Well, two more points for Alton! Both of his recipes I tried today were very good- “The Thin” chocolate chip cookies and braciole. The only quibble I had with the cookies was that the yield was off and that they were done cooking in eight minutes, tops, not the thirteen minutes as stated by the recipe. If I had them in for that long, they would have been burnt beyond recognition. Jon and I ate a few, but there should be plenty for D&D tomorrow. They’re not the most attractive cookies, I have to say, but they’re very yummy.

Oh, the braciole was good. And such a presentation! It’s a very pretty dish. (I should have taken a picture.) And, really, not very hard, although pounding out the flank steak was a bit of a pain. I don’t think I got it thin enough, but it still worked. I need to learn how to truss, though. The way I bound the cylinder of steak was kind of a joke.

I was really quite pleased with the tomato sauce I used for the braciole. I did not make the recommended sauce, which was the horrible, horrible sauce from Pantry Raid II: Seeing Red. I just don’t have enough hatred for that tomato sauce. Anyway. I used the reduced liquid from two cans of the Muir Glen Fire-Roasted Tomatoes (mixed with a wee bit of adobo sauce). You can’t buy that. I guess the substitute would be just a can of good-quality tomato sauce mixed with some sun-dried tomato paste and some adobo sauce. I’ll post a quasi-recipe later.

Celebrity nearness! The Graham Norton Effect has been asking Leigh to make cakes for their guests. They wanted a werewolf cake for Seth Green, but they asked the week of the show and there wasn’t enough time to design and get it from Colorado to New York. They then asked (far enough in advance) if she’d make one for Cyndi Lauper. So Leigh made a bust of Ms. Lauper that has hair that lights up like a Tiffany lamp. Out of cake. Seriously, the woman’s an artist. It should be on this Thursday’s show (it got a little damaged in transit, but hopefully not too badly). So set your Tivos and VCRs!

Rob was feeling badly this weekend. He thought he had strep (he doesn’t, thankfully), so I made him some Jewish penicillin on Saturday. It turned out okay. There were too many noodles and not enough broth. I had four cups of homemade stock and four cups of broth, but I only ended up using two cups of the broth because I realized that I wasn’t using low-sodium broth. I kept having to add water to the soup because as it simmered, it got incredibly salty. Anyway, I changed some of the quantities in the recipe so it would hopefully turn out a little more balanced.

I’ll finish this later. I’m monopolizing Ryan’s computer.

Okay, then. On Sunday, Lydia and I trekked over to San Francisco for the Japantown Anime Faire. I must say, kind of a bust. I think we would have had as much fun had we just gone for no reason. We ate, we bought silly things at the $1 store, we talked about anime. We ran into a guy I remembered from Fanime in 1999, which was weird. I feel that since then, I’ve grown as a person. He was still kind of freaky. Lydia tried to get me to dress up, but… it’s not really my thing. She looked all sorts of cute, though. She was dressed as Aryll from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Happy birthday, Dad!