Recipe. Homemade caramels

Feb. 27th, 2026 11:35 pm
pattrose: SallyMN (Bright flower)
[personal profile] pattrose
I love this recipe. These are melt in your mouth good.

Homemade Caramels

đź›’ Ingredients :
(1 Can) Sweetened Condensed Milk
(2 Cups) Light Brown Sugar, firmly packed
(2/3 Cup) Unsalted Butter, cubed
2 Tablespoons Liquid Glucose or Light Corn Syrup
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1.5 Teaspoons Flaky Sea Salt
👩‍🍳 Easy Steps :
🥣 Prep and Combine
- Line an 8x8 inch square baking tin with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the sides for easy removal.
- In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the condensed milk, brown sugar, butter, and glucose syrup over low heat.
🍳 Cook to Stage
- Stir continuously until the sugar has completely dissolved and the butter has melted into a smooth liquid.
- Increase heat to medium-low and bring to a gentle simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches the "soft-ball" stage (115°C/238°F) and turns a deep amber.
🔥 Finish and Fold
- Remove the pan from the heat and vigorously stir in the vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon of the sea salt flakes.
- Continue to beat the mixture with a wooden spoon for 2-3 minutes until it loses its high-gloss shine and starts to feel thick and heavy.
🍽️ Set and Serve
- Pour the warm fudge into the prepared tin, smoothing the top with a spatula, and sprinkle the remaining sea salt flakes over the surface.
- Allow the fudge to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours until completely set before slicing into neat squares with a sharp, warm knife.
đź’ˇ Beginner Tips :
- To achieve a creamy texture rather than a grainy one, ensure the brown sugar is fully dissolved before the mixture begins to simmer.
- Avoid "scraping" the sides of the pan too aggressively while pouring the mixture into the tin, as any crystallized sugar on the sides can cause the whole batch to become grainy.
- For the best flavor profile, use a high-quality flaky sea salt (like Maldon) rather than standard table salt to provide that specific textural crunch.

2026 60 questions meme

Feb. 27th, 2026 11:24 pm
pattrose: (Butterfly Puppy)
[personal profile] pattrose
How did you prioritize your time today?

Let’s see. I gave myself two hours to clean my kitchen and my bathroom. I didn’t need that much time, after all. But boy does my kitchen look great. And that’s basically what I did. I could have done so much more, but I just wasn’t in the mood for cleaning today. Then I sat on my butt and watched a bunch of episodes of Major Crimes. I love that series. I watch all seven seasons at least once a year. Something to do now and then.

That’s all I did.
pattrose: (DExter 1)
[personal profile] pattrose
28. Do you own many notebooks? What do you use them for?

I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say I have about 30 of them in my office. I collect notebooks , pens, and pencils for writing. I take them on trips, for using around the house, and one is always in my oxygen backpack. You never know when you’ll need one. I use them for story ideas, journal type input, and anything else I can think of.

How many do you have? How many pens? Or pencils?

Creators have been revealed!

Feb. 27th, 2026 10:16 pm
rfemod: (Default)
[personal profile] rfemod posting in [community profile] rarefemslashexchange
Creators have now been revealed!

Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed and helped make this exchange possible! We finished with 161 works in 119 fandoms!

Please remember that commenting is mandatory in this exchange. You must comment on your gifts before nominations open in the next round (dates TBD) to be eligible to sign up.

The collection will continue to remain open indefinitely so late treats are always welcome and accepted.

If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them on this post (anon is on, screening isn't) or reach out via email at rarefemslashexchangemod@gmail.com.

Thank you again! Hope to see you all for the next round! :D

Topics for talk February

Feb. 27th, 2026 10:55 pm
pattrose: (Iron man 4)
[personal profile] pattrose
Things I Miss

There are a lot of things I miss. I’m going to make a list.

1. My Grandparents, and my parents
2. When my children were young
3. My old job. I worked with developmentally disabled adults. They were all angels.
4. My younger days
5. All my dogs through the years
6. My old house that had a pool. I really miss the pool.
7. Driving
8. My healthy days before I got sicker
9. Our country before it was insane
10. Old friends that I no longer see

That’s a pretty good list. How about anyone else?

Daily Happiness

Feb. 27th, 2026 08:44 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It's the weekend!

2. We've been having another heatwave, but I think today was the peak. Tomorrow's supposed to be pretty hot, too, but then cooling off again from Sunday.

3. Another cat enjoying the new lounger.

Spotted.

Feb. 27th, 2026 10:48 pm
hannah: (Sam and Dean - soaked)
[personal profile] hannah
Based on the size and the chirps, I'm pretty sure the bird I saw perched on the rooftop structure earlier today was a peregrine falcon. I didn't have anything to take a picture, and I didn't see it fly off to be able to check the silhouette, so I'm only working off what I got from the ground across the street.

It was hard to miss. At least, I found it hard to miss. There wasn't enough noise to drown out the chirps, which were distinctive enough I knew something had to be around. I deliberately stopped a little while to look at it, in case anyone walking by would stop to see what I was looking at, or ask me what I'd noticed. There weren't many people, and of the people that came, neither of them bothered. I don't know what was on their minds.

It is TIME!

Mar. 1st, 2026 10:38 pm
senmut: Asajj snarling in anger (Star Wars: Asajj Snarl)
[personal profile] senmut
[personal profile] fth2026offerings is open for browsing!

My first auction has:
Doctor Who: Classic Doctor Who (1963-1996)
New Doctor Who (2005-present)
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Wars: Original Trilogy / Prequel Trilogy / The Clone Wars, EU Legends / Rogue One

My second auction has:

Any fandom I've created for before
DC: Birds of Prey / Justice League / Justice League International / Teen Titans / Young Justice
Legend of Drizzt - R.A. Salvatore

Offering 5-10k words, minimum bid $5

12 Helly R./Helena Eagan fic recs

Feb. 27th, 2026 10:26 pm
mossy_bench: Pink and white flowers (Default)
[personal profile] mossy_bench posting in [community profile] recthething
I've just shared 12 fic recs for the ship Helly R./Helena Eagan from Severance over on my journal. Please note that most are NSFW and deal with dark topics. If that sounds good to you, come get your toxic yuri!
primeideal: Shogo Kawada from Battle Royale film (battle royale)
[personal profile] primeideal

I had read a few reviews of "Back to the Future: the musical" when it opened on Broadway, and the reviews boiled down to: 1. the DeLorean is great, 2. they tried really hard to stay faithful to the movie and not cut anything important, but they also added a bunch of songs, so it's lengthy, 3. reviewer didn't care much for the movie because it didn't flatter their preconceptions, and the musical isn't any better, we have to be more edgy instead of just nostalgia bait. I figured 2 and 3 would not be big drawbacks for me, and it was in Baltimore, so sure.

It was...fine? I didn't dislike it in an "didn't flatter my ideological preconceptions" way, but the intro felt rushed (trying to establish Marty's siblings as characters, over-the-top hamming, etc.) This is just based on the original movie, not the sequels.

Anyway, here are some things that I think they could have done differently, especially because it's an adaptation. I'm not sure I'd necessarily enjoy all of these, just things that might be interesting to try.

  • Arguably the relationship at the core of the movie is Marty & Doc's friendship! Let them sing a duet together!
  • The character of Jennifer (Marty's girlfriend) could easily be cut. At the end of the movie it's like "come quick, your kids are in trouble!" and then that actress didn't want to do the sequels, so they just...awkwardly wrote her out. Jennifer in the musical doesn't do anything useful either.
  • I understand that we kind of need Marty's siblings to set up the photo as a symbol of temporal paradoxing, but again, they just showed up in the intro song to establish one-note characterizations, then were different in the alternate timeline of the ending. I feel like the first few scenes in 1985 could have been more streamlined/less ludicrous "And Now We Are Breaking Into Song" moments.
  • Doc has a song called "For the Dreamers," where he talks about his scientific heroes--he has pictures of Edison and EInstein on his wall, etc. But he's also like "yeah, some people fail a thousand times before they get it right, some people just...fail a thousand times." IDK, I kind of like the idea, but the execution of "the people who weren't successes matter too" could have been better.
  • The lampshading of "don't tell me about the future, I don't want to know, don't create a paradox" being resolved with "oh what the hell" is underwhelming plotwise. Maybe an adaptation where Doc actually dies? Or instead of Marty getting the message to him, someone like Mayor Wilson or Biff inadvertently changes the future based on Marty's meddling?
  • Sometimes people interpret the ending as fridge horror--Marty is the only person who remembers his original timeline, his family can't understand why he's not "their" Marty, etc. What if instead it doesn't change, but Marty is like, "hey, Dad, did you ever write science fiction books?" or something. Then we learn that George has been keeping up his hobby the whole time, he's just too embarrassed to share it with anyone, but Marty gives him a nudge to be a little more assertive in the future?
  • My mom's review of Wicked when we first saw it in 2008 was "this is going to be the best high school musical because both the lead roles are women and there are so many more girls than boys of high school age who want to do musical theater." What about always-a-girl AU for Marty and Doc? I like the idea of eccentric spinster Emily Brown still going by "Doc," but facing a little more side-eying/social awkwardness in Hill Valley. Is the love triangle different with girl!Marty in 1955? Does Biff flirt with her and get out of Lorraine's way? Is her alias "Victoria Secret" instead of "Calvin Klein"? :D

Ending spoilers )

(no subject)

Feb. 27th, 2026 08:51 pm
blotthis: (Default)
[personal profile] blotthis
Several folks requested texts about which I don't have too much to say... We didn't think it was possible.... Perhaps it's better this way... Anyway! Collected for your pleasure and my peace of mind: 

The Lady's Not For Burning for [personal profile] nextian 

Wow. The language is good in this one, huh??? I'm afraid I read it right after finishing Tam Lin, which ended up being an interesting experience... Couldn't help comparing it to Dean's interests--beautiful language, the marriage of minds alive to the world surrounded by idiots, particularly of a depressed man and a life-hungry woman--and the pacing flaws in Tam Lin... Lady, I think, might echo them. Not that Lady is too long, but the ending... we rise to a pitch and then we--don't. This could work on stage, I think, if you played the silences right. Worked less good in TL. 

Damn it was delicious to read, though. And I'll always happily read about people getting their belief systems shaken. And they're foils? How fun. 

Fleabag, Ep. 1 for [personal profile] queenlua and [personal profile] osprey_archer  

I liked it! I like watching people make expressions. I Love to See Olivia Coleman. I'm interested in the fourth wall, and I'm especially interested in reading the play that birthed the tv series, and comparing the choices. It's depressing, and the narrator sucks, but I was surprised and interested in the Friend Situation Reveal at the end of the episode, and the control of tone that reveal ... revealed. I'd love to hear why you each bounced off!

It's worth noting that I've only seen the one episode, and that I saw it on Dracula night, so I'd watched, in order, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and then Gatiss/Moffat's Dracula ep 1, and then topped it off with this. At that point, I was thrilled to watch a whole cast act. Also it was midnight by the time it finished. I do plan to watch the rest of the series, though!

The Freelancer's Bible for [personal profile] genarti 

I read this for my Business of Copyediting class. It's very good. I'm certain it was helped by the context, which forced me to Actually Do Things with the Information, but I really was impressed by this self-help book, alas. The writing is clear, the advice specific, the resources relevant, and the tone is cheerful and excited about the opportunities freelancing can afford people while being extremely clear-eyed about the difficulties of being a freelancer, both on the individual level and the systemic. The main author is the founder and former president of the Freelancer's Union, and so she brings a fiery labor organizer's point of view to a very entrepreneurial topic that I Appreciated. The book's a bit outdated in some respects--not everyone has a cellphone! you might consider getting wireless internet! AI doesn't exist!--but the overall guidance I found as helpful as ever. 

Spirited Away for [personal profile] genarti[personal profile] osprey_archer, and geestellar 

Stares into the middle distance. It's a good movie, Brent. No. Sorry. I watched it at a friend's place with a ton of friends, and my takeaway was, "Don't watch good movies with friends." Bless 'em. Nobody would shut up. 

It was kind of an interesting experience, in that before we got started, friend H said it was one of his least favorite Ghibli films, because it doesn't have a plot. This was a shocking statement to me. Of course it has a plot. It's about Chihiro... not growing up, exactly, but becoming More Herself. We argued about this a bit to start, and friend Z brought up that it has a Japanese-style plot, and Z is of course right. The movie's a bit episodic. There's a whole near-silent sequence on the ocean train. (Beloved.) But I also just think friend H is wrong and didn't grow up reading books about practical heroines who learn to Be Themselves. Or appreciate the soot sprites enough. Or Chihiro running down the stairs. Or my wife. Or---

Spirited Away doesn't pry me open with an oyster knife the way Kiki does. It doesn't have the evil lesbian capitalist foil to a hot feral wolf girl that Mononoke does. But it's my favorite. 
mossy_bench: Pink and white flowers (Default)
[personal profile] mossy_bench

Hello friends! With Femslash February nearly but not yet over, I am excited to share my very subjective list of favorite fics featuring Helly R./Helena Eagan from Severance. It's not a huge ship (it currently has a bit over 100 fics on AO3), but I nonetheless hope that these recs are useful, regardless of whether you're already a Hellyena (also known as Hellyna) shipper, or just interested in learning more about this niche F/F pairing.

A Brief Ship Manifesto )

So yeah. Selfcest body-sharing toxic yuri. What more is there to say.

Notes
All fics were published on AO3 before the end of February 2026, and are complete.

Please note that many of these fics feature sex or masturbation, dubious consent, canon-typical suicide attempts and self-harm, incest, and general mind-fuckery. I tried to note when specific topics come up, but consider this a blanket warning.

12 Fic Recs )
petra: Barbara Gordon smiling knowingly (Default)
[personal profile] petra
I'm working on identity porn for tomorrow because the Virginwan Weekend over on tumblr has it as a prompt, and y'all could've knocked me over with a feather when I saw it listed. A fest for deflowering my blorbo, and it has my word? OMG!

Even though what I meant back when I arguably made the word up (c. August, 2005 | Fanlore) and what the AO3 tag means do not tend to coincide.

My version is "A and B know each other extremely well. They have complicated identities -- maybe secret, but not secret from each other. They kink on acting out a subset of their identities for each other."

I am writing My Kind of Identity Porn on the occasion of Anakin's knighting.

It goes like this. )

*

Tagging this put Patricia O'Callaghan's cover of Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" in my head, so here, have Charmax's awesome femslash vid to it.

(no subject)

Feb. 27th, 2026 08:42 pm
blotthis: (Default)
[personal profile] blotthis
As requested by [personal profile] passingbuzzards, [personal profile] skygiants and door, it's.... Dracula!

I'd never seen any Dracula adaptation at all ever--unless one counts Buffy as a Dracula adaptation, in which case I've seen Hush and the singing one--and may I just say, I would not recommend starting with any of the three adaptations I saw this month!

I've a longstanding interest in adaptations, though, so when some friends decided to go see Luc Besson's Dracula (2026), I joined them. Now, none of us knew that in other markets, this movie was subtitled "A Love Tale."

Me: Between... Mina and Jonathan?
Besson: Mais non! Dracule et Mina!

Oh dear. )

I had a great time. What a series of swings. My takeaway was "Terrible movie. Everyone should see it." I laughed so much that I made friends with the folks on the other side of our group. I haven't even mentioned the gargoyles, which ended up being one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in recent memory. Do not spend 20+ dollars to see it, but if you're hanging out with buddies, eating snacks, and ready to yell delighted disparaging comments at a Bad Movie with A Huge Budget, put it on the list.

I mentioned seeing Dracula (2026) to a Media Professional friend, and when she learned I hadn't seen Bram Stoker's Dracula, she was like oh, we should get high and do that. And I was like can we please, actually. So last weekend, we did. Minus the getting high, plus another Media Professional friend, whose apartment we invaded. (He has a TV and a couch.)

New astonishments )

Ok. So, after we finished BSD, we tipsily decided it was early (10pm) and we could watch!! the first episode!!! of BBC's Dracula! They did not tell me it was an hour and a half and a Gatiss/Moffat production!!!

I'm not going to write this up in as much detail. I had fun with it, actually. There are parts in it that Gatiss and Moffat Simply Cannot Stop Themselves, of course, but overall I liked the Jonathan, Mina, Van Helsing (a Religiously Troubled but Very Self-Confident nun), and Dracula. Claes Bang, who plays Dracula, has more fun as he gets younger and sexier, and absolutely homosexually tortures Jonathan to pieces. Loved that. (Oldman and Landry Jones both become wooden as hell as they get younger and sexier, which was homosexually torturous for me---) I also adoooored Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha Van Helsing.

My understanding is that the third episode absolutely blows shit. From Gatiss and Moffat? Shocking. But the first episode, at least, felt more interested in the book's specific death-dread than the two movies, even as it turned much of the plot on its head. I've been told the second episode is even better. It's unlikely I'll watch it on my own, but I'm happily passing that information on to you.

Weekly Reading

Feb. 27th, 2026 04:25 pm
torachan: anime-style me ver. 2.0 (anime me)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
The Murder at World's End
The first book in a new historical murder mystery series. I liked this one a lot. A young male servant teams up with an eccentric upper class older woman to solve mysteries. Looking forward to the next one. I listened to this as an audio book and enjoyed the narrator a lot, too.

The Decagon House Murders
This is the first in the House Murders series, but the third I've read in novel form, as I had originally read this one as a manga. It's been a while since I've read the manga, though, so I thought I'd check out the novel as well. The manga seems to have stuck fairly close to the novel except for two big changes: the MC who doesn't go to the island with the others is a girl in the manga, but was male in the original, and the way the girl whose death triggers the revenge killings died is totally different in the manga. I can see why they'd change the gender of the one character, since it is otherwise all guys except two minor female characters who both die fairly early on, but I am baffled as to why they changed the death.

Boxers & Saints
Two volume graphic novel series about the Boxer Rebellion, a period in history about which I knew nothing at all previously (I had only vaguely heard the term and did not even realize it happened in China). Very interesting.

Yes, I'm Hot in This: The Hilarious Truth about Life in a Hijab
Collection of (I assume) web comics about life as a hijabi woman in the US. I enjoyed it, but collected all together the comics were often repetitive in a way that wouldn't feel as obvious if read spread out as a web comic.

Kinou Nani Tabeta? vol. 25

Ki ni Natteru Hito ga Otoko ja Nakatta vol. 4

February LOVE-fest: Day 27: ecstasy

Feb. 27th, 2026 07:15 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: heart shaped tree (hearttree)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Day 27: Ecstasy

I can't believe February is almost done and I've not posted any art. The image my mind conjures at the word 'ecstasy' is paintings of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.

The caption to this [Circle of Girolamo Siciolante, St. Sebastian Receives the Palm of Martyrdom, 1570s] is:

As is usual, St. Sebastian has been stripped, tied to a tree, and shot with arrows. The headless trunk at the base of the tree refers to the previous beheading of Tiburtius, son of the prefect of Milan, whom Sebastian had recently converted along with the prefect and 1,400 others.

Not to split hairs, but in the legend the saint did not actually receive martyrdom when he was shot with the arrows shown. He died four days later, beaten to death by the servants of Diocletian and Maximian. And it is not just a palm that the angel in the painting brings, but a golden diadem as well.


Being beaten to death would not be as sexy a subject for portraiture! But that beheaded body is not exactly sexy, either! Hmm.


saint sebastian

The Most Ridiculous Dream Ever ...

Feb. 27th, 2026 11:44 pm
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
[personal profile] davidgillon

 ... had me competing in the Olympics.

Dream-brain seemed somewhat hazy on whether this was summer or winter games, and normie or paras.

I'm not sure of the event either, possibly the Biathlon? Though skis seemed an afterthought and I don't recall any rifle showing up.

However in a firm nod to real life I was late for my race by way of being unable to negotiate athlete registration.

some good things!

Feb. 27th, 2026 11:40 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Got libgourou working (link to follow), with thanks to [personal profile] simont for bringing it to my attention and [personal profile] me_and for making sympathetic and encouraging noises while I stared muzzily at the documentation this evening. Happy to report that I have successfully downloaded Adobe DRMed ebooks from my command line without any Windows install or emulators at all.
  2. I am enjoying A Physical Education so much - SO much - that I have gone out and bought a book it recommends (Starting Strength; very wordy descriptions of which muscles one should be using for what, apparently, i.e. exactly my kind of thing). Acquiring my own copy once I've given the library's back is a definite possibility. It's really interesting in terms of both the pain Project (memoir about embodiment!) and in terms of my own movement-related special interests (e.g. the gulf between my experience of largely self-led Pilates vs the version available via mainstream contemporary classes embedded in diet culture). Lots of content notes but I'm really really liking it. Gratitude to [personal profile] buttonsbeadslace for posting about it (... link to follow...)
  3. Stupid Little Walk yielded both very cheap pistachio croissants (MORE BREAKFAST NONSENSE) and a very cheap "cinnamon danish with vanilla fondant icing" I've been vaguely eyeing up but was also very suspicious of. I am glad to have tried it and probably won't get it again, even if it is only 19p.
  4. This evening's tofu was particularly cooperative with being cooked. (Thanks be to [personal profile] evilsusan for the specific combination of courgettes, tofu and garlic that I still make regularly lo these many years later )
  5. I hit refresh on Oxfam Online and discovered that the rotating sale has migrated back around to "30% off 3+ books". Thus now on their way to me I have: the first edition of Explain Pain for an astonishingly reasonable price (I want to do the deeply nerdy thing of a side-by-side comparison with the second edition, and also to revisit its structure while the second edition is on loan to a physio friend...); a book entitled Science of Pilates, which I'd previously eyed up but that time it sold before I got around to it; a book about allotments and cooking; and a probably questionable out-of-print 1980s cookbook...
double_dutchess: (Sunnydale Herald)
[personal profile] double_dutchess posting in [community profile] su_herald
BUFFY: Mom? Mom? Mommy?

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New phone

Feb. 28th, 2026 11:50 am
china_shop: Mallory Archer sitting naked in a lift, wringing gin out of her dress (Archer - Mallory with gin)
[personal profile] china_shop
(Solely because they're decommissioning 3G, so my old Galaxy A8 stopped working for phones and texts, grrr.)

*spends hours tweaking and logging into things and all the usual stuff, ugh*

Google: Welcome to Gemini!
me: *kills it with fire*

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