Holiday Health Shake

There's eggnog in there. With bourbon, rum and cognac. 

My First Half

I'm going to be running in the Disney Princess Half Marathon tomorrow so here I am at Disney at the Pop Century resort having this breakfast:

There's no way I'm going to eat all of that. The bagel's for tomorrow (when we have to get up in time to catch a 3:30 bus to get in place for a 5 AM start). I got this breakfast because I really wanted the biscuit and this was the only way. I wanted the eggs and bacon too - and I wouldn't say no to French toast. 

Pete and I are here with my high-school friend, Kirsten, and her husband, Ben. It was Kirsten's idea to do this. She suggested it to me back in July when I was visiting down in D.C. I'd never imagined I'd do anything with the word "marathon" in it but it sounded fun and here I am. It has been fun, and very interesting, to train for this. More on that later. 

For now, here we are at Disney World for the first time. It's wild here. In a way it's kind of like Vegas. Last night, inexplicably, we took a boat to Downtown Disney. 

Disney's a whole other series of posts. You can't just call up, get a hotel room and come on down. There are Magic Bands and photo plans and Fast Passes and reservations and a whole bunch of research-ahead preparations to make that they keep e-mailing you about. I made as few as possible because I HAVE A LOT OF OTHER STUFF I HAVE TO DO just like most people. It's really as if you needs preliminary trip to Disney so you can plan your trip to Disney. 

Now that we're here it turns out to be even HUGER than I'd ever imagined. 

My plan for today is to head over to the Expo Center and pick up a bunch of pink sparkly swag then go on some rides I guess. Tomorrow I'll be running 13.1 miles dressed like a big, tall swig of sparkly Pepto Bismol - assuming there are no hiccups. 

Watch this space?

BAB

I will never be a "popular" blogger because I can't be bothered to take a pretty picture or gussy up the ones I take. Some artist. I'm supposed to be all about aesthetics. I am. Just not conventional aesthetics.

Any hoo, I'm all excited because I sent away for some fitness shake powder thingies and they came! 

This is Skoop B Strong. It's supposed to speed recovery after a workout, among other things. 

Since you never know till you try, I got a sampling of their whole line. It sounds like good stuff. I'm all about healthy skin, a healthy body, and plenty of energy. Why not give it a shot?  Plus they donate a serving of fresh fruits and vegetables to school lunch programs for every portion sold. 

Yeah, I got the mixing cup too. The sipper cap part clicks tightly into place which is good. I'm much less likely to spray my entire kitchen with soy milk and protein powder that way. 

So how does this B Strong taste? It tastes gross! I've never been one to tolerate artificial sweeteners before. I HATE diet soda. YUCK! This has Stevia in it. According to the website stevia can support healthy blood pressure (which I already have) and, I guess do other things for me that I don't need. 

I don't know, I'll choke it down. I might get used to it. If it helps me feel great I'll keep drinking it. 

Of course the best way to take care of your health and have plenty of energy is to eat right and exercise regularly - which I do a pretty good job of lately - and GET ENOUGH SLEEP. I don't get enough sleep. 

Holy crap! It's almost two! There's always so much stuff to do! That's why no one gets enough sleep. Gotta go! Later!

How To React When Nothing Makes Sense

You know, in a way this piece made itself. There were a number of happy accidents that went along with all the hard work I put in. For example two flat tires prevented me from leaving town as I'd planned to do when it was better for me to stay and work on the piece. The stool, already in the gallery, was the perfect pedestal for the plate of treats. Also, I hadn't known that I'd want a backdrop for this until I got to the gallery and set up the stool and empty cake plate. Then I remembered that there's a fabric store in the building next door. 

I think people liked it. It's amazing how difficult it is to give away free home made pastry when it's part of a sculpture. People either think it's a facsimile of food and not edible or they're "afraid to touch the art." Or they're just afraid. Poor things.

One week after my post referring to people not Facebooking anymore I received my invitation to join Ello. Plus ça change...

This Was All Before 8:45 This Morning

Uhm, I am wearing flip flops and I have coral color painted toenails and I LOVE everything because I went running this morning.

Here are some things I saw today:

A sea of jasmine

A beautiful view

Fuzzy, red, banana-looking flowers

A spacious view that came with a delightful-feeling headwind.

An almond croissant that my mom brought me.

Mom also put lilies in my room and they smell great! Thanks, Mom!

Yesterday I got in the hot tub. No doubt I will again soon. Not only that but I had an entire row to myself on the plane over! How often does that happen?

Today we will be celebrating Mom's birthday. It's a bit early but today we're celebrating. This means there will be cake. Dang good.

Garlic Festival Liveblog, Final

Adieu, picklebacks! Bonsoir, tout le monde!

Chocostravaganza!

Today I made chocolate cupcakes and brownies. The cupcakes are for a friend. I made the brownies so Pete wouldn't be disappointed. Tomorrow I will ice the cupcakes with chocolate ganache. Cupcakes and icing all sinfully vegan from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, which, as we all know by now, produces the best, most delicious cupcakes I've ever eaten. The brownies are not vegan. I am not vegan.

I loaded the brownies up with Guittard Extra Semi Sweet chocolate chips and walnuts. They came out very soft and chocolate IN THE EXTREME!!!! They would border on obscene in a brownie sundae. I might have had them for dinner by accident. 

Here's a scene from my two-day thank you card making exploit:

The mess I made. You can see some of Fay's beds over to the right in the picture. Also, I got some Christmas ornaments at Lord and Taylor. 30% off! They have great Christmas ornaments there.

I'd never experimented with rubber stamping and embossing powders before. Gotta say I had a lot of fun. These were my successes:

Not bad for a first try. Not especially inspired but I think the heartfelt gratitude comes through. I only really need three so I'll have to choose which I like best.

Those embossing powders are really fun. Here you can see the difference between plain gold ink, gold ink with gold embossing powder and gold ink with brown gitter embossing powder. Much fun to be had if you were to go nuts with this stuff - and you think this kind of thing is fun.

Once you start off with large photos it's really hard to go back to small ones in one post.

I did another ridiculous mini craft experiment yesterday and there's a movie that goes with it. I think I'll save that for tomorrow though. This is good enough for one day. 

Sorry Fellas!

I think the guy on the right looks disappointed with me. The other two can't be bothered. I've been neglecting my tequila. How will I ever make it up to them?

Tonight

Hey NaBloPoMo people! I'm in CALIFORNIA where it is not 12:35 AM on 11/19/12  but 9:35 PM 11/18/12! I posted today! C'mon! Count me!!!! In fact I posted this for the first time at 9:00 PM pacific time but spent the last half hour trying to correct my time zone. Seriously! Help a gal out!

Okay, whatever. I know what I did.

Cake Toupée

My Brother and Jaguars

This is just obscene

High Maintenance

I went to my first holiday party of the season on Wednesday: My sister-in-law, Kristen's, biennial cookie exchange. I believe I have mentioned it before (here and here) I don't seem to have mentioned that this is NOT the kind of event to which you can bring Entenmann's (halleluja - I HATE Entenmann's. YUCK!) You can leave your Pillsbury cookies at home too. This show requires a certain amount of sweat. It's also easily the nicest, fanciest holiday party I go to most years. Kristen is a fantastic hostess and gets everything right, from the hors d'ouvres to the cocktails to the decorations. There's a certain amount of pressure to PERFORM at this event.

The cookies I made this year are show-stoppers. I've made them a few other years and was not planning to make them this year but Kristen asked me to.

Honestly, if you have to make four-dozen cookies I would not suggest choosing a shaped sandwich cookie. It's at least three times the work: you have to make double the dough, roll it out and cut twice the number of cookies, you have to make the ganache and then fill the cookies. You could probably get away without decorating them with drizzles of melted white chocolate but there's no way I'm bringing a plain brown cookie to this cookie exchange.

This dough tends to be sticky too so it requires quite a bit of chilling time. It must be chilled at least four hours before you roll it out the first time, you must re-chill the remaining dough before you roll it out again to cut more cookies and the cut cookies must be chilled for ten minutes on the sheet before you bake them.

Once baked, the cookies must rest for two minutes exactly on the cookie sheet before you can scrape them off the parchment paper they have been baked on (I used aluminum foil which ripped with every batch I made. I got the cookies off with no damage but the foil ripped every time) Try to pry them off too soon and they'll distort, too late and they'll stick (Don't f*%k with the instructions, b!#ches!)

Then of course they have to cool completely before you can spread on the ganache (and, yes, the ganache has to chill and thicken before you can spread it on) Later, when all of the cookies have been assembled, the white chocolate drizzles need time to harden before you can pack the cookies up and take them anywhere. Actually, the white chocolate drizzles are a simplification I devised. The recipe suggests you pipe on the melted white chocolate. I might be an intense baker at times but I'm not pathological.

These cookies are impossible to make at the last minute. I took three days to make them. I made the dough and the plain and peppermint chocolate ganaches the first day (I made double batches since the recipes yield two dozen. In fact, I ended up with five dozen. Bonus) I baked the second day and assembled and decorated the day of the cookie exchange. You also don't want to assemble them too far ahead of time because they can get soggy.

The result of all of this labor is a truly amazing cookie. In fact it's more like a confection. While I was making them I was thinking, "This is the last time. I'm retired from making this cookie!"
Afterwards I thought, "Well, it is a great cookie. Maybe I'll make them again. Maybe just not four dozen."

Of course I'm whining about having to make four dozen cookies but most of the women at the party had had to make eleven dozen cookies for a school event the next day. I hope Pillsbury was good enough for that event. Something to think about if you plan on moving to Wellesley Massachusetts and enrolling your kids in the Wellesley public school system.

As for our event, it was so festive and convivial and the cookies exchanged were so delicious (at least the ones I tried were) that I felt like the trouble was worth it. And who knows, maybe in two years I'll have rested up enough to make those again? If anyone wants the recipe let me know.

Five dozen cookies in our sparsely decorated apartment

More Makeage

Toll House Cookies

Tarte Tatin caramelizing on the stove

 Tarte Tatin after baking and inverting on a plate

I've had two pieces so far. I think I could probably eat the whole thing by myself. However, I am sharing it with Pete and my mom.

It's Just My Nature

My secret weapon for today

I am a rebel. My hair is large and in charge. I'm wearing a black bra. Everyone else here (at the reservoir) is exercising - I am eating an eclair. I can tell they're all jealous. Also, I recycle - TO THE EXTREME!!!!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Making News

I did manage to make chocolate chip cookies with bacon in them today.  I cut about two tablespoons of butter and half the salt from the original recipe and added half a cup of cooked bacon in with the nuts and chocolate chips.  They came out good.  Pete approves and he wasn't so sure it would be a good idea.

I wish they were a little more bacon-y.  As you can see I broke the bacon up into chocolate-chip sized pieces.  Some of them broke down even more when they were incorporated into the batter.  I think they should be bigger so I'll use larger pieces next time (whenever that is - I don't usually buy bacon)

Also I'll try to use some solidified bacon fat in place of some butter for more bacon flavor. I'm not positive more bacon pieces is the way to go.  When you eat the cookie the bacon breaks down more slowly than the rest of the cookie and you can be left with, well, meat dregs in your mouth.  Kind of like the coconut when you eat a Mounds bar.  It's not a huge problem but I'm not sure I like that.

Whenever I use the oven Fay has to be banished to jail.

This is because she has a life-long hatred of ovens and will attack them if she knows they're in use.  Don't ask me why - I don't know of anything an oven ever did to her.  Except once she was able to bite an in-use oven and she got burned on her lip.  She was so busy beating up the oven though that she didn't notice until afterwards.  I'm sure she had no idea why her lip hurt.  So you see, it's jail for her.  She protests.

Poor thing - the whole house has smelled like bacon all day.

Another Brown Mass

Hey look everybody!  I made another brown mass!

These are the sticky buns that it took me all frigging day to make (not counting making the dough last night) They are tasty but there are eighteen of them (well, seventeen - I'm eating one) and I'm just one gal.  Hello neighbors!  This time I used 100% new, unexpired ingredients.  Not sure how I'm going to store them all but I'll think of something.

Last night I made Cincinnati Chili for dinner.  See how happy that oyster cracker is about it?  You know, the one kind of towards the middle of the plate with the saucy smile?

It's sacrilegious but I made the chili with vegetarian "crumbles" so as to avoid the beef pool. I try to avoid ground beef unless I know where it came from.  I once met a guy who's a muckety muck for the CDC and he said hamburgers are the one thing he doesn't dare eat.  Maybe I should be afraid of hot dogs too?  And heck, if there's a beef pool there's probably a pork pool and a chicken pool.  Yuck.  Now I've got to remember whose husband he was and ask her.  The chili came out fine though.  There are so many spices in it that the meat/meat-like substance is pretty much a vehicle.  

Ooh, you know what?  I just finished my last bite of sticky bun and it was good.  I kind of want another one.  But no - I'll wait till tomorrow.

So I have a big day of snow shoveling planned for tomorrow.  Very exciting.  I tried to do everything that would require electricity today: laundry, using the Kitchen Aid mixer, charging my necessary devices, etc.  I'll also be keeping a fire going in the fireplace so the flue doesn't get clogged.  Maybe I can knit a lot too tomorrow.

You never know though, the power could stay on.  I have to say CVPS, our electric company, does a fantastic job of getting things fixed in a timely fashion.  Thanks, CVPS!  Keep up the good work!

Plus One

Whoops!  There were four cakes for my birthday:

I forgot about the caramel cake (the nearest one in the photo)

Eat Me

Okay, now you guys are going to know how nuts I am: I don't care if I get eaten.*

After I'm dead I really don't care what happens to my body.  If someone wants to eat me I'm fine with that. Just for God's sake make sure I'm prepared properly!

I've had a couple of meals in my life where I've thought, "you know, if someone was going to eat me I'd want it to be this way."  I actually told one of the chefs that if I was going to be cooked after I died I wanted him to do it.  I think I weirded him out.  Do you know any chefs?  It's not easy to weird them out.

Tonight Pete and I went to the Highland Kitchen.  One of the things we ordered was the Pig and Pickle plate.  I believe that the crispy confit changed my life.  To me they looked more like deep fried pancetta - thick chips of bacony pork, crispy as all get-out.  Smoky, salty, rich but not greasy or overwhelming.  Holy cow!  To me that's respect: cooked pig perfected.

If someone wants to eat me after I die that's fine with me, as long as I'm FRIGGIN' DELICIOUS!

*I am not so weird that I want to be eaten alive or that I would choose to be killed for food.  I'm sure that many of you (perhaps all three of you) who read this blog feel similarly when you think about it.  Once you're dead you're probably not going to care about anything at all.  Also, there are plenty of weirder things about me than this.

Decisions, Decisions

I feel like one of those kids in the marshmallow test.

It's been so hot the last few days that I've really had a hard time not having ice cream for dinner.  Ice cream is tasty.  It's cold.  It requires no preparation.  Having it for dinner feels a little reckless.  It's fun!

It's not on my diet.

If I don't have the ice cream, later I can enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that I stuck to my diet.

Do I choose the instant gratification of ice cream or the deferred adult reward of having done the right thing?

Who can tell?

Plus, they keep talking about Vienna and the spy swap that happened there today.  When I think about Vienna all I can see in my mind is a huge, beautiful pile of whipped cream!

The Joy Of Food-ish Substances

It has come out on Facebook that I make marshmallows.

I've been making them for years because I found a recipe for them in Martha Stewart's Christmas: Entertaining Decorating and Giving,
a book I bought a million years ago when it was new.  I probably bought it because of the marshmallow recipe (who ever heard of making them yourself?  They're not food.  It's amazing they're edible at all and not just playthings) but the book also contains an AMAZING recipe for egg nog.  Serve that egg nog once and people will beg you to make it at every other occasion.  They'll invite you over just so you'll bring the egg nog. As I recall there's an error in the marshmallow recipe (something like it doesn't say when to add the vanilla) but you can fake it.

These days I've been using recipes from this book:
Marshmallows: Homemade Gourmet Treats.  This book is a comprehensive marshmallow manual.  It has recipes for dozens of flavors, different marshmallow consistencies and - best of all - none of the recipes call for corn syrup.

You need a strong stand mixer if you're going to make 'shmallers (as I like to call them - obviously)  You're not going to be able to whip up the searing-hot sugar batter with your hand-held.  Other than that they are no harder to make than cake.

Then you can have yourself a good time decorating them as you wish:

Or you can spread the batter in a pan to cure then cut out shapes with a cookie cutter or knife.  I wanted to play with a pastry bag.

Then you can foist them on unsuspecting visitors and their gluten-sensitive children.  Or just whip them at people.  Marshmallows make such a wonderful, soft smacking sound when they come in sharp contact with human skin.

Oh yes, and since you made them yourself and they couldn't be fresher they also taste really good.

Cursed

This cake is cursed. I'm pretty sure I cursed several times in the making of this cake, therefore it is certainly cursed. Or maybe I am.

Four days ago I tweeted that I was going to make "the chocolatiest cake" I could figure out how to make. This is it, right here, finished today.

I made the cakes yesterday, the first day that I actually had all the ingredients and the equipment I needed. I ran out of time to make the frosting so I made that today.

You know what it looks like to me? That expanding foam insulation that comes in a spray can.

I am disappointed in its chocolatiness. The frosting is a so-called "Mousse Buttercreammm." It is very mousse-y but not as chocolaty as I would have liked. It isn't very butter-creamy at all. The mousse is tasty but I think what I really wanted was more like a ganache.

I haven't tried the cake yet so I don't know how it tastes but I can already tell that it won't be the cake I'd pictured myself making four days ago. I thought I was going to make something a bit more robust. More like a cake-mix-and-can-of-icing cake only with no artificial flavoring or corn syrup.

Both the cake and the frosting were a lot of work. I was whisking eggs, sugar and cocoa in a double boiler for the frosting alone. This thing had better taste good!

I'm actually afraid that when I try to cut it the middle layers will squirt out the side like the ice cream in the middle of an ice cream sandwich when you're down to your third-to-last bite.

Suddenly it also dawns on me that I need to think of something to make for dinner.

I'm cursed. I mean, I'm cursing.

And who the hell (over the age of 8) has the nerve to be cranky about cake?

Cookie Photos

I was just looking at my browsing history so I could find the link to the cookie recipe I used for this year's cookie exchange. Not only did it contain cookie recipes, it also contained my attempt at researching a new hand mixer. It made me chuckle to remember that day.

Below are the un-baked Chocolate Cherry Gooeys I made from the December Food Network magazine special pull-out booklet. Yields are not mentioned anywhere in the booklet. I had to make four dozen cookies. Fortunately the recipe produced almost sixty cookies so I was all set.

Here they are baked and dusted with powdered sugar for the sake of festivity:

On the left in the photo is the red bag of Lust Blanket yarn.

Finally, here's a shot of all the cookies I came home with:

Four dozen cookies seems like a lot to make when you're looking down the barrel of the Christmas gun. When I get the cookie plate home at the end of the night I always wish there were more than two of each kind though.

The Chocolate Cherry Gooeys were very easy to make (go for the drop cookie recipe - it takes fewer motions to make them) and very tasty. I wish I had some with me right now, come to think of it. I'll definitely try a few of the other recipes in that booklet too.