Saturday, July 05, 2008
Baking and Cooking |2:25 PM| I enjoy baking, as I may have mentioned. Being called the "Da Vinci of cookies" last night was an ego boost, but is quite a stretch. I think I need to have more than 4 recipes (Plus a couple of variations on these original 4) to qualify.
As a social outing, I baked a great many cookies with my parents yesterday, a non-traditional way to celebrate the 4th. Will2 had a BBQ later that day, so I brought a few versions of the chocolate chip cookies, and a standard batch of the ginger ones. People were evenly split between their preference for the "regular butter, sweeter chocolate" and the "bitchin' vegan buttery sticks and Ghirardelli chips". A note if you the reader plan on making these, the regular butter ones do not rise as much as the butter substitute ones, I'm assuming it's related to the oil content. A pinch more baking soda or more flour may resolve this, but just because the cookies are more slab like does not mean they are not delicious.
I always lose faith when I make the chocolate chip cookies, right at the last mixing stage, before the chips. I always think "This dough is too lightly colored.". This is such a constant in my making them that I've learned to reply to myself "The dough is FINE. You ALWAYS think it looks funny!"
During that last stage of the first batch my parents and I made the other day, the dough looked funny to me. I kept telling myself "You always think that!" Even when I grabbed a chunk of it and it ran like mud, I thought "Keep the faith!"
Luckily I did not take the leap of faith of baking them, as I had left out half the blasted flour. Moral? The dough always looks funny, but if it feels funny, lose the Faith, get The Fear.
This is Rob:
I may have mentioned Rob in this blog before, but just in case, Rob is one of the 4 residents of the Robot Factory Playground. This is the current home of Cass, Chris, and Erik, site of last week's conspiracy party.
Rob is awesome, and I absolutely love baking for this guy. Every time I show up at that house with a box of baked goods his eyes light up like it's Christmas. He thanks me and attacks with zeal. I bake more often because of this guy, and I hope I don't cause him to develop a ginger allergy or type 2 diabetes.
I'm very happy with the chickpea curry I made the other evening. The spices need a little balancing, I think, but the other modifications I made seemed to help.
Suzy just bought me another vegetarian cookbook. The startup costs of these new dishes continues to slap me around, but that curry dish ran me, oh, $5 or so and made 4-5 decent sized servings (with rice) and could be easily expanded by a dollar or so to nearly double the amount, I'm sure.
The recipes I mentioned.
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Tuesday, July 01, 2008
I am far slippier |5:24 AM| Over the weekend was the Conspiracy Party. Excellent party. My main contribution was the construction of this:
Which was then painted and made awesome by Cass and Jessi:
They had started to lose momentum during the project, and when I came back from picking up coolers they had an idea that had re-inspired them.
Real chest hair was needed on the fat Elvis stand up. Being part of the project or being the only good enough sport for it, I doffed my work shirt and proceeded to rusty razor/ electric buzz cut the majority of my front insulation. You can see it in the above photo.
A bit of reciprocating saw work, some sanding, and voila, a wonderful set piece.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Cecil137/ConspiracyParty/photo#5217450334157687538
The party was an absolute damned blast, rivaled only by the preparation for said party, injuries and all. Thanks to this my tetanus shot is now up to date.
The rest of the photos tell in that gallery tell a better story, diving and water balloons, gas masks and booby trapped pinatas.
(0) comments
Baking and Cooking |2:25 PM| I enjoy baking, as I may have mentioned. Being called the "Da Vinci of cookies" last night was an ego boost, but is quite a stretch. I think I need to have more than 4 recipes (Plus a couple of variations on these original 4) to qualify.
As a social outing, I baked a great many cookies with my parents yesterday, a non-traditional way to celebrate the 4th. Will2 had a BBQ later that day, so I brought a few versions of the chocolate chip cookies, and a standard batch of the ginger ones. People were evenly split between their preference for the "regular butter, sweeter chocolate" and the "bitchin' vegan buttery sticks and Ghirardelli chips". A note if you the reader plan on making these, the regular butter ones do not rise as much as the butter substitute ones, I'm assuming it's related to the oil content. A pinch more baking soda or more flour may resolve this, but just because the cookies are more slab like does not mean they are not delicious.
I always lose faith when I make the chocolate chip cookies, right at the last mixing stage, before the chips. I always think "This dough is too lightly colored.". This is such a constant in my making them that I've learned to reply to myself "The dough is FINE. You ALWAYS think it looks funny!"
During that last stage of the first batch my parents and I made the other day, the dough looked funny to me. I kept telling myself "You always think that!" Even when I grabbed a chunk of it and it ran like mud, I thought "Keep the faith!"
Luckily I did not take the leap of faith of baking them, as I had left out half the blasted flour. Moral? The dough always looks funny, but if it feels funny, lose the Faith, get The Fear.
This is Rob:
I may have mentioned Rob in this blog before, but just in case, Rob is one of the 4 residents of the Robot Factory Playground. This is the current home of Cass, Chris, and Erik, site of last week's conspiracy party.
Rob is awesome, and I absolutely love baking for this guy. Every time I show up at that house with a box of baked goods his eyes light up like it's Christmas. He thanks me and attacks with zeal. I bake more often because of this guy, and I hope I don't cause him to develop a ginger allergy or type 2 diabetes.
I'm very happy with the chickpea curry I made the other evening. The spices need a little balancing, I think, but the other modifications I made seemed to help.
Suzy just bought me another vegetarian cookbook. The startup costs of these new dishes continues to slap me around, but that curry dish ran me, oh, $5 or so and made 4-5 decent sized servings (with rice) and could be easily expanded by a dollar or so to nearly double the amount, I'm sure.
The recipes I mentioned.
(0) comments
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
I am far slippier |5:24 AM| Over the weekend was the Conspiracy Party. Excellent party. My main contribution was the construction of this:
Which was then painted and made awesome by Cass and Jessi:
They had started to lose momentum during the project, and when I came back from picking up coolers they had an idea that had re-inspired them.
Real chest hair was needed on the fat Elvis stand up. Being part of the project or being the only good enough sport for it, I doffed my work shirt and proceeded to rusty razor/ electric buzz cut the majority of my front insulation. You can see it in the above photo.
A bit of reciprocating saw work, some sanding, and voila, a wonderful set piece.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Cecil137/ConspiracyParty/photo#5217450334157687538
The party was an absolute damned blast, rivaled only by the preparation for said party, injuries and all. Thanks to this my tetanus shot is now up to date.
The rest of the photos tell in that gallery tell a better story, diving and water balloons, gas masks and booby trapped pinatas.
Labels: Art, Parties, Pictures
(0) comments
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