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!

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 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.