(![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
smbc_comics_feed Jan. 24th, 2026 11:20 am)
smbc_comics_feed Jan. 24th, 2026 11:20 am)
- What type of hair do you have? (Thin, Normal, Thick, Frizzy, etc.)
Thick, fine, and wavy. There is a lot of it and it grows very fast. - What color is your hair currently?
Starting from my scalp, the first 5 inches are my natural salt and pepper, which I quite like. Then there are a couple of inches of very faded blue. Then there are another 7 or 8 inches of stripped brassy blonde, from when I was dyeing it at home and then stopped because we redecorated the bathroom and I don't want to mess it up. I mostly wear my hair clipped up or in a tight bun right now. As you may have spotted, I have thus far failed at my new year's resolution to find a new hairdresser. - What colors have you dyed/highlighted your hair?
Black, brown, red, green, blue and purple. When I had dreadlocks, I often had synthetics woven in in bright colours. - If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be?
L'Oréal Blue Mercury is my current favourite. - What is your hair's length?
It's down to my shoulder blade, which is longer than I'd like it to be. I prefer it closer to the tops of my shoulders.
Tags:
I just met someone to return their partner's phone, which I found in the road on the way home from ice hockey practice around 1am. Phone, case and debit card all scattered and wet from the rain I was grateful to have missed, the phone itself cracked but still intact. I put them in my bike and went on home.
There I dried everything out and set out to see if I could get in touch with the owner. I couldn't get into the phone, couldn't make calls or send messages, could access emergency contact info but it hadn't been populated, could view Gmail notifications which gave me the owners email address. I emailed it (and had the satisfying confirmation of seeing the resulting notification a short while later). I could see someone had been repeatedly calling the phone, and when they did so again I answered and we were in business. The owner was in a car accident, spent the night in A&E, and just got out, poor thing. I've just come back from meeting the partner at the Co-op to hand it over.
The situation reminded me to check my own phone was set up with emergency contacts and medical info in the Emergency section, which can be accessed without unlocking the phone. I also have my email address showing on my lock screen (all my notifications have the content hidden unless the phone is unlocked). Let this be your reminder to consider what you want visible on your own phone if it is lost.
For those of you in the parts of the US for whom an ice storm is predicted and who have no idea of what that is except that it means it will be cold:
1) If you have an ice scraper to clean the ice off your car, have it inside with you, not in the car. Because at a sufficient level of ice coating, leaving your ice scraper in the car is like leaving your car keys in the car.
1a) Honestly, at a certain level of ice coating, it's more like having one's car coated in concrete, and you shouldn't waste your energy and body warmth whaling futilely at it. One of the failure modes is you succeed in getting the ice off but take the windshield with it.
2) You probably associate winter storms and coldness with grey-overcast skies and darkness. But once it is done coming down, often the arctic winds that drove the storm will blow the clouds away, the skies clear and the sun will come up. I cannot begin to describe how bright it gets when the sun is shining and the whole world is made of glass. If you packed your sunglasses away for the winter, go get them out. If you store them in your glove compartment of your car, again, maybe go get them and have them inside with you so you can see what you're doing when you are trying to get the ice off the car.
3) All that said, maybe just don't be worrying about leaving home. A fundamental clue is that an ice storm is not done when the storm is done raging. For as long as there's a thick glaze of ice on everything, the crisis is not over. Your life experience has given you an intuition of physics that says ice forms where water pools and is therefore mostly something flat. But in an ice storm, you get ice coating absolutely everything including sloped and vertical surfaces. YouTube is willing to show you endless videos of people attempting and failing to walk up quite gentle slopes covered with ice and cars slowly and majestically sliding down hills. Driving and walking can be unbelievably dangerous after an ice storm. Try to ride it out by sheltering in place and don't try to go out in it if you can at all avoid it. Remember, it's not about how good a driver you are, it's about how good a driver everybody else on the road isn't.
4) Snow and ice falling off buildings can kill you. Yes, I know snow looks fluffy, but it is made of water and can compact to be quite solid and if it attains free fall it can build up quite a bit of momentum. Icicles are basically spears. If you endeavor to try to knock snow or ice off from a roof or other high structure, be real careful how you position yourself relative to it.
5) Now and until this is over is absolutely not the time to do anything that entails any unnecessary risk. Any activity that is at all discretionary that has even a remote likelihood of occasioning an ER trip is to be avoided. Boredom, I know, makes people find their own fun. Resist the urge.
1) If you have an ice scraper to clean the ice off your car, have it inside with you, not in the car. Because at a sufficient level of ice coating, leaving your ice scraper in the car is like leaving your car keys in the car.
1a) Honestly, at a certain level of ice coating, it's more like having one's car coated in concrete, and you shouldn't waste your energy and body warmth whaling futilely at it. One of the failure modes is you succeed in getting the ice off but take the windshield with it.
2) You probably associate winter storms and coldness with grey-overcast skies and darkness. But once it is done coming down, often the arctic winds that drove the storm will blow the clouds away, the skies clear and the sun will come up. I cannot begin to describe how bright it gets when the sun is shining and the whole world is made of glass. If you packed your sunglasses away for the winter, go get them out. If you store them in your glove compartment of your car, again, maybe go get them and have them inside with you so you can see what you're doing when you are trying to get the ice off the car.
3) All that said, maybe just don't be worrying about leaving home. A fundamental clue is that an ice storm is not done when the storm is done raging. For as long as there's a thick glaze of ice on everything, the crisis is not over. Your life experience has given you an intuition of physics that says ice forms where water pools and is therefore mostly something flat. But in an ice storm, you get ice coating absolutely everything including sloped and vertical surfaces. YouTube is willing to show you endless videos of people attempting and failing to walk up quite gentle slopes covered with ice and cars slowly and majestically sliding down hills. Driving and walking can be unbelievably dangerous after an ice storm. Try to ride it out by sheltering in place and don't try to go out in it if you can at all avoid it. Remember, it's not about how good a driver you are, it's about how good a driver everybody else on the road isn't.
4) Snow and ice falling off buildings can kill you. Yes, I know snow looks fluffy, but it is made of water and can compact to be quite solid and if it attains free fall it can build up quite a bit of momentum. Icicles are basically spears. If you endeavor to try to knock snow or ice off from a roof or other high structure, be real careful how you position yourself relative to it.
5) Now and until this is over is absolutely not the time to do anything that entails any unnecessary risk. Any activity that is at all discretionary that has even a remote likelihood of occasioning an ER trip is to be avoided. Boredom, I know, makes people find their own fun. Resist the urge.
Tags:
1. Our tv set has been misbehaving. It was refusing to connect to the wifi on which we get streaming channels like Netflix, although our wifi is otherwise working fine. B., who has 95% of the tv set usage in the household, thinks it may be a lemon. Nevertheless I contacted AT&T, our ISP and cable provider (some people will say AT&T doesn't provide tv service, but it does) to fix it. And eventually a technician came by who fixed the problem. (Mostly: another streaming channel we just subscribed to isn't working right.) "What did you do?" I asked. He didn't really know. "Magic hands," he suggested, holding them up, and indeed he even looked rather like Ben Carson.
An earlier interaction on the phone had produced a suggestion that our router (modem) and receiver (the box that attaches to the tv) needed to be replaced. I doubted this would fix the problem, but I said OK and they shipped the boxes. I was immediately stuck when the instructions for the router showed you where to plug in the coaxial cable, but the actual router contained no such plug. So forget that. I asked Mr Magic Hands what to do with them, since we'd received conflicting instructions on whether to return or discard the old ones. He said return them, which meant take them in to a UPS store, which would ship them without charge to me.
So I took them in. They took one of the two boxes but refused to accept the other one, for reasons unclear. I refused to take it back. I said my job was to take them in to a UPS store; shipping was their responsibility. So I just left it there and walked out.
Then I called AT&T and reported this, and they promised not to charge me for failure to return equipment.
2. For a long time, one of my regular lunches has been a can of menudo soup supplemented with albóndigas, Mexican meatballs, which are lighter and tastier than Anglo meatballs. (They contain rice as binder.) I would defrost a handful from a bag of frozen albóndigas that I'd buy at Smart & Final.
But alas, it seems that Smart & Final no longer carries these. I've checked quite a few large Mexican groceries - a species quite common in this area - and none of them carry albóndigas in any form other than canned albóndiga soup, which is not what I want.
So I found a recipe online and made my own. They're not a match for the ones I used to buy, but good enough.
An earlier interaction on the phone had produced a suggestion that our router (modem) and receiver (the box that attaches to the tv) needed to be replaced. I doubted this would fix the problem, but I said OK and they shipped the boxes. I was immediately stuck when the instructions for the router showed you where to plug in the coaxial cable, but the actual router contained no such plug. So forget that. I asked Mr Magic Hands what to do with them, since we'd received conflicting instructions on whether to return or discard the old ones. He said return them, which meant take them in to a UPS store, which would ship them without charge to me.
So I took them in. They took one of the two boxes but refused to accept the other one, for reasons unclear. I refused to take it back. I said my job was to take them in to a UPS store; shipping was their responsibility. So I just left it there and walked out.
Then I called AT&T and reported this, and they promised not to charge me for failure to return equipment.
2. For a long time, one of my regular lunches has been a can of menudo soup supplemented with albóndigas, Mexican meatballs, which are lighter and tastier than Anglo meatballs. (They contain rice as binder.) I would defrost a handful from a bag of frozen albóndigas that I'd buy at Smart & Final.
But alas, it seems that Smart & Final no longer carries these. I've checked quite a few large Mexican groceries - a species quite common in this area - and none of them carry albóndigas in any form other than canned albóndiga soup, which is not what I want.
So I found a recipe online and made my own. They're not a match for the ones I used to buy, but good enough.
(pennyarcade_feed Jan. 24th, 2026 02:08 am)
pennyarcade_feed Jan. 24th, 2026 02:08 am)Snorks, like many of our most treasured institutions, are real but not in any way that matters. Such are the wages of decrepitude and the fundamentally human centipede of cultural grist.
So I got jabbed Wednesday afternoon and the guy warned me the side effects would be bad, like notably worse than a covid jab. He said to expect to feel awful for 48-72 hours. And at 48 hours, I had a fever of 100F, a painful, itchy arm, no energy, and sniffles. (Though the sniffles might be allergies.) All of this is on the information sheet. And the second jab will be in 2-6 months. Happily, it was free at my pharmacy, though it would cost $57 at my clinic. (Weird.)
I'm so tired.
I hope y'all are doing well. Stay safe in the frigid cold. We're due at least a quarter inch of ice tomorrow. :(((
I'm so tired.
I hope y'all are doing well. Stay safe in the frigid cold. We're due at least a quarter inch of ice tomorrow. :(((
Tags:
(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cosmolinguist Jan. 23rd, 2026 09:27 pm)
cosmolinguist Jan. 23rd, 2026 09:27 pm)For reasons I am too tired to get in to, there ended up being no need or reason for me to be in London for work today. The thing I had been dreading didn't happen...not today anyway.
I sorta got my wish of not working much today. Viva la huelga. I got home in time to walk Teddy this afternoon, and both of the others could make it too. It was Vee's first time in a while and Teddy was beside himself to see us all.
I spent some time being annoyed by having bad to pointlessly stay away a second night. I could only conclude that the real reason I had to be here today is just so I could watch Heated Rivalry last night (it's on HBO in the U.S. so not easy to get here). And that cheered me up.
Tags:
Good news: not as tired today!
Bad news: extra stress at work and otherwise!
Today's writing
I did manage to write a few paragraphs, but it feels like I'm just treading water right now. I really need to make some progress over the weekend; the next deadline is fast approaching ...
Tally
( Days 1-20 )
Day 21:alightbuthappypen, badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, shadaras, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilme
Day 22:badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, shadaras, sylvanwitch, trobadora
Day 23:china_shop, trobadora
Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)
Bad news: extra stress at work and otherwise!
Today's writing
I did manage to write a few paragraphs, but it feels like I'm just treading water right now. I really need to make some progress over the weekend; the next deadline is fast approaching ...
Tally
( Days 1-20 )
Day 21:
alightbuthappypen, badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, shadaras, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 22:
badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, shadaras, sylvanwitch, trobadoraDay 23:
china_shop, trobadoraLet me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)
This has been four-fifths written since mid-September. May as well finish a thing, to the extent that memory serves.
( cathedrals, montmartre, rodin, eiffel )
Potential wrapup of random bits that didn't fit anywhere else coming, um, maybe.
( cathedrals, montmartre, rodin, eiffel )
Potential wrapup of random bits that didn't fit anywhere else coming, um, maybe.
Tags:
(smbc_comics_feed Jan. 23rd, 2026 11:20 am)
smbc_comics_feed Jan. 23rd, 2026 11:20 am)
Click here to go see the bonus panel!
Hovertext:
For the record, I am copyrighting this lifestyle. Anyone doing it owes me one (1) banjolele.
Today's News:
Mostly to create some space in my head. But holy shit, Minnesotans, you are extraordinary and we see you. Across the fucking ocean, we see you.
( Cut for US politics, violence )
How To Help If You Are Outside Minnesota by Naomi Kritzer
( Cut for US politics, violence )
How To Help If You Are Outside Minnesota by Naomi Kritzer
Tags:
Big Mood (Board)
CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).
I've never done a digital moodboard (have done physical collages, back in the day) and this sounded fun, if a little challenging to manage with limited laptop time. As I've been burbling about The Prisoner of Zenda quite a bit recently, I thought I'd stick with that. All the images came from Wikimedia Commons.
I can never make DW images play nicely, so I'm just sticking this under a cut and hoping for the best. I hope it doesn't come out too huge!
( Read more... )
Tags:
Nicolas Niarchos. The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth. I think I got this rec from Farah Mendlesohn. Apparently the entire "green energy" resource supply chain (including/especially the batteries) is fucked to hell and gone, including/especially in the human rights arena. Which is not surprising as such, but this is a field I don't follow in any detail (the world is FULL OF THINGS TO KNOW and I can't be expert in them all).
From the jacket copy:
This is ©2026 and just released, but of course...:gestures at current events:
:looks at small collection of slide rule, Napier's bones, abacuses, manual typewriters: Well.
From the jacket copy:
In this rush for green energy, the world has become utterly reliant on resources unearthed far away and willfully blind to the terrible political, environmental, and social consequences of their extraction. Why are the children of the Democratic Republic of the Congo routinely descending deep into treacherous mines to dig with the most rudimentary of tools, or in some cases their bare hands? Why are Indonesia's seas and skies being polluted in a rush for battery metals? Why is the Western Sahara, a source for phosphates, still being treated like a colony? Who must pay the price for progress?
This is ©2026 and just released, but of course...:gestures at current events:
:looks at small collection of slide rule, Napier's bones, abacuses, manual typewriters: Well.
Three days ago, I completed another orbit around the sun. Nothing terribly remarkable about that, however, I do experience a wide range of joyful emotions of surprise, affirmation, and humbleness when close to four hundred people across all walks of life reach out to me in some way to send their best wishes. The actual day itself was spent, first and foremost, in the good company of Mel S., who, as tradition dictates, took me out to perhaps the only eating establishment in town that suits her dietary requirements. Then, with a delightful dash of synchronicity, I discovered that a friend, Jaimee, shares not only the heritage of The South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, but also the same birthday. She had already organised an evening with friends, so I joined in and made it a dual gathering, with glamorous photo opportunities and some excellent conversations. I was particularly impressed and surprised by one youngster who shared an almost identical childhood and adolescence to mine, which is pretty unusual, to say the least - separated by decades and thousands of kilometres, there was a connection that only experience brings.
The celebrations are not complete, however. On Monday, for the second year, deflecting the wickedness that is Invasion Day, I'll be hosting a "linner" party. Unsurprisingly, this will be styled in a Latin American and Antarctic manner to follow up on the recent epic trip to those locations. Not much on the menu from the latter, of course (I don't fancy eating penguin, seal, whale), but the former does provide an enormous array of options, of which I am concentrating almost exclusively on interesting food and drinks from the locations I had the opportunity to visit. I should also mention, in this context, that I have been blessed in the days that I have returned to attend to other similar gatherings; Nitul D. recently finally hosted a housewarming gathering, which was full of some delightfully intelligent and educated individuals who were quite happy to discuss Incan civilisation, imperialism, and play chess. The second was Django's birthday party, which always attracts a likeable crowd from his wide range of interests (musicians and RPGers feature prominently). This weekend I will also be party to birthday drinks for Simon S at the Thornbury Bowls Club, which, as one of my oldest friends, also promises excellent company.
The marking of another year has meant in recent days that I've engaged in some planning of what I want to do this year and how it fits with my longer-term objectives in life. Recently, I mentioned that I have sufficient outstanding but interesting things to complete, so the bigger ticket items can be delayed for a while. Still, not being one to put things off too much, I have started a new unit in my PhD studies in global energy policy, which, whilst based at Euclid University, draws upon content from the University of London, where I started an economics degree (at LSE) several years ago. Further, I have plans to visit Guizhou, Sichuan, and Jiangsu provinces in China in two months' time, which also involves visits to a couple of "big science" installations, more to be revealed soon. Adding this to some more usual activities involving work, study, and social life is sufficient for the time being. But I do have something else quite remarkable on the back burner.
The celebrations are not complete, however. On Monday, for the second year, deflecting the wickedness that is Invasion Day, I'll be hosting a "linner" party. Unsurprisingly, this will be styled in a Latin American and Antarctic manner to follow up on the recent epic trip to those locations. Not much on the menu from the latter, of course (I don't fancy eating penguin, seal, whale), but the former does provide an enormous array of options, of which I am concentrating almost exclusively on interesting food and drinks from the locations I had the opportunity to visit. I should also mention, in this context, that I have been blessed in the days that I have returned to attend to other similar gatherings; Nitul D. recently finally hosted a housewarming gathering, which was full of some delightfully intelligent and educated individuals who were quite happy to discuss Incan civilisation, imperialism, and play chess. The second was Django's birthday party, which always attracts a likeable crowd from his wide range of interests (musicians and RPGers feature prominently). This weekend I will also be party to birthday drinks for Simon S at the Thornbury Bowls Club, which, as one of my oldest friends, also promises excellent company.
The marking of another year has meant in recent days that I've engaged in some planning of what I want to do this year and how it fits with my longer-term objectives in life. Recently, I mentioned that I have sufficient outstanding but interesting things to complete, so the bigger ticket items can be delayed for a while. Still, not being one to put things off too much, I have started a new unit in my PhD studies in global energy policy, which, whilst based at Euclid University, draws upon content from the University of London, where I started an economics degree (at LSE) several years ago. Further, I have plans to visit Guizhou, Sichuan, and Jiangsu provinces in China in two months' time, which also involves visits to a couple of "big science" installations, more to be revealed soon. Adding this to some more usual activities involving work, study, and social life is sufficient for the time being. But I do have something else quite remarkable on the back burner.
Between my regular rotation of Bastards/Cool People/ICHH, I've been slowly making my way through Better Offline's coverage of CES. Technically this is work-related and I should be listening on work time (obviously I'm not) but if you want like 20 hours of coverage about what's new in tech (spoiler: not very much), AI crammed into everything, and robots that still can't fold laundry, it's worth checking out.
It's really interesting from more than just Ed Zitron's usual professional hater perspective—which, to be clear, is something I appreciate as a professional hater myself. Because with something like CES, the questions of "who is this for" and "what is the use case" are actually critical and in your face. It's the Consumer Electronics Show, after all. So while robots in manufacturing are obviously a thing, the use case for household robots is a bit more questionable. The most successful household robot, the Roomba, recently went out of business, because as it turns out, they're not useful for 1) most households, which have things like furniture and sometimes stairs, or 2) the parts of your floor that you really don't want to vacuum, like tricky corners. They are good for scaring cats or if your cat is not scared of them, transportation.
The episodes are full of even more absurd technology to solve problems that aren't real, like fridges that open for you, meant to automate the parts of your life that you actually want to enjoy. We want machines to do menial tasks, leaving creative work for us. As it turns out, they're quite good at menial tasks in a factory, where you're doing the same thing repeatedly, but not in a house, where you have to do a lot of little annoying things.
But what we (normal people) want is very different from what techbros want. Remember, these are people who have not had to experience challenges in real life, so when they think about what a person might need, they come up with things like "what if I didn't want to cook and I got my fridge to open for me and dumped a bunch of ingredients in a pot and it would make food, and also a robot read a bedtime story to my child?" The fantasy, of course, is having a slave. But that is not the fantasy that normal people have, and there's an incredible disconnect between where tech is heading and actual human needs.
Anyway, I am working through it very slowly because, as I said, 20+ hours, but it's worth a listen. Also if anyone can find pictures of Robert Evans in an exoskeleton I would like to see that for reasons.
It's really interesting from more than just Ed Zitron's usual professional hater perspective—which, to be clear, is something I appreciate as a professional hater myself. Because with something like CES, the questions of "who is this for" and "what is the use case" are actually critical and in your face. It's the Consumer Electronics Show, after all. So while robots in manufacturing are obviously a thing, the use case for household robots is a bit more questionable. The most successful household robot, the Roomba, recently went out of business, because as it turns out, they're not useful for 1) most households, which have things like furniture and sometimes stairs, or 2) the parts of your floor that you really don't want to vacuum, like tricky corners. They are good for scaring cats or if your cat is not scared of them, transportation.
The episodes are full of even more absurd technology to solve problems that aren't real, like fridges that open for you, meant to automate the parts of your life that you actually want to enjoy. We want machines to do menial tasks, leaving creative work for us. As it turns out, they're quite good at menial tasks in a factory, where you're doing the same thing repeatedly, but not in a house, where you have to do a lot of little annoying things.
But what we (normal people) want is very different from what techbros want. Remember, these are people who have not had to experience challenges in real life, so when they think about what a person might need, they come up with things like "what if I didn't want to cook and I got my fridge to open for me and dumped a bunch of ingredients in a pot and it would make food, and also a robot read a bedtime story to my child?" The fantasy, of course, is having a slave. But that is not the fantasy that normal people have, and there's an incredible disconnect between where tech is heading and actual human needs.
Anyway, I am working through it very slowly because, as I said, 20+ hours, but it's worth a listen. Also if anyone can find pictures of Robert Evans in an exoskeleton I would like to see that for reasons.
Tags:
Featured Friday: Yoon Ha Lee [Zealotscript.co.uk, interview].
I apologize in advance for the closing :kof: pun.
I apologize in advance for the closing :kof: pun.
Which one of your characters would you most like to spend time with?
Excuse me, I had to be revived from a fit of the vapors. I give my characters difficult lives (when they survive at all) so it’s a common joke in my family that if they ever came to life, I am so, so very dead. I guess Shuos Mikodez from Machineries of Empire is the least likely to kill or torture me inhumanely for no reason. Alternately, Min from Dragon Pearl is like ten years old and I am not only a parent, I used to teach high school math so I reckon I can handle her. (Famous last words…)
For reasons I don't remember, Youngest bought sago, and then we discovered that there was some still in the cupboard. In discussion about what to do with this surplus, Youngest commented that they didn't know how to make sago pudding*, so we set out to do so. This is a bit variant on what I learned as a kid, so I'm capturing it now, because this was much closer to what I want it to be than it usually is. It is to be remembered that this is a dessert that is more about texture than flavour, and I make it with more flavour than the family friends I learned it from. Next time, I'll try soaking the sago in the soy milk, and then add water after, because the taste was a little thin.
1/2 cup sago plus 2 cups of water, in bowl, put in fridge for ~30 hours (it was going to be less, but I forgot last night; the fridge is because I am not leaving wet starch out in nearly 40°C heat).
Cooking: I used a heavy bottom pot, which I vaguely remember is important, but I don't remember why. Started on the too high burner, which was good for getting it to the boil, but I had to move it to the medium heat once it came to temperature.
Soaked sago plus somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup of soy milk, a tsp (estimate; it was what was left in the tub) pandan extract, and 2 somewhat heaped tbsp white sugar went in the pan (for slightly more flavour, use brown sugar; it will be a weird colour but it tastes fantastic). Bring to boil, turn heat down to gentle simmer, stir constantly, making sure to scrape down the sides of the pan regularly (do not be tempted by the idea of taking a break. This will burn in what feels like a moment if the heat is just a tad too high). I use a silicone spatula for this, so as to be sure to get into the corner of the pan. Check regularly for translucence - when all but one sago ball is completely translucent, and that one at least half done, I call it done, and pour into bowls to set. I have a lovely set of thin metal dessert bowls that are perfect for this, because they don't cool down too fast.
* not to be confused with sago pudding, which is a steamed pudding I vaguely recall, and have a recipe for that I've never used
Tags:
.