A Recipe For Food-Happiness in the Korean Style

Because everyone should be as food-happy as I am right now:

1. Prepare a mix of every rice-like grain you have in the house. My version of that is as follows: Bring 2.25 cups water to a boil, add 1/4 C wild rice, bring to a simmer, cover. Set timer for 15 minutes. When it goes off, add 1/4 C brown rice. Set timer for 30 minutes. When it goes off, add 1/4 C each sushi rice and barley. Set timer for 15 minutes. When it goes off, remove from heat. Remove lid, stretch a blue-cloth* across the top, replace lid.

This is not necessarily a Korean dish***, but Healing Tea serve something like it with all their Korean menu items, so I make it whenever I cook recipes from Maangchi's blog. As you will, shortly.

2. While rice cooks, load up these recipes: Panfried Tofu in Soy Sauce and Spinach Side Dish. Double the portions; leftovers are good, 2 bunches spinach is no harder than one, and you might as well cook the whole 1-pound block of tofu. Timing for these dishes may be as follows: Boil spinach first. While spinach cools, chop tofu and set to press-dry.** While tofu dries, heat up pan with oil in. While tofu fries, chop out or measure the seasoning ingredients for both dishes. When tofu is done, mix the seasonings into the spinach.

Eat a meal's worth of these things. Exercise restraint and do not eat everything. Leftovers are good.


*blue-cloth: These used to come in certain surgical kits. My family has a ton. I see house painters using them, too. If you are not conveniently familiar with a pediatrician or a painter, use a tea towel or whatever you use when a clean cloth is called for.

**Press-drying tofu: Lay out a blue-cloth on a cutting board or your kitchen counter. Across one half, lay out a folded paper towel. Put pieces of tofu on the paper towel. Put another folded paper towel on top, then fold the other half of the blue-cloth over the top of that. On top of this cloth-paper-tofu sandwich, lay a short stack of phone books. Five minutes later, you will have tofu dry enough not to spatter you when you put it in hot oil. Many thanks to @birjulie for this tip.

***Ok, well, maybe it is.

These Jeans Are Cleeeeeeeean!

Bright spring green latex paint splotches on deep black jeans. Unsightly! And this happened last week. Says eHow, "We hope you were wearing work clothes when you were doing that painting job ... because latex paint is almost impossible to get out of clothing." Then they talk about scraping off fresh paint and washing immediately, and sponging dried stains with turpentine. Then, just to rub my nose in it, under Tips & Warnings, they say "Once latex paint starts to dry, it may be too late."

So not helpful.

Next stop, Google. Which leads me here. Which has about a million things to try, from rubbing alcohol to hairspray to acetone nail polish remover. Eventually I decide to try the things they suggest that I actually have in the house, and achieve a happy ending thusly:

1. Wet stain and scrub in liquid detergent with an old toothbrush. Rinse. Repeat until this is doing no more good. (Smears at edge of paint spot are now gone.)


2. Squeeze out excess water. Pour acetone nail polish remover over stain and scrub with toothbrush. Rinse. Repeat this until it's doing no more good. (Brightness of paint spot is now gone, leaving dull/faded impressions.)
   
3. Squeeze out excess water and apply acetone as before. Scrub with a green steel-wool scrubby pad. At this point, tiny crumbs of paint can be seen leaving the area. Rinse. Repeat until paint spot is gone.


4. Repeate toothbrush-and-detergent step. Rinse thoroughly. All that acetone can't be good for your jeans.


5. Toss 'em in the washing machine.

I am currently between steps 4 and 5.

HTH!