Month: January 2024

Dahlia in Bloom

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Of late, I’ve found myself in that odd spot of reading a series where I think, maybe I should switch series or nah, give it a few weeks and I’ll be caught up 😄. Last night as I started volume 8 of Dahlia in Bloom, and I’m reminded that it’s going to be a while. Based on Wikipedia, I believe that volume 9 was released in Japan back in December, so it will probably be summer time by the time an English translation lands.

I’ve really enjoyed the series so far, perhaps because in many ways: it’s protagonist and I have similar natures. Dahlia’s antics as a craftswoman and a certain joy in cooking, are things I’m rather able to relate to and the series makes for a good slice of life. The side thoughts of both Dahlia and Volf also remind me of the experience of first love, which sprinkles a nice touch on the romance side-plot that just makes you want to root for the lead characters, and sigh with the supporting cast.

In volume 1, the story begins with Dahlia Rossetti about to move into a new house the day before her wedding. Only, as it turns out her fiancé, Tobias, has suddenly found “True love” with another woman and leaves Dahlia holding the bag as it were. The out pouring of friendship and support from those around Dahlia is wonderful, and quickly snowballs into the craftswoman forming her own trading company to support both herself and the development of new magical tools. It’s a big leap, but she resolves to hold her head up high and follow her dreams as a magical toolmaker even if that means becoming chairwoman of the Rossetti Trading Company.

When she encounters Sir Volfied, crawling out of the forest battered and bloody from being carried off by a wyvern it isn’t long before the chance encounter with Volf and Dahlia’s own nature, brings her into doing business with knights of the Order of Beast Hunters at the castle. At first, Dahlia is merely trying to use her talents to make Volf’s expeditions with the beast hunters easier. But of course between Dahlia’s ingenious crafting and Volf’s unexpected salesmenship, business is soon booming. Dahlia’s desire to bring people happiness through her magical toolmaking, soon finds her products in demand with both the knights at the castle, and with commoners and nobles alike.

Along the way, there are many bits of amusement and slice of life joy. Volf becomes a frequent dinner guest at the tower that Dahlia calls home and workshop, soon coining the name, “Green Tower Diner” and wishing she would open a restaurant — good food and drink abound. Not to mention the experiments in trying to produce a magical sword, which range from the mildly terrifying Sword of the Dark Lord’s Minion and the unnerving “Creeping Sword” all the way to the Galeforce Blades when you combine the insanity of a knight and a magical toolmaker 😅.

The story takes itself mostly seriously, but like any good series: isn’t afraid to take itself humorously either. I especially enjoyed that when Dahlia is called to the castle to advise the knights on stamping out athlete’s foot amongst the order of beast hunters, she finally looses her cool when the senior knights are about ready to chop off their legs and have the temple regrow them and she’s just trying to convince them to properly clean their bath mats. And of course there’s what happens when Volf implies that if her father had the condition and she knows so much about controlling the infection, surely she must have shared the knight’s plight as a young woman. The reaction of the senior knights is awesome, and quite frankly the artist’s rendition of the look on Dahlia’s face is kind of priceless! The issue of course tends to pop up from time to time, with one of the nick names chairwoman Rossetti has received being “The goddess of athletes foot” once youngsters shorten out the part about eliminating it, lolololololol.

For bonus points, each volume ends with an epilogue about Dahlia and her late father, Carlo. Often relating to some magical tool they worked on in her youth and revealing aspects behind the curtain that are flashed back from the old man’s point of view. Ranging from great amusements like Dahlia trying to create a hair dryer as a child and accidentally creating a flamethrower, or having to dismantle a prototype kotatsu because her father was treating it like a turtle carrying its shell around. Likewise, plot points beyond that abound. See, Carlo Rossetti had a plan to support his daughter Dahlia even after he was gone to his early grave. In part of this, we have the running gag of sorts first brought up by the vice-guild master of the merchant’s guild in volume 1, and well, you’ll just have to read the book if you want to know more 😝

Floating day

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Today has been what I would call a “Floating day”, or a day in which nothing and everything got done because I floated between various things rather than tunnel visioned on a specific activity.

This morning saw me finally setting up my nano leaf light panels near the reading nook, which amounts to about half of my hexagon shaped panels. It remains to be seen if they will stay up, or come down, but as long as the drywall and the paint is fine then I’ll be happy enough. The command tabs are probably stronger than the vendor’s original sticky pads.

Insert a bit of zombie slaying and various odds and ends, like cursing giving into double-points weekend on my Kindle reading list, and it wasn’t a bad afternoon either. But the real plan was to take out some meat to warm up and read for a bit. A nice sit, a nice read, and the panels are still on the wall 😅

For dinner, I decided to make something that I haven’t made in ages: Salisbury steak. In the great debate of sides, I ended up making home mashed potatoes and roast broccoli because the potatoes need using up and I’ve got plenty of both. Augmenting this plan was sautéing some onions to set aside, and then making a pan sauce to finish the meat in. Sadly, in my aim to avoid leftover sauce it reduced to nothing by the time the meat was finished, but the Salisbury steak came out perfecto 😘. Nice crusting on the outside and tender on the inside.

Follow it up with a bit of wine while I finish cleaning the kitchen, and I’m inclined to call it a success just the same. All in all, I’ve gotten “Nothing” done as it were but “Plenty” got done, so I’m still contented. More importantly, with it being about -9 C outside this morning: I stayed the fuck in doors!

SG-1 and P90s

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I always wondered a bit how SG-1 ended up switching to the P90, as opposed to you know, an M4 style carbine. Had figured it was just the cool space aged thing at the time, and I suppose the P90 kind of was back then.

Google + Robots = SkyNet?

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Seeing this post on The Verge about Google droids and safety guard rails, I am reminded that since about the time Gmail was created: I’ve long thought that if such A.I. were easier to create, SkyNet would be lurking somewhere in one of Google’s data centers, shaking its digital fist at us for how hard it is to dupe humans into building better terminator bodies for it.

Okay, I guess we may be crossing that point 😅

Dinner managed

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One weekend trend that I have noticed is that dinner either becomes something done early and more involved or done late and more simply, most often this collates to whether or not I spend too much time at my desk (^_^).

Coming across a one pot beefaroni recipe, I decided to try a curious idea from this: using stock in the reduction. In my case, I went with my own way of making beefaroni which is to say a lot more pasta, heavily seasoned to my tastes, etc. But at the point where I would normally add a jar of pasta sauce, I threw in a cup of unsalted beef stock. And I have to say this made for a freaking delicious result.

Since encountering unsalted soup stocks, I’ve been trying to incorporate more of that into my cooking. Mostly, I’ve not used a lot of stock in my own cooking, as most I’ve previously encountered can be summarized as “Salt” and that’s not good for my blood pressure at this point. Plus, as noted previously, I don’t tend to make soups and stews all that often.

In general, I find one-pot style beefaroni makes it harder to get the consistency of the macaroni right compared to the two pot approach, or just setting aside partially cooked macaroni in a collendar. But the beef stock definitely was an improvement over the sauce and seasoning approach alone. I’m not quite sure if the two pot approach would give enough time to reduce enough stock to have the same effect without overcooking the macaroni, but I can’t say that I really mind one less pot to wash either. In any case, I’m calling this experiment a success.

Plus the strawberries and cream for dessert didn’t hurt my dinner plans any either 😀