In which I need a sniglet

On February 17, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Teaching, Television10 Comments

Here’s a way to tell whether you’re old: if you know what a sniglet is, especially if you know it immediately without looking it up or going “Crap! I know this!” for five minutes, you’re old.

Dinner was salmon. Sriracha-maple-syrup-lime salmon, specifically. With baked potatoes. Which was frigging delicious, lending further credence to my frequent suggestion that you can put sriracha on anything and it will be awesome.

(Recipe: One half of a salmon. Two tablespoons of maple syrup. A teaspoon of sea salt. Three teaspoons of sriracha. The juice of a lime; zest it if you want. Whisk the marinade/sauce together in a bowl for a couple of minutes until it combines, pour it over the fish, skin side down, in a greased or vegetable sprayed glass pan. 15 minutes at 425. Pair with baked potatoes.)

Anyway. The word I need means “something which you feel ought to be a character flaw, and would probably be a character flaw in someone else, but which is nonetheless part of your personality and you don’t care.” Because as delicious as my dinner was, it didn’t look like much, and I didn’t take a picture of it. Which disappointed me, because I’m a wanker idiot. Foodstagrams in general are supposed to be looked down upon by the internet glitterati anyway, right? I wanna be glitterati!

Meh. I don’t care. There’s something weirdly fun about taking pictures of food I make and I’m gonna keep doing it even if I’m vaguely ashamed of it. So yeah. I need a word for that.

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Got most of what I wanted to get done today done, even if it didn’t always make it into the post below, and I made dinner besides, so I managed to keep myself busy today once I got my carcass out of bed. Tonight will be nothing but television; we discovered True Detective yesterday and there’s a new Walking Dead, so pretty much the second the boy’s in bed all interwebs activity will cease and we’ll be glued to the television for the rest of the night.

Also, it really hit me today just how close we are to ISTEP. If it wasn’t for the delay the state allowed, it’d be two weeks off, and as it stands it’s still less than a month. And the DC trip is not far off and there’s also the chance that I’ll get a letter on Friday that will literally change my life on the spot. It may be about to get busy around here.

In which I find a way to mention sriracha again

On November 8, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Reviews, TeachingLeave a comment

I have, conservatively, and depending on how much I push down on the stack prior to measuring it, between four and six inches of poorly-organized and no doubt deeply depressing grading to wade through this weekend. I am not remotely in the mood for it right now; I think pulling together next week’s lesson plans (and, uh, this week’s lesson plans) is probably about as ambitious as I’m planning on getting tonight. I have a blog post to write, the last 40 pages of a relatively entertaining book to blaze through, and Baldur’s Gate. I think that’s probably enough to get me through a three-hour shift at OtherJob.

Three of my favorite kids (and the sister of one of the three, who I haven’t actually ever had in class due to her age but I’m fond of) all transferred out today. It’s got me in a deeply pessimistic mood about my job during a month that has already seen much, much more than its share of pessimism, and I caught myself looking at job listings at private schools again yesterday. There’s a tiny silver cloud in that one of the two Kids Who are Always Suspended was spreading the word that he was transferring schools on Monday as well, but he apparently has given two different schools out for where he’ll be landing so I’m not holding my damn breath. Naturally, even in that situation, he’s the one of the two who I actually kind of like despite his constant attempts to derail my classroom; the nicest thing I can say about the other one is that the world would be a better place had he been a blowjob.

So, yeah, that’s where my head’s at right now. Also, since I apparently review commercial food items now, I had what Subway is calling their “Sriracha Chicken Melt” for dinner tonight. While it was tasty (and spicy enough that, half an hour later, my nose is still sorta running) there are little advertising placards all over the store that describe the sriracha as “creamy.” Sriracha is a lot of things, but creamy is none of them. Something else sriracha isn’t: orange. So I don’t know what the hell I was eating on that sammitch, but it wasn’t sriracha.

Mmmm, sriracha.

In which Kraft is out of their goddamn minds

On November 7, 2013March 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Reviews3 Comments

I am, as I’ve mentioned before, a macaroni and cheese aficionado. I’ve made it roughly two dozen different ways this year, and I found a new one tonight. My wife made a late-night grocery run last night, and asked me if I’d found my present while we were unbagging everything and using Pym Particles to fit all the food into the pantry.

I had not.

“I have not,” I said.

She digs around, all excited, and hands me this box. It’s new Kraft Mystery Taste Sand! Jalapeño Mystery Taste Sand! With, apparently, special new ridged macaroni! Which I think technically makes it something else, but hell if I know anything about what to call pasta.

I was as excited as she was. Then I forgot about it until tonight, when she called me to let me know that she and the boy had been roped into dinner at her parents’ house and I was therefore on my own for dinner. Batching it, as dudebros might say. Which I’m not. So I kind of feel dirty right now. But whatever.

Oh shit I can make the new macaroni.

Which I have now eaten. And taken a picture of.

Guys… I don’t quite know what to do about this. Kraft Jalapeño Mystery Taste Sand Macaroni and Cheese smells and tastes exactly like Chili Cheese Fritos. The smell is uncanny. And kind of horrifying, because when you put something in your mouth that smells exactly like Chili Cheese Fritos, only it’s on a spoon and it’s not Chili Cheese Fritos, it’s… a little… well, off-putting? Sure. Off-putting. Which maybe shouldn’t have a hyphen; the autocorrect fixed it once and left it alone the second time. I’m not even sure it’s a word.

So I covered it with sriracha. And then it was delicious. As all things covered in sriracha tend to be.

I will vouch for the thicker, ridged macaroni, although it would have boiled to limp nastiness had I not decided to taste it with about two minutes left– it boils quicker than they want you to think it does, but it’s good and they should use it for all their macaroni and cheese. I can’t really vouch for the macaroni, though. Unless eating Chili Cheese Fritos (owned by Kraft, I think?) transformed magically into pasta appeals to you. In that case, go for it.

There, you learned something today.