I usually hoard random bits of veg and protein and when I have enough I make like 5 gallons of soup at a time. Nothing is stopping you from adding more stuff later, when youre microwaving a serving of soup you can add some more steamed or roast veggies you have laying around.
It’s also excellent with toast. Additionally you can dry leftover bread, crush it finely and add the breadcrumbs to the soup too.
Literally any leftovers you have can be incorporated into the soup one way or another.
I had some unappetizing lasagna so I chopped it up and threw it in my serving of soup, the cheesy sauce makes everything edible lol.
Easy (relatively) chowder with random veg, protein and cheese
The only specific ingredients are onions, garlic, spices, heavy cream and at least some cheddar.
Before starting salt all of your veg. This is so they are INTERNALLY seasoned, otherwise you’ll have salty soup and bland veg.
Saute your onions (with any other hardy vegetables) and butter can be used if feeling indulgent. Salt as you saute
Once slightly tender add and cook a couple tablespoons of flour (depends on quantity of soup and desired thickness)
Add whatever stock or bullion on hand (I use home made with bones and veg scraps). You could also use plain water if really starving and desperate though.
Once the soup is boiling add a ton of (salted) minced garlic, FRESH CRACKED black pepper, rosemary, thyme, smoked paprika and a couple pinches of mustard powder. These can be fresh or dry, but I do like fresh garlic and fresh cracked pepper (many of the flavors and compounds are highly volatile and will literally float away if stored post cracking). Also be generous with your spices, makes it way tastier.
Add your veg. It can really be anything from broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, corn, peas, carrots, mushrooms zucchini, celery, cabbage (not too much), bell peppers, etc. experiment and go nuts.
When pot is hot again add your protein, nothing specific. I’ve used ham, pork, ground beef, ground turkey, deli meat that was gonna go bad, breakfast sausages, Italian sausages, chicken breast and thighs and even tilapia. Make sure to salt them for 15 mins before adding.
When your proteins are not raw and almost cooked add heavy cream (if you don’t have much you can also add some milk, you can also freeze milk, let it melt and drip into a container, when halfway melted remove the frozen milk and whatever is collected is highly concentrated because all of the fats in the milk melt much faster than water)
When soup is reduced to desired amount turn off the heat and let it cool to a light simmer. Add your cheese and stir thoroughly. If soup is too hot your cheese will cook and clump up in nasty globs and will not thicken your soup either.
Man I’m so glad my glass side panel has a steel frame around it. At work I’ve had to repair a couple PCs like that and man they make me so anxious. It’s best to bite the bullet, unplug everything and lay the PC on it’s side.
Tool handles. If you apply a hard glossy coat they just become too damn slippery and if it’s summer it’ll often slip on your sweat and it feels all clammy.
Chopsticks for the same reason, I always find myself dropping my food like an idiot when they are glossy and laqcuered. Especially when I was at a restaurant and for whatever reason they had mirror finished steel chopsticks. What the fuck!
Haha as well. I’ve been called chauvinist, fascist and other words associated with the super far right, even though I’m center left on the compass. It’s impressive how utterly extinct nuance is in social media and traditional news.
I have a cabinet with some sentimental items. My first knife (knives are my hobby), a candle from my sister’s and I birthday, and ESPECIALLY gifts from others, despite how insignificant it might seem. Birthday cards, handmade flowers, a tiny origami crane and other handmade trinkets. All really miniscule items but they all make me happy. I also have a tiny swedish flag from ikea. Oh and some cat chopstick holders I have on my shelf.
A stupid little quote that’s proven itself true time and time again is “small joy and big joy, all the same”. Because all these little, seemingly insignificant, items on display have often made me happier more often than other “more significant stuff”. Stuff like a new fancy office chair, expensive gaming PC and gaming set up, nice coffee maker, expensive speakers and other luxury items. It really is the simple things.
Trying out android. I forgot the instructions but it’s something to do with trygalaxy.com, shortcutting it and opening it. It gives you an android interface with home screen and apps. It’s really damn trippy and pretty cool.
There are a lot of brands that aren’t AS anti repair as apple and have devices that are fairly simple to fix, like Nokia and IMO Sony. There is the fair phone that does market itself as repairable but they lost my trust by removing the headphone jack and selling their own wireless earbuds.
Apple. They make some decent stuff but it has repeatedly become more expensive to own and maintain because repair is nearly impossible. And because of the monopoly they are building it is guaranteed to get much worse.
Additionally everything they do has a ripple effect across the industry. The average flagship phone is now over $1000. The average phone doesn’t have a headphone jack or micro SD expansion, or replaceable battery, and are all impossible to repair. Computers impossible to upgrade. Extra ram and SSD capacity being prohibitively expensive (8gb of ddr5 is 40$, apple charges 200$, similar scheme with their proprietary SSD’s)
It’s apparent that with Apple’s continued success the rest of all of our electronics have continued to get worse and predatory to squeeze more money out of us.
We reap what we sow and if we sow a company that is hellbent on enshittifiying all of our everyday devices and gouge us for our money, we aren’t going to have any other companies left (or at least those that won’t participate in this practice)
I work in computer repair and I have witnessed first hand how hostile aAple is to the consumer. Serialized components that are impossible to replace, to perforated cables that tear more easily during disassembly. It is dumbfounding that a company with such little respect for their customers is so successful.
Gambling. Everyone knows the house always wins and the exact probability of winning any specific lottery but people can’t grasp this. I don’t know how people look at these massive luxurious casinos and think they win against this company with an unfathomably profitable business model by taking money from people who think they can win.
I study a lot of geopolitics and history and I have read of many different aid programs, domestically for citizens or abroad to poverty and war stricken countries.
Unfortunately it’s not as easy as dumping a bunch of money, food or whatever resource into the problem. For example there are cities with tons of homeless shelters but many stay on the streets. There are massive teams of social workers dedicated to helping people in need but many of them refuse their help.
When it comes to countries sometimes this aid is embezzled and only given to those loyal to the government. Sometimes used to fuel armies to continue conflicts, or just disappear into corruption and resold by crooked politicians to make a profit. Additionally it can hurt local, and in turn, the wider economy. The aid distributed for free kills many local businesses and livelihoods because you can compete with free.
Especially when you have some stupid company pulling a publicity stunt to send their own products as aid to struggling countries. One example was this brand of shoes that would donate a pair for every pair sold. This “friendly gesture” killed off all local cobblers, shoe manufacturers, shoe stores and prevented anyone from doing so to make a living, not to mention preventing self sufficiency of the country. That’s just one example, there are a lot of companies and misguided companies that do exactly this and many economists recommend that these poor countries should refuse this aid.