Birthday Girl

She's long since asleep and onto her second day of 23rdhood, but here it's technically still her birthday, and here, the US, is where she was born, so happy birthday again, Stasia. Naturally she's already seen these, since they were made for her, but for posterity and all that, a couple small tokens of my affection. Any images I post can be clicked to enlarge them -- I keep having to remind my mom of that, so maybe others don't know it, either.



You didn't think she was getting through a birthday without a Muppet picture, did you? Yes, I looked at reference photos for this. A girl's birthday was at stake!

The Count is sometimes pink and sometimes purple. Check google images if you don't believe me. That's why I hedged my bets and colored him pink and wrote in purple. Also, did you know he had a beard? I'm not sure I ever knew that. It blends in with his suit. And it's impossible to make Oscar the Grouch look angry without drawing eyes -- without them, his naturally angry uni-brow becomes an Asian happiness emoticon (^^). I was trying to make him happy, not ecstatic. Impossible. (Please prove me wrong if you can.)

Scho-Ka-Kola

I don't eat (use? chew? what's the proper verb here?) mints much these days, but a couple months ago I stumbled across a list that almost made me reconsider. (No, it wasn't a list of ways my breath could be improved. I use the internet so I don't have to have good breath. Or leave my parents' basement. Okay, this joke is too real to be funny anymore. Abort. Abort!)

Here's the list that made me want to pick up a bad mint habit: 22 Manly Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin. If you can browse that list and not have a Dwight Schrute Pavlovian response, you, sir or madam, mystify me. But really, I didn't even want the mints; just the packaging. I admired the ingenuity and frugality on display and buying a tin of mints solely for one of these projects would have been counter-intuitive. Thankfully, pretty much any little tin will do for most of these, so I didn't have to buy a tin of Altoids and enjoy their curiously strong minty freshness; henceforth, Altoids will be stricken from the record.

I wished to assert my own manliness through the art of mint-tin re-purposing. Naturally, I alighted on the least manly way to reuse a tin, aka the least labor-intensive and most manageable way for ME to reuse a tin. I gave the finished product to Stasia as a gift, however, in an attempt to put the "man" back in "manageable."

Anyway, I already spilled the beans last time so you know roughly where this is going: I re-purposed a tin as a pocket watercolor kit. I didn't re-purpose just any tin, though:


My parents bought this extra-caffeinated chocolate in Germany as a souvenir last time they were over there. The name Scho-Ka-Kola is a mix of the words "Schokolade" (chocolate) and "Kola" (cola, i.e. any Coke or Pepsi-style soda) and plays on "Coca-Cola." My parents love both chocolate and Coke, but they don't drink coffee or drive 18-wheelers through the night, so despite "The Energy Chocolate's" claims that it "creates power" and "makes you alert," the tin remained firmly sealed through its "best before" date of March 4, 2011. She chucked the chocolate but thankfully my mom held onto the beautifully bizarre tin long enough for me to spot and claim it. Now it's filled with better things:

It turns out real watercolors are expensive and the kinds of people who need a pocket kit of them probably already have the materials required for miniaturizing them as suggested in the instructions, including crafting separate paint enclosures out of brass strips or clay. In my case, as I also mentioned last time, my mom finally helped me find a cheap ($2) solution at Michael's. The paints are already in their own containers, I just pulled the plastic connectors apart. Then I sawed (well, scissored) a brush in half and included the non-bristled end as a stirrer. The lid doubles as a mixing surface. Technically, you could even use one of the tin halves as a water cup.

And the best part? With this fashionable little kit, Stasia actually paints pretty pictures - Sam Eagle and a gnarled tree, to date.

How cool is that?

realpainting: Sam Eagle

Two posts ago I promised that "next time" you'd see Stasia's second contribution to the world of Muppet fan art, then I made myself a liar by posting my own drawing which I had given my mom for Mother's Day. So really, in so many ways, my mother made me a liar. It's good to get that off my chest.

Only one post later than planned, here's Stasia's rendition of Sam Eagle, sketched with pencil, outlined in marker, and then painted with actual paint and actual paintbrushes on actual paper. Who even has the time these days?


See, Big Bird's cool and all, but S. Eagle is one ice cold bird. He will PECK you, man. This wasn't done from memory, but it was done awesomely. Check out the shading on his face! That was done with $1 "watercolor" paints and $1 paintbrushes I picked up from Michael's Stores. And Stasia rocked 'em.

Next time I'll show you some behind-the-scenes pictures of the artist herself at work on this meisterwerk, including her secret weapon: the portable watercolor kit I put together for her, full of $1 paints and $1 paintbrushes. Don't you wish I were your sugar daddy?

Happy Muppet's Mother's Day

Sorry, Cookie Monster ate your rose.

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.

Battle Bird

Happy belated Easter. I spent mine with Stasia and lots of her mom's side of the family in NYC. In addition to involving delicious food and good company, it was a productive trip: I recruited at least one Big Bird artist, and perhaps more still to come.

Stasia's cousin Rachel Denny, awesome person and artist du jour, has this to say about her effort, which was done on her iPad: "I just spent about a half an hour trying to draw big bird. It looks like an oversized chick drawn by a first grader...." As mentioned recently, this is as good a season as any for chicks, so check it out:


That rocks.

Rachel sent this follow-up comment: "Looking at it again I realize that I only gave cookie monster one eye... strange...." Except it's not strange once you realize the 'roid rage driving this scene. How else do you explain Big Bird's high-pitched voice, compulsive work-outs, and sudden bulk?

Here's how it went down: Cookie Monster spilled one too many crumbs on Big Bird's well-preened coat and got his eye pecked out. Elmo tried to intervene, which led Big Bird to punch a hole directly through his fuzzy red stomach. Now that tickles.

Is this really Easter-appropriate? Big Bird's legs are practically melting with anger. I suppose if he loses an eye for an eye, Old Testament God will be satisfied.

And if I get more drawings, I'll be satisfied. At least temporarily.

Bulk Bird

Kyle Doran's twin, Brian Doran, feeling both the ancient spirit of sibling rivalry and the hereditary fondness for the spray paint feature overtaking him, emailed me a drawing from Japan yesterday, truly making my day:

Working both Big Bird and Cookie Monster into the image was pure class. Brian included a description which deserves to be seen as much as his drawing, which is why I'm posting it verbatim:

Alright, I'll bite. No way I'm going to be shown up by my brother.

This little ditty attempts to answer the age-old question of 'why did Cookie Monster' cross the road. It also features a rarely seen profile view of Cookie Monster, showing off his enviable cookie belly. While Cookie Monster does his thing, Big Bird is all business. Gotta bulk up for the show and make up for his high pitch voice.

Yeah, basically I have too much time at work. As a bonus, you can look closely and see when someone was walking behind me, as I tried to alt-tab while leaving the paint can in the same place.

There you have it: no additional commentary needed.

Additional drawings needed.

Tiny Bird

And now, a Big Bird selection from the inimitable Cyber Twan Dambrie with the following disclaimer: "I know it's terrible....but in my defense, I did it on my phone. Enjoy!"


Stasia exclaimed, "It doesn't really look like Big Bird, but it looks like a chick for Easter!" Anthony had no need to be modest: this is adorable and timely, what with Easter Sunday coming up. This creature belongs in a microwave next to an Easter Peep. We'll call this Big Bird's baby picture. At least it's not embarrassing. He could have been splashing around naked in the birdbath.

That's an impressive drawing for the iPhone. Simple and stylish. I'm not sure what app he used. On my iPod Touch I have the app Brushes, which I bought ages ago thinking it'd be sweet to draw on the go. But I hated trying to use such a small screen, scroll around, zoom in and out constantly, etc, so I almost never use it. I can't control the scale of my drawings, so I need a lot of space in case things sprawl wildly.

Also, on my original Big Bird post Stasia had commented about the accuracy of my drawing's "'guitar holding' pose" based on this diagram:


The link she posted to the diagram didn't work, so I wanted to make sure you all saw it. Stasia clarified, "That's not to say that the second arm never moves, but it requires a second puppeteer." Either way, go me. Please note: the Big Bird operator appears to be wearing solid 6 inch platform shoes. Maybe they should just hire a tall guy instead. Hint hint. Although I don't think I could pull off the high-pitched Big Bird voice, which would mean everyone's nightmare: more wrong sounding muppets. Can you imagine how frightened children would be if my voice came out of Big Bird?

I hope I get more Big Bird pictures. Even though Cookie Monster is my favorite. Feel free to draw him, too, if you're looking to truly make my day.

Little Bird

All the way from Armenia, a little birdie flew into my inbox a few days ago:

Kyle Doran, currently spreading peace in the European east and tipping the balance of this feature in favor of guys named Kyle, explains his drawing: "I took your challenge because I felt like the spray paint feature hadn't been featured enough, especially for someone with Big Bird's texture. Not sure why he looks ornery, but enjoy!"

And enjoy I do. This looks like a baby owl dressed up as Big Bird for Halloween. He's just now realizing how awful the paint fumes are, not to mention how long it will take to wash the yellow out of his feathers. (Plus his mom probably warned him of these downsides and he ignored her.) That would explain the orneriness. That and the coal-black eyes pecked out of Frosty the Snowman's melted-puddle corpse at the beginning of spring. Circle of life!

More Big Birds, I say.

Huge Bird

Yesterday, there was Big Bird. Today, there are Big Birds.

Since I sent out a challenge to Facebook daring all comers to try drawing Big Bird in MS Paint, a couple of brave souls have taken up their digital drawing tools and shown me what B.B. looks like in their heads.

Kyle Courcy, who does a comic called Cereal With a Fork for Boston's Weekly Dig and blogs over at this other place, showed me his "oddly morose" version, explaining his technique thusly: "Basically I drew a body around a yellow drumstick."

I don't think there's anything odd about his moroseness. This is the "before" picture: Bird before he stopped caring about the haters, threw on a pair of pink legwarmers and a splash of blue and pink mascara, and truly embraced his fabulous side.

Now here's another "after" image in the style of mine. Stasia took the touchscreen for a test run, insisting she could draw Big Bird from memory. Turns out she was more than half right, but being more talented than I am wasn't quite enough to fill in every blank. Her version is certainly fabulous, so see if you can spot her mistakes:

Anyone else care to contribute? Go ahead and look at pictures while you draw, I don't mind.

Large Bird

My parents have a touchscreen computer. No one uses the touchscreen but me, for when I occasionally draw these pictures. WORTH THE COST (that said, I don't know the cost).

Pie.

On Friday, the King Arthur Flour company, based in Vermont, took its baking demonstration road show to the Portland, ME Holiday Inn by the Bay, which also hosts the fantastic Chili and Chowder Challenge. The King Arthur people do free demos throughout the country with the opportunity to ask questions, and at the competitive price of $0.00 I couldn't pass up an excuse to leave the house in the middle of the day. I even slipped out of my old-man slippers and into my young-man sneakers. Plus I had visions of free samples floating in my head.

At noon they were demonstrating how to make tasty, flaky pie crust and chocolate tart crust. Stasia and I made some pie for Thanksgiving last year so, um, experts? But as the Germans say, "man lernt nie aus," aka "you never stop learning." I never even started learning, so this would be as good a time as any.

The conference room was good-sized and most of the seats were filled, so I'd say maybe 100 people were there. I stood in the back just to prove I could still stand, and I lowered the average visitor age by 20 years, easily. I suppose most youngsters (i.e. the non-retired) are either working or, I dunno, sleeping? at midday on a Friday, so I infiltrated the secret baking circle at great personal risk of embarrassment to bring you the hottest tips in pie-baking.

Our very nice, teachful teacher worked at the front of the room and we followed her movements on a projector screen (German word for projector: "der Beamer," which does in fact come from the verb "beamen," or, "to beam." The Germans are funny like that). We had little recipe/tip pamphlets so we could follow along. I wished I had brought a pen to take more notes but when I got home I jotted down as many tips as I could remember. Those tips will follow.

After the demonstration, during which our teacher made everything seem so simple that I was chomping at the bit to try it myself, just because I'd be a fool not to take advantage of a treat which practically bakes itself when under the manipulation of a trained professional and no one else, they had a raffle. They had bags of flour, boxes of mixes, and sundry nifty gifties to give away. I won a box of Cranberry-Orange scone mix, but I just quietly raised my hand instead of making a happy sound as suggested by the hosts. I thought about saying "happy sound" but I didn't want them to revoke my winning raffle ticket for mocking the system.

Scones are something Stasia and I learned to make from scratch in London (from our Taiwanese-Canadian roommate, C.J., naturally) but hey, free mix. On our way out, they also gave us little rubber scrapers (this sounds lame but makes me very excited to scrape and level and, well, maybe mix a little and that's it) and $10 gift cards (off a purchase of $20 or more, but flour never goes out of style).

So basically I made a tidy profit. And I'm likely to buy King Arthur Flour (again, since I'm sure we have some already) so good marketing ploy, King Arthur Flour. I haven't put my newfound pie knowledge to use yet, but when Stasia gets home tomorrow I promise that will change. Callaghan Test Pie on the horizon! That's all from your intrepid baking correspondent for now, so enjoy the tips I could remember, most of which are probably painfully obvious to those of you who use that mysterious organ in your heads for something other than storing Office Space trivia:

- Use butter, not something like shortening. Specifically cold, cold butter, along with ice cold water. You don't want the butter melting from over-working either. You want butter spots in your dough.

- Don't scoop flour directly with your measuring cup. This compresses the flour, meaning you scoop extra flour, which can really add up in a large recipe. Use a separate scoop to pour flour into your measuring cup, then use a flat surface (such as a handy dandy rubber scraper, boo-yah!) to scrape lightly across the top to level the flour.

- Another way to prevent bad measurements is to weigh your ingredients, which always wins out over just eyeballing if you want better quality. But it requires a kitchen scale and patience, neither of which I have in abundance.

- Here's a bad habit Stasia and I have: using the solids-measuring cups for liquid as well. To get the right amount with these measuring cups that come right to the top, you have to fill them straight to the top perfectly, which is hard to do and you're probably going to spill some before getting it in the bowl. Be sure to use the taller, see-through pitcher-style measuring cups with multiple lines so you can get a better measure and pour. As an example, if you're trying to measure 1 cup of water, use a measuring tool the has lines for 1 cup and 2 cups so you can see when you've reached 1 cup. Like the previous tip, this requires some sort of forethought, willingness to dirty extra dishes, and perhaps even patience, reducing its attractiveness.

- After you wrap your ball(s) of dough in plastic, flatten the ball so it will cool faster and more evenly when you put it in the fridge before rolling it out. You can also put the dough, or the pre-made pie crust, or even the pre-made pie in the freezer and keep it for about 6 months with no discernible loss in quality. If you take a pre-made pie out of the freezer you can put it directly into the oven, just add 20 minutes extra baking time to account for thawing.

- Don't roll your dough back and forth. Go out from the center in different directions, like the rays of the sun. Also, don't roll over the edge of the dough so your pin hits the surface. This can compress it oddly and lead to misshapen, cracked edges.

- Put your pan over above the dough so you can see if the dough is rolled out enough to then hang over the edges of the pan. Once the dough is rolled out properly, fold it in half, then in half again. (At this point, if you're working with the top crust, make four little steam-release cuts in the dough near the point of the triangle so you'll end up with the steam vents near the middle when you unfold the dough.) Place that rounded triangle of dough in the pan with the point of the triangle in the center, then simply unfold your dough to get it safely in the pan.

- If you're making a double-crust pie with a top crust, make sure you roll out and prepare both crusts first. Then set the bottom crust in the pan, dump in the filling, and put the top crust on right after. This allows you to pop the pie into the oven right away, which prevents the bottom crust from absorbing a lot of extra moisture from the filling.

- Use a glass/Pyrex pan for pies so you can actually see the bottom of the pie crust and ensure it's getting baked thoroughly. Also, in a conventional bottom-heated oven, put the pie on the bottom rack (not the floor of the oven but the bottom rack level) for 20 minutes to start then move it to the middle. This helps set the bottom. (If you're using a convection oven, which uses air to heat the oven equally, set the temperature about 25 degrees Fahrenheit lower than you would for a normal oven.)

- If you use frozen fruit for a pie, add up to 3 tablespoons of corn starch to thicken the filling.

- A pre-made but unbaked pie can last in the freezer for up to 6 months. Flour in a sealed container can last up to a year. Whole wheat flour should be frozen since it has the wheat germ and enzymes which can spoil easier.

- There's a white whole wheat flour which can fool whole-wheat -haters into thinking they're getting the normal stuff.

- Trivia: vanilla comes from a type of orchid native to Mexico. The plant has since been successfully grown in other countries, including Madagascar, which now produces the majority of the world's vanilla, called Madagascar-Bourbon vanilla. Bourbon refers to the region in which it's grown. I always thought it was alcoholic vanilla. I still like it, but I definitely like it less now. I'll have to add my own bourbon in the future.

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.

Velocipede

On Thursday the weather got nice. Remember that? It feels like a lifetime ago.

Though I love to bike, filling tires is about as far as my limited bike-care ability goes. So I hauled my bike out of the shed, stomped on the rickety foot pump about 800 times, and finally got the proper PSI of air into my tires. Then I put my slightly less limited bike-knowledge and deductive skills to good use and assessed the chain as "too dry." Considering the bike sat in the shed for over two years, I felt confident in my assessment. Dry chain = bad.

I've seen a chain lubed before and I figured with a combination of spotty memory and BicycleTutor.com I could take that major step and lube my own chain, thereby doubling my practical bike skills. I know where the rags are and I know where the stuff like WD40 is. So far so good! Is WD40 kosher, though? Thankfully I looked it up. Turns out WD40 strips stuff from metal, which means it's great for cleaning off gunk and rust but won't make the chain any less dry when you're through. I'd have to take my search on the road.

Since there are no bike shops in sleepy little South Portland, I went to the hardware store. I found some Tri-Flow, which seemed like a possibility, but I realized if I didn't want to waste my money on the wrong product and risk ruining my chain, I'd better get some actual bike advice from an actual bike shop. These flashes of insight just strike me sometimes; I can't explain them.

Next blind spot in my knowledge: what bike shop to go to. There are about six in Portland but I've only ever been to CycleMania, and I wasn't 100% satisfied with the last tune-up I got there, so I started searching. There wasn't much feedback online to guide me until I spotted a little gem called Portland Velocipede. If the name alone weren't enough of a draw, there were multiple glowing reviews on the google maps site, it was the closest shop on my route, it had an amazing logo, and it focused on retro, solid-steel-on-wheels, European-style city cycles. I tend to ride sporty bikes but you know I appreciate a good European-style cycle, perfect not only for cruising but also for convincing your non-biker friends to go cruising.


I didn't make it to Portland Velocipede on Thursday, though, so my bike ride had to wait.

On Friday, the weather got NICE. Remember that? It feels like a lifetime ago.

As we hit a record high temperature of 67 degrees Fahrenheit, my bike ride could no longer wait, car or no car, lube or no lube. In shorts, t-shirt, and sunglasses I braved the Casco Bay Bridge for my first time ever. What a terrible choice! The wind was unusually strong, enough to give cars some trouble, which meant I was nearly blown off the bridge. While trying to breathe in as little dust as possible in the intense sandstorm, I wished for the first time that my bike were as heavy as some of those European cruisers.

It was worth it, ultimately. I can't say enough good about Gillian and Josh, the owners of Portland Velocipede. They've got a great attitude, a great shop, and great customer service. Josh put some lube on my chain before I even bought anything and after I had talked their ears off for a while. Josh explained all kinds of technical stuff, Gillian told me all about the shop and the wares, Josh measured my chain to make sure it was still in good condition (it is, somehow, despite my utter lack of care), and I had an excellent time hanging out.

I bought some Chainj lube (top notch quality; not the number one in pure lube power but certainly number one in bio-degradable lube power, according to Josh). I left my Chainj on the counter while joking about the change purse in my European-style wallet (I lost my American-style one with everything in it last weekend). I returned sheepishly the next day and picked up my Chainj.

Bottom line: check out Portland Velocipede, even if you prefer your ride more sporty than European. They've been around for a year and should stick around for many more. They're good people doing good work, offering good advice, and fostering good community. And like at Two Fat Cats Bakery, the main area is completely open so it feels welcoming and you can see all that's going on, which in the case of Portland Velocipede involves less baking and more bike tuning, which is cool in its own way if not strictly edible.

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.