Category: minutiae

Happy Eleventh Birthday!

I mean, technically. This blog was started March 22, 2004. Here was my first post and first recipe. We’ve since nuked the original site design, but look! Cute! That top image was from an apron my sister-in-law embroidered for me.

I will not lie that I’ve neglected this place for a long, long time. My last post on Braisin’ Hussy 1.0 was in 2010. And then I made a comment on that post directing people to Braisin’ Hussy… let’s call it 1.5, which was hosted here on WordPress. It’s still there, as a monument to my quite pathetic attempt to start blogging again, which lasted all of 24 posts.

But this time will be different! Probably! Braisin’ Hussy 2.0! Woo! Let’s go!

(I’ll do my best.)

Tea Time!

I had my friend Joa over for tea today. Joa used to work with me, but she left to go have an adorable baby. Luna is so cute. She’s 7 months old, crawling all around, pulling herself up (and falling right back down again). We had a delightful time.

I made banana bread and some tea sandwiches. The plums on the outside tree are about a week away from full ripeness. I made a sandwich with some cream cheese and the closest to ripeness plum I could find, sliced thin and sprinkled with sugar. For a more savory sandwich, I buttered some bread and put slices of cheddar cheese with some Branston Pickle.

Look at this hella fancy spread.

Salt: Critical Mass

I think I’ve finally hit the edge of what is too much salt in my snickerdoodles. I made a batch on Saturday. I doubled the salt (1 teaspoon table salt), added a dash of kosher salt to the cinnamon-sugar mix, sprinkled the baking sheet with kosher salt, and finally put a few crystals on top of each sphere. I’m not even sure these are cookies anymore. They’re totally my division when it comes to sweets, but I think they won’t be finding many champions in the general populace. I’ve also added an additional step to my baking of them. When rotating the baking sheets, make sure to whack the bottom of the sheet on the open oven door. This makes them collapse more quickly. Salty and crispy. I like to call them “cookie chips” in the same tone that the ad announcer says “coooooooooookie crisp.”

In other news, man is it a pain to remove infinite scrolling from one’s blog. =/

Well, there goes the week

I went to a A Dance With Dragons release party last night at a local independent bookshop. It was reasonably well-attended, I think there were like 50 people there. Snacks and wine for free, but I did not partake (it was already difficult staying up until midnight). There was a sort-of pub quiz thing, and sadly, while I did not win a copy of the book, I came in second or third and received a little stuffed dragon. Even though I misspelled “Rhaegal.”

I called myself “Team Yay Sansa.” With the broadcast of A Game of Thrones on HBO, I’ve been hearing a ton of Sansa hate, and while she is written specifically to be hard to like in the first book, she’s grown a lot since then. So I thought I’d throw her some love.

I’m heading off to San Diego Comic-Con next week. I am VERY excited. This will be my fifth year attending, and my fourth year participating in the masquerade. I still have a decent amount of work left to do on my costume, and hopefully this book won’t impede that too much!

Sewing FAIL

I must have the world’s pointiest knees. That is, I assume, the only reason I wreck sheets within a year of purchase. Of course, since I am also a packrat, I keep said ruined sheets. Yesterday I took one out to use as scrap fabric to attempt to make a pattern for an upcoming costume. Afterward, I started looking at the sheet and came to the conclusion that it would make good pajama pants. The elastic in one of my pairs has been failing lately, and I like having extra comfy pants.

The last time I made comfy pants, I used a harem pant pattern and simply didn’t add elastic to the ankles. These pants are HUGE. This time I decided to use a slightly more fitted pattern with a two-piece leg. I French seam them because they’ll be going in the wash a lot, and I wanted them to hold up as well as possible. So I cut and press and sew and press and sew and press. Then I put the one leg inside the other so I can sew the crotch. And… fail. I’ve sewn two left legs.

This would not have happened if I had just used a one-piece leg pattern! Argh. So now I’m faced with a couple choices. Do I rip out the seams (all four of them) and resew? Or do I make two right legs and end up with two pairs of comfy pants? I’m leaning towards the second option. However, I don’t have enough material left to make the right legs. What I do have is another sheet I ripped a hole into. I think I may end up making what are basically the world’s dullest Harlequin pants. Cream and taupe.

I’ll take another look at them when I get home and make a decision. I hate when I screw up simple things like this. Frustrating.

Well, since my last post, I started a job, hated a job, and ended a job. June was a busy month. I haven’t really been cooking much, apart from the occasional Rather Boring Pantry Pasta. I made a scrambled egg on toast this morning. That was delicious. I don’t eat enough breakfast. Looking at the front page of the blog, I kind of want to make the Smoked Ham Hocks and Cranberry Beans again. It’s not really a summer dish, though.

I biked 15 miles yesterday. I feel good about that.