schneefink

Recipe Dessert
Lemon Heaven on Earth Cake

Ingredients:
1 (3.4oz.) box vanilla instant pudding mix unprepared
1½ cups cold whole milk
1 cup sour cream can substitute for vanilla Greek yogurt
14 ounce store bought angel food cake divided
1 (21 oz.) can lemon pie filling divided
8 ounces Cool Whip thawed
¼ cup almond slivers

Directions:
In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together 1 (3.4oz.) box vanilla instant pudding mix, 1½ cups cold whole milk, and 1 cup sour cream until smooth, and the mixture begins to thicken. Set aside.
Cut the 14 ounce store bought angel food cake into 1-inch cubes and then evenly layer half of the cubes into the bottom of the baking pan.
Spread about ⅔ of the 1 (21 oz.) can lemon pie filling on top of the angel food cake, then layer the remaining angel food cake over the top of the lemon filling.
Evenly spread the vanilla pudding mixture over the top of the angel food cake layer.
Then top it with the thawed 8 ounces Cool Whip, spreading it out to fully and evenly cover the pan.
Using a spoon, drop spoonfuls of the remaining lemon pie filling over the cake and swirl it around a bit.
Chill in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 4 to 6 hours or even overnight for a more flavorful and moist cake. Refrigerating it will also help the layers to set. You can tent aluminum foil over the top of the cake if desired.
Right before serving, sprinkle with ¼ cup almond slivers.

pattrose

Recipe
Fettuccine and Alfredo sauce

Ingredients
* 1 lb Fettuccine
* Salt, for the boiling water, about 1 tbsp
* 1 Stick (8 tbsp) Salted Butter
* 6-7 Garlic Cloves, minced
* 2 Cups Heavy Cream
* 1 tsp Italian Seasoning
* 1/2 tsp each Salt and Pepper adjust to taste if needed
* Pinch of Red Pepper Flakes optional
* 5 oz Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese
* 1/2 Cup Reserved Pasta Water may need more depending on how thick you want your sauce
* Chopped Fresh Parsley, for garnish optional
Instructions
* Begin by boiling a large pot of salted water. Add in the fettuccine and cook it just until al dente, following the package instructions. It’s essential not to drain the pasta, as you’ll need the starchy pasta water for the sauce later. 
* While the pasta is cooking, melt the stick of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add in the minced garlic cloves. Cook the garlic for about 1 minute, being cautious not to let it burn, as burnt garlic can turn bitter and ruin the flavor of your sauce. 
* Stir in the 2 cups of heavy cream. Season the mixture with the Italian seasoning, along with the salt and pepper and red pepper flakes. Continue stirring this mixture continuously for about 10 minutes, allowing it to thicken. This step eliminates the need for flour, resulting in a creamy, rich sauce. 
* Once the sauce has thickened up nicely, add in the freshly grated Parmesan cheese. To prevent clumping, add in about half of the cheese at a time, making sure to turn the heat down to low while stirring until the cheese is completely melted and incorporated into the sauce. 
* Add the cooked fettuccine directly into the sauce. Pour in about 1/2 cup of the reserved pasta water. Mix everything thoroughly, allowing it to simmer for a few additional minutes to let the flavors meld together and the sauce to thicken up. If it becomes too thick, feel free to add more pasta water until you reach your desired consistency. Season with more salt and pepper if needed and garnish with fresh parsley if desired.  

pattrose

Not quite 365 days questions, March

3. If you visit somewhere special, do you buy a small memento to bring home (such as a fridge magnet, keyring, ornament, or something else)?

Yup. T-shirts for hubby and me, we collect ball caps, and magnets. Half the time I don't even wear the shirts, and that's the truth. I should stick with magnets.

A friend on DW told me about a t-shirt she saw. It was perfect for me. It says we have romantic walks at our hardware store. It cracked me up because he and I do this at least twice a week. As we walk, we plan what we’re doing and in which room. It's a fun way to exercise.

pattrose

Topics for talk

Things I Would Do if I Were a Multimillionaire.

I've even thought about this one. I would love to be rich. But I have a feeling it's harder than one thinks. I would buy up like 20 run down motels, fix them up and donate them to the city for homeless people. It would help a little. I feel so bad for them. They look so lost and alone. I think it's a tragedy that we have so much homelessness in Arizona. Before long well be like Mexico. The very rich and the dirt poor. More and more Americans are sinking into depression and despair. The ones that are in the middle are praying that they don't lose their jobs. Most people are only two paychecks from being homeless. That's a scary thought.

I wouldn't be rich long. Money goes fast. Then, I would be normal again. 😁🌹❤️

How about you?

pattrose

90 topics for discussion in March.
1. Describe, in detail, what your life looks like 5 years from now. What do you do for fun? For work? Where do you live? Where do you drink your coffee in the morning?
5 years from now, I will be 79. I expect to be still alive and still writing and reading fan fiction. For fun, we play a game called Farkle. It's so much fun, I see us doing that till we are gone. We’ll still be in Tucson, Arizona, enjoying the sun. I don't drink coffee, but I drink tea. I'll be sipping that in my kitchen. Of course because none of us know where we will be in 5 years. But I can hope.

How about you?

landingtree

During the first covid lockdown,

ambyr introduced me to Sean Stewart's book Clouds End, and I wrote her some fanfic for it. I vaguely intended to write it a tidier ending and post it online, but never did. It came up during

ambyr's visit (which she has just posted about and I also mean to get around to posting about, it was lovely), and I reread the fic and thought 'I still like this. And why should it need to be tidy, given the title?' So I got her to send me photos of the parts I hadn't kept, and here it is.

A Frayed End

flareonfury posting in

harpieicons

Most of the icons feature characters from the Monsterverse (aka Godzilla 2014 and Kong: Skull Island universe, including Monarch Legacy of Monsters) but there are a couple of Godzilla: The Series icons in this post 'cause I love that series and I couldn't help myself.

Preview

( Gojira is not only living proof that coexistence is possible. He is…the key to it. )

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: Earthlings
Author: Sayaka Murata
Translator: Ginny Takemori
Genre: Fiction

The second book I finished this weekend was Earthlings by Sakyaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Takemori. This book is about Natsuki, a girl who's always felt she doesn't quite belong with humans. This has been book #16 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.

I've struggled a lot with what to say about this book, or whether to say anything at all. First, as many other reviews note, the book description does not in any way prepare you for the trigger warnings that may apply, so if you have no-gos for reading, do have a look around for a list before you crack this one open.

There are a lot of things you could take away from this book. The lifelong impact of childhood sexual abuse. The damage of a child having no safe adult to confide in. The pain of feeling alienated from society. The pain caused by strict social expectations that leave no room for individuals to pursue other modes of living. The danger that refusing to allow deviations from the "norm" will lead individuals incapable of conforming to that norm to reject society altogether. The idea that rejecting smaller social rules eventually leads to complete anarchy and amorality. The suffocating impact of the absence of privacy and the extremes to which it may drive people.

It is an exploration of the harm done, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who don't "fit" into the mold of society. How much of it is reality and how much of it is Natsuki's imagination is also up to the reader.

It's also a book about interrogating taboos, which leads to the trigger warning above. Natsuki's choice not to marry or have children is in and of itself, violating a taboo of her culture. Her feeling that violating this taboo does no harm to her or anyone else naturally leads to questioning other taboos, and you can't write a book about questioning taboos and then say "but not that taboo, that's too taboo!" so the book does go some dark places as Natsuki and her companions ask themselves if there's anything rational in refraining from theft, murder, and assault.

The translation is well done, particularly in dealing with a number of sensitive subjects.

I'm not sure what I ultimately take away from Earthlings. Perhaps how much damage societal rejection has on a person's psyche and the harms that can spawn from that. We are, in the end, social creatures. Feeling from a young age that you don't belong is bound to have detrimental developmental impacts.

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: The Seep
Author: Chana Porter
Genre: Sci-fi/fantasy, grief processing

This weekend I finished two books, the first of which was The Seep by Chana Porter, which has been on my TBR for years. In this book, Earth has been peacefully invaded by a parasitic alien which goes about solving all of Earth's problems in exchange for insight on what being human is like.

If you're looking for a SFF book with heavy world-building, this is not it. Very little explanation is ever given about the Seep (the alien, not the book), how it works, how it got here, what its initial invasion was like. The practicalities of the Seep are not what this book is about; this book is about its protagonist, Trina, learning to live in a world where the Seep dominates everything, for better or worse.

The Seep itself could be an allegory for any number of things, but to me, it correlated strongly with modern technology, especially since the advent of AI, although the book was published in 2020, before AI hit the public market. The way Trina's misgivings about the Seep are brushed off as a sort of Ludditism, an old fogey being old (Trina is 50 for the better part of the book), the way even Trina acknowledges a lot of the good the Seep does but no one is willing to seriously discuss what's being lost, the way it has so quickly and totally seeped into every aspect of life on Earth so that those who choose to live without it are relegated to an isolated, ostracized community roundly mocked by everyone else.

However, while the book starts off with something to say about Trina feeling lost, about being unwilling to give everything up to the Seep, it peters out at the end without anything really to say about Trina's society (and by extension, our own). It floats around the idea that friction in our lives is good--various characters admit, under pressure, that they miss some of the more difficult aspects of life before the Seep, perhaps the sense that accomplishments meant more when you really had to work for them. Now everyone does whatever they want and it's easy, everything's easy. It hints that Trina, who is trans, has some resentment about how easily people are able to modify their bodies now with the Seep--friends walk around with angel wings, cat ears, change gender by day of the week--while Trina had to fight so hard to become who she is and feels that struggle is part of what made her who she is. It makes salient points that part of freedom is the freedom to chose wrong (the Seep is fixated on keeping humans from any unhealthy behaviors, and Trina longs for the days when she could have a drink without the overwhelming sense of alien disapproval, or the chance to grieve as she wishes to without someone trying to fix it for her). It implies that immortality takes some of the meaning out of life, because part of what makes our experiences meaningful is knowing that we only have so much time for them.

Yet the climax lacks a follow-through to these premises, in my view. When a book starts off with such strong opinions, I expect it to conclude with a solution, a criticism, a proposal...something. But here, Trina makes her speech to the Seep about why each person's individual experience shapes them and why we're all unique, but she also returns to the fold of the same community she left before, which, I think, substantially failed her in her grief for her lost wife, and partakes in the social rituals they had been demanding of her. Her end feelings on the Seep aren't even clear. She just sort of...goes on with life as she was doing before her wife's departure. Which would be perfectly fine if the story was only about grief, but this one felt like it was about a lot more than that.

I still think The Seep raises interesting, and very relevant in today's world, points, but I wish it did more with them in the end. However, the book is quite short, so I do still think it's worth the read.

impala_chick

Browsing is open at Fandom Trumps Hate here! I find it easiest to navigate using the fandom tags list.

Here is my offering. I'll write 5-10k fic for Raven Cycle, Band of Brothers, or Masters of the Air. I'd love to write a rarepair or a poly fic, but I'm open to lots of other things. Feel free to ask questions if you have anyway!

topaz_eyes

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Current Mood: sore

melroseee

Just finished another 12-hour work Monday... *falls to the floor* Work has been the busiest I can remember in a while. Fortunately I only have five weeks left of these Mondays so at the very least there's an end in sight! Since AO3 is still down, I thought I'd unwind by doing some ~blogging~ instead.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: groggy

ranalore

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Current Mood: cold
Current Location: eating a mug cake and watching taylor tomlinson

vialethe

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topaz_eyes

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atamascolily

This was a gorgeous 3-D animated series from 2017 that I am just now catching up on... evocative of Steven Universe (sentient gems with the properties of their namesake) and the Ship of Theseus (all kind of fascinating philosophical questions about identity and personhood). Overall, the vibes are tragic and existential, which is not a bad thing, but it can be depressing at times.

The aesthetic and the fight animation were my favorite parts, hands down. I knew I was going to like this show the moment the antagonists - "Lunarians" who are hunting the gems - turned up with their ghostly Buddhist-themed floating pavilions, like a cross between Madoka Magica and the Lotus Sutra, and it did not disappoint me. Chiwa Saito does a fantastic job voicing a pink snail, and there are some fun character moments amid the tragedy and heartbreak - and literal breakage, as gems shatter and are pieced back together in every episode.

Special shout-out to episode 10, which had me on the edge of my seat for two-thirds of its run; rarely have I been so invested in an extended action sequence. And then episode 11 has the most unexpected resolution possible! Incredible. I'm going to be thinking about that for a long time.

One thing I didn't like is that there are so many gem characters, it's hard to keep track of them all, and most are in the background unless it's their turn to hang out with the protagonist. Sometimes it feels like gems literally show up as they're needed instead of being there from the beginning. The protagonist starts out as the typical klutz with a good heart, which can be annoying at first, but they quickly got put through the wringer and transformed to the point where I ended up missing their old personality - an excellent example of "be careful what you wish for"! Also, there's one relationship that is heavily teased in the opening credits, but while those characters are important to each other and the plot/themes, they don't get a ton of screen time, so the opening is not as representative of the show's contents as I expected.

Unfortunately, the anime is only 12 episodes and it ends on a cliffhanger, and season 2 is non-existent after almost a decade and may not ever happen. The manga is complete, and I read a summary of some of the key plot points and... I only got a small fraction of it, but what the fuck. What the actual fuck.

I'm torn between reading the manga in full to see if it's as wild as the summaries claim, or if I'm better off pretending the anime is all there is and coming up with my own ideas. Either way, I'm glad I watched this and would recommend this series to others who are interested in animation and/or philosophy and who are up for characters suffering beautifully and being repeatedly traumatized by The Horrors.

torachan

1. Even though the only caffeine I had yesterday was in the morning, I had so much trouble sleeping, so I'm feeling pretty tired tonight. I am hoping that I will be able to get to sleep easily because of that. Fingers crossed!

2. I'm going to be making some store visits over the next few weeks to talk to the store managers and accounting staff about the upcoming new system and to see what current accounting practices are at each store to see what they need to prepare for, since the new system will have some big changes for invoice processing. I went to two stores today and am also kind of feeling worn out from so much talking, not just the lack of sleep, but it was nice to do something other than WFH or in the office.

3. The weather is much nicer today than it has been the past few days.

4. Chloe also approves of the new lounger but it's not as good as the ratty cardboard box next to it.

billroper

The treadmill left for its new home today and the library looks a good bit less crowded. This is good.

In keeping with the theme of moving things, today at work was largely spent rearranging things so that I could combine two classes into one. I think that's done and I can move on to the next bit of this project tomorrow.

Yay, me!

xinas_island

OmG! After the time shift on March 8th, BC will no longer do time changes. We will for ever be at Daylight Savings Time. 💖

Other than having this final time shift on March 8th to adapt to, that'll be it!

Most of BC is going in to a future that has no more time change created confusion fatigue, mental fatigue, etc.

The cats will be so happy, and medicine times won't be confusing right after a time shift any longer. 🥳

news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2026AG0013-000209

"Recent actions from the U.S. have shifted how B.C. approaches decisions that merit alignment, including on time zones. Making this change now reflects the current preferences and needs of British Columbians, and helps ensure the province is well-positioned to thrive, even when circumstances across the border evolve."

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Vancouver Island

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schneefink

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Network

Recipe dessert

Recipe for lunch or dinner

Not quite 365 questions March

Topics for talk March

90 discussion queestions

Happiness and fanfic

Monsterverse/Godzilla Icons

Book review: Earthlings

Book review: The Seep

Fandom Trumps Hate!

(no subject)

straight off the tumblr blog

just a teensy post to say

3 Sentence Ficathon 2026 Fills - Hades 2

The Pitt Fan Fiction: "I Can See Clearly Now"

Lily watches: "Land of the Lustrous"

3 Sentence Ficathon 2026 Fills

Daily Happiness

Moving Things Around

One last 'Spring Ahead' change for BC

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February 2026

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