I have now made collard greens!
There's a local group that has a line on excess produce, and gives it out for free at various places around the city. We were actually in a place to do something about that this time, and came back with potatoes, bananas, and two bundles of collard greens.
It's been on my list of things to try, because it appears on various How Southern Are You? Find Out In Thirty Iconic Foods type lists. And we had bacon in the refrigerator.
I was a little limp and giddy after this morning's successful and moving inauguration. (I sobbed in abject relief after he took the oath, but was still jumpy at various pauses in the audio feed. I woke up early, and once Belovedest was awake, I turned the volume up. We listened in the shower. I crawled back in bed and listened until the crucial part was over, then collapsed and took to Twitter and reviewed highlights.)
So I looked up some recipes, decided against using the instant pot, defrosted the bacon, and got things going.
( Read more... ) Ev asked me what I wanted for Yule. I originally had my eye on an embroidery machine, but they vanished and/or went out of the price range. And then
seperis was posting about fun with home automation and lights. So I picked out a set and shared the list with Ev.
The box arrived on Tuesday, and there was so much fuss and feathers. I was missing a few of the essentials for the hub (namely, a spare network cable and power outlet in the same place), and I sent Belovedest on a wild goose chase for the little network switch I knew I had at some point. (It will probably turn up at the bottom of a suitcase in mid-March if I know our luck.) We eventually got that figured out. And then I realized that I'd requested the wrong lightbulbs.
We are, as a couple, against the idea of
wifi-enabled light bulbs that could take down the network if it went rogue. So isolating any smart bulbs on their own private segment (and having plenty of bulbs that aren't smart) was the correct idea.
I'd put the wifi bulbs on my list. D'oh.
So I set up a return and made an 11pm trip to go drop them off at a pickup point.
The hub was up, though, and I had ordered an LED strip. I will be gleefully playing around with the colors, and I have it hooked to IFTTT. I'm a little shaky on the javascript that IFTTT has started to allow, but I *think* that I should be able to take the time I show up back in the radius of home, compare it to the time of local sunset, and drop any light-turn-on events that happen before sunset.
I haven't quite committed to putting this strip light under the mantlepiece, but it's a reasonable place to have a light, and if it's placed correctly, it probably won't glare in anyone's eyes.