go to Micheal's, after hearing they had some of those funny (biologically inaccurate) skeletons of different creatures INCLUDING A CENTIPEDE and I wanted one as a halloween decoration for my office. 

And I found it! And they were on sale, so I bought a spider to go with it, because they're small and will fit on the shelf of my computer desk where the monitor sits.

* I decided to start reading the (LARGE) Connie Willis books "Black Out" and "All Clear" (they are a two volume set; I think All Clear is set right after Black Out). They are, as you might guess, set in WWII (in Britain) but like most of her novels, they are time travel novels; the real setting is 2060 Oxford, where historians travel back in time to learn from history. In this case, there's also apparently some controversy - where it had been previously believed in the reality of the novels that time travel didn't allow past events to be changed (this is a huge question in all time travel situations: the whole "would you kill baby Hitler if you could?" question), apparently some new studies suggest that they DO, and that the "slippage" (winding up in the slightly wrong time or place) is a result of that, rather than of the time travel PREVENTING someone from going to a time where they would feel duty bound to change events (again: the "killing baby Hitler") question.

I expect, given the setting, there will be parts of it that are sad and unpleasant, but every Willis novel and short story I've read has been fundamentally hopeful, and that makes it easier.