Category: minutiae

I’m not dead. I’m resting.

Seriously, I’ll write something tomorrow.

Recently, my mom posted her thoughts on the whole Schiavo debacle and got a pretty irate commenter on her blog. I figured I might as well open myself up for flaming- not on the same issue, though. I read this in the newspaper yesterday (Carolyn Jung of the Mercury News).

I wanna go! Doesn’t that sound like a fabulous meal? The first time I tried foie gras was in January of 2002 at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, Italy. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t eat more than two or three bites before trading plates with my mom because it was just. too. rich. Seriously. But it was lovely. It was just… an experience. And dude, that Ducksicle? Sounds awesome. Mm, cracklings. But that’s a crapload of money for just one person.

Apparently this isn’t the first time Jon Sears has hosted this dinner. I googled his name and “foie gras” and got a couple of sites bitching about last year’s Foiellywood dinner. Yes, okay, the protesters are right. It is cruel to the geese. And so is everything we do to further the meat industry. The vegans have a right to be harshly judgemental about this case. If I’m going to hell for eating meat, I may as well drop another circle by eating foie gras.

But really, I’m going to hell for reasons worse than enjoying meat.

Happy birthday to me.

I made a bunch of cupcakes last night to take to D&D tonight. It’s very second grade of me. I don’t know if my body’s trying to tell me, “Hey! Don’t think just because you’re turning 25 you’re suddenly going to acquire grace! You’re still as clumsy as ever!” or if it was trying to get out all the klutz before 10:12am, when I actually will have been living for 25 years (I believe I was born at 1:12pm EST, and if I’m wrong, my mom will correct me). Because wow. I had many near fatal things happen to my cupcakes. First, when I was making frosting in my lovely stand mixer, the screw that holds the attachment-hole-cover-thing got loose and the cover-thing fell into the frosting. Whoops. Then, after I had wrapped the cupcakes in plastic, I dropped them (at which point, I yelled in frustration- at midnight). Only a few suffered cosmetic injury. Then, this morning, coming into work with the cupcakes, I hit the tray with the door I was opening and jammed the tray into my ribs. Ow.

All that aside, these cupcakes smell intoxicating. And I used over a pound of butter yesterday between the cupcakes and the frosting (eighteen ounces, to be exact). That’s good times, right there.

Happy Birthday, Braisin’ Hussy!

Actually, that kind of surprised me. Apparently today is the birthday of the blog. I thought it was tomorrow, since that’s my birthday and this was a birthday present from my dear sister-in-law, Ryan. But yay! I’ve been blogging for a year. Interesting statistics:

Posts: 309
Recipes: 85
Recipes that actually involve braising: 4
Average readers per day: 42
Best month: December 2004
Best week: February 27-March 5, 2005

For a girl who claims to have a baking curse, I sure have done a lot of it. It’s kind of sad that a blog called “Braisin’ Hussy” would have baking recipes outnumber braising recipes by many factors. Maybe I’ve broken the curse. I make damn good cookies now.

I’m not a terribly aggressive blog pimper, but maybe I should become one. I should have more people coming here daily. 42? That’s pretty low. Although I do remember the days when I was excited I broke ten. I’m interesting, damn it! Read my blog!

Feels like forever since I’ve posted. Sorry.

Went to a butcher on Friday to buy rabbit. Dittmer’s in Mountain View. What a cool little place! Oh, their porthouse looked good enough to eat raw. Their frozen cases were filled with really amazing things, too. So many organ meats! I was delighted. I’m going to have to go back there and buy lots of weird things. Er, once I have an idea of what to do with them.

So I made the rabbit curry over at Lydia’s yesterday. I thought it turned out really well. I took a chicken recipe and substituted rabbit meat. It worked. The meat was slightly sweeter than chicken, and the texture was slightly different, but it was really good. However, butchering a rabbit sucks. I got the guy at Dittmer’s to cut it into eight pieces, and then I tried to further deconstruct it. I wanted smallish, boneless pieces of meat, but that didn’t happen. Lydia ate the boneless bits I was able to cut away, and Zack and I each had a hind leg/thigh piece. I will post the recipe probably tomorrow. It was really quite good.

A trip to Lydia’s wouldn’t be complete without some anime, so we watched an episode of Maria-sama ga Miteru, or The Virgin Mary is Watching. First of all, that’s a creepy title. Secondly, that’s a boring anime. I guess it redeems itself with pretty character designs, although the animation wasn’t all that great. Lydia said she might give it a second chance, maybe, and I said there were better ways to spend 23 minutes. Then we watched the hour special of Yakitate!! episodes 11 and 12. I figured out the two “mysteries” of the baking competition very quickly, which delighted me and Lydia. The first was that was that Azuma had chosen margarine, and the second higher fat content butter doesn’t always translate into the best butter to use.

I tried on some of Lydia’s wigs- a long ash blond, a long black, and a short brown. I looked uniformly awful in them. I was very sad. Oh, and I lost an earring. That was sad, too. But happy- Lydia converted my extra-large Derrida t-shirt into something actually wearable. Huzzah!

So Lydia’s having this contest. Make her a bunny, and you’ll win a buttload of cute. Generally, I’m one to refuse cute, but Lydia’s concept of cute is a good one. What can I do with a bunny that Lydia would like… hm, hm, hm… oh, I’ve got it! I’ll make her a rabbit curry! That combines two things she likes.

Are you free on Saturday, Lydia? Or is that too close to when you’re leaving for Hawaii? Otherwise I can just take pictures and tell you how good it was.

Quick post before I go to bed. First day of work was good. I had an artichoke and soup for lunch. Tomorrow we get pizza. D&D was pretty awesome, greater rage kicks so much ass. We all almost died again. We’re so good at that. I retired a d20 because it kept critically missing saves.

Today is Kenny’s birthday. That means it’s a week before I’m officially old. Happy not-mid-twenties, Kenny. I’m totally with you.

Last day o’ freedom. I’m cooking a bunch of stuff, but not anything new. Just getting prepared for future lunches. Tomorrow night is D&D, so I’m not going to be cooking anything. I want to make more sourdough bread, but I still have a lot left from my not-so-good batch. Jon was talking about it with Rob, his coworker who gave him his starter, and they say to move my oven rack closer to the top. Also, to make sure my oven’s getting up to 500. I forgot to put my oven thermometer in when I baked the bread.

I’m making the apple-rutabaga soup again (I had leftover vegetables, and what else was I going to do with them?). This time, I remembered the apple. I’m trying to lighten it just a little. Half a stick of butter, half and half instead of cream, and no maple syrup.

Well, my bread has just finished baking. I screwed up the crust, it’s all pale. But it’s nicely sour with a decent crumb.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Ah, the d10! While you aren’t actually a true regular polyhedron, you are the only die that makes logical sense–metrically speaking. Chances are, others see you as over-analytical or a goody-goody. While that may be true, you also have a gift for patience and tolerance. Growing up you probably had a calculator wristwatch that you never really needed to use (since you were faster on your own), and you probably aced all your classes (except for gym). You use the metric system almost exclusively, but are able to quickly convert in mid-conversation for the sake of your backwards Imperalist friends. You’ve coded in at least two different programming languages, and have created more original gaming systems than you’ll ever admit. You’re generally not a show-off, but you do take pride in being called either a geek or a nerd.

(Well, I agree with the last sentence, but the rest of it? Not so much.)