spotify wrapped is out and everybody is always posting their top 5 songs….. let’s see some love for number 6 that didn’t make the cut. rb and add your number 6

small friends

spotify wrapped is HERE! send me a number 1-100 and I’ll tell you the song it corresponds with on my top 100 playlist!

I have $24 to last me til Friday, what should I buy with it?

a pallet of ramen noodles

I hate ramen noodles tho

hmmmmm bees?

Are you suggesting that I eat bees for a week

This is roughly what I make sure I have in my kitchen all the time along with rough estimates of local prices (MN). I buy a lot of things when they’re on sale and stockpile them. 

instant oatmeal packets with fruit in them - $3 probably and this can be breakfast all week and maybe even a lunch or dinner too since you usually get 10 packets

bag of rice - $2-3 depending on size. 1 cup dry rice makes enough for about two meals depending on what you add in. if you get cheap rice, rinse it before cooking

canned beans - usually under $1 per can - mix the can with your rice and you have a meal. chili-spiced beans will make bean tacos. Rinse non-spiced beans before adding to anything.

Tortilla - usually around $3 but you get like 8-10 of them. Tacos, wraps, and quesadillas are all fair game here

lettuce - $2 max around here, either a head of something or bagged precut depending on preference, use as a salad or on tacos

protein other than beans of some sort - probably $5-7 for meat, $2-3 for eggs. sometimes I can get bags of frozen chicken breasts in this price range and each is usually 2 meals if I add in a bunch of veggies. fry/scramble eggs and add to any of the options. 

your favorite stir fry sauce - $3ish

vegetables - $5ish. literally anything that you can 1. fry in a pan and 2. you’ll eat. fresh carrots are usually pretty cheap. get frozen if it’s cheaper and you’re strapped for cash/prep time on this part. 

alternative to stir fry:  pasta (~$2), fresh tomatoes (~$2), cheese (~$3). 

cheese and fruit if you have extra - look if your store has loyalty cards for free that you can load coupons on for cheese there’s always one it seems like.

ahh thank you!!!

Reblogging because there’s never knowing who’ll need it.

Adding also: the single most nutritious food on earth is potatoes in their peel. Potatoes + some milk and butter = everything you need. They don’t last all that long, but they’re fairly cheap and the quickest cheat to “How do I not fuck my body up.”

(Cooked potatoes’ll last a while in the fridge. Potatoes nearing the end of their useful lives? Cook them to half-done first, figure out what to do with them later.)

Easiest baked potatoes: slice thinly but not paper-like, spread like cards, brush with oil (a silicone baking brush is totes worth the little it costs), spread salt and pepper (a little less than you think you’d like), cover with foil, stick in oven or toaster-oven at 150C for 40min. (If you have the patience, at that point click up to 180C, remove the cover and add 10-20min.) Reheats well, lasts in the fridge longer than it’ll take you to nom.

Dead-Animal-Free Whole Protein: some legumes + some grain. AKA rice and lentils, or rice and beans. (Maybe some fried onion for flavor; onion’s cheap and stays good a descent while. Fried onion makes everything taste better and keeps forever in the freezer, so frying up a bunch and keeping portions is not a half-bad idea.) (If going for the beans option - lentils are cheaper around here but fuck if I know what it’s like in your area - dump some tomato sauce and oil in; canola or soy are best health-wise, and far cheaper than olive; avoid corn.) Oh, what does instant couscous go for in your area? It keeps for fucking ever, it’s usually cheap, and it takes well to any and all added taste.

If you get to choose, black lentils taste the best and need the least soak-time (0-20min), green lentils are best for cooked stuff and red lentils are best in soups. (Red lentils + potatoes + root vegetables of choice + spices; cut into small pieces, cook, run through the blender if you wanna [stick blender’s awesome], freeze in portions.)

When possible, get instant soup mix. Get the good instant soup mix. (The kind that’s not made primarily of sugar, yeast or both. The rest is optional.) Dump 1/2tsp (or more, but start on the low end) into couscous, or chicken, or sprinkle over potatoes being stuck in the oven. Whatever. It’ll make most cooked-food-type things taste better. And again, lasts forever on the shelf.

If  you can have eggs (goodness knows they’re sometimes expensive), dump some tomato sauce in a pan (tomato sauce lasts forever on the shelf), add some oil, onion/beans to cook in it, hot peppers if you wanna, then when it’s nearly ready crack an egg or two in. Hard-boiled eggs last a remarkably while in the fridge, so when eggs reach near the end of their usable lives, just hard-boil and stick in the fridge. (Have eggs as often as you can, particularly as you have brain-shit going on. You need all the eggs, salt, and 60%-or-more chocolate you can get. Brains are made of cholesterol and salt, so folks with neuro or other brain shit need more of both. Potassium is also aces. You know what has the most potassium? Tomato paste.) Grated cheese keeps in the freezer for ever. Grated cheese will make a lot of things taste nicer. Preserved lemon juice keeps forever in the fridge. Grated cheese + oil + lemon = instant and awesome pasta sauce that’ll liven up the weeks-old dry pasta in the fridge. Slices bread also keeps well in the freezer. Try to have half a loaf or a loaf. Dry bread gets cut in cubes, mixed with oil and the aforementioned instant soup, stuck in oven at lowest until properly dry, then kept in an airtight jar to add to soups. (Over-ripe tomatoes come cheaper. They get turned into soup or sauce, then frozen in portions.)

this is a very good post but why are we glossing over the fact that the alternative to ramen is bees

i have it on pretty good authority that bees are not an affordable eating alternative to ramen.

Seriously, bees are expensive

Trufax. 

And speaking as someone who is also living off oatmeal, beans, and brown rice, if you need recipes, I have them! 

Today I made 16 bean soup with chicken sausage and it was crazy good and I got 8 servings out of the one batch (froze half). I usually get the cheapest beans I can find, and GOYA bags of beans are usually $1-2. I soaked them overnight,rinsed them, and threw them in a gallon lidded saucepan with 2 boxes of chicken stock (also on sale for $2), two bay leaves, sauteed green pepper, onion, and celery, some garlic from a jar, about two tablespoons of dried herbs de provence,and the “fancy” bit was adding $6 bourbon and apple chicken sausages. You can actually sub veg stock for chicken and skip the sausage and make it vegan and it would still taste great.

Oh and I’ve been doing steel-cut oats. I don’t buy the name brand ones, I just pick whatever store brand/generic I can get for less than $4. They take about ½ an hour to make, but they’re super tasty and I make 2 cups of dried oats at a time with dried cranberries and that’s breakfast for 4 days at least. 

I’ve also been making black bean soup, red beans and rice, and curried potatoes and chick peas. I got 100 quart and pint take-away containers from Amazon for $20 and they all stack neatly and are perf for one serving of whatever.

Additionally, depending on where you live, whole rotisserie chickens are something like $4-$7 and are easily 4 - 6 servings of protein and on TOP of that, if you stick the carcass in a ziplock bag and then the freezer you have excellent soup makings. Using bones in soup literally squeezes all viable vitamins and minerals out of the suckers. Soup made from lots of bones is great to keep around if you get sick, it’ll feed and sooth you relatively easily and as you get better you can add noodles. ON TOP OF THAT, a quarter to a half cup of soup broth added to a lot of dishes also adds those nutrients PLUS flavor.

Here’s my “How to eat for a week on $30″ post.

don’t forget Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 A Day

Yall are clutch for this lmao cuz ima need this for about the first month after I move

Reblogging cause who knows what your followers are going through rn

I possess alternative recipes for anyone who’s allergic to beans and/or tomatoes if you need them

I still want to know why Bees were even suggested as an option.

I’m mostly reblogging this because eating on a budget tips are ALWAYS a helpful thing to reblog.

But I’m also reposting this for the always-important life tip: you cannot substitute bees for ramen.

Oh hello there, fic idea that I'm gonna fantasize about for days/weeks on end but not write. Nice of you to drop by

sir that’s my emotional support premise

Guide to Writing Episodic Plot Structure

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

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Understand The Structure

Episodic plot structure is more of a rounded story structure than others there are to choose from. Especially because some of the storylines are a lot more self contained. Subplots are generally either much longer and detailed than you would find in other structures, or they’re much shorter, contained in just a small amount of time. It’s important that if you’re attempting this structure, you determine which subplots and conflicts are deserving of a rounded, slower payoff, versus a short, snippy lifespan that is more for the sake of entertainment than developing the conflict and characters. 

Is This Structure Right For Your Story?

A lot of writers choose this structure for their stories thinking that it’s a lot easier to come up with a solid path from point A to point B in the story, simply because the format is seemingly stricter and more uniform. However, this can be tricky because you must create a tree-branch like map of events and consequences because as the overarching plot is slowly developing behind them, the characters’ immediate concerns and conflicts must be more entertaining and of consistent quality. 

Make The Main Character(s) Proactive, Not Reactive

When you have a quick-moving plot with a self-sustainable conflict, there’s more room to let the characters simply react to what’s happening to them and still produce a dynamic and compelling storyline. However, when you have several self-contained plot points within an overarching story, you need to make sure a good chunk of the plot occurs because of the characters’ actions, not the other way around. If you’re struggling to come up with ideas for the episodes themselves, it’s worth examining how much of what the characters are doing is reactionary, rather than in pursuit of something. 

Have A Strong Connecting Factor

The episodes and converging plots within them must be connected by more than just the people they happen to. The episodes should each be a domino falling in a larger process. The characters are obviously the most easily identifiable connection, but you must also make them cohesive with one another in the grander scheme of the story you’re ultimately trying to tell and the way you’ve chosen to do so. 

Give The Episodes A Larger End-Place

Unlike the overarching plot, the episodes do not need a complete resolution. In fact, most of them should have some small open window to allow for revisitation or development in the future of the story. Take advantage of what the reader may overlook or what consequences of the episode may mean for their future. Yes, they should end tied up in a neat fashion by nature of the plot structure, but they do not need to be contained absolutely. 

Common Struggles

~ What’s a good way to leave off without doing too many cliffhangers or awkward endings?… As I said in the last point, the containment of each episode doesn’t need to be complete. I don’t mean that every episode should end in a cliffhanger, but there should be one or two aspects within each episode that could be revisited in the future. The reason there exist “filler episodes” in many stories is because readers can sense there’s nothing more to note about those installments. There’s no “but what about this” or “I bet that’s gonna come up again”. Leave off with those moments and you’ll be golden. 

~ How do you do overarching plots in episodic stories?… With great strategy and subtlety. Always write with a bigger purpose, always keep tabs on your loose ends, and always track the development of plot and characters. You may have an end goal in mind, you may not, but you must allow your characters and story to evolve organically and when changes occur that you do not expect, work with them, not against them.

~ How do you maintain a good flow?… Pacing and tone are key. Flow is really just a way of measuring how efficiently you’re using the text to tell the story and progress the plot. Be intentional with which events receive a lot of attention and which events are summarized or inferred, and make sure that you transition tones with great care. 

~ How do you make each episode consistently important and engaging?… Focus on quality, not quantity. Again, filler episodes are a symptom of redundancy and an inability to evolve with your story. If you set out to write 10 parts and you write a fantastic story in 8, you haven’t failed and it’s not too rushed. Concise writing is an underrated talent. Focus on how effectively you engage the reader, not for how long. 

Other Resources…

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Masterlist | WIP Blog

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are you tired of my picrew chains? too bad!

tagging: whoever wants to

SS

I have to rate this one differently, these types i will have to rate by their vibes, and this 9ne has the best vibes

You know, I’ve never seen a picrew quite like this one!

I’ll tag: @violent-kurumi @agirlinsearchof @the-yugioh-theorist​ @faebeestime @thisfanisokay @purple-echo-chamber​ @mlmmrtickle @useful-boy​ @twistedm0th​ and anyone else that wants to!

Wow, this one’s weird… but also kinda fun!

Tagging @ina-bon @friendlyphantom @vampy-tk @etoilebleu27 @the-sayuri-rin @annsparksthegmr @melancholicdesire @lisiechan @sphymx @xxcureangelxx @silverfae16 and anyone else!

This is a cute and different picrew <3 

Tagging @mariamtiarko​, @ladyphantomhive101​, @osmiumtrash​, @littlepurplewakiya​ and whoever else wants to do it!

wait lets use that spotify stats page i want to know what everyone’s long term most listened to artist and track are! mine are the cure + “the river the woods” by astronautalis

cool new ask meme

send me a fandom and i will tell you

嵐電 🌸 桜のトンネル 🌸

Cherry blossoms along the railway.

Kyoto, Japan.

693 JOHAN ANDERSON ICONS  / YGO GX

Doodles from a fluffy fic that Maybe I’ll finish one day lol

Ryo and Hikaru can father-daughter bond little a bit, as a treat

Drifting Dreams~

Sometimes I just want to float away~

Pink round pokemon!!  (≧∇≦)/