Jan Thie
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janthie.bsky.social
Jan Thie
@janthie.bsky.social
340 followers 86 following 1.6K posts
Amateur bread baker, cat botherer, book addict, writer:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0841RPQBS/allbooks

In a former life: freelance translator, copywriter & journalist; pub cook, and night manager in a Dutch hotel for the homeless for 17 years.
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janthie.bsky.social
Best Buy Ever.

(The kitten came free.)
The kitten lies in the hammock that's part of a cat tower. I'm pretty sure who he would save from a burning house, the hammock or me.
June 24, 2025 at 8:02 AM
janthie.bsky.social
I had rice with coconut milk & fruit for breakfast, and ate what was left for lunch, so a nice and cosy start of the day.

I'm too lazy to get up but my one and only big poppy is flowering, so that counts for peaceful?

No complaints about either adjective anyway.

May calm & peaceful find you too.
A poppy flower I hadn't even planted has been rising up close to one of my shed walls. The poppy grew itself a way through the netting for my tomatoes who still have to be placed there. More and more wildflowers grow close to the wall, so I'm thinking about placing the tomatoes somewhere else. That's not a problem. Removing the netting without hurting the poppy probably will be. We'll see. Pretty red poppy though.
June 11, 2025 at 1:05 PM
janthie.bsky.social
For sale now, only at the Bald Satan Shop, unfortunately - and 'thanks' to scandalous Amazon blackmail, I had to make the books more expensive: $8.17 for the paperback and $3.50 for the ebook.

#Booksky
#NewBook
Pic of the front book cover. Really hard to describe, so let's start with the easy bits. Author name above: Jan Thie Title below: In Meg we trust. Illustration: a cropped pic that started out as a photo of part of my house, close to the front door. The roof is snow-covered and icicles hang from the gutter (and from wherever else they can hang). The small outside lamp is on. In the cropped pic this means the icicles seem to shine from within. The open door is merely a black rectangle with icicles covering the top of it. The snow-covered roof is a ghostly blue that becomes a dark blue where the sky starts. It has a slightly alien feel to it, which is helped by a twig of ivy that has escaped the snow and now resembles the V of a bird (or a spaceship.)
June 6, 2025 at 8:56 AM
janthie.bsky.social
I tested out an interesting-looking recipe. Technically an appetiser but I had it for dinner with a cucumber salad:
foodmymuse.com/stracciatell...

It's really good.

#Appetiser
#ItalianFood
#Ciabatta
#Breadsky
All the ingredients in mise en place. To the left a ciabatta-type bread. Above that a bottle of light soy sauce. (I only need a teaspoon of that.) Then the bowls. The two bigger ones on top. One with the mozzarella & cream, the other with half a finely cut fennel bulb. Below: six small bowls. The top three: olive oil, herbs & sugar, sliced fresh green chilli pepper. The three below: Fresh basil, thinly sliced garlic, blitzed almonds. On a green glass plate. First a layer of, cheese/cream, topped with some of the raw fennel and fried garlic. On top of what I mentioned in the previous pic a layer of the peper and almond and herbs & sugar. Those I had in a bowl and ai poured the very hot garlic oil over it. Also, more garlic and fennel. I added fresh basil on top. Leaning on the plate are three slices of a sourdough ciabatta bread.
May 28, 2025 at 6:02 PM
janthie.bsky.social
Those who will read my coming book (and read past chapter 12) will get this.

Others won't. Not ever

#Booksky
#SpaceOpera
A blue rubber suction ear syringe bulb, held up in my left hand.
May 28, 2025 at 3:11 PM
janthie.bsky.social
'Tis the season to take all the logs outside again, and to start the soot-clearing of the living room; especially the big fern, since its leaves are covered with the dust of ashes. As is the small bookcase and that small cupboard in the kitchen.

I'm late this year because laziness.

#SpringClean
A pic taken in the winter. The wood burner is burning and a huge pile of logs lies on the two metre long shallow elevation in front of it. There's also a wooden basket with kindling wood. Same wood burner and elevation but no more wood and freshly cleaned. My huge fern that sits on a small table. To its left is a small bookcase. To the left of that, half of an open kitchen cupboard is visible. It also gets covered in soot. I can't close the kitchen door because of cat.
May 28, 2025 at 12:31 PM
janthie.bsky.social
I don't know what he thinks he'll find up there.

(I think I'll call him Musk.)
A pic of a snail climbing one of the beams that keep my terrace roof up. It's more than halfway up that two-and-a-half metre beam. Nothing to eat for him there and he passed my young strawberry plants on the way up.
May 27, 2025 at 1:11 PM
janthie.bsky.social
An old one. The last novel by Canada's grand magician:
The image lifted from the cover of the book. It shows the author's name (above): Robertson Davies - and the title below: The cunning man. In between there's an image of the upper half of a suited man's body. He has a pencil moustache and looks a bit like a villain in an old play (or an incognito fortune teller.) Before him he holds a flat square something. On it a snake winds its way around a rib cage. You can also imagine it's his own rib cage shown on a weird röntgen photo. To the right of the man (behind him) is a bookcase. On his left, also behind him and seen through a window is a town, with mostly a church and its tower showing.
May 25, 2025 at 5:33 PM
janthie.bsky.social
Full decadent.

#Mango
#Strawberries
#StickyRice
#Matcha
A white ceramic bowl half-filled with sticky rice (green from added matcha), coconut cream and slivers of fresh mango and sliced strawberries. Half an hour work from start to finish.
May 23, 2025 at 9:51 PM
janthie.bsky.social
'Oh come on, I saw you with that woodpecker!'

#Birdsky
#BirdFeeder
A pic taken my bird feeder camera. Two sparrows are near the feeder, their sides showing and their heads close together. A few metres behind them is a hanging bird feeder. One of the woodpeckers is busily eating there, but he is visible in the background between the sparrows' heads.
May 22, 2025 at 4:46 PM
janthie.bsky.social
A visit from the Health & Safety inspector is always somewhat fraught.

The feeder passed the test though.

Yay! (Sorry.)
The bird feeder camera captured a jay, who is standing to the left of the feeder but poking his head and neck within the camera's reach. He looks suspicious and judgy. Still beautiful, though.
May 22, 2025 at 12:07 PM
janthie.bsky.social
I was editing.

Resistance was futile.

#CatsOfBluesky
#Editing
I'm sitting in a folding chair in the one place in the garden that gets a bit of late afternoon sunlight. I was editing but the cat had other ideas. I had seen him coming, so I'd closed the laptop. The laptop is safe under my left arm. The cat is lying on me, from upper legs to belly. He is daintily licking his left paw. My right hand rests on his back. He knows he's won.
May 21, 2025 at 6:09 PM
janthie.bsky.social
I have four big freezer drawers for fruit, mostly from my garden, but I also freeze things like lemons, after I've used the peel. I had two big freezer bags with cut up lemon.

So, I made lemon syrup.

These will end up in one small freezer bag.

#LemonSyrup
The syrup (more a jelly) in a small plastic tub (with its green lid half under the tub). It still weighed 610gr. The syrup almost looks red. That must be all the herbs (mint and lemon thyme) reacting with the lemon & sugar, I guess. There were two big bags with cut up lemons in the freezer, and they weighed close to a kilo. I added 350gr of sugar. Not a lot for syrup but I used all the flesh, so there was more pectin. I also let the lemon/sugar/herbs mix sit over low heat close to 50 minutes. 20 is normal for syrup. Two ice-cube trays next to each other on a small oven tray. The left, light green one is large for an ice-cube tray. 12 big sections. I filled that tray first. The one on the right is black, with 35 small sections. I managed to fill half. I will bag the syrup cubes tomorrow. I guess it will take up less than a fifth of the space the cut up lemons did.
May 20, 2025 at 11:28 PM
janthie.bsky.social
Okay, that's just weird:
A Worldle grid. My first word: all letters wrong. Second word: only one letter right. The first letter, in the right place. Third word: I guess the correct word.
May 20, 2025 at 10:04 PM
janthie.bsky.social
A poem for the Dutchies here.

The original is by JC Bloem, written in 1950. The title translates as 'The nightingales'. We don't have those here, so I rewrote it as 'The woodpeckers'. We have those.

I will post a quick translation of both poems in the comments.

#Poems
#Bloem
#Birds
The pic is 100% text, in Dutch: Ik kwam net dit oude gedicht van J.C. Bloem tegen: De nachtegalen Ik heb van ‘t leven vrijwel niets verwacht, 't Geluk is nu eenmaal niet te achterhalen. Wat geeft het? — In de koude voorjaarsnacht Zingen de onsterfelijke nachtegalen. We hebben hier (volgens mij) geen nachtegalen, dus maakte ik er dit van: De spechten Ik heb van't leven nooit echt iets verwacht, Geluk is niet iets waar je voor kan vechten. Wat geeft het? - Op een vroege voorjaarsdag Hameren de hongerige spechten.
May 19, 2025 at 1:40 PM
janthie.bsky.social
A new Andre Nguyen recipe: Coconut Sticky Rice with Mango.

It's mind-blowing good.

#AndreaNguyen
#StickyRice
#Mango
#Coconut
Sticky rice (cooked with water and coconut milk) on a green glass breakfast plate. A bit of lightly thickened coconut sauce has spread a little. Thinly sliced mango pieces cover the rice in a half-arse star points form. Although my plating talents lack any talent, this still looks nice; which really is all about the colour contrasts of green plate, yellow/orange mango, and white rice.
May 18, 2025 at 3:47 PM
janthie.bsky.social
I think this must have been the first time that I realised (during editing) that we should have been calling the dodo the donedone, for quite a few centuries now
John Tenniel's quite famous illustration of Alice (in Wonderland) meeting the dodo. Alice is wearing her usual Tenniel scowl. The dodo looks nonplussed. In the background a lot of animals look disapprovingly at A and the D almost shaking hands. (My two cents: AiW is much less fun without Tenniel's illustrations. Avoid all imitations; even by Chris Riddell, who did what he could - which is a lot!)
May 13, 2025 at 1:29 PM
janthie.bsky.social
'My own personal overseer
Someone ignoring my prayers
Who doesn't care'

#Catsky
#JohnnyCash
#Editing
More outdoor editing. I'm sitting half in the sun (out of shot.) The open laptop is sitting on my glass-top terrace table. Behind the laptop, on the right, is my anti-sun glare hat. To the left of the hat, my cat sits straight up, looking deeply unimpressed.
May 13, 2025 at 10:58 AM
janthie.bsky.social
'Me and you, and you and me
No matter how they tossed the dice
It had to be
The only one for me is you
And you for me
So happy together'

(Well, one out of two ain't bad.)

#Birdsky
#Birdfeeder
#Turtles
The birdfeeder with inbuilt camera caught two sparrows in the same pic. The one closest to the camera has a kind of happy Elmo vibe. The one in the back is channelling Statler and/or Waldorf.
May 12, 2025 at 12:13 PM
janthie.bsky.social
In homage to yet another series of books, I am littering my coming space opera with silly footnotes.

This is one of them:

#Booksky
#Pratchett
#SpaceOpera
#Elvis
Text in screenshot: *For instance, a certain Earth singer liked to proclaim that he was so lonely he could die. He was quite wrong. Thirty-trillion microbes lived inside his body. The bacteria on his skin outnumbered the cells in his body ten to one. Whatever else this peanut butter and banana junkie was, lonely he was not.
May 11, 2025 at 11:50 AM
janthie.bsky.social
There is a laptop somewhere, under the editing hat and the editing cat.

Dr. Seuss would be so proud.

#Editing
#Booksky
#CatsOfBlueSky
#HatsOfBluesky
#TheCatInTheHat
I'm sitting outside, in the sun (if the clouds don't intervene.) The hat keeps the sunlight out of my eyes. I'm invisible in this pic. I was having a break, with the hat on the closed laptop, and so the cat leapt on my left leg. Here he is still sitting straight up, only parting resting on the hat. One corner of the laptop peeps out from under same hat. The cat is now partly lying on my left leg but mostly on the hat that lies on the laptop. It's a soft felt hat, so it will survive. Part of my left hand is also in the frame.
May 9, 2025 at 8:48 AM
janthie.bsky.social
Paler & flatter than the ones baked by our teacher Jack, so more like proper ciabattas but the crust is crusty, the crumb is very good, and the bread and sun-dried tomatoes are a perfect vehicle for a fairly ripe camembert.

I declare these sourdough slippers a success!

#Breadsky
#BakeWithJack
The three breads on the cooling rack, seen from above. They really look like regular ciabattas, with that typical 'slippers' form, snd they are ciabatta pale too. The breads seen from aside: flat slippers. A third of one bread, sliced over the long side. The crumb is absolutely lovely: all the holes you can wish for in a ciabatta. The sun-dried tomatoes folded into the dough are still nicely juicy (though I dried the outside of the tomatoes with kitchen towels before adding them to the dough.) A really lovely bread, this. Same two pieces of bread but now topped with four slices of Camembert. And yes, it did taste great. Strangely enough, this was not supposed to be a ciabatta bread. It's a sourdough bread. So I fed my sourdough starter yesterday, and today I built up the dough over six hours, and then I baked it (when normally you bake a sourdough bread on the third day). Still, the dough should have become at least a bit more solid over those six hours but it didn't. I don't mind: I love ciabatta bread - but I don't understand why the dough behaved as it did. Again, lovely bread, so I don't care, for now.
May 8, 2025 at 7:45 PM
janthie.bsky.social
Artificial Intelligence when I was a kid.
A yellow & white Sixties' kitchen timer, with the original box behind it. A Smiths Ringer.
May 6, 2025 at 1:26 PM
janthie.bsky.social
For those still on other social media too (or have sleeping accounts), this could be fun:

#PissOffTrump
#SpoilTrump'sBirthday
#Obama
ON JUNE 14 (Trump's Bday) The world is going to post Photos of OBAMA on all Social media platforms. Pass it on.
May 6, 2025 at 11:03 AM
janthie.bsky.social
3

Thing is, if you have made all your footnotes and in the next editing round you change enough stuff, you will probably have to rearrange all those footnotes too.

So, the very last edit will be solely a footnote edit. Live and learn (the bleedingly obvious.)

#TheLifeOfDuh
#Foot
#MontyPython
The animated foot used in Monty Python's Flying Circus. It's a huge flat foot, maybe meant to be God's foot, coming down hard on anything and anyone God or the Foot disapproves of. Partly behind the foot: a rainbow and clouds. The image is slightly fuzzy but there also seem to be hills of skulls in the background.
May 6, 2025 at 10:54 AM