shivers and cold champagne

I had a pretty productive day today, which was a good thing because I have a million things to do this week. I spent some time this morning journaling in bed, and then I finally got up, made some coffee, ate a granola bar, and talked to [censored]. We watched the Weekend Update portions of last night's SNL, but we didn't keep going because we both knew that we'd stop being productive entirely if we watched another hour of YouTube videos.

I spent most of the afternoon doing office stuff - including literal office stuff like dusting, rearranging my bookshelves, etc. I also washed my sheets, cleaned out the fridge, and other similarly interesting tasks. Eventually, [censored] left and I experimented with supper - I was in the mood for something spicy and Asian-ish, and I had almost zero groceries, so I read a few recipes online and then improvised. What I came up with was rice noodles with sauteed onions, brussels sprouts, ginger, and garlic, which I tossed with a sauce of peanut butter, chili oil crisp, soy sauce, mirin, and miso paste. The sauce recipe wasn't an improvisation, but the other ingredients were - I had no mushrooms, no green onions, no cilantro, no tofu, and nothing else, so I used more yellow onion than the recipe called for and also sliced up some brussels sprouts that were about to go bad.

Overall, the verdict was probably a 7/10, would definitely eat again but would keep tweaking. I liked the sauce, which was basically a spicy peanut sauce, but I thought that the recipe called for adding the ginger/garlic way too soon, and I think they probably scorched a bit from overcooking. Green onions would have been a big improvement. And the dish needed some protein -- I did fry an egg to put on top, which helped, but tofu or shrimp or chicken would be a nice addition.

Anyway, it was still tasty and I will happily eat the leftovers. Then I cleaned the kitchen, took a long-overdue shower, messed around online, and finally forced myself to write a couple of pages so that I have a headstart on thinking about what I'll write tomorrow. And now it's time for bed - goodnight!