Birthday Cards

I had a good birthday. I got some solid gifts.

I got a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting from Two Fat Cats Bakery. My dad noted admiringly, "It tastes like a giant Funny Bone." True. A giant, delicious, handmade Funny Bone. I didn't put it in the fridge like last time, either.

I had some delicious, low-carbonation craft beers with friends at Gritty's. I hate carbonation.

I avoided all the storms while biking.

And best of all, I got some awesome handmade cards. Here's the card my sister made me (don't forget to click images to embiggen them and read the fine print):
My mom made me Ninja Turtles cakes when I was young, but I never got a "totally rad birthday 'za." Probably for the best.

My sister said she deliberately hid the hands and feet here since those are the features that give her the most trouble. I pointed out that that's true of professional comics artists, as well. Either way, she did a nice, subtle job of hiding the deformed extremities. I rate this card Totally Tubular, dude.

For purposes of comparison, here's a card I made for Stasia's birthday last year:

Sorry if that made you spill your coffee or gave you nightmares. Hopefully it's large enough that you can read the text, since that's much better than the image. I like the card in general, but I don't know what I was thinking when I drew that crazy-eyed close-up. I'll have to redo it with my improved mspainting skills, so as not to pervert the minds of innocents.

And here's a simply incredible card Stasia drew by hand and held up to her webcam so I could see it:

Whale done. (If you don't get that joke, try saying it the way Stasia would now: with a British accent. {And if you don't like that joke, kiss my blowhole.})

mspainting: Bat Bird

"Bat" in the title refers both to "batting one's eyelashes" and to "Batman." It seems clever to me, and even if you don't agree, you'll at least see what I mean.

I pestered my sister into drawing me a picture. While she was mspainting (which is a legitimate term now that I've coined it) she remarked, "jeebus it's pretty horrifying already." That's what we like to hear!

Full disclosure: Alena admits she cheated and used a photo reference. I've already said that doesn't bother me. If anything, it makes resulting flaws much more entertaining. Plus, if you're reading my blog, you've got so much Big Bird on the brain that you'll never forget what he looks like again.

Anyway, while drawing anything strictly from memory is an added level of difficulty, the biggest challenge here has to be drawing anything with MS Paint. Using a mouse is great for so many things. Drawing is not one of those things. Hell, even using a touchscreen I struggle to draw basic shapes on the computer.

So with all that in mind, let's see the masterpiece:


Wow, after having expectations set at an all-time low with "horrifying," this is brilliant. Here's the description that accompanied the email: "So I tried to give Big Bird his eyelashes, and ended up making him look like a chick (rimshot). Bonus Snufflepagus!"

Bonus Snuffleupagus indeed.

First of all, well done. Second of most, Big Bird always looks like a chick, with or without the pun intended. Third of some, Big Bird does not actually have eyelashes.

See? If she'd have stuck to drawing from memory, Alena would have had a better excuse for drawing eyelashes, as Stasia did. Also, apparently we would have gotten the super-villain interpretation, as Alena explained, "i originally had big bird with purple and green legs until i looked at the pic. very jokerish." Now you get the hilarious wordplay in the title. What you don't get, sadly, is to see the Joker version. I was disappointed too. Somebody get on that.

(In the meantime, here's a Muppet Wiki [yes, that exists] article about Batman's connection to Sesame Street along with video of one of Batman's amazing animated appearances on the show, doing absolutely nothing to stop the Joker from being run over by a car. Key line: "Holy manhole!" Not in public, Robin. Not in front of the children.)

Oh, and if bonus Snuffleupagus weren't enough, Alena went on to mspaint me something else, which she described as, "My current obsession. Drawn completely from memory (which explains the crappy logo)."

While it sounds revolting, it looks amazing. All of you, get on a caffeine high and mspaint me some more stuff. And next time: Stasia mspaints a muppet without the MS Paint. What's that called again?...Oh yeah, painting!

Ostrich Bird

When I was 14 I wanted nothing more than to own every version of every Beastie Boys album. I had just discovered some international versions in Germany and collected what I could. I sorta trailed off there, though, when I felt I'd gotten most of the stuff worth getting and when other music caught my attention. The Anthology was an excellent cross-section anyway.

Amazingly, 11 years later, the B. Boys are still putting out new stuff, and while I wasn't very impressed with their 2004 effort, To The 5 Boroughs, the newest release, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, is a remarkable return to form. You can stream it for free here (via Soundcloud) and you can stream or download a sweet megamix of the Beastie Boys through the ages by DJ Z-Trip here, which I'm jammin' to while typing this very post. Point being, if the Beasties can keep kickin' it after all these years, the least I can do is keep kickin' it after all these weeks, "it" in my case being Big Bird posts.

Another recruit from Easter, Stasia's aunt Meg requested to draw Big Bird on paper. Unorthodox, I know, but I allowed it: I don't say no to drawings in any format. Etch a sketch of Big Bird on an Etch-A-Sketch and mail me that if you really want. Just because I can't do it doesn't mean you shouldn't.

So here's our first colored-pencil-and-paper submission:


Magnificent. In case you can't read the inscription, the message reads, "This is what Big Bird really looks like." Can't argue with that.

Uhhhhhnless you've actually seen Big Bird. Then you've probably got a solid argument formulated.

The scan quality isn't perfect; some of the vibrancy of the colors were lost in scanslation. But this interpretation of Big Bird, with his gaudy head feathers and flamboyant neon orange- and pink-striped legs and neck, looks like an Ostrich of Paradise. This must be the mutilated extreme of the fabulous Big Bird envisioned by Stasia: Big Bird after years of wearing African neck rings to stretch out his neck in the vain pursuit of an ideal of beauty. (Or tourist dollars.)

Hollywood does terrible things to bird-people.

In Meg's defense, Big Bird wasn't of her childhood, nor did her kids watch much Sesame Street, so taking those things into consideration, this is a fantastic effort. Big Bird is also on the advanced side of Sesame Street characters you could draw from memory. Cookie Monster, my favorite, is probably beginner, since he's mostly just a blue blob with googly eyes and a gaping, cookie-devouring, black-hole of a maw. Snuffleupagus would be be intermediate to draw and advanced to spell (yeah, Google Suggest corrected it for me -- and that's Mr. Snuffleupagus to you).

So go ahead and try your hand at a drawing or painting or whatever, whether you're looking at it currently or you've only heard of it in passing and never actually seen one in real life. Hey, maybe you can find a field of blooming dandelions and strategically kick some of the yellow heads off to carve out a Big Bird shape. Now that's a picture I want to see (or a field I want to stumble upon while hiking). To inspire you, here's a poem I wrote in creative writing class in high school, after doing some tongues-on research by licking the head of a dandelion:

Dandelions
Ain't so dandy;
They don't taste at
All like candy.

I Dreamed I Was Eating a Giant Marshmallow...

...and when I woke up, I made Stasia this helpful guide, Dream Symbols 4 Dummies (Part 1):


I assume she cited me properly when she referenced my guide in her grad school essay. With my someday-complete 7-volume work by your side (7 is a powerful number because it ate 9 in this dream I had), you, too, will be destined for greatness as a drama- and/or movement-therapist with an emphasis on dream deliciousness. Also, you will no longer find yourself devouring inedible objects in non-dream world, or "the real world" (as some call it, though is something really real if it's inedible? Yes - check out volume 3 for the exciting proof!). This will greatly ease your stomach pains and subsequently your nightmares. Order now!

Go ahead and draw me your own dream symbol interpretations if you've got those kinds of things. Oh, and I'll definitely post a new Big Bird picture soon, promise. But send me more drawings, even in dream world if you'd like. Also by real world email, just in case. I tend to eat things in dream world.

My Lost Examiner Article

As a follow-up to yesterday's rant about examiner.com, here's the infamous (in my own mind), never-posted second piece I wrote for the site. Was it unpublishable? You be the judge. Or the jury. Maybe I should call in some surprise witnesses to influence your decision, each more surprising than the last. Bring 'em in, boys!

Chocolate ice cream, peanut butter, and bourbon: a novel milkshake

In London, there's a chain of American-style diners called, appropriately, The Diner. The food is decent when you've got a craving for fare like hamburgers and mac and cheese or even a bottle of Sam Adams Boston Lager. Most importantly, though, The Diner serves "hard shakes," or alcoholic milkshakes, a market woefully untapped in America.

The best of the bunch is one made with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, and Four Roses bourbon and called "The Colonel Parker," named after Elvis Presley's manager. (Was the Colonel fond of Four Roses? Was this a signature drink of his? I don't quite understand the reference, so please, enlighten me if possible.) Here’s a chocolaty homage to The Diner’s delightful drink, which should easily serve two.
Ingredients:

1-3 cups of chocolate ice cream
½-1 cup of peanut butter
¼-½ cup of milk
3-6 ounces (or 2-4 shot glasses) of bourbon
Optional: hot fudge (homemade or store-bought)

This is a simple and decadent treat to blend up at home. Combine the ingredients in any order in the blender (the superb Euro-Pro Ninja Master was used here) and pulse in 5 second intervals until there are no lumps. The amounts listed are a very rough guideline, so sample the shake as you’re making it and adjust proportions based on desired strength. For example, if you taste your shake and find the peanut butter is being drowned out, simply add another spoonful of peanut butter and blend again.

For this recipe I grabbed what was in the kitchen, but substitutions are easy and encouraged. I used a mix of the local Smiling Hill Farm’s Dark Chocolate ice cream, acquired at the ever-enticing Rosemont Munjoy Hill in Portland, and Stone Ridge Creamery’s Chocolate Fudge ice cream. The peanut butter was standard Jif. Organic might work, though the consistency and taste are different enough that there's no guarantee.

The hot fudge was homemade but any, or none, will do. The milk was fat free, but a drink like this practically begs for a higher fat content. As for choosing a bourbon, don't worry about getting fancy here. Unless you refuse to touch cheap bourbon, use something low-end for this recipe and save your top shelf liquor for a glass with a couple of ice cubes.

This is an excellent dessert with two caveats. First, the consistency was a little thin even with all the peanut butter, so suggestions for thickening homemade milk shakes without sacrificing flavor are very welcome. Second, generally speaking chocolate is superior to vanilla. In this case, however, an exception could certainly be made. Vanilla ice cream is milder, allowing the other ingredients in this shake to really shine, while chocolate was nearly overpowering. If, unlike me, you have vanilla ice cream, try the recipe with that (leave out the hot fudge if you do, naturally). Bottoms up!

My Brief Stint as an Examiner

For those of you who show up expecting a Big Bird fix, I apologize for the interruption, but this isn't strictly a Big Bird blog (yet), so settle down. When I get another picture in my email or when I figure out how my parents' scanner works so I can scan the latest (hand-drawn) picture, regular muppet service will resume. In the meantime, either read this regrettably long, semi-serious rant or get to work drawing me pictures. Can you do any less?

Begin rant.

Recently I started writing for examiner.com, an employer that is constantly bombarding job sites like monster.com. They're always looking for both national and local writers covering topics as broad as "Young Adult Pop Culture" and as specific as "The Beatles" -- though my dad might argue that "The Beatles" is just as broad a topic, so let's say there are topics as specific as..."Handbags." (Seriously. Who are these people?)

I didn't know if I was enough of an expert in any subject to qualify, but I finally bit when I saw a call for a local "Food and Drink" examiner. I figured, Hey, I eat food and drink drinks. I also figured, Hey, I'm already cooking and blogging about cooking pretty regularly. I went on to figure, Hey, the Portland area's not a bad one for covering local food and drink. Finally, I figured, Hey, if I could continue doing what I was doing but get some slight professional cred along with some slight monetary compensation, so much the better.

I'm good with figures.

I was kind of excited, and for my first official article I fleshed out my application's sample piece about LeRoux Kitchen's Baker's Thursday event. I saved it for the editorial team to review it, which is allegedly what they do with each article before it goes live. My article passed muster, it went live, and I was officially a published Examiner. I posted a link to my piece on LeRoux's Facebook page so they could see the positive review. Slight professional cred attained! Cool.

Examiner.com wants you to write at least two or three pieces a week, so a few days later I put together a little recipe for a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bourbon Milkshake. Stasia and I had recently made it, it was good and simple, and I even had a couple pictures I could run with the article. I saved it for the editorial team to review it. I waited.

And I never heard back.

If that were the only problem, I would have made an effort. It would probably be simple enough to contact someone at examiner.com, figure out what went wrong, sort it out, maybe alter or scrap the article if for some reason it didn't follow their rules or they didn't like it. But I had already been feeling uneasy about examiner.com. Here are the other major problems I have with that make me prefer to let the matter drop rather than pursue a working relationship with the site:

Examiner.com purports to pay based on factors such as page views, session length, and so on. That's not uncommon these days; in fact, it's very similar to Google Adsense's model, as far as I know. Here's the rub: nowhere will they tell you the formula for payment. Not even when you're "hired" and get your whole introductory spiel, which is mostly a few editorial rules and tips on how to navigate the site. So I'm just supposed to trust that I'll get my fair share of whatever advertising dollars they collect?

The only concrete figure given is $50: the amount of money you'll receive for each additional person you refer to examiner.com who gets accepted as a writer for the site. I know there are employers, such as summer camps, that thrive on word of mouth. But this feels less like a summer camp and more like a pyramid scheme. Keep drawing writers to the site, pound the Search Engine Optimization pavement, keep hitting the top of search engine lists, fill the site with obtrusive and aggravating advertising, toss a few cents around here and there, and profit at others' expense (okay, profit has to come at others' expense, but usually "others" are the consumers, not the workers).

These are the glaring issues, and there seems to be a lot more seething just beneath the surface, enough that my gut tells me to get out sooner rather than later. Google "examiner.com scam?" for yourself if you'd really like to know more, including the frighteningly conservative politics of the billionaire owner of Examiner.com, Philip Anschutz. When I didn't hear anything about my second article, it was the final push needed to convince me to sever my ties to examiner.com and stick to personal blogging for now. (Technically I didn't "sever" ties yet, so this is kind of like when I hated my coaches in college and "quit" track by never showing up again my senior year, or when I hated the Pope and "quit" the Catholic Church by never showing up again after being confirmed, Christmas mass notwithstanding. Actually quitting is harder than it sounds.)

My sister's working on her homepage and very generously offered me a sub-site, so maybe I'll take her up on that. I might not know her secret formula for paying me either, but I prefer her frighteningly liberal politics any day.

Wrong Colored Food

First I heard they'd turned blueberries pink. Is this like when they try to make games for girls? Were blueberries not selling well enough with the 12-25 year old female demographic? Will they also utilize the delicate Japanese art of growing perfect apples to imprint the blue pinkberr--er, pink blueberries with Hello, Kitty symbols and further corner the lucrative squealing teen girl market?

Now I hear they've turned garlic black. Garlic finally found its much needed street cred.

Bad jokes aside, I can't wait to try these two food innovations. If it's true that, as described, the pink blueberries are "sweet and flavorful," then they sound just like normal blueberries. But looks matter too, and they'd certainly make for a nice oddity for the backyard.

If it's true that, as described, the fermented black garlic "tastes much sweeter than traditional garlic" AND "doesn't leave you with bad breath," well that's progress we can all agree on. Except for the "sweeter" part because I'm fine with the current taste of garlic and until I taste a sweeter one I'm having a hard time imagining it. Will I put it in ice cream instead of spaghetti sauce? Also, I don't know how the price compares to regular garlic cloves because I don't remember what garlic costs at the store. But I'm guessing the fermenting process plus the increased rarity of black garlic makes it more expensive. My friends are cool, and all, but are they worth it?

All this talk of wrong colored food makes me want some right tasting food (and of course makes me think of the greatest Family Guy joke ever: wrong sounding muppets). Maybe I'll make a peanut butter milkshake tonight. Or a chocolate peanut butter milkshake. Lots of recipes for "chocolate peanut butter milkshakes" call for vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Why not just skip the sauce and use chocolate ice cream to begin with? That's all we have, since vanilla ice cream's not worth keeping around.

Then maybe I can approximate the Colonel Parker milkshake from the UK's chain of American-style diners helpfully named "The Diner." The Colonel Parker is a hard shake, i.e. a shake with hard liquor, not a shake that isn't soft: peanut butter, vanilla ice cream, and Four Roses bourbon, and it is delightful, and will probably be even more delightful with chocolate ice cream and with any other kind of bourbon. I recently got a 1.75 liter bottle of Jim Beam white label for $5 (after rebate...$20 before rebate, which is still good, but not $5 good) from the New Hampshire liquor store, so I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

Cake Fake-Out

Good birthday cake is hard to come by. For my mom's birthday I thought about trying to make one, but I haven't done cake for a long time. I probably would have needed a test run, and it was too short notice by the time I thought of it. On that note, let me know if you need a test cake made. Maybe for a friend whom you don't really like. Or for a dog's birthday. Or a school bake sale. Kids will buy anything with their parents' money.

So instead, my dad and I headed into Portland to check out Two Fat Cats Bakery. It occupies prime real estate, practically sandwiched between the fantastic Italian grocery store Micucci's and the decadent Duckfat restaurant. I had never even noticed Two Fat Cats, set back as it is, but my dad had and was surely a fan.

As we stepped inside, I was smitten: you go down a few steps and straight into a kitchen, basically. This main area is cozy, not too big but open so you can see all that's going on: cakes and cupcakes being frosted, fruit being peeled for pies, many wonderful aspects of baking that might normally be hidden away. I'm a fan of these set-ups where you can observe and admire the process behind the delicious product.

The employees were terribly friendly and obviously enjoying their work. One even humored me with a laugh and a "That's what we aim for!" when I suggested that a cake looked "good enough to eat," which I'm sure she had never heard before. Don't take me out in public.

We took home an 8" chocolate cake with chocolate frosting -- or should I say chocolate frosting with chocolate cake? Seriously, here is a bakery that understands when I ask for a "cake" it's only because polite society considers it rude when I inject frosting directly into my veins. "Cake" is about pushing the laws of structural engineering to their limits in order to find the largest possible ratio of frosting to non-frosting-material. The cake is a lie: frosting is the truth.

That's why frosting is so important. You need thick, rich, gooey buttercream frosting, and lots of it. And this cake has frosting: I promise you there's more frosting than cake involved here. Here's where it all started to go wrong, though: for some reason I thought that, as with most foods, cakes needed to be protected from the detrimental effects of heat. I forgot that cakes are impervious to harm, protected as they are by thick frosting shields (and thick plastic cake covers, just to keep stray cat fur off).

I admit it: I put the cake in the fridge (for its own good, I told it). HUGE mistake.

Never put the cake in the fridge! Even hours after we took it out of the fridge, the frosting was still too hard. You do not want your frosting hardening unless you're making some kind of Ganache or maybe a scale model of Mount Everest. So when I had a piece of cake last night, though the taste was amazing, the texture was off. It was just too hard and slightly waxy. I couldn't understand how it had gone so wrong.

Thankfully the cake is also big enough that my mom was able to rescue it. She left the cake out on the counter overnight (covered, of course...don't need any stray cat fut or deep cat paw prints in it, despite the bakery's name). What a difference. Today the cake was perfect. The frosting had warmed to its optimal temperature and softened to its ideal consistency. Frosting delivery system is a go!

I only wish the Two Fat Cats' website had a picture of their logo, because it is worth seeing. I promise I'll start taking pictures again soon. Until then you'd better head to Two Fat Cats yourself and come by some good birthday cake. Otherwise you're gonna end up with a Callaghan test cake, which belongs in an ACME catalog.

Slainte

Happy belated St. Paddy's Day! I didn't fulfill the drunken part of the stereotype, though my dad busted out his Bushmills 21 Year Old whiskey and we each had a taste of that. It's incredible stuff, to be sure. It comes in what's basically a silk-lined, wooden coffin, though, so calling it the water of life seems somehow contradictory. It's been laid back to rest in the liquor cabinet until the next big occasion -- my dad's birthday, maybe?

Naturally, we made a proper Irish dinner. My mom and I made corned beef, carrots, and potatoes in the slow cooker, cabbage in a pot with some of the corned beef juice (why don't they sell that in with the orange juice, I ask you), and Irish soda bread.

I had never made corned beef and she had never done it in a slow cooker, so we used sort of a combination of a few recipes, including the one at A Year of Slow Cooking. We used a bottle of Sam Adams Boston Lager plus a bit of water for the liquid. I liked the flavor it gave; my mom thought it was too strong and probably wouldn't do the beef in the slow cooker again. I was pleased with the results and will be eating leftovers soon.

My mom has a recipe she usually uses for Irish soda bread but Alena sent us the link to the one she tried this year, saying it was worth trying, so we went with that. Someone in the comments suggested "traditional" Irish soda bread doesn't have such niceties as sugar in it, which makes this kind of modern loaf more of an Irish soda cake, but admitted the Irish probably would have used sugar if they could have afforded it. So we'll forgive ourselves the breach with tradition.

It's a good thing my mom was supervising or else I definitely would have over-mixed and over-kneaded the dough. I need more practice with bread-making; the fact that it's possible to get overzealous and ruin the dough makes it more advanced than my usual fare. This stuff is pretty simple to whip up and you don't have to spread the process out over days to let it rise or anything, but the dough definitely ends up sticky and tricky to handle. Because of this, we ignored the suggestion of the recipe to form a ball and put it on a baking sheet; instead we put the dough in a shallow cake pan the way my mom normally does, so it automatically took that shape. We also drizzled some melted butter and sugar on top to make it extra crispalicious.

It came out great. I haven't had soda bread for years so I can't say how it compares, but I've eaten it every day since we made it: sometimes with butter, sometimes with honey, and today without anything because even like that it's tasty.

No cooking or leftovers today, though: it's my mom's birthday, so we're going out to Paciarino in Portland for a nice Italian dinner. Happy birthday, ma! Here's the card I made -- eat your heart out, Hallmark.

Fabian and Hojo will learn to get along eventually. For love.

Tennessee Truffle Shuffle

The other night, when making those delicious Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, I wanted to make sure I had something like the "rolled oats" that the recipe called for. I knew we had "thick & rough milled" oats and whatever Quaker Oats are...but were they rolled enough? Google, what are rolled oats?

Enter foodsubs.com, aka The Cook's Thesaurus!

This site is so useful. Some parts are admittedly easier to parse than others. If I try to consider individual types of oats and suss out their differences, the letters on the page start to swim and my brain atrophies. But from that mess of swimming letters and brain-mush and pictures of oats that look exactly the same, so much the same, I'd say the point is use whatever oats you have for whatever you're doing because what can it matter in a world where they canceled Firefly but they're still looking for ways to keep Two and a Half Men on life support, what can anything matter!

So I just went with Quaker Oats. It was fine, because any oats are fine. Let's leave it at that.

Check out the green onions & leeks section, though, and you can find out that green onions are scallions are shallots (in Australia!) are spring onions (Fruehlingszwiebeln in Germany!) are Chinese onions (in China?) are stone leeks are cibols! And none of these is a leek! (Don't be fooled by the stone leek, it's a notorious fraud.) And there's even something called a Tennessee truffle, aka a ramp. (Sometimes also masquerading as a wild leek -- were you fooled?) Humble origins, foodie prices. Crazy!

Plus, you can see freaky pictures, like a puddle of mustard oil, which can be found terrorizing internet goers at the oils & cooking sprays section! It haunts my dreams. And Indian markets, apparently.

What are you waiting for? The Cook's Thesaurus: learn to make your food sound exotic even if it's the same old crap.

Pesto Change-o!

I hadn't even realized, but the previous post was my 100th. Does that qualify me as "prolific"? If I had known I was reaching such a milestone, I probably would have drawn a crazy monkey picture to celebrate, because that's really my bread-and-butter. I should get my dad to guest-blog to explain the gorilla-comics phenomenon in more detail, but for now suffice it to say I'm like DC Comics: I find my product makes a bigger splash when it's got a monkey attached.

...

Hello again; are you done learning about the "Gorilla Age of Comics" and enjoying each and every brilliant Perry Bible Fellowship comic? No? Take your time, I'll just be here drawing monkey-fueled disasters (I bet they're behind that situation in Japan).

Okay, enough of that. Assemble!

As suggested by the punny title, I came here to talk about pesto. The green stuff, made from basil, is great; the red stuff, with sun-dried tomatoes added to the mix and sometimes called "pesto rosso," is even better. I'm pretty new to the pesto scene. I've never made it myself since, in the mere couple of years I've really been aware of pesto, I've never had a food processor nor a surplus of fresh basil (I'm still waiting for the invitation to Casa de Drew Lafiandra to try their homemade pesto).

So, not surprisingly, I've still got a lot to learn about the delicious, herby stuff. It has come to my attention that pesto can be more than just "basil, with or without sun-dried tomatoes" An article at rodale.com has the scoop:

"At its most traditional, Italian pesto is made from fresh basil leaves, olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and raw pine nuts, all of which are ground to a smooth paste in a mortar and pestle (in fact, the word "pesto" comes from the verb 'pestare,' which means 'to crush,' as with a pestle). But with modern preparation methods (food processor!) and a little creativity, you can make pesto from just about any herb or green veggie (alone or in combinations), along with oil, some sort of nut (raw or roasted), some sort of cheese, and garlic or some other seasoning."

So many pestos (pestoes?). One of the best reasons for making it is so extra herbs/greens you have don't go bad on you, which can happen quickly. Pesto keeps well, especially with all that delicious, preserving oil, and the article suggests you "freeze it in an ice cube tray and pop the frozen cubes into an airtight container. Drop a cube or two into soup for a flavor lift, or thaw and toss with hot pasta for a quick meal."

I don't use ice cubes unless I'm drinking whiskey -- even then I only need two rocks -- so chalk this up as a second reason for me to have an ice cube tray in the freezer (in my theoretical future-freezer). I just need to make sure I don't confuse the ice cubes. I'll try a lot of things, but pesto-whiskey isn't on the list...yet.

Anybody ever tried other kinds of pesto, either bought or homemade?

Slugging and Baking

As a quick follow-up to my previous post, my mom is pretty sure that my uncle used to "slug" to work, which makes sense since he works for the government and lives just outside of DC. Plus, he's kind of a hippie once you get past that faux-conservative exterior, so I bet he was happy to undermine the auto industry's profits. My mom thinks she and my dad might have slugged with him one day to get into the city. I'd think that kind of thing would be hard to forget: standing quietly in line, getting in a random strangers car when called like some sort of prostitute, riding silently into the city for free? Guess I'll have to ask my uncle and see if he's got more to tell me about it.

And as a quick follow-up to a Facebook post from last night, the Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Brown Eyed Baker site were awesome. Stasia thinks raisins are wrinkly, healthy chocolate chips, but I reject that notion and demand actual chocolate in my cookies. Peanut butter always helps, too, both in flavor and shape. Not that I care much about the shape of cookies since all I really want is to under-cook them for maximum softness and gooeyness, but it can be satisfying (and easier to pick them up) when they don't end up pancake-flat every time. Handy tip. Otherwise just do what Stasia and I sometimes do: eat your fresh cookies with a spoon. Then you can sell it as "breakfast" easier. Put away the Cookie Crisp.

I didn't get any pics, but there's more dough in the fridge so maybe I will next time the cookies come out of the oven. We were going to try the technique described on the site for giving an extra-wrinkly, crispy (is wrinkly+crispy where "crinkly" comes from?) texture to the top of the cookies

To shape, basically roll the dough into ball, then pull it apart in half (so the jagged edges are facing each other), then turn those halves up (so the jagged edges are now facing up), then press them together (side by side) to make them round again, with the jagged edges on top. Hope that explanation helps!

but we didn't end up making the balls of dough as big as suggested in the recipe (believe me, I tried to make them huge but I was overruled as usual), so it was hard to pull off the proper method. Still, delicious, and I will be trying other recipes from the site for SURE. These Italian Pigu sound delicious, simple enough for me, and hilarious, which is my ideal foodstuff. Heh: Pigu.

Edit, March 20, 2011:

The dough dries out very quickly when kept in the fridge. The cookies still turned out well the second time around, but I wouldn't recommend saving the dough for more than a night, maybe two.

A Little Taste Of Home

Robert and I went to a place called American Diner for dinner tonight. Robert is a friend from the frisbee team -- he started playing about the same time I did, and he's good people. He had recommended this diner a while back and, being a real American (hero, GI Joe is theeeeere....if you didn't sing along with that, you're not a child of the '80s.), I figured I should investigate. We finally made it this evening, and the good news is, it's halfway decent.

We sat outside because the weather was so nice, but before leaving I glanced inside. It's got the right touches from what I could see: the proper shiny, silver lining on everything, the distinctive worn, red pleather (or whatever it's made of) booths, and even a jukebox. You'd feel comfortable ordering a malt in there. And they menu hits the proper highs: chicken wings, spare ribs, and a varied selection of specialty burgers, including a Double Header and a Triple Header if you really covet that American waistline. Oh, and lest I forget, they have different All You Can Eat specials throughout the week, for prices that are basically the same as the single servings. They've been doing their homework, yes indeed.

My choice was clear (since there were no All You Can Eat specials on Sundays): the BBQ Burger, with their special home made BBQ sauce. I'm constantly lamenting the lack of proper (or, uh, any) BBQ sauce in Germany, so when I see it I have to try it. Good news: this stuff was passable (I positively gush with praise, don't I? I should work on that). The burger and sauce were quite good, especially since it's been so long since I've had the real stuff. The burgers even come with a little American flag on a toothpick stuck in them. How's that for a finishing touch?

The fries were tasty, too, but I'm not a huge fry guy and there were too many, so Robert finished off mine once he cleaned his plate. As if that wasn't enough to make me doubt my citizenship, there was more. The burgers are pretty big already, but in fact the average-sized couple at the table next to us really pulled out the stops. The guy polished off a Triple Header and even his girlfriend made short work of a Double Header, including all of the fries for both of them. I expected them to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and then give me a wedgie. Sorry, folks: I let you down.

Other than forcing me to question my American manhood, it was a fun time. The place isn't quite Fuddruckers, but it's one of the best approximations I've seen over here.

Oh, and the demonstration last Wednesday went well, so in case anybody was still wondering, I survived. There was a great turnout, especially for such short notice, and the weather cooperated -- my face even got a tiny bit sunburned. I was one of 20 people involved who had to hold back on the "protesting" aspect and just make sure nothing got out of hand, since this was an organized protest. I had a bright orange vest along with the swell of self-righteousness that a small amount of undeserved power brings.

I'm not sure what will happen with this school situation, but I'll keep ya posted if anything interesting happens.

Mmm...Bucket Of Lard

Alright, gotta take this slowly, ease back into the whole blog thing with small yet delicious nuggets of information. After more than four months off, I obviously need to post something on here. I probably got too ambitious promising to talk in detail about a week-long trip, so I'll try to get back to some more narrowly focused topics so I don't go crazy.

So here's something from Poland. I went with Ben, Kathryn, and Michaela from Thursday, Apr. 10 to Sunday, Apr. 13. We took a train from Berlin to Warsaw, which took about six hours, stayed there for a night and the next day we took a train to Krakow at around 8 PM. It turned out to be a great trip, beautiful cities that really rebounded after the war -- Warsaw in particular, since it was about 96% destroyed, whereas I think Krakow got off easier -- interesting sights, and many lovely people, both in personality and appearance. This was surprising to us and probably is to everyone else who hasn't been, since the stereotypes of destruction, depression, and terrible fashion haunt many of these eastern European countries. It also helped that the weather was gorgeous, much nicer than in Germany during the same period of time.

While we were surprised to see so many really attractive people, we became even more surprised as we ate at more restaurants. Why? Because when every meal includes lard, you expect to see some lardbutts running -- or lumbering -- along. There were no lardbutts, people. Despite finding lard sprinkled liberally on everything we ate, despite eating a leg of pork in an aspic mold (link goes to a definition), despite being served as a starter some slices of bread with a BUCKET of LARD as a spread (link goes to Kathryn's blog post with pictures of Poland, including Polish food if you scroll down), these Poles were not fat. How do they do it?

Maybe they don't sleep much...that's a good way to lose weight, right? While I was in Poland, I had multiple nightmares each night. I rarely dream anymore, whether good or bad, but on at least two nights I had nightmares which I was able to clearly remember. Since I wasn't doing anything else out of the ordinary, I have to assume that what was fueling my night terrors was the addition of large quantities of pure animal fat to my diet. I'm pretty sure the aspic, which was the first night in Warsaw, started this. If you've never had aspic, the definition I linked to won't do it justice. The horror of forcing this thing down my gullet...Ben tried a bite and refused to chew and swallow it, preferring to spit it in a napkin. I couldn't manage all of it, but half was clearly enough to damage my mind. And while the bucket of lard-spread turned out not to taste like anything as far as we could tell, it definitely was one of the least appetizing buckets I've ever seen.

Don't get me wrong -- most of the food we ate was quite delicious, especially pierogies, and I suppose Polish people don't eat this traditional stuff every meal the way we did. Definitely keep an open mind and try stuff, especially since the most hilarious reactions came from people realizing they needed to get the lard out of their mouths NOW. But don't overdo it unless you packed a night light and a teddy bear.