I had the whole. house. to myself. all week.
I don't often swear, but it was fucking amazing.
I don't even have capacity to document everything I did. Here are a few Good Things before my topic-specific posts get pulled in:
- watched multiple horror films
- worked on a new TTRPG mini-zine
- made a good contribution at work and a bit of acknowledgement
- slept well
- multitasking cool stuff
- a positive change in US politics
- did drawing
Cottage cheese & 'flatbread'
I've been toying with the idea of making cottage cheese for a while, but my single motivation (not wasting milk) hasn't been quite strong enough to actuate me. If only cottage cheese was, in itself, a more desirable product.
Well the stars aligned this week. With the family away I had a glut of milk and time to do something with it. I also recently became aware of 'the viral flatbread', which you can search for yourself. It's basically cottage cheese and eggs, baked and it's supposed to be like flatbread for us keto types.
The cheese 'worked' I suppose? I took 2 litres, heated it, added white vinegar, left for 30 minutes, drained the curds, left it to cool, added salt and cream. It came out a lot thicker and drier than I expected, even with cream added. Either I over-squeezed it in the draining phase or I used too much vinegar? It did taste quite vinegary.
I'm unsure whether I was sceptical about the cheese because of its inherent qualities, or if I was just the how-the-sausage-is-made effect. Anyway, I will make it again now that I know how, and will experiment with my process. Next time I'll use the whey as a lactofermentation starter, or make whey soda (?!) or something.
The so-called flatbreads worked out as they were supposed to (I think), and they were fine, but the consistency was not as bread-like as I'd been led to believe. Once I got the omelette notion in my head it was hard to shake. Next time I'll add almond flour and see where that gets me.
Diet
In one sense I feel like I've totally succeeded in getting back onto the keto diet since coming back from holiday. No sugar, no carbs, fasting between 18 and 20 hours a day. I'm not quite down to one meal a day, but I frequently have one proper meal at lunchtime and then a strawberry milkshake before the end of my eating window.
On paper this is all good, and from a weight loss perspective it seems to be working — I'm almost at the 13st target weight I set myself when I started this whole thing.
But I'm also conscious that as my familiarity with keto has grown I'm probably not doing it as healthily as I used to. When I started I just ate, like, chicken breast and avocado in a salad of leaves and raw pepper (because I didn't know what else to do), and because I was ravenous I was delighted to eat whatever I made.
Now I feel like I'm gaming the system a little. Portions that are bigger than they ought to be; lots of fried cabbage, which probably isn't as good as fresh greens; more meat, but it's not very high quality.
This week I was thrilled to realise that pork scratchings are available to me as a snack option. I guess my thinking was: "hey, people eat fat bombs, right, it's pretty much the same thing". But even searching around right now for a link to "fat bombs" I'm seeing the emphasis on healthy fats. A packet of scratchings has, like, 1000 calories! I also just discovered the Gin Rickey cocktail, and have probably over indulged somewhat (by recent standards at least!).
So you see what I'm saying here: it's not like I'm pigging out at KFC or anything, but there's a drift towards "dirty" keto in a sense, and I'm just, y'know, acknowledging it. That's what this blog is for after all!
TV backlight replacement
My son found a 32" TV abandoned in the back lanes and my partner inexplicably allowed him to bring it home. Consistent with my litter policy (once you pick it up it's your responsibility) it's been kicking about the house awaiting proper disposal.
With the family away I had space to open it up and work on it, so I ordered some backlight strips from spares2repair (good service!) and went at it.
I'd seen this fix described as being a bit further along the difficulty spectrum than I'd normally tackle, with some folk saying it had taken them 4 hours or longer. Maybe I'm getting better at this stuff because I found it quite straightforward. Getting the inner screen bezel off was the hardest part, but it just took the right ratios of patience and confidence.
In the course of figuring out how to do this I'd watched a bunch of videos and become aware that the backlights possibly weren't the problem — it was possibly more likely to be the LED driver or some other part of the backboard. I didn't know how safe it was to try and test parts of the system in isolation with the box open, so I just reassembled the whole thing before turning it on.
Good news: it worked!
Bad news: the screen has significant cracks that were invisible while the screen was dark 🙄
Oh well. I've stuck it in the loft and maybe the kids will get some use out of it. When you're watching cartoons the cracks aren't so obvious.
I think the parts cost £23, so overall I'm not disappointed. It was good to have a win and worth a punt for the chance of a 32" smart tv that's much better than our real TV!
END