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Ok, for hondo*, a quick king cake recap. Got up ass early on Saturday to bake for zannejude’s birthday thing at Soulfire. Made three batches of sweet-bread dough, the kneading of which will, the following morning, result in a disturbing amount of shoulder muscle self-awareness. Baking on cakes #1 and #2 wrapped up some five hours later due to massive kitchen inefficiency and my obsessive desire to photograph each stage of the process (with incessant hand washing breaks to keep the camera butter-free). Cake #3 turned out to be the best of the batch (despite being eaten at a point in time where the entire king cake experience was devalued due to repetition), and not just because I got the baby(!!!). The secret to massive success, I believe, turns out to be to use the full bar of cream cheese in a single cake instead of foolishly splitting it in half.
Anyway, here is this year’s recipe. My new photos from this year’s process are the bottom rows here.
*who updated her own blog yesterday, after TWO AND A HALF MONTHS of radio silence. Sheesh.
The last several times I’ve moved I’ve packed and unpacked this sad solitary single-use disposable camera. I was never really sure whose it was or what was on it. Unpacking in Boston yet again, I figured it was finally about time to find out.
Today, I got the photos back from the developer. I know most of the people in the photos, Ambre, BTQ, Katie, YJP etc. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t take the majority of these, I don’t remember being around for when or wherever this was. The exception is the last five, those are definitely mine from some random Fourth of July with Z, possibly in 2007. Any ideas about the others? Australia, Hungary, Italy? Where did you come from little camera? And why has your life been so much more exciting than mine?
OMGWTF Juliette reincarnated as Jacob!!! Who saw that one coming?
Ok, that said. I wasn’t going to watch Lost tonight because some friends are having a Lost party tomorrow due to a work conflict one of them has tonight. First, any boss who schedules a work event for the long anticipated final season premiere of Lost deserves to suffer the terrible wrath of your employees absenteeism. Second, screw waiting. I don’t like to wait. Third, spoilers like the highly accurate one above are going to be de rigueur throughout the internet tomorrow. It’s going to be impossible to even check my most boring of work emails without some jackass writing a company-wide alert about what’s up with Kate & Sawyer.
Point being, I’ve decided to just watch it twice. Ask me no questions I’ll tell you no secrets you don’t wanna know.
As promised, the recipe for homemade hummus, stolen from the MIT Hummus Experience workshop. As it so happens, I’m wearing at this very moment one of their Hummus Junkie t-shirts. I’ve never been prouder of my wardrobe.
George’s Hummus
1 can (15 oz) chick peas
2-4 tablespoon tahini
1.25 fl oz lemon juice (1 lemon)
1 clove fresh garlic
cumin, salt and zhug* to taste
olive oil for garnish.
Blend chickpeas w/ some of the canned liquid. Peel and add garlic, re-blend. In a mixing bowl add the tahini and mix manually. Lastly, add the lemon juice (some kind of funky chemical thing will happen here and it’s important not to mix the lemon and tahini until the latter is suspended in the chickpea mix). Lastly add cumin, salt & zhug then cover with a bit of olive oil.
*Zhug here (pronounced, roughly, skl-oog) is a Yemini pepper sauce made from garlic (2 heads), cayenne peppers (5 big un’s, de-seeded), cardamon (1/2 teaspoon ground), caraway (3 teaspoons), coriander (a big bunch), a pinch of salt and black pepper (2 teaspoons).
Some more information on their taste-off event today since it’s behind a facebook firewall of doom.
January 28 • 12 – 2 pm
MIT • Building 10, Bush Room, Cambridge MA
DIRECTIONS: http://www.facebook.com/l/3387d;whereis.mit.edu/?go=10
Vote for the best home-made hummus at MIT. Help choose the best hummus at MIT’s annual “made from scratch” hummus taste-off! Be dazzled by the variations in flavor and texture. This year’s Taste Off features Hummus ice cream made exclusively by J.P. Licks, live Israeli music, free “Hummus Junkie” t-shirts, and free hummus tubs!
A few photos from Waterville. Short narrative version: I suck at the snowboarding thing, but still it’s fun. The only bad part (other than the soft tissue damage from the repeated wipeouts) was that nobody wanted to play scrabble. Next time.
In the spirit of snackreligious, milkshakes for MLK day. Also present, handmade homemade truffles, both with standard and surprise flavored ganache. Resolution #6 from way back when (ummm yesterday) already having a hard time being heard above the din.
With just under 50 weeks left in the year, I finally get around to resolutions.
1) Run 1000 miles in 2010. That’s 20 miles a week from here on out.
2) Run at least one marathon, and one half.
3) Learn to use external lighting. Buy a secondary light source.
4) Acquire a wide angle lens.
5) Turn my 365 into a 730.
6) Eat better. Embrace my inner Michael Pollan.
7) Run the Ragnar.
8) Make Foss Fest 2010 a financial success.
9) Make Jingle Blast III bigger, better somehow.
10) Finish off everything from last year that got left undone. Specifically discrete objectives 5 through 8. And re-embrace all the vague unmeasurable notions.
It’s on. The Somerville Arts Council (in their infinite wisdom) has decided to fund Foss Fest 2010. We don’t have a date set yet so best to just keep the whole summer open.
It’s a fatalistic mindset, that we have standing reasons to dislike Mondays this time of year, with it’s associated promise of early darkness and unfulfilled obligations. But tonight has improved somewhat upon receipt of a random email from Amazon saying there was a $5 mp3 credit waiting for me. I don’t know why they send me these, some money losing promotion straight outta 1999, but I’ve gotten a few of these recently, thanks Bezos! Coincidentally they’ve got a stack of $5 albums to sort through. Sifting through the chaff there, I found & bought Steve Earle’s album Jerusalem. This is my second Earle album in as many months (the other being the slightly superior Train a Comin’ ), and one I had been thinking of getting ever since a track of his – John Walker’s Blues – ended up on mixcorp album last year. I’m not going to fake up any sort of coherent album review or anything, it’s just what I’m feeling, where this house is at right now. Recommended.
Over the weekend I wanted to try something special so I made a gooseberry dessert. For many in my family gooseberries hold a somewhat peculiar place of honor, being held (in the context of pies) to esteem above all other fruits. It’s difficult to purchase gooseberries here in the northeast, an irritation related to either low supply or demand. I’ve never really met other people who have actively liked gooseberries and most people I mention them to have never even tried them. So anyway after looking at a stupid high number of grocery stores I ended up borrowing a can with a promise to pay the loaner back two-fold after I get around to ordering my own.
So anyway, in brief, my gooseberry tart thing recipe (hashed out with help of my mom & internet strangers).
1) Mix a can of gooseberries, two thirds cup sugar and three tablespoons of flour together, bring a gentle boil. Let that cool. It will set up into a liquidy gel.
2) Make a top/bottom pie crust recipe. Instead of balling in two, make 8 to 12 smaller balls.
3) Mix an 8oz cream cheese (softened) w/ three tablespoons of sugar.
4) Flatten small balls (optionally, with your newly purchased and totally bitchin’ rolling pin), smush a tablespoon or two of cream cheese in the center and cover with a similar amount of the cooled gooseberries.
5) Crimp those bad boys shut and trim excess. We’ll have to pretend like I did this part of the recipe correctly.
6) Bake at 400 for 10-14 minutes.
My not-very-objective opinion is these tasted pretty decent but didn’t turn out to be terribly attractive. I think had I baked them in a mini-cupcake cooking sheet instead of on a flat pan it might have kept the three dimensionality I imagined when I started the project. Next time.
I admit I fell asleep when the Longhorns were within three and woke up sometime in the middle of the late news. So it’s too bad that Alabama won but congrats to UT for at least making it to the big time again a short four years after winning it all. Despite who I was cheering for my favorite part of the game was the interception of Garrett Gilbert by Javier Arenas. Gilbert-Arenas? Get yer guns.
Anyway, at least your morbidly obese coach didn’t get fired for trying to shake terrified players until all the imaginary hidden pop-tarts fell from their pockets.
We’re not entirely opposed to last minute walk-ins showing up for the Jingle Blast 2.0 tomorrow morning, 9am, starting in the North End, considering as how we currently have more customized hats than confirmed entries. For the unfamiliar the Jingle Blast is a highly competitive, blazing fast sprint to the death along the Boston Harbor. Winner gets to push the baby carriage next year while the loser goes in the drink. Leave a note if you need directions.
UPDATE: Wow it’s snowing pretty hard out there. A proposal has been made to substitute jingle bagels for the jingle blast. Ummm…
And here’s November. I’m going to hold off on posting December until tomorrow sometime as I’m finding myself unable to commit to a final POTD of the year until the night is over. Happy New Year’s Eve everyone!!
I’m spending some time on this last snowy day of 2009 finishing up my Project 365 posts. This is the month of October, a pivotal time of the year for me. It starts with the second half of the move from San Francisco, through the start of my new job here in Boston.
The second annual Jingle Blast has finally found a date that makes most folks happy. So henceforth we’re officially on for Saturday January 2nd, 9am. We will be meeting in the North End to get our run on, followed by coffee & crumpets. Bring your tattered remnants of Christmas spirit and residual hangover, along with your present for me if you accidentally forgot to give me one before. Much like it’s cousin-in-spirit, the “Super Bowl”, the Jingle Blast now faces the challenge of being located in a different calendar year than the regular season, making it inappropriate to dub it Jingle Blast 2010 (since the inaugural was held in 2008 that makes it look like we skipped a year). And since nobody wants to end up running the Jingle Blast LDCXXXII I’ll stick this year’s race with the played out but technically accurate 2.0 suffix.
For posterity, here are the specs from last year’s race. I don’t assume the route will be identical but it should be similar in spirit. 4.2 BLAZING kilometers!
Me and mine wish you and yours a very merry late festivus, chistmas eve, solar new years, kwanzakkah, verdukian sing-along etc. May your face stay rum-flush, your fingers warm and your paws unsalty. We’re off to (yet another) church thing followed by the merriest of chinese food options in beautiful downtown Arlington. Tomorrow? Cheesecake part 2: Cheesey-cake vs the Gooseberry of Doom. It should be good fun.
Christmas countdown? I don’t know what kind of Christmas countdown I can muster given that I still don’t have a tree and have yet to buy a single gift.
But regardless this has been a fantastic weekend, so humor my brief linky recap. Snow dog absolutely made my weekend by getting posted on Universal Hub. AZ flew into town for our little blizzard, and ended up with her hand featured on ACL (and linked to on the UH). I didn’t get tickets for the free skate at Fenway but got to see the rink and see Marc’s brother play at league night (w/ Team HB & YJP). Jenni drove up for an exuberantly fun party at Annie’s house which devolved into the kind of chaos that should have resulted in a visit from the noise police. And I had a delicious lunch date with my three sisters in the North End at La Famiglia (though, I shouldn’t have bailed before fancy coffee). All in all a pretty much perfect weekend. More snow days please!!
(Also, Happy Birthday Lee!)
Saturday my car got a little smashed up. Not as exciting as it sounds. Dog & I are fine.
Sunday, driving home in the dark rain, merging onto the interstate with no driver’s side mirror, I had flashbacks to the free for all attitude of drivers in Lima where anyone who’s even marginally ahead of someone else has the right of way. There’s no cutting people off, since what unpredictable BS the lead car does is totally fine. That’s me, merging blind, hoping other people understand our new rules.
Today, body shop. The bill comes to $1835.44, for one new fender and a repainted driver’s side door. Word is someone else is paying for that.
I’m sitting here in my office, watching a live stream of the I-70 bridge demolition in Lawrence (on ljworld.com). I find this fascinating. The bridge that’s being blown up is just upriver from the new KU Crew boathouse, up from where I spent most of my college years rowing on the Kansas River. The bridge itself was a landmark we used every day, marking the steady starting and finishing lines for thousands of workouts and impromptu races.
It’s a weird feeling – the replacement bridge is right next to the old one, there’s practically no difference but I have this odd emotional thing going on. I have these memories of running up under that bridge, crossing the clearly-unsafe catwalk just under the roadbed. Sometimes homeless people or wandering kids would hang out around the base of the bridge, I guess for whatever shelter it provided. And since I assume the statute of limitations has passed with the bridge’s demise, by far my most favorite bridge memory is when some like-minded people and I somehow got our coach’s keys to break into the boat compound, borrowed his motor and launch and despite high and fast water managed to beautifully deface the underside of one of the supports, leaving an impressive piece of multi-chromatic artwork claiming our light men’s four to be the fastest on the water. If it’s written on stone, it’s true.
So who knows, maybe that was still there, maybe long painted over by other crews and their bravado or by Kansas Turnpike workers in a fit of post-9/11 don’t mess with infrastructure zeal. But’s it’s for sure gone now, and that’s a little sad. On the upside, the explosion prompted this, my favorite email of the week.
I smell road trip. We’ll start in Boston head north head to Newfoundland, cut through Canada. Head to Toronto and down by Michigan. Head south to St. Louis and East toward Florida. Over to Cuba, the Islands and come out in Mexico. Back up to California and then North. Washington to Vancouver to Calgary. Montana to The Dakotas. Wyoming to Colorado. Utah to Nevada. Then down South to Arizona and New Mexico. East to Colorado and then finally Lawrence.
If we work a few odd jobs to make gas and food money it should only take us what a year.
Exactly. I could get on board with a plan like that. Lawrence ho.
Tomorrow is the Massachusetts primary to fill the Kennedy seat. I’m still unsure who to vote for despite paying some moderate amount of attention to the four Democratic candidates. I got an amusing canvassing call the other day from one of Coakley’s people, which went like this:
THEM: We’d like to ask for your support for Martha Coakley this Tuesday.
ME: I’m really not sure who I’m going to vote for yet.
THEM: Ok thanks, bye.
ME: …
So I remain unsure. My gut says Khazei but my people say he can’t win. And the pragmatic part of me says Capuano but Coakley’s less likely to burn down the house after succumbing to the various ills that plague male politicians. But both those latter two pissed me off by saying they wouldn’t have voted for the health care bill in it’s current form. I still think push comes to shove they’d both fall in line or get quick bounced out the door at the next possible opportunity.
Point being, sway me. I just need one semi-convincing argument for one over the others.
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