Weekly thread - How is your week going?
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I got barely any work this week, so I'm mostly playing OpenTTD.
All Mangas Reader bugged out, and I lost the list of ~500 manga series I was tracking. Ouch. This was a blessing in disguise, though; it forced me to install Suwayomi. After I got used to Suwayomi I learned to love it better than AMG.
My arm is full of small scratches and bites, because one of my cats needs to be pet 25h/day, paws my arm when asking for attention (without retracting the claw, bloody arsehole), and to make it worse she gets overexcited if petted for too long. She's almost 17yo so I'm cutting her some slack.
Thanks to the same cat, though, I almost got a heatstroke. Summer has been harsh these days; she likes to sleep in my room, but hates the fan, so I was avoiding to turn it on. ...I kind of brought this to myself, didn't I?
I invited my mum yesterday to an all-you-can-eat steakhouse. It was a pretty penny (I paid for both of us), but she was extremely happy. Specially because steakhouses here often have seafood dishes, and she loves seafood.
Speaking on food. I prepared 600g worth of flour in Berlin balls for a party, and at the end it was all gone. People loved them, and even asked me the recipe. (It's simply a Polish recipe I translated, adapted, and filled with a pastry cream.)
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trying to get passport renewal done this week, which means i have to get my hair looking vaguely reasonable once again (the sidemost parts of my bangs are doing this hair-horns thing that i think is funny but am not sure i want on an official document)
also this sunday the gas gets shut off for a whole month while they test the building for expired hoses & leaks & whatnot so i am mentally preparing for the many cold showers in my future
oh, and i just yesterday finished week 4 of the C52 art fundamentals challenge, i'm doing inbetween 'standard' & 'heavy' levels, hopefully i can stick with it because the structure feels quite helpful for me!
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I got barely any work this week, so I'm mostly playing OpenTTD.
All Mangas Reader bugged out, and I lost the list of ~500 manga series I was tracking. Ouch. This was a blessing in disguise, though; it forced me to install Suwayomi. After I got used to Suwayomi I learned to love it better than AMG.
My arm is full of small scratches and bites, because one of my cats needs to be pet 25h/day, paws my arm when asking for attention (without retracting the claw, bloody arsehole), and to make it worse she gets overexcited if petted for too long. She's almost 17yo so I'm cutting her some slack.
Thanks to the same cat, though, I almost got a heatstroke. Summer has been harsh these days; she likes to sleep in my room, but hates the fan, so I was avoiding to turn it on. ...I kind of brought this to myself, didn't I?
I invited my mum yesterday to an all-you-can-eat steakhouse. It was a pretty penny (I paid for both of us), but she was extremely happy. Specially because steakhouses here often have seafood dishes, and she loves seafood.
Speaking on food. I prepared 600g worth of flour in Berlin balls for a party, and at the end it was all gone. People loved them, and even asked me the recipe. (It's simply a Polish recipe I translated, adapted, and filled with a pastry cream.)
Berlin Balls! I am intrigued.
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Good. My area got slammed with and Ice Storm and we didn’t loose power. Take meant the wife and I both got to work from home this week. She typically works about two hours away so normally she leaves for work Monday morning and comes back Friday night. It was nice to see her in the evenings.
Dealing with the Ice and Snow is what it is. I shoveled the snow and spent a lot of time busting up ice. I need to do more to clear out my drive way as the temps will be in the Teens for the next two weeks.
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Berlin Balls! I am intrigued.
I called them "Berlin balls" but I don't know their actual English name; in Polish they're pączki, in Portuguese either sonhos (dreams) or bolas de Berlim (Berlin balls). Their dough is similar to donuts, but they don't have that hole, and they're typically filled instead of topped.
Dough:
- 3~4 cups of flour (375~500g)
- 1/2 package of instant yeast (~7g? amount can be eyeballed)
- 4 Tbsp sugar (50g)
- 1/2 tsp salt (3g)
- 1 cup lukewarm milk (240ml)
- 2 large eggs (100g)
- 2 Tbsp veg oil (30g)
- vanilla extract to taste
Finishing:
- veg oil for deep-frying
- either caster's sugar or refined sugar, for sprinkling
- filling of your choice [see notes]
- Mix all dough ingredients together, starting with 3 cups of flour. Add more flour as necessary; the resulting dough should be wet, but not too sticky, you should be able to spread it afterwards.
- Knead the dough and let is rest for two hours or so. It should visibly expand.
- With a rolling pin, spread the dough on a flat and floured surface, until it's ~1cm thick. Cut it into discs with a cookie cutter, a glass, or similar; I aim for 8cm diameter discs but you can make them larger or smaller as you want.
- Let the discs rest again, for 90min or so. Note they'll expand mostly vertically, the discs won't get meaningfully larger but they do get thicker.
- Deep-fry the discs in oil, 180°C, until golden.
- Sprinkle sugar over them, preferably while still hot.
- Let them cool, make a small cut on their sides, and use the cut to fill them with a sweet paste of your choice.
Notes:
- from my experience, the actual amount of flour varies quite a bit. That's why I suggest starting with 3 cups and add more as needed.
- don't spread the dough too thick. Otherwise it gets raw inside. [insert Gordon Ramsay meme.]
- as you cut the dough into discs, the leftovers can (and should) be rolled together, for a second batch. Do note however this second batch of dough tends to be denser than the first one, so you might want to roll it thinner than the first one.
- fillings are up to your taste. There's no "wrong" answer, but you'll probably want something with strong flavour. Common fillings here are jams, dulce de leche, whipped cream, chocolate ganache, guava cheese. I'll also provide recipes for two that IMO work great.
Pastry cream:
- two yolks
- 1 carton of condensed milk (400ml)
- 400ml whole milk
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch
Just mix all ingredients and let them cook over low fire, while mixing constantly, until it thickens. Then let it cool.
Homemade strawberry jam:
- 500g strawberries
- juice of one lime
- sugar to taste
Clean and coarsely cut the strawberries. Then cook them with the lime juice and sugar, until they start breaking down. Then let it cool in a hidden place so your mum doesn't eat it all by the spoon. (Mine did it once.)
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I called them "Berlin balls" but I don't know their actual English name; in Polish they're pączki, in Portuguese either sonhos (dreams) or bolas de Berlim (Berlin balls). Their dough is similar to donuts, but they don't have that hole, and they're typically filled instead of topped.
Dough:
- 3~4 cups of flour (375~500g)
- 1/2 package of instant yeast (~7g? amount can be eyeballed)
- 4 Tbsp sugar (50g)
- 1/2 tsp salt (3g)
- 1 cup lukewarm milk (240ml)
- 2 large eggs (100g)
- 2 Tbsp veg oil (30g)
- vanilla extract to taste
Finishing:
- veg oil for deep-frying
- either caster's sugar or refined sugar, for sprinkling
- filling of your choice [see notes]
- Mix all dough ingredients together, starting with 3 cups of flour. Add more flour as necessary; the resulting dough should be wet, but not too sticky, you should be able to spread it afterwards.
- Knead the dough and let is rest for two hours or so. It should visibly expand.
- With a rolling pin, spread the dough on a flat and floured surface, until it's ~1cm thick. Cut it into discs with a cookie cutter, a glass, or similar; I aim for 8cm diameter discs but you can make them larger or smaller as you want.
- Let the discs rest again, for 90min or so. Note they'll expand mostly vertically, the discs won't get meaningfully larger but they do get thicker.
- Deep-fry the discs in oil, 180°C, until golden.
- Sprinkle sugar over them, preferably while still hot.
- Let them cool, make a small cut on their sides, and use the cut to fill them with a sweet paste of your choice.
Notes:
- from my experience, the actual amount of flour varies quite a bit. That's why I suggest starting with 3 cups and add more as needed.
- don't spread the dough too thick. Otherwise it gets raw inside. [insert Gordon Ramsay meme.]
- as you cut the dough into discs, the leftovers can (and should) be rolled together, for a second batch. Do note however this second batch of dough tends to be denser than the first one, so you might want to roll it thinner than the first one.
- fillings are up to your taste. There's no "wrong" answer, but you'll probably want something with strong flavour. Common fillings here are jams, dulce de leche, whipped cream, chocolate ganache, guava cheese. I'll also provide recipes for two that IMO work great.
Pastry cream:
- two yolks
- 1 carton of condensed milk (400ml)
- 400ml whole milk
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch
Just mix all ingredients and let them cook over low fire, while mixing constantly, until it thickens. Then let it cool.
Homemade strawberry jam:
- 500g strawberries
- juice of one lime
- sugar to taste
Clean and coarsely cut the strawberries. Then cook them with the lime juice and sugar, until they start breaking down. Then let it cool in a hidden place so your mum doesn't eat it all by the spoon. (Mine did it once.)
Thank you so much!
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Nothing has happened, but still, I guess not great. I have some medical issues which had died back a little bit for a couple of months. That doesn't really happen.
Not anymore, though. Seems to be over now.
![Lvxferre [he/him]](https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/333d03a0-bcae-434b-a8d1-7dfd18962d20.jpeg "Lvxferre [he/him]"){kind=avatar}
