Mmmmhhhmmm....I am definitely looking forward to my dinner tonight.
I have about 5 packs of steaks in the fridge, a mixture of fillet and sirloin of beef, and a big assortment of mushrooms, a lot of shiitake, some king oyster mushroom (Pleurotus eryngii, I think these are), enokitake (Flammulina velutipes, I think, grown under high carbon dioxide conditions, usually its a wide capped yellow mushroom in the wild, a woodlover, but the chinese and other orientals grow them with collars around the spawned substrate and allow CO2 buildup, done in the dark, resulting in thin, elongated stems and white fruitbodies with small rounded pinhead-like caps of 1cm or less, some shimejii, and several packs of Craterellus tubaeformis, a yellow-stalked, somewhat tubular mushroom, with a darker outer 'cap', related to Cantharellus, the true chanterelles, and quite tasty.
Going to serve a couple of tubs of each of those with a couple of either sirloin or fillet steaks, haven't decided which, but I am leaning towards the fillet, fried mushrooms, and steaks served with my signature spiced fly agaric gravy and spice blend/soy/worcestershire sauce and peppery bolete marinade.
Nice and spicy, although cooking steaks as I do them does have a tendency to need the doors and windows of the kitchen opening, and ideally a mask and organics cartridge fitted to scrub the vapors evolved when the steaks are subjected to heat. Or rather, the spices. The fumes are somewhat lachrymatory, but the end result is very tasty; with quite the spicy hot kick to it. And my fly agaric/spice blend gravy really works wonders on a prime piece of deceased bovine.
And for dessert..I haven't quite decided yet. A mixed berry jelly-topped berry cheesecake, which I'll whip up a mango and caramelized brown sugar coulis for, or tiramisu. Maybe both if I really cannot make up my mind, and to drink, some lychee, pear and apple fresh juice, got some irish coffee flavor limited edition 'frijj' thick milkshakes that aren't half bad.
Supper....hm....might be quite stuffed after the repast I have planned. Might be more of a 3-4am snack, after I've finished a recrystallization and some melting point tests that need attending to, along with supervising the introduction of a certain olefin to some NaBH4, and then arrange a second date of the resultant saturated derivative to some zinc and concentrated hydrochloric acid, or else perhaps iron dust and ferric chloride in hot glacial acetic acid. The alternative, although something I will have to do on a small scale, because thus far mastery of the reaction of the kind successfully, has eluded me, is an aluminium amalgam, with nastyass Hg (II) salts used and it scales like shit, and generally is finicky as fuck. Aluminium amalgam reductions and I have a hate-hate relationship.
Wish I had some lithium aluminium hydride here, instead of having to order some and for the time being make do with a two-step reaction using sodium borohydride and then acidic dissolving metal+added lewis acid reduction. That'd save a fair bit of work, and do it in one step. Although I've been paid this monday and tuesday, and only spent anything today, plus rent, and had about £500 saved up already, so I'll treat myself, call it a pre-xmas gift from me to me, was already going to go glassware and reagent shopping, but going to treat myself to some LAH, some Red-Al and if my go-to place has any I think perhaps some potassium hydride or sodium hydride. Will grab myself some calcium hydride too, for dessication of compatible solvents, (might grab some molecular sieves too for final drying, they are slow, but they are very effective at getting rid of the last traces of water from solvents....hmm...need more iodine [thinking I'll just get a fresh kilo of I2, and use what I have left to make methyl iodide, using methanol, iodine and a little catalytic red phosphorus, MeI being a very useful, although unsurprisingly, toxic/carcinogenic/mutagenic methylating agent. AFAIK its possible to recover the phosphorus too, once one is finished. Although thats not too much of a worry since I've still a couple of kg left of top notch red P, from sigma-aldrich, so the quality is assured
] and more empty attack-resistant reagent storage bottles
After I've finished watching the scifi and horror movies on and coming on that is, and have swapped arse-space between a greasy great theresa may with some oxy. Wouldn't want a perfectly good couple of hundred mg of oxy to end up getting sucked up by a turd
