Anecdotes from this Week

[awanderingbard]

1. We're having the deck redone, because my dad built it before I was born (so, like at least thirty years ago), and some of the wood was rotting and Ascii liked to snack on it. We got non-snackable wood. When the deck man took off the old boards, we found a headless ninja turtle (Leonardo, judging from his knee bands, which means he'd also missing his katanas). My brother is 33, so let's just pause to think how long that's been under there.

2. Ascii has a UTI, which she gets frequently. The vet asked that we bring a urine sample with her to the vet. My dad went all around the block with her, and she wouldn't go pee for him. She stepped into the vets office and peed on the rug. Life with a Scottish Terrier, my friends.

3. I decided to make some rice pudding today. I haven't made rice pudding before, so I followed my little recipe, and the pudding doesn't really thicken, and it tastes very saltly, even though I didn't even put as much salt in as the recipe called for. An hour after making it, I suddenly get a brainwave and go to the kitchen. Yep. I put two tablespoons of baking soda in instead of two tablespoons of cornstarch. Which also explains why it started foaming, too.

Mum: Well, when you follow the recipe, I think it's going to be really good!

Way to mom, there, Mum.

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Your dog sounds like a cat! Why cooperate when it's more fun the other way. But I have to ask: did they get a usable urine sample off the carpeting?

I once put in baking soda instead of baking powder for some biscuits (or was it the other way around? You see why I have this problem). They were inedible; even the birds turned up their beaks at them. I couldn't even bring myself to retry the recipe correctly because I wasn't sure the results could improve that much. So if your pudding was at all edible when you substituted baking powder for cornstarch, I bet your mom is right!

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

But I have to ask: did they get a usable urine sample off the carpeting?

They did! Dad says they got a few drops to put under a microscope. They said it was full of bacteria, but I don't know how much of that was from her or from the carpet! The reason we took her in was I noticed drops of blood on the pavement when we were walking, after she'd peed, so I'm sure blood in the urine is a decent enough reason to presume UTI. They did an X-ray to clear her of kidney stones or something more serious, so we covered the bases.

I once put in baking soda instead of baking powder for some biscuits (or was it the other way around? You see why I have this problem)

Baking powder is usually what you put in biscuits, if you're referring to scones. I think you double the powder to replace soda, but you can't replace powder with soda, if I recall correctly. Because of...like...science? Baking powder is baking soda + cream of tartar, so you can substitute both of those if you don't have baking powder.

I'm usually pretty good in the baking department, but the baking soda box looked just like the cornstarch box, and we for some reason we have to two different brands of baking soda in the cupboard, so it never occurred to me that the box that looked like cornstarch would be baking soda when we had another box of it.

I'm attempting another round of pudding right now. Hopefully this one works out!