Experimental Cookery 2022: Kitchari

This one came from the Hairy Bikers' "One Pot Wonders". It was quick-ish and easy to put together, resulting in a huge pot of food in short order.

The verdict: yeah, it was a good one. There are a couple of things I would do differently in future - I wouldn't add more liquid partway through the simmer stage, as this led to the meal being more soupy than I would prefer; I would use different, less strong, chillis at the end to reduce the heat; and I'd make less of it in general, as two people don't need four servings!

But this is definitely one we'd have again, taking our menu of good vegetarian options up to five - one short of my threshold for having enough. Given that I have two more candidates waiting in the wings, we look to be in a good place.

Day 100: Update on Goals

 Today is the 100th day of the year, so it's time for the regular update. Note that this was written in advance, so it may be slightly out of date. I do expect it to be fairly accurate, though.

• Books: By day 100 I should have read 16.44 books. I'm quite a long way short of that, but I have made significant progress through "The Stand", the longest book remaining on the List. I'm well pleased with my progress towards finishing The List; less happy about the general progess.
• Weight: I've made a small amount of progress here, but not really enough to say any more about.
• Blogging: By day 100 I should have written 32.88 posts here, so I'm pretty much on target here. I've also actually written 17 posts on The Imaginarium, so I'm very happy here.
• Redecorating the Hallway: I mentioned in the previous update that we might tackle this around Easter. It's not happening at this time, but may happen later in the year. We'll see.
• Super Secret Goal: As before, I've made no progress on this issue. Unfortunately, I tend to think it is still necessary, so I'll need to try to have something more to report for next time.

And that's that. I'm mostly happy with progress to date, but some of the areas will definitely need more progress made for next time.

Experimental Cookery 2022: Stuffed Aubergines

We've recently been trying to go for a vegetarian main meal once a week. My thinking is that in order for that to stick we'll need about six solid options to try. At present we're at four: there's a green lentil curry we enjoyed, a chickpea curry, the sunblush tomato risotto, and many of the pizzas we have are meat-free. I had hoped this would make a fifth solid option.

This meal came from "The Hairy Bikers' Mediterranean Adventure" (bit of a theme there). It was easy to put together, and fairly quick - in future I'll need to start earlier so that I can parallel the children's meals with the second bake in ours, rather than the first. But that's not a huge problem.

Unfortunately, the results were mixed - I quite enjoyed it, but LC was much less impressed. She just felt that it was missing something, a common trait of vegetarian meals.

The upshot of that is that we might have these again, but it may either be as a side dish for something else, or possibly with the addition of bacon. Either way, it won't serve as a fifth veggie option. A shame.

Experimental Cookery 2022: Lentils with Sausage

This one is very similar to a sausage casserole LC sometimes makes, so is included here more or less just for completeness. This one came from "The Hairy Biker's Mediterranean Adventure". It's fine - quick and easy to put together and tasty enough. It wasn't a world-beater, but something we might have again occasionally.

Another Life

One of the mixed blessings that comes with a subscription to any of the streaming services (in this case, Netflix) is that you get access to a whole lot of material that might be good. And so it was that I found myself watching "Another Life" - a sci-fi series about a sudden and world-changing first contact with an alien species.

"Another Life" started really well, with the central mystery of the aliens matched up with a deep-space mission led by Katee Sackhoff, and for much of the first series it remained mostly good and quite interesting.

Alas, the second series just went to pieces - it started by dispatching and replacing about half the remaining cast from the first year, became ever-more proposterous, and then engaged in a massive rush to tidy things up following cancellation. (I'm actually somewhat glad of that rush, since it avoided ending on a cliffhanger. Even if it was rather too "Independence Day" for my tastes.)

And that was that. Honestly, I'm a little glad it's ended, since I would probably have been pulled into a third season had there been one. And, alas, it's a show I really can't recommend.