monkeys and ponies

Requested by nostalgia_lj.

( after the cut )

Title: The Five-Ish Stages of Grief
Characters/Pairing(s): Duplicate Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG
Word count: 2,800
Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Summary: "I could be wrong," the Doctor said, "but I'm fairly certain 'rebound sex' is not one of the five stages of grief."
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.

Author's Notes: Belated birthday fic for platypus -- happy birthday! This story takes place in the same universe as Fake Palindromes, You That Way; We This Way, and Souvenirs, but is set chronologically before the other three, so there's no need to do extra reading unless you want to.

::xposted to time_and_chips, dwfiction, dwfiction, and archived at Teaspoon and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Title: British Summer Time
Characters/Pairing(s): Eleven/River
Rating: Adult
Word count: 940
Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Summary: The end of British Summer Time is a very different experience for Time Lords.
Beta: platypus
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.

Author's Notes: PWP written for nostalgia_lj, who wanted non-angsty Doctor/River with a very specific kink.

::xposted to spoiler_song, dwfiction, rivereffinsong, and dwfiction, and archived at Teaspoon and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Do you need a Middleman/DW crossover written by the Middleman's author himself? Why yes, you do.

A whole bunch of new recipes for Thanksgiving this year:

#46, potato bread. Another one from Baking With Julia, and another delicious success. The dough is very weird -- it starts off dry and sticky, but as you mix it, it loosens up and practically becomes liquid, to the point that it feels like surely you must have done something wrong. But after it rises, you can shape it easily despite how soft it still is, and it bakes up into a solid loaf with a tight crumb and a lovely potato aroma. Makes great toast.

#47, cranberry, apple, and crystallized ginger chutney. This one's from the most recent Cook's Illustrated. I usually make a spiced cranberry sauce with cinnamon and star anise, but I wanted to try something different this year. It's very good, but I find the shallot taste a bit weird in it and would leave those out next time.

#48, tandoori turkey. From the latest Bon Appetit, but found via a blog post linked from Tasteologie. Like the bloggers, I used premade garam masala; unlike the bloggers, I made my own tandoori seasoning, subbing thyme for the ajwain seeds I didn't have time to get. This was my first time cooking a turkey in an oven bag, a slighly freaky experience that nearly resulted in an explosion when even the steam vents I'd cut in the bag failed to prevent the bag from almost overinflating. But I may go the bag route again, because the turkey was incredibly moist (probably also due to an overnight soak in whole milk yogurt), and cleanup was a breeze compared to the usual soak/scrub/keep scrubbing routine involved in cleaning a post-Thanksgiving roasting pan.

#49, blackeyed pea/quinoa croquettes with mushroom sauce. From Vegan With a Vengeance, and the main course for the two vegetarians and one vegan joining us for Thanksgiving. I am not kidding when I tell you that one of the cats was begging for the uncooked batter. (Mind you, she also begged for the vegan cornbread -- and enjoyed it when I gave it to her -- so maybe she's just weird.) I'm not even a huge blackeyed pea or quinoa fan, but I liked these very much. Using panko for the coating made them even crispier, they reheated beautifully in the oven, and the mushroom gravy was good enough to use on everything.

#50, vegan "creamed" spinach. Creamed spinach is one of my favorite dishes, but it's not exactly a low-fat food. Nor is the vegan version, though at least it's zero-cholesterol. Next time I make this, I'm going to try to thicken the soy milk, and will probably add some nutritional yeast to give it that slight cheesy flavor I really like in my non-vegan version. Still, this one isn't bad, and there's good nutmeg flavor. (I left out the dill, though, because dill and nutmeg? Seriously?)

#51, vegan pumpkin pie brownies. It isn't Thanksgiving without pumpkin of some kind, and better yet, pumpkin and chocolate. I should have had some of this for breakfast this morning ... in fact, I might go get some of it now. I'd have preferred a cakier and less fudgy brownie layer, but that's my only complaint.

Some thoughtful anon (not me!) has been trying to get a sizeofthatthing revival going, so of course I had to participate. I haven't had much time or energy this year to write fic, but given how much fic I've already written for the kinkmeme, I figured I could find a way to write at least one more.

So: Nine/River, "no names, no regrets," now posted at Teaspoon and AO3, with notes and a link to the original version in the kinkmeme master list linked in my journal sidebar.

The backstory is that one of our routers died today, leaving us sans wireless network. Considering the number of internet-enabled devices in our home far exceeds the number of residents, even including the cats, this is a problem. (And how little am I looking forward to reconfiguring the home network? Gin may need to be involved.)

That's not how I know I live in the future. No, that's because after a long drive in pouring rain to get my first winter CSA share, I went to the mall to buy a new router. The Apple Store was packed to the gills with people, and the wait to talk to someone who could sell me anything was clearly going to be significant.

But I'd read this morning that the Apple Store had released its own app allowing you to check out your own purchases, so here's what happened:

1) Thread my way through the crowd to the back of the store, where they keep the routers.

2) Connect iPhone to store's wireless network; download Apple Store app.

3) Launch app; touch option to purchase something; get little rectangle in which I must line up the product bar code.

4) App recognizes bar code and asks me to confirm my purchase, which is charged to the credit card attached to my Apple account.

5) Receipt appears on my phone.

6) Leave store.

Total elapsed time in mall: five minutes.

And now, to go configure a network. If only it were as easy as buying the router.

#41, smothered mushrooms and kale. Yes, it's a Rachael Ray recipe. Deal with it. I even own one of her cookbooks (bought before she had her massive entertainment empire), and it's really not bad at all, despite being a little too meat-heavy for my taste.

Anyway, I had mushrooms and kale that had to be used, and wanted to try something a little different than my usual garlicky kale and lemony mushroom recipes. This one is quite simple, although I think it calls for too much fat; I used a tablespoon total of olive oil and butter for half the amount of kale and mushrooms called for and felt like I got enough flavor. Would make again.

#42, jackfruit curry. I'd never even thought about cooking with jackfruit until I was watching The Great Food Truck Road Race (... yeah, I know), saw the vegan truck making "pulled pork" with jackfruit, and realized I had to give this fruit a try.

I didn't have the lime leaves called for in the recipe, so I subbed lime zest and some extra basil leaves in the curry, and oh my god, I could have just poured the coconut curry sauce in my mouth and been happy. But the point of this exercise was not to drink curry sauce; it was to cook jackfruit, which turned out to taste much like artichoke hearts and was really good in the curry. I'm definitely going to pick some more up next time I'm at an Asian market so I can make kathal kabobs.

It was time to take down the rest of the garden today, which meant the tabasco peppers had to be processed. I turned them into this cooked chile-garlic sauce, which in raw form, is absolutely thermonuclear. I don't know if I had some extra-special-hot tabascos or what, but these tasted nearly as hot as some habaneros I've had. Fortunately, they mellowed a bit after cooking, and are now slightly less likely to cause instant death.



I also made a baked apple oatmeal pudding recipe I found in today's Boston Globe magazine, subbing in walnuts (since I had no pecans) and candied ginger instead of dried fruit. It would have been perfect with vanilla ice cream, but even without it, was pretty good.

The Globe has put a lot of their content behind a paywall, which I have no patience for even though as a subscriber, I have rights to everything for free anyway. One recipe posted online isn't going to make or break their business model anyway, so here it is.
( the recipe )