From the jaws of victory
Jan. 20th, 2006 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqI was minding my own business, evading work this morning when one our administrative assistant wandered in with a non-work related question. She is taking a course on HTML and she was having some problems with style sheets. I told her that I knew nothing about style sheets, but I'd do some quick research and get back to her. I did some quick digging and found a way to do what she wanted. Then I did some more digging and found a work-around that would make it function properly in IE6 as well.
From zero to teaching in under twenty minutes. Not bad.
On a more culinary note, I managed to salvage a batch of curry from disaster last night. It's one of those curries that sounded good on paper...
I cubed up a cheap cut of beef and coated it in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, curry powder and a bit of paprika. I let that saute in hot olive oil for awhile, then dumped in a bunch of canned ingredients (whole tomatoes, yams, peas, corn and chicken broth). Finally I added some curry powder, sweet Thai chili sauce and cumin. I gave it a stir, took one sniff and added another tablespoon of curry powder.
It didn't help; the mixture smelled awful.
meep!
I figured (hoped!) that maybe the flavours just needed to blend. I wandered off to play WoW for an hour while the questionable mixture simmered on the stove (and got my engineering skill up to 300 - w00t!). Occasionally I wandered out to the kitchen and stirred the bubbling mass, and over the course of an hour it began to smell less disgusting. By the time the tomatoes and yams had softened up enough to mash into the mixture, it was emitting vapours that smalled halfway palatable. I tasted it and, playing a hunch, I added about a half-teaspoon of cardamom. I let it simmer for another fifteen minutes to blend the flavours a bit more, and the result was not just palatable, but very very good.
From zero to teaching in under twenty minutes. Not bad.
On a more culinary note, I managed to salvage a batch of curry from disaster last night. It's one of those curries that sounded good on paper...
I cubed up a cheap cut of beef and coated it in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, curry powder and a bit of paprika. I let that saute in hot olive oil for awhile, then dumped in a bunch of canned ingredients (whole tomatoes, yams, peas, corn and chicken broth). Finally I added some curry powder, sweet Thai chili sauce and cumin. I gave it a stir, took one sniff and added another tablespoon of curry powder.
It didn't help; the mixture smelled awful.
meep!
I figured (hoped!) that maybe the flavours just needed to blend. I wandered off to play WoW for an hour while the questionable mixture simmered on the stove (and got my engineering skill up to 300 - w00t!). Occasionally I wandered out to the kitchen and stirred the bubbling mass, and over the course of an hour it began to smell less disgusting. By the time the tomatoes and yams had softened up enough to mash into the mixture, it was emitting vapours that smalled halfway palatable. I tasted it and, playing a hunch, I added about a half-teaspoon of cardamom. I let it simmer for another fifteen minutes to blend the flavours a bit more, and the result was not just palatable, but very very good.
