Category: minutiae

Woo! New year. My resolution is to blog more this year than last year, which won’t be very hard, considering I have an extra three and a half months. I made stock today, as well as a couple of loaves of white bread. Yes, there are more interesting breads out there, but I’m new to that area of baking and decided to start out simple. They are currently baking. I am very excited to try them- I hope they don’t suck.

I’ve been spending my free time over at Jon’s so I can play video games. Katamari Damacy, more accurately. I had been planning to try and beat Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal in a week, but I put in the Damacy disk and it’s just stayed there. What a hellishly fun game. It’s not hard to beat, but it’s got excellent replay value, at least in my opinion. My moon’s 845 meters in diameter (The King was extremely happy), and I suck at the constellations where you have to pick up the biggest one of anything (Ursa Major and Taurus). So fun! I am really looking forward to seeing Lydia’s costume for the Prince of the Cosmos.

Oh! I feel it! I feel the cosmos! The timer has gone off, and I need to go take my bread out of the oven.

Well, I’ve tried roasting a bunch of vegetables this week, and cauliflower wins as the one I’d be most likely to eat on a regular basis. Broccoli was good, but not as good as cauliflower, and fennel was… well, I didn’t like it. I was just trying the vegetables plain- maybe fennel would taste better with something more than olive oil, salt, and pepper. Anyway, I know I don’t have any recipes on the front page, and I’m sorry. I’ll try and copy some of the Mothra Stewart ones I made (the ones that were at least mildly successful) sometime this week. The icebox crackers, probably, or the yogurt-tahini dip, which no one but me seemed to like.

Happy Christmas afterglow. I am so tired of eating. We tend to go a bit overboard with the food at the holidays- make too much, eat too much. My appetite has been temporarily exhausted.

After we had finished opening gifts, Jon said, “You know, some people get married.” I got a lovely Kitchenaid stand mixer and a Cuisinart food processor (an epicurean Pentium). And a pizza stone! I can’t wait to use them. However, that will have to wait for tomorrow, for today I am taking people to the airport, doing laundry at Jon’s, and playing video games.

One of my favorite clues this year was (I hope I’m remembering this right) “The sounds that started World War I.” I guessed Franz Ferdinand, and I was right, but that was only half of it. It was The Killers of Franz Ferdinand. So I got two CDs. I love clues. Even though I’m usually way dumb at them.

It’s raining. I’m very glad. My nose and hands were getting far too dry. Some moisture in the air is a good thing.

Taking a break from cooking. Why is our Christmas Eve the best Christmas Eve? Because it’s filled with hors d’oeuvres! It’s a family tradition of ours to make and eat a bunch of hors d’oeuvres for Christmas Eve dinner. I just made the Chicken Liver Mousse. Mmmmm. Also up are the Basil Leaves with Goat Cheese, the yogurt-tahini dip I made for Gingerbreadfest that I’m not sure anyone liked but me, and the icebox crackers that I was supposed to make for Gingerbread but I was too tired and annoyed with the failure of the toasted pepita dip to do so. We’ve also got a bunch of cheese and crackers and crostinis and vegetables and such. Yay!

In case you’re wondering, our other Christmas traditions are: bagels and lox for breakfast Christmas morning, lasagna for dinner, and clues on gifts- the recipient has to work out what’s inside the box before they can open it. It stretches gift time out a lot. I suck at writing and guessing clues, so I’ve been trying some different tacks- charades was kind of a failure last year. I’m thinking about doing a Pictionary-like thing this year for my clues.

I went to go see The House of Flying Daggers last night with Jer, after dinner with Jon and Ryan and her family. What a goofy movie. And wow, is Romantic Lead Guy beautiful. Just… yeah. That movie brought the pretty. I thought Hero was better, personally, in terms of music and cinamatography and pretty-fu (er, to describe the choreographed fighting scenes rather than the actors).

I have been busy every night this week. I’m kind of exhausted. Tomorrow, I’m heading over to my parents’ house, and my mom and I are going to make tons of hors d’oeuvres for dinner. That’s our Christmas Eve tradition. Christmas breakfast is bagels and lox, and Christmas dinner is lasagna, although this year we’re going to have a more traditional dinner over at Jon and Ryan’s with both our families. The lasagna dinner will be on Boxing Day.

Which reminds me, I need to go buy not only things for tomorrow’s dinner, but broccoli, Velveeta, and Ritz crackers for the Death By Broccoli, and green beans, mushrooms, and almonds for… well, green beans. Damn it, and the lasagna makings! Argh, that’s so many stores! Whatever, I’ll buy my produce at Safeway, not Sigona’s. And I thought I was going to have time tonight to clean off the Tivo. Ha! I’ll have to set up the mirror to reflect it into the kitchen while I work. Crap, and my kitchen’s a mess.

Dumb holidays.

Hm. Well, this week has quickly taken a turn for the worse. My last day of work is Thursday. I was looking forward to a vacation next week. Not so much anymore, now that it’s the start of my re-unemployment. Hopefully my temp agency’ll scrounge up something quickly. Although I’d still like to have that week off.

D&D tonight.

So, yesterday was spent cooking. I got a Martha Stewart hors d’oeuvres cookbook recently, and I went through and marked all the things that didn’t seem to unnecessarily fussy. Ryan asked me to bring something salty to today’s 25th Annual Gingerbreadfest. I’ll let you know if any of these things pass muster.

One of them did. Ish. Needed some tweaking. I made a yogurt-tahini sauce last night that was pretty good, but a little too bitter. So I added some honey. I don’t know why not sugar. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I think it was. I’m not going to bring it to the fest- there’s not really enough for… I don’t even know what we’d do with it. I’m planning on dipping popcorn in it.

I made a bunch of icebox crackers- Parmesan and rosemary, cheddar and cornmeal, Gruyere and thyme. They will have been in the fridge for 16 hours when I make them, not the recommended 24. Also, I didn’t have a food processor, so I just made them by hand, which may result in weird textures or not-combined-well-itude. Whatever.

Oh man, I made frico, and what a MESS! I first tried it the Alton Brown way, in the oven. Didn’t work. Stuck like mad to the parchment. So I made them in my lovely, lovely crepe pan, which worked, kind of. These are not pretty at all. Hopefully they’ll still be crunchy by the time the party starts.

Let’s see, what else? Crunchy, spiced garbanzo beans. Canned beans, dried in the microwave with a bunch o’ spices on them. Tasty, yes. Crunchy, not really. I probably won’t be bringing these. Or I’ll keep them in the car.

Recipes to make this morning include something involving bacon, possibly a mixed nuts thing, and a dip. I should probably get over there.

I think I prefer this description of dragons better than the one I linked to yesterday. Here’s red dragons, specifically.

I finally wrote up the last curry recipe! Channa Matar. I also moved up the Spiced Onion Puree, since this is the recipe you use it in.

Stephanie of The Grub Report, better known (at least to TWoPpers) as Keckler, has a new post on her site about the wonders of cauliflower. I was skeptical- cauliflower’s not my vegetable of choice. I tried it. Wow, was it good.