#these are our staples

[lotstradamus]

do you have some favourite go-to recipes? i would love any of your recommendations!! xx

we eat the same few things on rotation in our house, as I do all the cooking, and I like a) one-pot meals, and b) pasta, preferably. most of these are fairly low effort but you get a lot of bang for your buck flavour-wise, and they're endlessly customisable!

also, listen, I don't do measurements. follow your heart and taste as you go.

the tiktok viral baked feta pasta from like 4 years ago ingredients: plum or cherry tomatoes, a block of feta (or boursin if you're feeling flush), garlic, pasta optional extras: spinach, cannellini beans, chili crisp recipe: whack your tomatoes, sliced garlic, and olive oil in a big dish. nestle your feta in there. I like to add a tin of drained cannellini beans at this point to bulk it out/cut down on the pasta/make the texture confusing, but you don't have to. stick it in the oven at like 180-200C for half an hour ish. after half an hour boil your pasta. retrieve your oven dish, stir everything up to desired consistency (I'm a chunk girl). you can add spinach while you do this for extra greenery, or a massive spoonful of chili crisp for heat and crunch, but it's good on its own. add the pasta and some pasta water if you need. voila. you simply cannot go wrong.

gochujang and hummus pasta ingredients: gochujang (this keeps forever in the fridge so it's a good kitchen investment), a tub of hummus, garlic, white onion, parm optional extras: parsley recipe: chop onion and garlic, sling them in a pan with butter and a splash of EVOO. when the onion is sufficiently sweaty and nice, add a dollop of gochujang (the bigger the dollop the spicier the end result) and stir it all in, followed by the whole tub of hummus. boil the pasta. add the cooked pasta to the pan, along with some pasta water, a shit load of grated parm, and garnish with parsley. my friend sent me a vegan version of this recipe about a year ago and I've made the non-vegan version roughly once a week since. it is so fucking delicious. butter bean thing ingredients: butter beans, garlic, red onion, tomato paste, cream/double cream/greek yog, lemon, sourdough/nice crusty bread optional extras: parsley recipe: throw chopped garlic and onion in a pan with butter and EVOO and really let them sweat it out. add tinned butter beans WITH THE JUICE. yes, I know. add in a few good squirty piles of tomato paste and stir, then let it all heat through. at this point start toasting your crusty bread of choice because I ALWAYS forget until the end and then I'm rushed. I recommend splurging for the good bread, slathered with melty butter. add whatever creamy thing you have to hand (the og recipe I saw said double cream, but I usually have greek yoghurt in and that does the job) to the beans, along with some lemon juice, garnish with parsley if you like and serve. use the bread as a giant spoon. you are welcome.

sausage soup/stew? casserole?? ingredients: celery, white onion, carrot, sausage/s, cherry tomatoes, tinned tomatoes, chicken broth, parm optional extras: creamy thing of your choice, spinach, orzo recipe: dice the celery, carrot and onion (mirepoix!), and throw it in a big big big pot with some EVOO. now: I get a pack of nice sausages and either mash or chop them depending on how much energy I have, but if you live somewhere with a butcher or whatever you can save your mashing arm and just get ground sausage. throw in the ground, mashed, or chopped sausage and cook for a bit. follow with a tin of chopped tomatoes and chicken broth. I usually put in about a litre. chop the cherry toms and toss them in. follow with a load of grated parm. if you have any parm rinds, throw em in and leave it to bubble away. this doesn't sound like much but it is so good. the longer you leave it the more flavourful it will be! towards the end I like to add in whatever creamy thing is in the fridge (double cream, greek yog, milk), along with lots of chopped spinach and a cup of orzo to really bulk it up. we can happily live on this for DAYS, especially if we have leftover fancy crusty bread from the gochujang pasta. oh and remember to take out the parm rind.

thai chicken curryish ingredients: chicken (thigh/breast), garlic, ginger, yellow peppers, spring onion, cashew nuts, rice, coconut milk, chicken broth optional extras: sriracha, coriander recipe: I love this one cos it is SO quick and SOOOO easy. cut chicken into chunks and brown it in the pot. whip it back out and throw in the chopped garlic and ginger (I have a tube of ginger paste in the fridge cos WHO has the time?) with a big glug of EVOO, then a cup of rice. jasmine works, but I've also used risotto rice. toss in the chopped peppers, spring onion and cashew nuts (if I have the energy I'll chop the nuts, but you can put em in as-is), then add coconut milk (a tin's amount, be that an actual tin or some of the melted stuff that costs 1/4 of the price - thanks Asian supermarket!) and chicken broth. put the browned chicken back in, give it all a stir, cover it, and stick it in the oven for like 25ish mins. here’s the NYT recipe if you need liquid measurements/an actionable recipe that isn’t me riffing. (as always, 12ft.io/ in front of the address to bypass the paywall.) serve it with sriracha squirted all over it (HIGHLY RECOMMEND) and coriander if you like it.

delicious little rice waffle ingredients: leftover jasmine rice, chili crisp, an egg, kewpie mayonnaise, sesame oil, spring onion, A WAFFLE MAKER optional extras: furikake recipe: full disclosure, you need a little waffle maker for this. mix the rice with chili crisp, a little sesame oil, and egg yolk. dollop it into the waffle maker and cook. garnish with kewpie mayo, sliced spring onion and some furikake if you have it, or just toasted sesame seeds if you have those, or neither! delicious little spicy umami snack, my beloved.

tuna melt of dreams ingredients: you know what's in a tuna melt recipe: swap the butter on the outside of the bread for kewpie mayonnaise and thank me later.

ADDENDUM: this goes without saying for me but sadly I know it does not for everybody: SEASON YOUR FOOD WITH SALT. IT WON'T MAKE YOUR FOOD SALTY IT WILL MAKE IT DELICIOUS. COOK YOUR PASTA IN SALT. WHEN IN DOUBT, ADD SOME SALT. THANK YOU.

[linkeduniverse]

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[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[godsfavoritedumpsterfire]

[canisalbus]

so a few weeks ago i went to a local scandinavian fair/market (i live in the northeastern part of the usa, so not a Huge population of scandinavian immigrants/ancestry. a pretty small but really nice gathering!), and there was someone there selling imported Finnish candy. i thought of you talking about salmiakki and asked if she was selling any, which apparently she was, but sold out pretty fast! i still bought a bag of assorted Finnish candies that she had put together herself, and i really liked them! however... one day i will try salmiakki, I've got it in my mind now.

Ooo that's so cool! It feels really strange to think of Finnish candy being sold as rare imported goods on the other side of the world, but that's how it goes, of course. Where I come from, some common American brands are still exotic and rarely stocked by stores, I remember coming across Reese's cups in person for the first time just a couple of years ago and going "OH I've heard of those!!"

Salmiakki is a powerful and unique flavor, and as a finn it genuinely brings me such glee that you remembered me mentioning it once and were curious enough to try to give it a taste! Sorry they were sold out. I hope you'll get your hands on some sooner or later. (I personally like the hard candy varieties like turkinpippuri, oukki doukki, patruuna and dracula piller the best, but I'd say those can be on the more aggressive end so, like, brace yourself a little if that happens to be your introduction point).

[proselles]

Nobaras about to bully megumis ass out of depression yuuji was all like oh.... fushiguro... it's going to be really lonely without you 🥺🥺😞😞 and nobara'll fucking COME for him she'll b like that's the fit you're gonna die in??? The fucking jujutsu tech uniform??? Megumi please if you haunt me in that I won't even be able to take you seriously even your DOGS were better styled than that. Anyway stop sacrificing yourself for people moron it has literally NEVER worked out for you. Get your GAY ASS in gear its disrespectful to let someone who likes FEMBOYS wear you like a meat puppet. its giving homophobic lol loser And sukuna would stop for a moment to glare at the audacity and then nobara would hit him with another nail backshot

[lgbtqreads]

Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Adult Fiction: January-June 2025

Due to the delightfully large volume of titles, Romances will be getting their own post later this week! Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett (January 7th) At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give.…

[queerliblib]

Queer books?? fuck yeah. Indigenous Queer books for Indigenous Heritage Month??!? even better.

[fidgetspringer]

It crimas

[softinvasions]

I'm the copy of a copy of a copy of a woman, you're the copy of a copy of a copy of a guy, but the way we behave towards each other makes me think that even this could be a lie.

DOMINO by @squalloscope. Collage assembled from National Geographic cuttings. Nov. 2023

[agnesmontague]

i realize the prevailing joke is time traveling to medieval times and making a peasant listen to heavy metal or feeding them a dorito or something but my fantasy is to be able to magically source a shitton of fresh ingredients from our modern era and cure some ailing villagers' malnutrition with a hearty vegetable stew or have a child taste orange juice for the first time

[biomic]

very cute to see kohtaro taki (kijino's boss and world's first ever goggle v fan) cameo in this ep. "guy who gets typecast as pink rangers' employers" is a fun gig to have

[rontra]

I hope you’re having a lovely time with your viddy games and rest! Whatcha playing lately?

i am thank you!!!!!! its nice to kick back a bit even tho i really wanna continue my comic. absence makes the heart fonder(?? 😂)

i've been playiiiing... Wilmot Works It Out.... picking at my FFXIV msq again (Stormblood gaming!!) (and spending a loooot of time gposing also LOL).... Minecraft ofc. Maneater blipped back onto the radar out of nowhere cause its low brainpower gaming and i remembered i need to re-get all the chieves on steam 🥰 AND i got back into Valheim after like 2 years. also a little Buckshot Roulette with friends bc ive always wanted to be in a dank basement with them w/ all of us repeatedly failing to count to four with deadly consequences

also my warrior cats friend got me on Clangen which is less of an active "videogame" and more a "spin the rng wheel to see what happens next" program but i spent like hours staring at it to see what would happen to my poor pixel cats next so i guess it counts 😭

also ive been watching a show w my mom every day and my cats are warming up to her presence. everybody say good job bouba & kiki. it was their birthday 2 weeks ago :)

[wantonglances]

*based on the experiences of myself & my friends during the height of emo culture in the USA. list isn't completely inclusive due to limited poll space/personal experience.

[invinciblerodent]

I was thinking.

At first read, I thought Harding's apple pasta dish sounded uniquely gross, but then I remembered.

I'm Hungarian.

I'm no stranger to sweet pasta, especially not as a main dish; I grew up eating pasta with semolina and jam. I used to regularly have just straight up walnut- or poppy seed spaghetti. We fucking put sugar, black pepper, and steamed cabbage on pasta without batting an eye. We truly do not give a fuck. Pasta to us isn't even a carb, it's a vehicle.

I bet I could make an Apple Cheesy Butter Pasta that is actually good, and it would not even take as much finessing as I had initially thought.

Like, most I'd actually need to do to make it palatable is probably just swapping the semi-hard cheese I was envisioning to like a cottage cheese, and make the "apple" bit kind of an oldschool Hungarian granny-style apple pie filling with sugared cinnamon and grated tart apples.

Maybe I'd add a bit of goat cheese, or a bit of fresh mozz or some burrata to the top for the bubbly-cheesy-melty factor that Lace mentions, but other than that, if I disregard my first "ew, savory noodles swimming in too much store-bought applesauce with sharp cheddar on top" impression, it's not even that quirky a dish.

[pomegranateplumes]

I'm seeing Opeth in NOLA in a few days ᕕ( ᐛ ) ᕗ