C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 65

Kitsnacks: Lemon Curd

You would think I would know by now not to post “I made this” food stuff without also posting the recipe. :) Someone asked, so here’s my recipe:

Lemon Curd
2 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
3 oz (6 tbs) butter, room temperature
1 to 1.5 cups sugar
the juice of 3 lemons (1/2 to 3/4ths cups lemon juice, depending on the size of the lemons; adjust sugar accordingly)

Cream butter & sugar until fluffy. Add eggs & egg yolks & mix again. Slowly add lemon juice. The mixture will look curdled when properly mix...

strawberry rhubarb deliciousness

Iiiiiii have made an aaaaaaamaaaaaaazing batch of strawberry rhubarb jam.

Ted, who likes zingy strawberry/rhubarb jam, thought there wasn’t enough rhubarb in mine generally, so I did half and half instead of favouring the strawberries, and it’s rrrrrrrrrrrrrreeaaaaaaaaaallllly good.

I used jam sugar because I didn’t have enough regular sugar, and I thought I might have a little too much s/r for a kilo of jam sugar, which is often soft anyway. So I took what I’ve learned about unripe apples an...

perchance to dream

I dreamed I was trying to deal with our book collections, and found not one, but *two* copies of author Robin McKinley’s (obviously, from 1. the well-read condition of the books, and 2. their (differing) covers) 1980s-era fantasy novel ONCE UPON A TIME, and the fourth, interstitial (it fit between books 1 & 2), book of Pamela C Dean’s Secret Country trilogy.

*grabby grabby grabby hands* I would pay good money to go back into that dream and read those two books cover to cover…

The post perchan...

much better, thank you

I am, for all of you who have asked, much better today, thank you. Muuuuuuuuuuch better.

Apparently I alarmed my poor husband, because he did come home to get Indy from school, and when he arrived home I was sleeping on the couch and he couldn’t remember the last time I was sick enough to give up trying to push through and just went to sleep on the couch. Evidently he went back to work and told people I’d been sleeping on the couch and they said “so?” and he was like, “no, you don’t understan...

Writing Wednesday: Patreon patronage

A while ago I was muttering about how I wanted somebody I *knew* to have test-run a relatively new distribution opportunity for self-published writers, and one of my friends said, “Er, Catie, you’re the one who does that. You go charging off the cutting edge and we all wait to see how it works out and then follow, having learned from you.”

I said “!” because I didn’t know that was a thing I was perceived as doing, but since it apparently is, I’m gonna talk about my experiences with Patreon no...

i has a sick.

I’ve had a cold sneaking up on me the past couple days, but today it decided to land with both feet. I feel tired and faintly ill if I’m holding still, but if I move at all I cough. Climbing the stairs requires a ten minute sit-down to recover.

I’ve spent a lot of time lying on the couch today. :} I was so wrecked from bringing Indy to school that I asked Ted to come home from work long enough to *get* him from school. And that was after we deliberately left early because I knew I wasn’t goin...

Picoreview: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut

Picoreview: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut: very disappointing.

There were enough longer scenes and stuff that it was clear we weren’t watching the theatre release, but we were expecting something called The Rogue Cut to, y’know, I don’t know, heavily feature Rogue, or something.

And it did, sure, more than the original, but ultimately Rogue did nothing more than what Kitty did in the theatre release, with every hope of payoff just…ffffsshhht. Washed away.

Spoilers ho.

Because it could...

vacuum triumph

In a stunning route, I have triumphed over the vacuum, which wasn’t sucking anything up. I’d taken the whole goddamn thing apart trying to find the problem, and yesterday discovered a section I hadn’t known CAME apart. Inside it was an 8″ clog of solid dust that I clawed out with chopsticks.

The vacuum worked a lot better after that. I have vacuumed the whole downstairs, which looks a great deal better. #triumph

I also have the first cold of the school year, which is less of a triumph, but al...

a must-read author

A children’s book writer and artist, Chris Judge, lives down the street from my parents. Last year, or the year before, he gave them two of his (quite charming) books for Young Indiana, who is very fond of them. (My parents gave them fudge. When Dad arrived at their house with it, Herself answered the door and said, “Oh! Thank you! We were just discussing what to have for dinner.” :))

I saw on Friday that Chris’s new book, THE SNOW BEAST, had just come out, and I told Indy about it. “A SNOW b...

Kitsnaps: Ivy Gravestone

Ivy Gravestone

Ivy-covered gravestone in Athy, Co Kildare, Ireland

This is the first composed photograph I took with my Nikon D50 DSLR camera when I bought it in January 2006, just after we moved to Ireland.

The next several photographs will all be from early 2006, and all taken in Athy, Co Kildare, where we first lived. I’m very fond of this one, though; it seemed like an auspicious start to my relationship with the camera. :)

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