Day: November 13, 2017

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Easy-Peasy, Quick and Filling

Because I’m lazy, I like one pan meals. Here’s one we had this evening. Good eats. Note the amounts given, and adjust however you like. *heh*

Take

Some smoked “cocktail sausages”
Some cubed and cooked (boiled) potatoes
Some chopped bell pepper and onion
Some fresh or frozen green peas or other veggie you like (I’ve done this dish with other meats and other veggies; tonight was green peas)
a few eggs, beaten together with some *heh* heavy cream
Some shredded cheese. Tonight I used a packaged cheddar/monterrey jack mix
Some freshly ground pepper

Start warming the lil sausages in a medium-heat pan (~285F). They’ll release enough of their oily goodness to saute the onions and bell pepper (other peppers, garlic, etc. are also good in this–use what you have and like). add the potatoes and let them start browning. Dump in the peas (or other veggies), top with cheese and then pour the beaten egg/heavy cream mixture over it. Cover and let it go for five minutes or so before you turn the heat down a bit. Takes about 15 minutes.

If you started this in a cast iron pan, you could put it in a 325F oven for that 15 minutes, uncovered, instead of leaving it on top of a burner. Nice browning of the cheese and a wee tad more “crusty” from the potatoes. Also good.

Different tastes, different ingredients, different temps and pans, as you wish. It’s still fritata-like delish-dish.

Wanna use leftover hash browns instead of cubed potatoes? I don’t know where one could get leftover hash browns, but sure. It’d be good. Leftover rice instead or potatoes? Also good. Easy-peasy, quick and filling. Delicious. Just Good eats.

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Is Your “Smartphone” Spying On You?

Maybe.

Well, no: probably. If you use it to access social media sites (FarceBook, et al) or any Google service, almost certainly. Heck, there are growing claims that smartphones “listen in” to conversations happening within access of the phone’s mic, like so-called “smart” TVs do.

So?

I’ve worked with computers/networking, etc., for ~30 years and am certainly no Luddite, but my phone stays OFF (and usually in another room) when I am not making calls. I check it now and again for messages from any whitelisted folks, and (very rarely, and only when I’m away from a desktop/notebook/large format tablet–which is very, very rarely, since I almost always have one of the three at hand) I might use it to check something on the web, but only when locked down fairly well and using a strong VPN, while on a local network I trust to be well locked down, as well. I see no reason to let a phone run my life or be connected to any old whomever who might want to contact me.

Other phone “tracking” things?

I don’t need GPS. I’m not helpless or “directionally challenged.” I know how to read a map, can navigate with or without (usually) a compass, and check my routes before heading out anywhere I’ve not been before.

Yes, I got lost once (on an overcast day, on a system of rural gravel roads and two-tracks in rough terrain, off my projected area of travel for that day–no excuse, since I simply left my compass and map for the area behind that day). I stopped and asked directions (because I’m also not completely stupid).

I like the convenience of having computers, tablets, cell phones, etc., but unlike many I know nowadays who would probably be pleased as punch to have their dumb “smart” phone embedded in their body, wired to display in their field of vision, etc., I think I can handle a lil disconnection now and then.

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I Think This Was Part of EA Poe’s Problem with “Life As We Know It”

Frequent readers (OK, the frequent reader *heh*) here have seen me refer to “the voices in my head.” They’re not really there, at least not as delusional thoughts. But I do “overhear” arguments with myself, and I imagine that’s something Kierkegaard, at least, could have related to. But I do hear strange, distracting, annoying, and sometimes painful sounds.

Tinnitus is a real PITA.

One of the most irritating things about tinnitus is the way it seems to effect a distraction to certain frequencies, at least as I experience it, in effect covering over certain pitches. Other freqs, higher and lower? Nope.

So, I can be sitting quietly playing a game of “Zen Freecell”1 with all the “tintinnabulation of the bells, the bells, the bells” ringing and roaring in my head, and yet a clock ticking in the next room impinges on my subconscious and I find myself CLICKing and making moves with a steady one second rhythm. Once I realize I’ve been caught again, I can then not do so, but that “tick-tick-tick. . . ” in the other room still hounds me.

1“Zen Freecell” is just regular old everyday Windows Freecell played as near as possibly in a mindless state. My current scores on each computer where I do that for relaxation (in place of “meditation”) are each above 8,800 games played with no losses. It’s just patterns. It’s a bit like seeing the solution to an equation without performing the intervening steps, only with “Zen Freecell” the steps have to be taken even though the solution’s a foregone conclusion.