So these are both “Aw Fuck I’m outta real food” meals BUT ALSO: if you’re learning how to cook, these are great “baby steps” meals to learn how to cook basics into something enjoyable without “wasting” anything expensive. Though I maintain that even cooking screw-ups are valuable in terms of lessons learned.
Also they’re great for when you get absorbed in something and you realize your blood sugar is dropping and you need to make something Quick.
I don’t think of myself as a cook at all, but I looked through this list and was like “if you have [center] and [any item on a surrounding ring] how do you sit there thinking you’ve got nothing to eat?” Like, I buy a fair amount of staples knowing that I’ll be able to quickly assemble them into something tasty if I’m hungry and don’t have anything instant (or in a leftovers container because I made it earlier in the week specifically to eat for a week): butter, cheese, noodles, and more.
It still impresses people how I can go into random kitchens with no food in them and emerge with Filling Snacks for Five People. This is the secret: knowing how to assemble Cupboard Meals. And these charts are incredibly well-laid-out too!
I feel dumb and/or alien. I literally can’t understand how having some of that awesome stuff – eggs, cheese, avocado, noodles, spices, oils – qualifies as “no food at home.” What do people mean?
I think I read “no food” as, “the bread line was eight hours long and we gave up because it was too cold” or some such.
Do people mean, “no prepared meal in the fridge”?
I think people mean “I am looking for food on low energy and nothing in here is striking me as a meal to eat”, and/or “i want a food that i haven’t eaten like 5 times already this week”.
The Sahara sand viper (Cerastes vipera), is a small, venomous viper endemic to the deserts of North Africa and the Sinai Peninsula and it has a very special skill. It can hide itself by burying itself in the sand. They do this in order to wait for prey. They wiggle their tails to attract a potential meal and then lunge out from under the sand to chomp them.
Photographer Zac Herr had the brilliant idea of giving a captive-bred Sahara sand viper the opportunity to show off its special skill in a pool full of rainbow sprinkles instead of sand. pacinthesink provided the snek and jdrrising recorded the results:
ok can we agree that the WORST feeling is when you’re just sitting around consciously procrastinating and you’re just overly aware that each second that passes is more time wasted and you like watch hours pass and you’re STILL procrastinating and you CANT STOP and your panicked brain is trapped inside a body that refuses to be productive and inside you’re screaming but outwardly you’re just eating chips
this is your yearly reminder that animals are not toys. they are a huge commitment. even small pets like hamsters and fish can be expensive and require a lot of work. if you’re planning to get someone a pet as a gift this holiday season, please only do so if you’re 100% sure that they are willing and able to take responsibility for the well-being of a living thing, potentially for years or even decades.
I’ll ad a caveat of never buying anyone an animal as a surprise, unless they were already planning on adding it to their family.
Better gifts include a check to cover adoption fees/purchase price, or supplies for said animal so they have everything they need when they’re ready to get it themselves.
If you do get someone a pet as a gift and they didn’t ask you to, be prepared to care for that animal if it blows up in your face.
Get someone the supplies and a stuffed version of the pet, or a nice photo of the pet if it doesn’t come in stuffed version, and accompany it with a check/cash/gift card to get the actual animal.
Also: if you get a pet for your children, be fully prepared to give that pet a good home, not just a non-lethal one, if your kids lose interest.
And never, never, NEVER buy someone a fish and put it in their aquarium without asking! It might not be compatible- which means it could die or kill their existing fish. Plus, they’ll most likely want to quarantine it in case it’s carrying any diseases. Even if the pet store says it’s healthy.
I have been having some thoughts about the original mythological
Loki and the thought that has been on my mind most is this:
Loki is
1. Surprisingly great with kids
2. Is addicted to parenthood
Let me explain.
As to the first bit, well, yeah, it’s surprising. Or it should
be at first glance. Because, seriously, this is fucking Loki. Standing
in close proximity to him for longer than a minute is bound to result in theft,
arson, a splash of bloodshed for color, and at least one confused party waking
up in bed with the fucker. He’s a chaotic, manic, and generally hazardous force
to be reckoned with.
To us. That is, adults.
Mortals, gods, giants, trolls, dwarves, et cetera–but only
those who are mature.* *Read: there is Something to be Gained from conning,
seducing, or otherwise messing with us. Whether it’s to save his own skin, or
to get some sweet petty vengeance, or to steal a bauble, or to satisfy some
carnal itch, or to just fuck up somebody’s day for the Hel of it, Loki only
ever targets those he can take something worthwhile from.
And what is there to take from kids?
Plenty of folks on his extremely extensive Enemies List have
children, of course. No one in the Norse mythos was especially mindful of
dropping their seed. So. Children.
Children–easy to fool, easy to make a hostage, easy to charm
and siphon their parents’ secrets and treasures from–should be great big
bullseyes to the God of Mischief and Trickery and Assorted Other Unscrupulous
Things. Yet there isn’t a single Edda or snippet of lore in which Loki makes cruel
use of them. Not once.
But what’s the big deal? Most of the rude and/or villainous
characters in Norse mythology don’t bother with harassing kids either. Except
in the case of stories like Loka
Táttur.
Loka Táttur is a tale about how a farmer loses a bet with a
vicious troll who swears to kill the farmer’s little boy. The farmer calls upon
three gods in turn. Odin, Hoenir, and Loki. Odin and Hoenir both disguise the
boy and hide him away, but the troll is too clever and each time manages to
sniff out the boy’s hiding place. Ultimately it is Loki who hides the kid–pulling
an Idunn-in-a-Nutshell gag and hiding him as a speck on the eye of a flounder
in the water–and then, rather than stepping back as Odin and Hoenir did from
their work, he sits in his boat and lets the troll see him.
The troll, being suspicious, asks what Loki’s business is. Only
fishing, obviously. The troll demands to join him. Lo and behold, they bring up
a wealth of flounders, including the one where the boy’s hidden. Loki manages
to change the boy back to his true shape and hide the kid behind his back
without the troll noticing. As Loki brings the boat back to shore, and to the
farmer’s boathouse with the latter’s doors open, Loki tells the boy to run
through the boathouse. He goes, the troll gives chase, and the troll becomes
wedged in the entryway.
At which point Loki proceeds to chop off the troll’s legs and
stick an iron stake in the bastard’s skull. Then he walks the kid back home. The
grand payoff for Loki after all this?
The boy is safe. The troll is dead. The End.
Huh.
Now, much as Loki may have been the catalyst for a lot of
corpses pre-Ragnarok–see his business with Thor getting his hammer back and
leading more than one giant into a death trap–Loki is actually very rarely, if
ever, one to get his hands dirty by killing a victim himself. Even Baldr was
done in by an arrow he aimed with blind Hod’s fingers. So why did Loki
personally orchestrate this plan in such a grisly way? For what gain?
What, other than the satisfaction of personally slaughtering the
would-be child-killing prick troll?
In a less bloody narrative, we see his hand in getting Thialfi
and Roskva, a pair of mortal siblings, taken into Thor’s service. While the
exact ages of the two aren’t mentioned, they are young enough to still be in
the care of their parents. When Thor and Loki are travelling it’s their father
who invites them under their roof. Thor’s goats are slaughtered for the evening
meal and–in some tellings–it is Loki who entices the son, Thialfi, into
breaking a leg bone to taste the marrow. When morning comes and Thor resurrects
his goats, one has a broken leg.
Thor’s visibly pissed—never ever
a good thing–and so the family offers to make some compensation.
Loki, coughing through his hand: ThialfibroketheboneheshouldpledgeservicetoThor
Thialfi: Uh–
Loki, clearing his throat:Alsotakethesistertwoforonedeal
Rosvka: But I didn’t do anything—
Loki, en sotto voce: Kids, consider your options. Teensy
mortal lifetime of toil on Midgard, harvesting dirt and snow on one hand.
Potentially immortal lifetime, I don’t know, scrubbing giant blood off Mjolnir in
Thor’s hall on Asgard on the other. Verdict?
Both: Sold.
Loki: Excellent! Really, Thor, you’re a master dealmaker,
a born barterer, I’m in awe.
Thor: Wh—
Loki: AND WE’RE BACK TREKKING LETS GO
Cue laugh track.
Point being, Loki has been shown to purposefully go
out of his way to help kids because…because. Yet how does this translate to the
idea of him being good with kids?
I ask this purely hypothetically and am trying not to
laugh as I do, because really. Really.
How in the hell is a kid not going to be entertained by the Norse god of
revelry and recreation?
Oh yeah, that bit’s often left off the résumé.
Loki, God of
Mischief, is also God of Recreation. Play, in other words. Because playtime is
a thing that is Chaotic rather than a product of Order, and so Loki is
naturally all over it. There are some who even credit him with having added
that trait to the first humans, Ask and Embla, while Odin, Vili, and Vé were
carving them and breathing character into their souls.
On top of that, he’s also the god of flyting—poetic shit-talking.
So we have a shapeshifting, storytelling,
magic-wielding, game-spinning, trickster god who can also teach young ears
every bad word they could ever hope to learn, and he’s expected not to be a hit with kids? This is all
without even mentioning the fact that Loki is a bit of a hyperactive attention
hog all on his own. What better audience for him than a gaggle of credulous
little onlookers who are too young to sneer at his antics rather than take
delight in them? Children are wee balls of mischief themselves, muddled in with
imagination and wonder and an eagerness to be wowed or made to laugh themselves
into weeping.
All of which brings me to point number two:
Loki is a kidaholic.
Like, even though a lot of his and/or her sleeping
around the Realms can be chalked up
to an insane libido, there’s also just the sheer number of kids they’ve
produced to factor in. Maybe more than even Odin or Thor could boast. At least
half being born from Loki herself. Not because Loki was helpless against the
workings of nature—it’s impossible to believe that Loki wasn’t smart enough or powerful enough to get around producing
new Lokisons and Lokisdottirs with every other bedmate—but because Loki wants more kids. There will never be
enough kids.
The guy’s got a case of severe paternal/maternal
hoarding going on. I mean
Loki: I need another one.
Odin: You really don’t.
Loki: You’re right. I need two other ones.
Odin: I am positive that you do not.
Loki: Three. Triplets. Need them. Right now.
Odin: Loki.
Loki: Four? Four. Definitely four.
Odin: Loki, please.
Loki: Yeah, let’s go with four. I can give or get. I’ll
flip a coin.
Odin: Loki, as Allfather, I am expressly forbidding
you to impregnate or be impregnated for at least a century.
Loki: Fine.
Odin: …
Loki: …I’ll settle for three.
Odin: What did I just
say?
Loki: Three’s a good number, isn’t it? All good
things come in threes. You and your brothers—
Odin, fighting an aneurysm: You and your brothers—
Loki: So you agree!
Odin: I did not—
Loki: Three it is!
Odin: Loki—
Loki: Be back when I feel like it
Odin: Loki—
Loki: Give my love to Sleipnir
Odin: LOKI—
Loki, pantsless, vaulting over the wall, cartwheeling
towards Jötunheimr’s Ironwood forest: Bye
It’s in that Ironwood that he meets Angrboda and
fathers a giant wolf, a giant snake, and the literal corpse-faced queen-goddess
of the dead by her. Being that Loki’s scope of attractiveness/aesthetic acceptability
is elastic enough to let all sorts of species between his legs, I find it hard
to believe that his kids’ unique looks would repulse or even faze him. They’re
his children. Therefore they’re great.
And we all know how that happy family
ended up. Ditto his second family with Sigyn and his two little twin boys.
Enter Ragnarok, warfare, general Bad
Times, and so on.
Anyway.
Comical as it is to envision a Loki who cringes at
the notion of parenthood and/or fears his more monstrous children, I just don’t
believe it lines up with what we know of the Loki of myth.
Myth Loki is a god who would spend hours entertaining
a child, simply entertained that the child is entertained.
Myth Loki is also a god who would hunt down and methodically dismember whichever idiot
thought it would be okay to make a child cry within said god’s earshot.
Huh! This didn’t occur in my mind cus many fairytales and myth don’t have a concept of parenthood but I love this suggestion, Loki being a kidaholic, very, very much! I’m totally on it.
Obviously I want you to take care of your pets and make sure they get food and fresh water on a regular basis, but cats being huge drama queens and screaming hysterically at you and acting like they’re tragic famine victims who haven’t eaten in weeks and are about to drop dead from starvation right mcfuckin now, because you’re 10 minutes late feeding them is always going to be one of the funniest things to me
the cat who lives at the vet clinic i volunteer at was mad yesterday because his dinner was half an hour late due to a busy day. he proceeded to go to all the (empty dw) garbage cans and tried to knock them over and started desperately scavenging for scraps of food because obviously no one loves him or cares about him and if he must eat garbage to survive then so be it
not food related, but one time my cat cried at me for 20 minutes before i worked out that the reason why she was upset was because there was a coat hanger on her favourite cushion
This is absolutely beautiful and changed my life, thank you so much. Please protect her from hangers at all costs
wow. am STORVING and humaines here making joke laugh at cate honger ?!
My cat is a social eater who is not food motivated at all, so I was baffled when I first got him because he didn’t seem to care about food but he would SCREAM at me for hours when I knew his bowl was full. Any time I went to double check that he did indeed have food, he’d book it to the bowl and snarf like his life depended on it, but as soon as I walked away he’d follow me screaming again.
Eventually I figured out that he just wanted a dining companion and was screaming about how we’re a family and families eat together, god damnit! I moved his food bowl under my computer desk and it fixed the problem. But if I’m ever out for more than 12 hours I’ll come home to find him in a passive-aggressive kitty huff because dinner has been ready for hours but he’s been trying to be considerate (unlike some humans) and waiting for me to eat it.
Things my cat has cried at:
I wouldn’t let her jump on top of the burning hot stove
I moved my coat so that she couldn’t scale the kitchen chair and jump on people’s shoulders when they walked past
I didn’t scratch her cheek firmly enough
She ate her entire meal allowance for the day in one sitting at 9am and was famished by 10am
I didn’t let her sit behind me on the toilet seat
I wouldn’t let her eat toothpaste
I wouldn’t let her eat the cork from a wine bottle
I wouldn’t let her eat the straw that my rabbit had pissed on
Cats are inherently ridiculous creatures and this is why they are perfect.
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