I am soooo sick. Sick like in and out of consciousness, can’t complete sentences, it hurts to blink sick. It’s not how I’d planned on spending my Thanksgiving weekend, but it’s better than being at work and feeling like this. Shout out to my girlfriend, who’s also sick and is still taking care of me for the last two days and letting me lay in her bed, running Surf The Channel on her giant monitor. Now that I’ve hauled my ass upright, she’s being very patient about how slowly I’m typing. You’re the best, baby.
Anyway..
No one needs desk calendars anymore. I shouldn’t say that acutally, my CEO has a desk calendar that comes in really handy when we’ve got a group of people discussing an event or deliverables schedule and she needs something to slam on the table when she doesn’t like what someone says. There are still people though, despite all the other clutter on their desks, who love their page-a-days or 12 months of Dachsund puppies. I’m not one of those people either, but I would probably clear off a little spot on my desk for one of these:
This calendar from the Ukraine is twelve paiges, with one tear-off match for each day. Great for smokers, vigil-keepers, and lovers of scented candles. Or stress-monkeys like me who would find a lot of solace in burning the evidence of every passed day and knowing it will never, ever have to be lived through again.
Fluffy puppies, internet phenomenon? Well, yeah! If CuteOverload.com can be covered by CNN, Martha Stewart, and the Dunder Mifflin newsletter, and if I Can Haz Cheezburger can be as stupid as it is adorable, then it make perfect sense that one web-saavy breeder figured out s/he could get the attention of the whole internetz by streaming a playpen full of puppies with the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.
My first thought was, why didn’t this happen sooner? Puppies, video, pretty straightforward. There are a couple reasons, I think. First what would a dog breeder be doing with live streeming capabilities on their dinky website, and the kind of crazy bandwith to handle 4 million hits A WEEK? It was a random stroke of genius to use UStream, which seems to have hosted some ugly combination of techie programing and celebrity video before it found its niche in the puppy market. You’ve got univerally appealing, constantly updating content that can withstand humongous traffic. Bingo.
It’s 9:17pm in Amy’s apartment….
Do I have anything sweet in the house?
No.
Shit.
Didn’t I just buy eggs this weekend?
Yes!
Impulse cookies! Problem solved.
There is a reason I bough those air tight containers from Target. Having butter, sugar, flour and eggs on hand will help you solve just about any culinary improv challenge. And if you still can’t make real food with the help of these staples…at least you’ll have cookies. With the mint extract that I accidentally bought last year and some cocoa powder donated from my roommate, I whipped up a batch of really delicious mint chocolate cookies. I’ve made this recipe half a dozen times, and with the help of a mixer with more horse power than my Saturn, it’s 30 minutes to certain cookie satisfaction.
Of course, since I’m terrible about saving recipes to my “recipe box” or keeping notes on stuff I’ve made, I forgot my key adaptation to not the recipe, but the process. You don’t need 2 hours to chill the dough to slice it into rounds, because it is already extremely firm and actually a bit dry. I think it’s less onerous to roll out balls of dough and the squash them flat with the buttered bottom of a glass. When I made these as part of a gift for my family, I did the butter-sugar-dip-squash maneuver which added a nice crackly sugar texture to the surface of the cookies. I didn’t do any flattening this time, which is why I got these completely tasty but very poufy cookie nubbins.
I also blowed one up. Some day, probably after Christmas, I fill get one of those silicone scraper paddles for my mixer to solve the Kitchen Aid’s problem of leaving hunks of unmixed butter clinging to the bowl. That’s what I think happened to this poor little guy. Iron Chef/Mythbusters judges still award 8 points for aroma.
On Saturday I hosted the Third Annual Dinner Party, a tradition I started when all of my friends moved to Astoria after college and I wanted a way for us to share our Thanksgiving-y dishes among the urban tribe. We crammed about 25 people into my tiny apartment, and by midnight we were all stuffed and I was begging people to take some leftovers. I thought I made out with the best parts: garlic butter, cranberry maple butter, acorn-sage strudel (all my concoctions, which I didn’t get to eat because I was too busy trying everyone else’s stuff) and two mostly-full bottles of Shiraz. I’ve been sustaining myself off the leftovers and some additions this week, but I was ordered by my doctor on Tuesday to absolutely avoid alcohol for 3 weeks while my ulcer is healing up. Coffee in moderation is ok, thank god.
Believe it or not, I tried to give the wine away but got no takers, so tonight I scoured my cookbooks and ended up, as always, on epicurious.com, which I swear up and down is the best way to find recipes when you don’t know what to do with what’s in your kitchen. I found a recipe in which I had everything on hand from my pantry, the CSA, and my garden, plus a leek and three cans of broth from the store. When I eat more of it tomorrow I’ll probably take pictures to add to this post, but tonight it was all about getting dinner done.
Lentil and Roasted Garlic Soup with Seared Steak (sans steak)
Like everything I make, this is an extremely flexible recipe that requires next to no planning or accuracy. I tend to eliminate fussy prep steps, but the pan-roasted garlic with rosemary and the addition of sage to the leeks are really key to the depth and richness of the soup. I made a few changes: I used about 1 cup of black lentils instead of preparing the green and red lentils separately. I had sweet potatoes instead of yams and brocolli rabe instead of kale. I might leave out the potoates next time, but the bitterness of the rabe really worked here, especially because the greens go in wilted at the end instead of stewed through the whole process. The most important change was the switch from 7 cups of stock to about 4 cups of stock and half a bottle of red wine and a little water. I was afraid I’d made a horrible mistake when the stock, lentils and wine came to a boil and created a really….weird….kind of smell. That dissappated, though, and the result was a magnificently rich, truly meaty flavor and color that was beautiful with the wilted greens. Even for meat eaters, I would suggest forgetting the strip steak topping and buying yourself a nice bottle of red to split with the soup.
A big thank you goes out to all of my lazy-assed friends who didn’t take me up on my offer of free wine. I doubt this recipe with convince anyone to take the rest, but that’s just fine with me. I’ll just have another Leftovers and Lentils party.
I spew “brilliant” ideas at my girlfriend constantly. Most of these ideas bounce off her head, fall to the floor and get kicked under the metaphorical couch of shutthefuckupAmy. Some ideas, though, I really believe in. I do not let them go. They are the ideas I tell my girlfriend about constantly, at which point they at least serve some use as running gags in our relationship which prevent her from killing me. One of these persistent ideas, it’s a vision, really, is the Ultimate Cable Program: a mashup of Iron Chef America and Mythbusters. The premise is simple: Two challengers meet for battle, equipped with hellish tools of destruction. Viking ranges spewing fire and immersion blenders with roaring diesel engines! They are presented with their secret ingredient and in 60 minutes must each create a unique 5 course meal. And then blow it up. Judges award points on style, velocity, and aroma of the explosion.
The blank look on my woman’s face made me think I was alone with my dream, but there’s a little company called Ivo Vos who makes me think it could work.
With this toaster, a part of Ivo Vos’s collection “Brunch” prototypes, you can calibrate the force and angle of your toast’s ejection. Coming soon to the Brunch line of defensive kitchen equipment: The OJ trebuchet. Heads up, honey!
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Oh, no it’s not. McCain’s aides said that he was relieved that the campaign would soon be over. I’ve never agreed with the man more.
My friends, this is not about the election (though there may be one later). It’s about a muffin.
I took Monday off from work. I had planned to take an entire week’s vacation in mid-October to relax, make some doctor’s appointments, etc., but my Granddad died and instead I spent that week with the blanket over my head coming to terms with mortality. I took Monday off to try to achieve a few of my previous intentions. I got up early, headed out to the Union Square to take some photos. Thwarted again! Not only was it so cloudy I go no morning light, but my favorite waste-$5-on-fancy-junkfood restaurant, Tisserie, had been closed by the Health Department! Gah.
I headed a few blocks over to City Bakery, which is inferior in selection but about equal in overpriced concept. It was there I got the Baker’s Muffin, for $3.75, which wasn’t worth it for the taste but kept me interested for a while trying to figure out exactly what it was. From what I could surmise, this was a handful of one-inch squares of pastry dough tossed with some cinnamon, eleven rasins and four walnut pieces, squished into a muffin pan and baked. The top was an admittedly very appealing flaky pastry landscape dusted with sugar which held much promise for an adventurous enthusiast of baked goods, such as myself. 
Upon further probing, however, the Baker’s Muffin was really a lukewarm muffin mess of slightly dry, too-crunchy bits of croissant edges without the moist interior that one expects. Le sigh.
Munny and I headed back to the Farmer’s Market, where I found no greater inspiration. While no one was looking, I stuck him in a pallet of herbs, took this picture, and went home for a nap.
