better weekend

[jazzfish]

The weekend more or less improved from Friday morning, and my thanks to those of you who offered sympathy and/or listened to my whining.

Friday I was off work for a team outing to Old Town Alexandria. We took a Food Tour, wandered around, got some bits of history, and ate at three different restaurants, plus a glass of odd apple/grape cider from the Lyceum and tea and cake from Old Town Coffee Tea & Spice. Only got moderately soaked during the ten-minute downpour.

Afterwards, met up with uilos, bought some tea (they carry sikkim! No more need to order tea from India!) and a couple of silicone egg poachers, and had dinner at a crepe place off King Street. I think that was also the night we had ice cream floats at home. Update: And also walked around the Torpedo Factory for an hour and a half. I dearly love the Torpedo Factory. It's a three-floor studio/gallery space for a bunch of artists, with some very neat stuff going on in all manner of visual media. It makes me wish I had a) a lot more money and b) someplace permanent to put Art.

Satyrday I tried out the egg poachers (extremely effective, just make sure you oil them lightly first) and we sealed the bottom seam on the tent. Other than that Satyrday pretty much sucked.

Sunday was alright, though. Laundered, hit the thrift store to drop off the TV and DVD player and walked away with a bunch of new shirts. I mean, seriously. I have not had this much luck finding decent men's medium button-up non-polyester shirts in ages. One is a little tight, and one is missing a button (torn, so replacing it may be tricky), but overall an excellent haul. Also found a copy of Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat books. (Very strange. I devoured the first one and am not sure what I think of them. Will take some thought.) Then over to lyricon's new place for games and hanging out.

I'd like to say "and now it'll be better," but I'm still too washed out from the weekend and the week before. Ask me again on Thursday.

Comments

[tulip-tree.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a good weekend! Yay for tea and eggs and stuff.

In case you're also interested in non-thrift store deals, Eddie Bauer sells a lot of men's button up shirts of various sorts, and they tend to have incredible sales on their men's clothing. (Not so much on the women's side of the store - I like their stuff and shop there anyway sometimes, but the discounts on men's clothes are much better.) Andrew can often just head straight for the sale rack and find a few good things for really cheap. It's hit or miss, of course, but then again so is the thrift store.

[jazzfish]

Thanks.

Hm, okay. I usually think of Eddie Bauer as being a more expensive version of LL Bean / Land's End, and I think of those as places where jackets come from catalogs at Xmastime. (I had a, well, curious, upbringing.) Worth looking into when these start coming apart.

Generally I think of clothes shopping as something to be avoided. I've gotten around that with thrifting for shirts because of the random /stuff/ you can find. Like, this time E walked away with an electric-orange silk Chinese mandarin coat.

[nixve.livejournal.com]

as places where jackets come from catalogs at Xmastime. (I had a, well, curious, upbringing.)

I seem to have had the same curious upbringing in that respect.

[babushek.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you had a least a better if not perfect weekend. And I really want to try those egg poachers! :)

[jazzfish]

They're neat. :) Much easier to deal with than poaching eggs by breaking them into boiling water, which never works for me. Well, it does, I get poached egg out of it, I just also end up with bits of egg all through the water and sticking to the sides of the pot and generally making a mess.

[babushek.livejournal.com]

I have the exact same experience trying to poach eggs in water. I've tried putting vinegar in, but I swear it does nothing! ;) And my little microwaveable egg "poacher" is actually an egg "exploder all over your microwave." ;)

[jazzfish]

*snrk* That sounds, um, less than helpful. :)

[lyricon.livejournal.com]

Glad you could make it, and I'm glad your weekend overall was generally nice enough. Congrats on the shirts, too. I love random thrift store finds. One of our couches was a spontaneous Salvation Army purchase, and it's been awesome.

[jazzfish]

The Zebra Chair, which you may have seen over in the book corner, was a thrift-store chair. It is ugly as sin and the single most comfortable piece of furniture I have ever owned.

Thrift stores make me happy.

[nixve.livejournal.com]

What exactly is poaching an egg? What form does it take afterward?

[jazzfish]

Stealing an egg from the King's forest in the dead of night. Sadly, we live in a democracy, so these days the meaning has degenerated to the point where it's more like dating the egg right after (or right before) it breaks up with your best friend.

(Thank you, I'm here all week. Try the veal.)

Seriously though. I think it's the same thing as 'soft-boiling.' The way I know how to do it is you boil water and break the egg into the water, and let it go for five minutes. The egg theoretically stays cohesive and becomes cooked and solid all the way through, like a hard-boiled egg but fluffier and tastier. In practice, this method ends up with about 70% of the egg staying together (and being fairly tasty) and the other 30% spreading out and sticking to the bottom of the pot and generally making a mess.

Which is why the egg-poacher cups are so cool. You have to put a lid on the pot because the egg doesn't actually touch the water, so it's a combination of the boiling water and the steam that cooks the egg. On the bright side, the egg all stays together and doesn't get as soaked.

[nixve.livejournal.com]

Now I have images of Ursula-like paintings of eggs lurking in forests.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I thought you were supposed to swirl the water first and drop the egg in the center, so that the water current keeps it all in until the outside has solidified. I haven't ever actually tried it, though... in my world poached eggs are things you order at restaurants to annoy the cook, whose job it is to make these things work properly.

[jazzfish]

Maybe so. That sounds like it ought to work. Although then you can only do one egg per pot and I'm more of a two-egg breakfast kinda guy. I think I got the "instructions" I used, such as they were, from the Plaid Book, which is often pretty long on recipes and short on techniques.

The times I've gotten poached eggs from restaurants they've been Perfectly Shaped. Either the cooks are really good or they're using some sort of egg-poaching device, making it less of a problem for them.