Ryan Sullivan's Blog

Homemade Marmalade

I'm currently catsitting at my parent's place. My cat, Creamer, is doing alright. He's almost seven years old now, but he's still very spry and he constantly escapes through any open door. Thankfully, he comes home within the hour. Overall though, he isn't that much work: feed him wet food in the morning, give him water and dry food, and clean his litter box. This does not take up my whole day, so I brought an activity for myself: orangles, lemons, and pectin! I knew my parents had the rest of the ingrediants/tools I needed like sugar, knives, jars, measuring cups, etc., so I went to my friend's house to grab the lemons I needed (while promising to give them a jar when it was ready). Today, April Fool's day 2025, I finally brought all the ingredients together. I followed this recipe and this canning tutorial. I did have to alter the recipe a little, since my oranges did not have enough natural pectin. Therefore, during the reducing process, I added a whole box of pectin (which costs 5 dollars); this perfectly fixed the lack of structure the marmalade had. I tested the mixture on a cold plate, and without the pectin the marmalade was very liquidy and not like a jam at all. Thankfully after putting the pectin in and letting it simmer for another fifteen minutes, it firmed up enough so that I could turn my cold plate upside-down and it did not flow off -- which was perfect. The canning process afterwards was very easy. The pouring was a little difficult since I wasn't using a funnel, but it's easy enough to clean up the mess (more marmalade to go on my toast). I'm currently waiting for the jars to properly seal, which means just leaving it for a day in room temperature, but I had a little extra that won't be able to fit into a jar. For that, I think I'm going to leave it in the pot and eat over the next couple of days. Additionally, with this extra marmalade, I saw on the recipe that I could add it to meat as a glaze, so I decided to try it for lunch. It was delicious. My parents left a lot of their leftovers (most of which I'm still iffy on eating), so I picked a random box and fried the steak inside. With some rice, I ate the steak with marmalade atop it, and it was good! I did not expect the sweetness to come out of the marmalade so soon, especially with the meat. Not to mention, the sweetness went great with the rice. I was licking my plate by the end of it. I highly suggest this recipe but make sure to grab a packet of pectin! As I was cooking I was reading Sunrise on the Reaping. I just started part 2 of the book, and it's really good so far. I will definitely be posting about it as soon as I'm done.

New Blog Yay!

My new blog... so shiny, so new! Eee!! I've been meaning to actually code this thing for a while now, but I've been so swamped with schoolwork. Midterms just ended this week, and now I'm close to spring break, but I have one last assignment I have to do tomorrow. Of course, I am ignoring it for now. I really wanted my website up and running so I could maybe share it with people. I'm going to be uploading some of my papers from school that I really liked from this week, but for now I'm just so happy I started this project! Even if it looks terrible, it's uniquely mine!

Essay Ideas (archived from a school project)

Recently, I've had quite a few essay ideas that I've wanted to explore, but have not had the time or energy to properly outline/write them. My first rough idea is about a video game character, G'raha Tia from Final Fantasy XIV. His character genuinely fascinates me. The main theme I wanted to observe with this character is self-sacrifice. In high school and preceding self-help college lectures, the concept of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy would always come up, and I think it pertains to this character a lot. I've currently have an article that I printed out about that very topic on my floor (where papers go when it no longer fits on my desk), and I've been trying to get myself to start reading it; however, I have not gotten the want to read it because of the taunting task of starting this essay. One day, I'll actually be able to pick it up. Anyway, the basis of this essay is how G'raha plans on sacrificing himself from the beginning of his two stories, which eliminates the idea for him that he could survive. Though, by the end of his stories, he survives through his friendship with the main character, proving that through friendship and companionship that one can escape this self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, this is one of the essays I do want to write that has a solid basis, which you'll see is not that common in my essay ideas. My other rough idea is an essay about architecture and the horror of it. One of my favorite books of all time is House of Leaves, a horror novel about a house that is bigger on the inside. A very quick synopsis would be that a family moves into a house in the countryside, but one day a door appears in the their living room. In this door, there are a series of dark hallways and the father of the family and a few of his friends descend into these cave-like hallways until a few of them die. It's a very good book, I cannot recommend it enough. This essay will have House of Leaves as one of the main topics, but I also want to include more recent horror games, like R.E.P.O., and Lethal Company. Both of these video games are multiplayer where you explore a series of rooms in horrifying buildings. The architecture of the buildings are so fascinating -- both in a setting of post-apocalypse. The horror of it all in relation to these familiar yet strange levels, it always brought to mind of House of Leaves. I'm not sure how to put all of this together. I think I need to find some essays on architecture and how it relates to human feeling before I fully dive into this essay. This has been in my head for a very long time. One day, I will have to write this.

Homemade Apple Cider (archived from a school project)

I recently made some homemade apple cider using this recipe. Ever since I started living at the dorm, I've been trying to cook recipes with random crap I don't usually like that my parents keep pushing onto me. Most recently: they gave me two apples (I dislike uncooked apples) and an orange (I also dislike eating this uncooked). With these ingredients, my first thought was to make apple cider! I love apple cider, and I've never attempted to cook it myself. My mom used to make her own special apple cider by buying precooked apple cider and then adding cloves into it on the stove top. I thought it couldn't be too difficult, and it wasn't! However, I did burn the apple cider. I burnt my poor saucepan. I followed the recipe, but I wasn't checking the pot often enough. I checked it about every 30 minutes, playing video games in between. Apparently, 2 hours and 30 minutes was too long! However, when I checked it at 2 hours, it was perfect. The recipe, however, calls for you to let it sit for a little while longer. My sorry soul did not realize that a little while did not mean another 30 minutes. I tried to salvage it, but the flavor was too concentrated at that point. It was way too strong, almost bitter (surprisingly), and even when I added water it was still too strong. I also should have added more cinnamon. I think I can do it again, better next time. I highly suggest this recipe with two apples and half an orange in a small sauce pan -- and add way too much cinnamon. I would check it every 15 minutes during the two hour simmering -- tasting to make sure it's going well! Anyway, I have a lot of apple, orange, and cinnamon left over from cooking this, so I'm planning on adding it to some vanilla ice cream to make a make-shift apple cider ice cream. I'll post if it works out!

Unedited Book Reviews (archived from a school project)

I recently finished two pieces of Japanese literature: Growing Up and In the Gutter by Higuchi Ichiyō. I have already turned in the book to the library, and I do not recall the translator's name; therefore, I'll do my best to refer to the content instead of my own opinions on the translator's choices. These two stories are quite wonderful. Growing Up is about a young girl growing up to be a geisha and In the Gutter is about a geisha who has fallen in love with a married man. The stories of the characters feel very realistic and poetic. The reason why I had read these novellas is because of my anime class (as I lovingly call it) because we had to watch a TV adaptation of Growing Up in class. The film in class was much different than how it was presented in the book. I think the TV adaptation was much better for my USA-American understanding of story-telling. However, the translation included In the Gutter, and I personally dislike reading collections and only reading one story from them. Therefore, I read the second story, and I'm so glad I did! Thanks to getting familiar with the story telling by Ichiyō, I was able to enjoy In the Gutter much better than the previous story. In the Gutter is very short -- twenty pages short -- but I enjoyed it start to finish. The intense conflict within the main character geisha is incredible, and not to mention, the ending is so crazy. The last piece of Japanese literature I've read before these books was Hell Screen by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa sometime last year. I think I'm finding that I quite enjoy Japanese classic literature! I've been currently reading more European classic literature as well, mainly Don Quixote. If you know anything about that book, you may know that it is very very long. I'm currently 300 out of 1000 pages in. I've been reading it since last summer. Surely, I'll finish it this year!