It feels good to take care of myself!  I'm calling it a night after what I'd call a pretty decent day.

I didn't do any Rhythm Quest work (going to try and delve into that tomorrow...), but I focused on letter-writing tonight -- took care of no less than =4= letters for xmas, so we're at 13 now which is feeling a a little more reasonable given that there's only a little more than a week left in the month.

Doing a pretty good job with my cooking recently.  Last night was a standard broccoli chicken stir-fry, then for lunch I did some baicai with dried shrimp, but also a small bit of arctic char that I dry-brined overnight.  This is J Kenji-Lopez Alt's recommended dry-brine-overnight-uncovered (on a paper towel) method of pan searing salmon(ish) fillets.  I always have trouble remembering whether the fillet is supposed to be skin-side down or up, but I think it's skin-side up (confirmed after a little bit of internet digging).  It's an interesting technique in that, like salting and "drying" steak in the fridge, sometimes it almost feels like you dry out the surface/exterior a little TOO much.  I know for steaks it can sometimes result in a little bit too much drying out, especially for something like a reverse sear (Helen Rennie comments on this in her reverse sear video).  It's a weird feeling to put your protein onto a hot skillet with oil and then hear essentially no sizzling or sputtering because you've already gotten rid of most of the moisture content on the surface of the thing beforehand.  But I will say, it certainly helps crisp up the skin very nicely, =and= is probably the most foolproof way to avoid sticking when you're using something like a stainless steel skillet (like I did today).  Kenji says that this also helps with an even cook and prevents white albumen from oozing out as much, which anecdotally I'd say seems to be true.

It's something I'll have to play around with.  I could also salt the fillet overnight but rest it covered, or maybe uncovered but without the paper towel -- which definitely did draw moisture out of the fillet.  The great thing is, though, even though I've cooked up salmon/steelhead/char fillets to quite varying outcomes, they're pretty much all tasty given that you're starting with a decent, fresh piece of fish.  I even tried the Magic Ingredients channel's sous vide and then seared with corn starch recipe, and that produced a really nice result too, though more sashimi-like than a plain pan-sear, especially with the soy-based overnight marinade.

At night I did a whole roasted fish, which is another Magic Ingredients recipe I've been eyeing for a while, and it turned out pretty nicely!  Maybe a few tweaks here and there for next time (or just experimenting with different types of fish), but honestly the end result was really quite decent, particularly the edges and skin sections which crisped up nicely.  This one calls for a wet brine, which seemed to work okay, but I almost wonder if =this= is the recipe where an uncovered dry brine might work better, as drying out the skin seems like it would be beneficial for crisping up more.  Well, we'll see.

I also cooked up some very simple chicken stock/soup from some leftover bones and veggie scraps.  Trying to do that a little more often so that we can avoid chicken bones and such going to waste.  Now that my chicken-bone freezer bag is empty again it'll be time to start refilling it -- starting with tomorrow's dinner, for which I'm planning to do a sundried tomato chicken dish...(lunch is congee with ground pork and preserved egg)

Been on a little bit of a progressive kick lately (prog house/trance) after finding Shion Hinano's works (through a Puru remix).  After listening to a sampling of that stuff on YouTube over the past week or so I finally got around to purchasing some of it today, so I'll have it on hand in my music library to enjoy.  Nice!  My OHC entry last week was of that style, and I might try leaning into it a little more.  I'm actually thinking of purchasing some FLEX libraries for FL Studio -- the synthwave library in FLEX is already something that I use really regularly, and I feel like FLEX is really the right plugin for me to invest in.  The banks aren't too expensive, the whole idea is all around (slightly customizable) presets, and they're FL native and usually load quickly, which is great for my workflow.

Yeah, there's still a million things to do -- I've got an eye exam later this week, Rhythm Quest is begging for more attention, I'm ostensibly "behind" on letters still, and I'm only like half-done reorganizing my drawers, so there's a small mess on my floor.  But I get to celebrate some small victories along the way, too.  Writing 4 letters and mailing out another 2 in a single day is a good feeling.  Did a skincare face mask and some light isometrics, too.  Yeah, I'm not sleeping particularly early, but I had a nap in the afternoon and I get to sleep in tomorrow...  all in all I can't really ask for much better than this.