Anyone make anything better for dinner?
KFC and Krispy Kreme.
I won't troll the food threads.
I'm kind of nauseated with the flu. On the other hand, the flu has brought me under my pre-pregnancy weight, which appeals a wee bit to my vanity.
KFC and Krispy Kreme.
Two great tastes that... oh.
I don't know yet, it's making. But, duck breast with a fig and red wine sauce: chopped shallots simmered in butter till just beginning to get golden, add more butter, add pint box of black figs coarsely chopped and some chipotle flakes, simmer until the figs are disintegrating, add half cup of strong beef broth, reduce by about two thirds, add one cup of red wine, reduce by two thirds, throw it in the food processor to puree. Serve with a simple porcini risotto and the magret sauteed medium rare with just salt and pepper. Damn well better be good, I'm putting in a lot of work on this one.
[my weekly 'nice' dinner, plan for nine, serve probably around ten - currently the fig sauce is cooling before getting pureed, still have the risotto to do.]
I just had a bowl of cereal, mostly to get rid of my remaining milk and cereal. I probably should have waited longer after heating up a can of soup and eating that with toasted bread. I'm not even thinking about dinner yet.
For the chicken broth, or any other sort, I really, really recommend homemade. Keep your scraps, and once or twice a year make a big batch of broth, reduce a bit then turn it into ice cubes and store in freezer bags. If you have to use store bought stuff, pour it into a pot, add an onion and a carrot, and maybe a bit of meat, simmer for fifteen minutes and use that. It makes a huge difference. But the homemade stuff, you're only spending about an hour or so of actual kitchen work once or twice a year - and it's dirt cheap since most of the meaty stuff comes from leftovers.
We've got a freezer space issue -- a year's worth of stock is incompatible with our ice cream and leftover storage needs.
I know homemade stock is better, I've used it, but the canned stuff usually doesn't offend me. Either something weird about the pumpkin made it taste awful in combination, or there was something wrong with one of the cans. (Or with the brand? Collage Inn, which I'm sure I've used without minding.)
Collagen: what makes all those short rib and oxtail braises so good.
I was going to make a pudding from the blood of my enemies, but I'm a vegetarian, so instead I'm making scones from their dandruff and eye boogers.
Carnivores are vengeful, but vegetarians merely grody.
For the New Yorkers here, do you know of any butchers that sell good quality blood? I'd really like to make a civet this winter but I don't know where to get the key ingredient.
We had baked tortellini covered with local smoked mozzarella, an herb salad with pine nuts, and a 2005 Gotim Bru.
I don't know where to get the key ingredient
Homegrown blood is the best.
So you're suggesting a trip to ASPCA? Unfortunately I'm not sure if that's legal.
15: Try Faicco's Pork Store? I don't know that they sell blood, but they seem like the kind of place that could tell you who would if they don't.
I had a peanut butter sandwich, and the kids had cookies. (Why yes, my wife is away for the evening--why do you ask?)
So you're suggesting a trip to ASPCA?
Foster parenting.
So, teraz, when are you having us over for dinner?
I had beans and cornbread for dinner.
I had the last of the beans that I've been eating off and on for the past week or so. I guess tomorrow I have to cook something new.
If you want to sometime, sure - you guys do live pretty close by.
It does sound like something odd was up with the pumpkin itself. Was there any chance it was a variety not really made for cooking?
"Groundnut" stew: sausage, peppers, carrots, onions, tomatoes, red pepper flakes, broth, and peanut butter, chopped and put together in a gallimaufry, tonight reheated over white rice.
I read somewhere (IFA?) that when a recipe calls for broth or water with boullion or whatever, you can substitute salted water. I did that this time, but my palate isn't that refined. Any comment thereon?
We went out for dinner -- Cambodian. I'm very full now.
I have certainly been known to use salted water instead of broth in some recipes to no ill effect.
Sure, you *can* substitute salted water for broth, but then you have water instead of broth. Sometimes I want water instead of broth: I prefer my squash soups generally to taste more like squash than like broth. But if I were going to make gravy or chicken soup or what-have-you, I would want the tastes and body of broth.
Sometimes I want water instead of broth: I prefer my squash soups generally to taste more like squash than like broth.
Yes, just so.
The thought of salted-water gravy is both very funny and quite tragic.
I've basically done salted-water gravy: scrape up the brown bits in the pan, add water, salt, uh, whatever's at the bottom of the fridge, reduce, garnish, and serve with a defensive attitude. Not
Yes, implicitly not for things like chicken soup.
Panaeng curry with tofu, green beans, and mushrooms. Eaten by the fire, which was arguably the best part (although the curry was quite good).
I also made chicken stock today, just to have on hand, and will be making beef stock tomorrow, for some soup (Bamia, sort of an African peanut and okra thing) and also to have on hand.
Yes, implicitly not for things like chicken soup.
Saltwater chicken soup: chicken of the sea?
I read somewhere (IFA?) that when a recipe calls for broth or water with boullion or whatever, you can substitute salted water.
Yeah, Ezra quoted some guy saying that, and I went ballistic. What really pissed me off about it was that the guy - some chef type - was totally pulling this reverse ju-jitsu food snobbery thing (the premise was that all store-bought broths are so inferior that saltwater is preferable, not merely an adequate substitute). Yes, don't bother my beautiful palate with your canned broth. Fuck you, clown.
To be clear: it is true that most canned broths suck. This is why serious cooks (ie, Cook's Illustrated) figure out which ones are good enough*, and use them. The pose that they are all inadequate for, say, making some sausage gravy or scalloped potatoes is the rankest snobbery.
* That would be Swanson's reduced sodium, 99% fat-free
I made pumpkin soup for dinner tonight, too! And it was delicious! I'm not usually a pumpkin soup fan but this one had black beans in it, which gave it some nice oomph.
I'm right!
You'd think she'd get tired of proclaiming it at some point.
No cards.
Wait, you expect uninvited guests to converse for their unearned dinners? Awkward.
Despite feeling horrible (I was very mildly sick most of last week, started to feel better on Thursday and Friday, and then was somewhere on the awful end of functional today) I just made up a batch of my seasonal baking recipe -- applesauce, ginger, molasses bread and I have reasonably high hopes for it.
I'm terrible at following recipes with any precision so part of why I've become attached to this bread is that it tolerates fairly broad interpretations and almost always comes out tasty.
You don't have to "converse" as such, just spit out your established catchphrases and then wait for food to be served.
OT, potentially stupid query: I have a job interview coming up that will almost certainly require me to wear a suit. My one suit was purchased 1.5 yrs ago, and is in decent shape, but since its purchase, I have lost ~20 lbs. Is it likely that the suit needs fresh alterations? I know that one answer would be, "Try it on an see if it still fits, duh", and I just did that, but I am not sure that my evaluation of the fit of a suit is worth a hill of beans. I'm also trying to come up with people I know in the area whose opinion I could trust, and I am not having much luck.
48: Upload a picture to Flickr and let us judge!
Did it look obviously ridiculous in the mirror? If not, you're probably fine.
Maybe not obviously ridiculous. A bit baggy.
48: hard to say without seeing either you or it, but if it fit well before, it will probably still be fine. If it was at all big before, it will probably be too big now.
49: Shoulda thought of that. Now I'm already in my running clothes.
Goat heart turned out well, simmer w/chard, hot peppers, garlic, preserved lemon, and oregano, served alongside fresh cranberry beans.
My guess is that the suit probably needs alterations, but it will be too expensive and take too long for it to be worth doing before the interview.
Addendum to 54, also some nice wine.
take too long
Otto didn't give a timescale for "coming up".
54: I never should have doubted 2.
It does sound like something odd was up with the pumpkin itself. Was there any chance it was a variety not really made for cooking?
I think that redfoxtailshrub's suggestion sounds right; I've cooked with the wrong sort of pumpkin before and while the results have been palatable, not nearly as good as with the sugar/pie/etc pumpkins that they sell for cooking. Also, age might have had something to do with it - I had a pumpkin sitting around my too-hot apartment for weeks - when I finally roasted it (for an otherwise yummy spicy lentil salad), it was dry and not nearly as luscious as I expect squash to be.
Anyone make anything better for dinner?
Marcella Hazan's ludicrously simple but always delightfully tasty tomato and onion sauce with some heretical spicy pork sausage thrown in over fettuccine, roasted brocollini, and some sourdough rolls from the local bakery.
The meal described in #5 sounds delightful. I have a bunch of cherries in red wine that I canned - I need more duck to go with.
fresh cranberry beans
I saw fresh black-eyed peas today. Must go back and get some once I decide what to make with them.
I guess the key question is: how perfectly does your suit need to fit for this interview? If "not obviously ridiculous" is good enough, you're likely okay. (This all depends on how dramatically those 20 pounds affected your frame.) If you need to look your absolute best (meaning not only wearing the requisite monkey suit, but doing so stylishly), then yeah, it probably needs to be altered.
It's a matter of how closely your interviewers will be evaluating your outfit. If they'll be noticing whether you look especially sharp (or not), then an alteration might make sense. If they're just going to check "dressed respectably: wearing a suit" off their mental checklists and then move on to more important issues in the interview, then it's probably fine as-is.
51: That's too bad. Otherwise you could explain it as an attempt to be the new David Byrne.
To make 60 more concrete: would you be needing to wear a suit for your daily job, if you were hired? Or is it just part of the interview-show?
If the latter, then "not obviously ridiculous" is probably a good enough fit. And it's probably not obviously ridiculous.
I've forgotten, if I ever knew, what Otto does. In some fields it would be reasonable to wear a sweater under a suit jacket, wouldn't it?
Mmh, yum!. Was afraid i'd be disappointed, but nope, really good. Now back to ingesting food and wine.
Goat heart turned out well
I honestly assumed that was a joke. That'll teach me.
63: Grad student in neuro/science, interviewing for a job not in academia. (Sorry, Otto, for answering your question for you, but I couldn't resist.)
In academia, I'm guessing the sweater look would pass with flying colors.
It's not as if I haven't eaten other hearts.
My guess is that the suit probably needs alterations, but it will be too expensive and take too long for it to be worth doing before the interview.
Depends on the alterations, I bet. I have a Men's Warehouse suit that I got in college and I wore it a few times and then didn't need to wear it again for a few years, by which time I'd gained about 20 lbs. They do free alterations for life - or at least did at the time - and I took the suit in and got it altered in a few days.
If you have to pay for the alterations, the costs probably rise the faster the turnaround time.
I made pad thai from a mix. It was edible. I'd previously bought the flavoring stuff at an Asian grocery store (a pre-made paste like Thai curries), but this sauce was not as good.
LB: Trader Joe's makes a very good boxed chicken stock. I use their concentrated liquid, but they have the normal stuff too.
It's not as if I haven't eaten other hearts.
True. Not sure how telling it is that when I saw a friend of a friend on Facebook had posted a picture of a beef heart (with a query of what to do with it), my first thought was of nosflow.
For store bought broth I'd recommend the concentrated frozen D'Artagnant stuff. Or for cheapo day to day use for, say, rice - the Better than Bouillon concentrate. I used to use the former before I got into the frozen homemade concentrate habit, I still use the latter for weekday dishes where broth taste isn't absolutely essential. But again, just adding a couple veggies to any store bought broth and cooking for a little bit is really worth it.
And now I'm gettng Beck's style and regretting I didn't open a better wine - with the one cup going into the sauce I figured a generic decent Chianti would be enough, rather than one of the bottles my parents have brought over on visits.
49: Shoulda thought of that. Now I'm already in my running clothes.
I have a better idea: just stop running and put the weight back on!
I've only eaten grilled heart in Korean and Argentinian restaurants. Not bad. On the other hand neither intestines nor tripe were made for grilling. Indeed the former weren't made for anything except casings or freaking out food prudish friends. The southern Polish term for blood sausage is 'kiszka' literally 'intestine'. Used to be able to get great Polish blood sausage in the East Village, fucking real estate boom.
The southern Polish term for blood sausage is 'kiszka' literally 'intestine'.
Interesting. This is presumably the source of Yiddish "kishke," also meaning sausage, but not the blood variety.
If you know German and Polish, Yiddish is pretty easy to understand. If there were a course which just taught the shifts and Hebrew loan words I'd probably take it.
My guess is that the suit probably needs alterations, but it will be too expensive and take too long for it to be worth doing before the interview.
Depends on where you bought the suit. Nordstrom will often do alterations for free on suits you've bought there, even years later. And they'll turn alterations around in a couple of days.
But Otto, where the hell are you interviewing that a suit is going to do you more good than harm? (Perhaps I have grown spoiled by my time in tech.)
roasting pumpkin, pureeing it with some chicken broth, simmering the puree with ginger and nutmeg and a little maple syrup... and threw it out because it was disgusting. I'm not sure what went wrong -- the recipe seems like the sort of thing that should be foolproof. But there was no pumpkin flavor, and the chicken broth, a brand I've used plenty of times before, tasted rank
(I agree with rtfs and ().) Just going by listed ingredients, it doesn't sound foolproof, it sounds kind of bad. Broth, pumpkin, ginger, nutmeg...{thump}maple syrup??? It sounds more like liquid pie than soup. But even if I'm full of it, chicken stock would still be your base and the bulk of the soup, and if it the stuff was off (too long on the shelves maybe - not likely this year) or the manufacturer went to a cheaper formulation, then you're dead in the water. Extra extra bonus bad if the pumpkin was Not Right, and then... maple syrup.
I am reminded of the time several decades ago when I read some recipe that was on the back of a can of kraut, and I'm like, 'Sound ok, oh, why the hell not?' Kraut, potatoes, apple, sausage... sniff sniff. 'It just turned... black! Eww!' Everything went bad, and later experience taught me that you just don't stew kraut that way. I did, in fact, try again later, taking a great deal more care, and... still not very good. It Does Not Work, not with the canned stuff certainly, and I don't care what happened in the test kitchen. The kraut and apples cobo is too acidic and an accident waiting to happen, especially in the presence of sausage fat.
So what I figure is that a) the manufacturer reformulated on you (probably), b) the pumpkin was either a show pumpkin or pulled off the vine way too young to be good for anything, even baked, and then c) the maple syrup (still good?) plus ginger plus nutmeg catalysed/crystalized the badness.
Poking around, I see there are lots of ... odd ... pumpkin soup recipes, but here's a reasonably sensible looking one - basically it's a can't-go-wrong chicken soup with cream, that has pumpkin in it. If you wanted to get back in the saddle, you could snag a chicken and boil the shit out of it, and then proceed, using canned pumpkin. That might tend too sweet in combination with the cream, but you could easily tune it at the end, when the cream goes in.
max
['This shit happens to everybody!']
IIRC the cook's illustrated test rated college inn as particularly awful, so that, combined with the bad pumpkin, made for the disaster. also, I always put an onion (and sometimes a potato) in with the roasted pumpkin. sorry about that, nothing's worse than spending time cooking something and having it be gross.
Yeah, slaving away and having to throw it out is very frustrating (don't make a reduced red wine sauce without some sort of meat or broth stuff with it, don't simmer fresh tarragon for an extended period of time, trust me). More common is the elaborate meal that just turns out ok - edible, but a huge disappointment.
(Sorry, Otto, for answering your question for you, but I couldn't resist.)
No problem. Consider yourself officially deputized.
But Otto, where the hell are you interviewing that a suit is going to do you more good than harm?
To make 60 more concrete: would you be needing to wear a suit for your daily job, if you were hired? Or is it just part of the interview-show?
Think SeeKRit Commenter's industry, at a well-known firm. The people holding this job whom I met at the first round were dressed business casual, but the high-end variety of b.c. No suits, but not chinos and polo shirts, either. I'm thinking I'll look into the alterations. I have a little over two weeks. (Though I'm leaving town for something else at the end of the week, so I'd probably need within-the-week turnaround.) I don't want to sink a huge amount of money into this, though, because I don't think I have much chance of getting the position. But if I don't do it right, might as well not do it all.
This wasn't dinner, maybe linner? But I tell you what, we got some of those yuppie-ass beans you yuppie-ass people are recommending, just the other day, and we cooked them, and they were good, and then I was like "HEY, LET'S TAKE THE POT LIQUOR AND SAVE IT AND THEN ADD SOEM NOODLES AND SAGE AND UH HARD-BOILED EGGS" and of course Blume suggested adding a bit of cracked hot pepper and you know what? It was fucking delicious. Thanks, me! No, wait: thanks, unfogged!
But Otto, where the hell are you interviewing that a suit is going to do you more good than harm?
I find it distressing to learn that there are places where a suit will positively harm you.
85: clearly somebody hasn't tried out for enough bikini teams.
Well, that's just a different kind of suit.
I find it distressing to learn that there are places where a suit will positively harm you.
You're living in the wrong metropolitan area, then.
Not everything is about the superiority of Oakland to San Francisco, Josh.
Oh, wait, that's not what you meant. It's not as if I find the fact in itself disturbing or distressing, it's just—can't we decide on a standard interview uniform and be done with it? All these variations supposedly in the name of increased casualness or whatever are in fact head games in themselves.
I'll cop to having a knee-jerk reaction of "dork" when a someone shows up to our program's interviews wearing a tie. I know it's a bullshit reaction, but I have a hard time not projecting onto the tie-wearer a certain uptightness, or a lack of understanding of the culture he's trying to enter.
Shorter nosflow: everybody just dress the same, dammit!
I know it's a bullshit reaction, but I have a hard time not projecting onto the tie-wearer a certain uptightness, or a lack of understanding of the culture he's trying to enter.
I can see why you'd have issues projecting the former, but why the latter? Sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable reaction to have.
I'm not being stupid, noseflow. It's nice to see you, you know.
Really, though: interview outfits are, I think, as much about fitting into the work environment and the aesthetic at hand, whatever it may be, as anything else. I'd hesitate to call it a uniform for that reason. The interview is, at least ideally, measuring your fittedness (which goes further than mere fitness) for the overall environment, and since not all work environments are alike -- god forbid -- I wouldn't want the interview outfit to be alike for all either.
I probably wouldn't have worn a suit to my oral exams - which was what led to my getting it altered - but it was the only formal clothes I owned. Plus, men at job talks almost always wore suits and ties. But it was more formal than some of my committee expected, not that it mattered.
One of my examiners told me I was overdressed at my oral exam.
Sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable reaction to have.
Really? It sounds as if a moment's thought should convince you otherwise.
Suits were required at orals. And after the exam you got the old school switch to the informal with the older Euro profs.
I'm thinking in particular about first-job-in-the-industry type interviews. It's rather unreasonable to think you can get much information about anything other than what the candidate knows about job interview attire from his or her attire at the job interview. Lord knows when I went out to interviews my last year of college, all I knew was, it's an interview, you wear a suit. And yet I would, I dare say, have fit in as well at an office where no one wore a suit as at one where everyone did. OR BETTER! And yet I might have been written off as Not Our Sort, DearBro at the former.
The interview is, at least ideally, measuring your fittedness (which goes further than mere fitness) for the overall environment, and since not all work environments are alike -- god forbid -- I wouldn't want the interview outfit to be alike for all either.
If you were allowed to bring several changes of outfit with you to the interview, changing into your final selection after having first made the rounds, this would make sense.
Really? It sounds as if a moment's thought should convince you otherwise.
Well, okay, either lacking understanding or deliberately violating the norms. And I'm okay with penalizing people for the latter. (The spirit of ogged lives!)
Kobe: Oh, I'll make an exception for people who are too young to know better. But really, how are they going to learn if we don't humiliate them for their failings?
I think I wore a t-shirt to my thesis defense, but I don't remember for sure.
I can see why you'd have issues projecting the former, but why the latter?
Largely for the reasons that neb elucidated. Clothes are fucking hard, man. And expensive. And unpredictable. If the would-be coder shows up in a tie, maybe he just didn't know. And an awesome coder can probably learn to start wearing old BeOS and USENIX t-shirts every day pretty easily.
BeOS! There's a word I haven't seen in a long time.
If you were allowed to bring several changes of outfit with you to the interview, changing into your final selection after having first made the rounds, this would make sense.
This is a terrific idea. People would not be allowed to look at you funny when they saw you every 20 minutes. This is me now! And this is me now! And now! Kind of like bringing a portfolio of headshots or something.
I made a date for dinner. That's right. Me. A date. And it wasn't at all disastrous. What is this world coming to?
I ended up having a sandwich and salad for dinner.
109: Within the bounds of discretion and decorum... We went to an outdoor fall festival in a nearby 'burb, took a Segway tour, had drinks and then dinner (he a steak sandwich, I turkey) at an Irish pub, chocolate fondue for dessert in yet another 'burb, back to my place for a nightcap, and he has just departed after roughly 12 hours together. And he told me I was pretty and asked when Rory would be home tomorrow because he wants to call me but doesn't want to intrude on my mother/daughter time.
I honestly don't know if I have ever had a date go so well. Ever.
112 to 110 (and 111)
good work Di. I hope he didn't get fresh.
111: I honestly don't know if I have ever had a date go so well. Ever.
Hot damn! Woo hoo!
And because I realize I did not address the Q at the end of the OP - I don't eat worth a damn around here, because I hate the kitchen, and the comestibles that one can acquire from the store SUCK. So, when starvation drives me to cook something, it's really simple, like the adaption of pasta aglio e olio with fish. (You gotta use a lot more garlic to balance out the strong fish flavor.) I have not recently been driven by starvation to eat.
So, since I have nothing to add to the OP, instead, I will point to this article/recipe, which makes me want to have slow, sultry sex (in a cuddly, metaphysical kind of way, mind) with the entire nation of France. (This offer excludes Roman Polanski.) Anyways, teh article and teh recipe:
The French have a special fondness for lamb; they raise some of the best in the world, and chefs and home cooks transform it into a remarkable array of dishes. It's part of their culture, their heritage: the slow-cooked shanks served at bistros; the rib racks crusted with a paste of garlic and parsley, called a persillade, and roasted for special occasions; lamb loin chops skewered with a sprig of rosemary and rubbed with olive oil and herbs before being grilled over charcoal. Particularly in regions where sheep's milk is needed for the making of cheese, like Roquefort and Ossau-Iraty, lamb is produced and consumed in great quantities. The lamb Labro has bought comes from the Midi-PyrƩnƩes region, which specializes in milk-fed Aveyron lamb, prized for its succulence.
Back in her apartment, a large, airy flat in the 11th arrondissement, Labro unloads the contents of her cart--herbs, garlic, the lamb, a baguette, a bottle of red wine from the southern Languedoc region--and arranges the ingredients on her kitchen table. She pulls an old wooden pepper grinder off a shelf and gives it a few turns, sending a coarsely ground mixture of peppercorns into the drawerlike receptacle in the bottom of the grinder, which she sets aside. She rubs the lamb all over with olive oil; then she retrieves a cocotte, a heavy enameled Dutch oven, from a cupboard and sets it over a high flame. Finally, she sprinkles the lamb with the pepper and some coarse salt and nestles it into the cocotte to let it sear.
While the lamb browns, Labro breaks open a head of garlic and scatters the unpeeled cloves into an oiled glass casserole dish. Atop the garlic cloves she builds a loose nest of fresh rosemary sprigs, bay leaves, and savory. "Everyone in Provence grows and loves savory," she says of the peppery herb. "When I taste it, I have a rush of memories from my garden." Once the lamb has browned all over, she removes it from the cocotte and places it on top of the herbs in the casserole dish. Next, she empties a leftover bottle of white wine from her refrigerator into the still-sizzling cocotte, freeing the caramelized bits from the bottom of the pot, before pouring the mixture of wine and meat juices over the lamb. Into the oven goes the meat, which will cook at 300 degrees or so for most of the afternoon. "In the end," she says, "the lamb should be confit: caramelized, sticky to the teeth, almost melting."Now that's food
max
['Appropriate for a Saturday night, yes?']
113: good work Di. I hope he didn't get fresh.
I, on the other hand, hope he did.
max
['By invitation only, of course.']
We went out last night to this place where you cook your own food - you get a steak of some sort and a very hot rock. Our party (my mum, dad, aunt, C and the kids) had swordfish, tuna, sirloin steak, fillet steak, ostrich, kangaroo and springbok. Good fun, and no one burnt themselves.
I'm with the home made chicken stock faction. The birds aren't expensive; you can start out by roasting one, and obviously there are lots of things you can produce with the results. Tasty chicken sandwiches, for instance. Then, after a couple of days, you can make stock from what's left (extra ingredients: onions, carrots, celery, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns; simmer for about three hours). We tend to use said stock to make risotto.
Huh. Maybe I'll stay away from Collage Inn in the future. The pumpkins were little fat sugar pumpkins from the farmers market, not jackolanterns, but they were mysteriously awful as well. (On the merits of the recipe, I was trying to appeal to the kids; anyway, what went wrong wasn't that it was oversweet or too piespice tasting. It was just rank.)
Friend came over to bake and escape loud punk rock events at his house. He and my programming housemate and I made a thing with acorn squash (which we peeled and which was not well-designed for peeling) and butter beans with tomato--saute the onion, add savory, add the squash and cook, add the beans and pureed tomato and some frozen white wine and cook longer.
It was good but everyone was so hungry that we didn't let the squash cook as long as we should.
We also made experimental pumpkin chocolate chip muffins--experimental mostly because I am a dutiful recipe-follower and my friend goes by "hm, that looks like about a tablespoon". Each of us blamed the other for the results, which were tasty but rose too high and had tough exteriors.
119: Well, you may want to avoid College Inn, but it doesn't sound like it's at fault. I have made many, many wonderful soups using little veggie stock cubes and while they're certainly no great shakes, they can't really ruin anything (and certainly anything that involves blending a bunch of other stuff into them). I think the trouble has to come from the pumpkins -- if they were still hard post-roasting then that is a bad sign.
It has only just now struck me that College Inn is a pun for "collagen". Intentionally?
This just goes to show how very slow I truly am!
Excellent news, Di! Glad it went well.
College Inn makes delicious pizza in Charlottesville.
We had excellent food from Durty Nellies last night.
My only disappointment was that we missed a good band at nameless field.
Hooray, Di! That rocks. What did you wear?
Feeling any better this morning, Heebie?
bake and escape
Bake 'n Escape sounds like a very successful franchise, although I have no idea what it might offer.
Bake 'n Escape sounds like a very successful franchise, although I have no idea what it might offer.
The classic file to saw through prison bars hidden in a cake, obviously!
132 = me
127 - Just your basic jeans and a sweater. Simplicity.
Last night we had beef burgundy with roasted fingerling potatos from the garden, a green salad, and a baguette. Finished it off with possibly the best pie I've ever made.
Di, was this the guy the e-mail to whom you asked for advice on formulating? Or did I miss the results of that? In either case, woot!
KFC and Krispy Kreme.
Recently, I have been spending time in Mexico City on business. One effect of globalization of which I do not usually take advanatge is that of the three places to eat lunch that are closest to the client's offices, one is Burger King and another is McDonalds (the other is some Mexican chain). Still, I was delighted to learn that in the shopping center that is about a kilometer away (the one with the Home Depot, Sam's Club, Radio Shack and Subway, not the one across the highway with the OfficeMax) there is a Krispy Kreme. I love me some Krispy Kreme.
127,133: Just your basic jeans and a sweater
OK heebie, your surely know how this works. What did *you* wear? (It's better in the present tense, but voyeurs can't be choosers.)
Feeling any better this morning, Heebie?
A bit. My throat is pretty sore. I went to soccer anyway, but it was rained out.
137 - Yes! Yes it is. I'm such an ingrate, I nearly forgot the Mineshaft collective effort. I especially want to thank K-sky, whose draft I believe I adapted. It takes a village...
Thanks for the article in 114, max. We just bought half a lamb, and that recipe looks great (but what does she mean by "ripe tannins"?)
The matter of "Better than Bullion" has been settled. Here's a tip for chicken stock: save your carcasses and whatnot in the freezer until you have enough for a big batch, then roast them up before you make the stock.
No dinner to speak of last night, but it's winemaking season, and we Garagistes like us some good eating and drinking when the work is done. The other day I made oeufs en meurette for 24, a few days later spicy spare ribs, always lots of chanterelles, which are $8-10 at the store these days.
FWIW, little I suppose, I'm in the school of folks who taste while cooking. I've thrown stuff out way before finishing the process because of how it tasted 1/3 or 1/2 of the way through. For stuff that needs cooking to be edible, tasting obviously can't happen before it's cooked. And in this case, I think you're right in thinking the browning failed. "Browning," in my amateur opinion means cooking. Rarely, I think, does "browning" mean leaving any part of the browned thing cooked less than the eventual desired final state. So the pumpkin should have been done, and tasty, just after browning.
Your recipe, while not foolproof, does remind me of the best pumpkin soup I ever had, at Jazz Alley in Seattle. They also have really good live music.
will point to this article/recipe,
That article was quite inspiring; if only I had the budget for leg of lamb!
made a thing with acorn squash (which we peeled and which was not well-designed for peeling)
One of the worst cooking experiences of my life revolved around having to peel acorn squash. (Final product - yum - but the rest? Never going to do it again.)
Finally, woooooooo, Di! That sounds quite awesome.
if only I had the budget for leg of lamb!
According to this post, you can get leg of lamb for about $4/lb. from a halal butcher in SF, which works out to about $20 for the whole leg. Not extravagant by any means.
145: Hm. Still too expensive for me (graduate student), BUT, not too too too expensive for me. I'll look into the halal butchers.
Within the bounds of discretion and decorum...
I know what those words mean, but I can't make any sense of them together like that.
(W00t!)
146: Well, presumably you're not going to eat the entire leg at one sitting. Spread it out over a bunch of meals (or get some friends to go in on a big meal) and I'm willing to bet it's back in your regular price range. Either that or I'm an overprivileged yuppie who's forgotten what it's like to be poor.
Either that or I'm an overprivileged yuppie who's forgotten what it's like to be poor or I eat too much.
No, really, I do make the occasional more expensive big meal and have friends over; next on the list is cassoulet (only expensive because I'm determined to make duck confit and I'm apparently not allowed to just kill three of the thousands of ducks that swarm campus.) Thanks for the tip!
Happy to oblige, Di. Anyone else need Cyranonsense?
I'm apparently not allowed to just kill three of the thousands of ducks that swarm campus.
You never know until you try...
Thanks for the tip!
Did I mention that I love cassoulet? You can pay me back in that...
Aren't there duck hunting areas in the valley? You can find someone with the old nintendo duck hunter game and practice.
Anyone else need Cyranonsense?
Remind me what it is first? I don't remember in what thread that exchange occurred, or what k-sky's email draft looked like.
149: I'm apparently not allowed to just kill three of the thousands of ducks that swarm campus.
Look for the humane society member driving a BMW. Offer $10/duck, $15/goose and $50/deer. Use cash. Keep the conversation vague enough that you don't sound like you are wearing a wire.
Aren't there duck hunting areas in the valley?
There are many, and I've actually been to a number of them in order to watch the birds overwinter on the Pacific Flyway. This has allowed me to observe the hunters closely enough to know that unless I go after the fat and content ones on campus, I have no chance.
And this reminds me that the Sandhill cranes must be coming into Consumnes. I'd grace you all with some Snyder poetry concerning their arrival, but I'll relent this one time.
156: My family is from the sandhills. You aren't allowed to eat the cranes.
Pars -- Cyrano-sky's ghostwriting can be found here. Simple, yet effective. He's a professional writer, after all.
(I think it was the P.S. that really sealed the deal.)
"Not only is she hot, but she asks such profound, thought-provoking questions, too. Who does want to sex Mutumbo? I really should go to lunch with her."
158: Ah, thanks. That was perfect. Short, to the point, not afraid to say that you like, you like so far, yes okay, and shall we see?
Good work, k-sky! The sexing Mutumbo part is surely best kept to oneself.
And thanks for the "Pars", Di. Better than "Parsi". I've never had nicknames before, and it weirds me out. I'm currently trying to come up with a new email address name for use among parties in the bookselling world, pursuant to ditching my previous one. It's difficult.
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Today's soup: sauteed onions, can of tomatoes, potato masher, bring to a boil, blenderize, cream, reheat to almost simmering, was much better. Campbells, except tomato-flavored.
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So does the potato masher break down after long cooking or something?
I've been worried about anemia. If you leave it in for long enough to rust, it kind of dissolves into the soup, and makes it higher in iron. You could just add some old nails if you don't have a spare potato masher (but in that case, throw in a piece of wood or some toothpicks for fiber.)
It sounds like LB should have an immersion blender if she's going to be potato-mashing her tomato soup.
(Seriously, immersion blenders are possibly the best electrified kitchen accessory you can get if you like making semi-creamy soups. You will find yourself making more of them.)
Note that the halal butchers "in SF" discussed in Josh's comment supra are actually in Oakland.
only expensive because I'm determined to make duck confit
$2.40/lb cheap! Shipping'll be a bitch, of course, but my sister advises that you can fit five or six ducks into a single shipping container, or (I estimate) maybe three or four and a nice five-pound bag o' unrendered fat.
Why neither of these is a crazy idea:
- ducks are easy to bone out. You can freeze the breasts & other non-leg meaty bits (e.g. if there are oysters on ducks, which I assume there are), and use the legs & thighs for confit, having rendered the fat from all the ducks for the same purpose (in all likelihood you'll need more than one duck's worth of fat to confit one duck's worth of legs).
- then you can make stock from the carcasses.
- THEN you can make duck confit risotto!
- if you go for option two you'll have a bunch MORE fat for OTHER purposes as well!
Or you could just find some other people to go in on ducks with you.
Mmmm (mmmm good), that tomato soup sounds yummy. I haven't been able to get warm all day -- may have to try that for dinner.
I think you mentioned the nickname preference before, Pars. I try to remember such things, when I can.
166: Someday I want to share a meal with neB.
I'll freeze your breasts and drape your thighs in aromatic fats.
What, doesn't that sound inviting, even tempting?
I have just made some vegetarian moussaka, assembling all the components now and baking partway, to do the final baking on a weeknight. It smells gorgeous.
since this thread is circling back around to food.
applesauce, ginger, molasses bread
Turned out pretty good but too sweet.
I didn't increase the sugar that much, but I failed to accurately judge how much sweeter this batch of apples was than the previous (which had resulted in somewhat overly tart bread).
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On a student's test: The function is increasing on the interval [2, affinity].
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166: Not a bad idea at all, really. Duck is yummy.
We got a pumpkin from our farmshare this week, so today's project is kaddo bourani. I hope this weekend isn't one of generalized pumpkin disasters.
You could also make duck breast prosciutto.
Braising a beef brisket right now for pastitio.
The pumpkin soup does sound like it should have worked. Onion and garlic before you cooked the pumpkin down are important. Salt and pepper. Not too much broth-to-pumpkin--should be very dense. A bit of half-and-half to thicken. I also do pumpkin soup with bacon, always--cook the pumpkin and the onion and the garlic in a bit of the bacon grease as well as some olive oil.
Also, yeah, as above? Avoid College Inn broth--I think it's nasty. Swanson's organic chicken broth is really quite good.
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This is fun: Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire. At the end it tells you what celebrity your answers most resemble; I drew Joan Rivers. It does not show you how their answers or how your answers match theirs, which is especially maddening since the answers are free form.
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On the topic of broth, today I also made some really delectable green sauce for enchiladas, a Rick Bayless recipe -- but playing the part of chicken broth (and of added salt, which I omitted) was some brine from my slow-fermented pickles. It sounds insane, I realize, but it worked very well.
Now baking: some cinnamon pecan cookies.
175: She may have a similar understanding of math as my six year old. I've been having conversations with her like this:
Caroline: What is princess plus princess?
Me: Umm, two princesses?
Caroline: Nooo!
Me: The question really doesn't make sense.
Caroline: Yes it does! Princess plus princess equals ballerina!
As it turns out, there is a whole extra realm of math, where common nouns can play the role of numbers. Also, ten plus twenty plus princess is fifty.
I'm going to render myself uninhabitable for this site if I wonder why chicken broth is needed for a basically vegetable soup like pumpkin. Soup. Aren't I?
I'm just thinking out loud: chicken broth adds fat and sodium, and some general flavours. If you use a vegetable broth instead, you're omitting the fat. I understand that fat is considered premium, bro, and for good reason. Tastes good, or should, unless you're using College Inn, apparently.
Okay.
Princess plus princess equals ballerina!
Priceless. Where's the mermaid come in?
181: I had a 98.1% overlap with John Waters. I'm suddenly convinced that he's much less weird than I had previously thought. (Next, with 81% overlap, was Brian Wilson.)
185: For fat, for depth of flavor, for umami. Add in a parmesan rind or some dried seaweed (kombu) for a similar effect but in vegetarian form.
(I think the fat is the least key part, actually - you can use the nearly fat free chicken broth to good effect as well.)
188: Umami? I'll look that up. Chicken fat has that?
Pars: I just asked what mermaid plus mermaid was, and was told "Princess."
"But wait," I said, "Princess plus princess is ballerina..." I had been hoping to compute that a mermaid was a quarter ballerina, but I was interrupted:
"No no, princess plus princess is queen."
190: "Umami (ęØå³?) is one of the five generally recognized basic tastes sensed by specialized receptor cells present on the human tongue. Umami is a loanword from Japanese meaning roughly "tasty", although "brothy", "meaty", or "savory" have been proposed as alternative translations.[1][2] The same taste is also known as xiÄnwĆØi (simplified Chinese: é²å³; traditional Chinese: é®®å³ literally "Fresh Flavor") in Chinese cooking. Inasmuch as it describes the flavor common to savory products such as meat, cheese, and mushrooms, umami is similar to Brillat-Savarin's concept of osmazome, an early attempt to describe the main flavoring component of meat as extracted in the process of making stock."
For more, see here.
Thanks about the umami, Parenthetical.
I'm going to render myself uninhabitable for this site if I wonder why chicken broth is needed for a basically vegetable soup like pumpkin. Soup. Aren't I?
No. Indeed, this very subject has already been discussed above!
Note that the halal butchers "in SF" discussed in Josh's comment supra are actually in Oakland.
See? Oakland really *is* better than The City.
"No no, princess plus princess is queen."
You should tell her that she'll never get anywhere with her system if she won't stick to just one set of axioms.
194: I haven't followed the thread closely, as you can tell. Apologies!
191: rob, do we need to be concerned about the set of gender categories (or whatever) young six-year-old is fascinated by?
I am kidding. She's just getting this stuff from wherever. It's in the ether or something.
198: We were resisting the gender norms tooth and nail for a while, but it did fuck all. Molly did convince her to dress up as a Ninja rather than a princess for Halloween, though. It helped that we found this fancy ninja outfit with dark green frilly dragon accents.
181: 94.57% Annette Bening. Huh.
185: I'm going to render myself uninhabitable for this site
Yeah, I wouldn't want this site inhabiting me, either.
199: I'm not an actual parent of an actual young child, but from what I hear, you have to kind of let it go for a little while, and she'll figure out the problem herself, most likely, after a while. The princess and mermaid and ballerina stuff is deeply embedded in our culture. She's going to hear the message that that's what she should aspire to.
200: But there's this really nice place to camp down by your spleen!
See? Oakland really *is* better than The City.
Well there are halal butchers in sf.
200.last: That formulation was a problem, wasn't it? Oh well. "Unfit" would have been fine.
Veal stock is particularly umami-rich, because of the college inn.
Have any of you made pear jam? A neighbor and I are in the process of doing so (23 pounds of glorious pears!), but we have a pectin question. Some of the recipes we've looked at call for pectin, some don't. Pears are low in pectin, so I'm assuming we should add some. I can probably track down the info somewhere on the intertubes, but if someone out there knows for sure, do tell.
Add some.
I note you don't say if you've ever made pear jam, nosflow.
Have any of you made pear jam?
I lost track of them over the past few years, but I remember liking Even Fow.
Umami so fat, uh, it makes a good broth.
Umami so savory, uh, afterwards I couldn't eat meat for three days.
I am in the process of making a pear-cranberry crisp. Go pears!
I have not made pear jam myself, but even Christine Ferber, who does not go in for firm preserves, calls for a source of pectin (she, scrupulously, always calls for green apple jelly rather than commercial pectin) in her pear recipes, so I think unless you want to make pear butter, you're going to want extra pectin from somewhere.
Umami so satiating, after a few bites I need to go take a nap.
SEE, JOSH? Ferber doesn't even call for pectin in strawberry jam.
You could also do this with your pears.
181: 98.81% Michael Caine.
Only 11.11% like David Mamet and only 10% like Nora Ephron. Cool!
181: 98.81% Michael Caine.
Only 11.11% like David Mamet and only 10% like Nora Ephron. Cool!
You could also do this with your pears.
I was just going to make the same observation. I need to get some jars of the appropriate sort, because I am very eager to make those myself.
I'd say that you should use half to two thirds a packet per 4-5 lbs. of prepared fruit. My pear jelly was too firm last year, and I used the whole pack.
Pectin will be added. This is going to be unforgettable pear jam, not because of the jam itself but rather because one of my daughters went missing while I was next door working on it. It turns out she had gone out for a nap in the warm car, where I found her sleeping after 15 minutes of terrified, frantic searching. Holy shit.
On preview, thanks, Chopper, that's what I was looking for.
My top two (and then a big, big gap) were Aretha Franklin and Karl Rove. Don't even want to think about what that indicates.
221: I'm still pointedly not thinking about what the comparison to John Waters means.
221/22, etc.: I am 92% Eleanor Lambert (of whom I had never heard, but who seems kind of awesome) and 72% Joan Didion.
Also, in re the interview suit: get it altered. Suits are being worn slender right now, so having a loose suit is going to read slovenly to an interviewer. If you're having the pants taken in, you may want ask them to shorten the pants lightly so you have minimal to no break. Wear a French-cuffed shirt and make sure your tie is up to date. Get your shoes shined. Seriously, if you look polished and confident, you'll up your chances, especially if you'll be interacting with clients.
223, etc. I am most similar to Arnold Swartzenegger and Bill O'Reilly, apparently. This makes me introspective.
I'm making a pentagonal apple tart.
Fall!
224: Holy fuck! If they care about shit at that level of detail, turn around and run away. Fast.
The point isn't that they'll care--if it's done right they won't even notice. But they'll notice it unconciously, and remember him as smarter, better-looking, more confident, and more professional.
re: 96
I suppose here the fact that there are clear rules about clothing for exams helps, a bit. The fact that rules require you to wear a white bow-tie, and full-robes, not so much. A bow-tie and collar is _just_ what you want to be wearing when nervous and speaking for hours.
You would think that an interviewer interested in actually hiring the best qualified candidates would take steps to make him or herself aware of these hitherto unconscious biases, the better to counteract them with conscious reminders that n—roscientists aren't likely to be the most fashionable types.
My pentagonal tart looks awesome, by the way.
You should make more of them and build a dodecahedral tart.
Oh, and the cheapest ducks are found at Chinese grocery stores in my experience--$9 for a 4 lb. bird last time I was there (including neck head and feet, but those enrich stock nicely).
Both the duck and the clothing problems are easily solved by the hiring of a hobo consultant. But be sure to check the hobo's shoes for shards of glass and bits of gravel and dirt - too little of any and they won't be able to give you the information you need.
Similarly to how I don't quite remember if I wore a t-shirt to my thesis defense, I have this sneaking suspicion I just used the phrase "fucked up" in a phone conversation with my mom about her church, thus possibly scandalizing her.
Duck's feet, cooked right, are delicious.
Maybe I should make some hexagonal tarts as well and make a buckytart.
You'd think, but very few people do, in my experience. Why throw away a potential advantage?
My interview advice is you should be aware that your job interview is happening, because if you don't, and you think you just happen to be chatting up the chief of staff while you're waiting to see your friend who just got elected and whom you've idly considered working for, you might not be on your best.
if you don't
If you aren't, you mean.
M. Merleau-Ponty reports of brain-damaged (a piece of shrapnel hit symbolic consciousness) patient Schneider that he has the use of a great many more expressions [than a different patient] and he is constantly correcting grammar
(The Structure of Behavior, p 66).
I checked the Vanity Fair celebrity resemblance Proust questionnaire linked in 181, and it appears I have to log in to Facebook in order to do it. What's that about now? I do not like it.
Chopper's 224, on the way suits are being worn these days, is sort of fascinating.
236: Is this one of those Chinese things where it's about texture more than taste? I generally don't enjoy those dishes.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather wear a t-shirt and jeans any day, but if you're going to play their game, you might as well do it right.
242: That's only if you want to compare your answers to those of your friends. You can compare them to Joan Rivers's anonymously.
I like wearing suits.
You know what else I like wearing? Slacks. Especially in summer, slacks are more comfortable than a lot of my pants options. And yet I infrequently think to wear slacks.
And I am not short on pants.
I wish the fashion weren't for skinny ties. I have none.
re: 244
I think the problem that nosflow is pointing to is that a lot of the time it's impossible to know what 'doing it right' will involve. Or that knowledge is going to be restricted to those who are already 'inside'. That applies less to wearing suits, though, than it does to horrific travesties like 'business casual'.
To counter the pentagonal tarts, use your Jesus Pan.
Hard to decide if it is parody or not.? Seems legit, but then you read, Holy images have been popping up all over... A grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary sold for over 17-hundred dollars on Ebay.
245: Well, it is not loading for me, or something. All I see is the introductory paragraph and invitations to Facebook and learning about the book about this. Admittedly, I've switched to Firefox with adblock and flashblock and stuff. Maybe that's it. It's almost like being a virgin!
224: the only part of this that gives me real pause is "[w]ear a French-cuffed shirt". That's dangerously close to hopping the line from "clean and polished" to "flashy", which you don't want to do. The standard advice in a job interview is always that they shouldn't notice what you wear--nothing about it should stand out. Which means of course you should take care not to wear the wrong thing (so have a suit, that fits), but that you should trend conservative. French cuffs run the risk of being "noticed".
And what, exactly, the fuck does it mean for a tie to be "up to date"? (Serious question.) You just mean fashionably skinny? Because normal-width ties aren't really "out".
Quick and easy leftovers: No duck, but I do have plenty of the risotto and fig-red wine puree. Mixed up a few eggs with some of the puree, add a bit of salt, pepper, and nutmeg, added it to the pan which had had the duck with some melted butter, stirred in the risotto. It's now cooking covered over low heat. This could be a disaster or really good or anything in between. I'll see.
Yeah, I'm not willing to purchase a French-cuffed shirt and cufflinks for this. (Yes, it's true, I have neither of these things. Also, no cummerbund!) One of the current employees I met at the first round was wearing French Cuffs, though.
Getting alterations is probably as far as I'm willing to go. I have some leads on places and hoping one of them will be able to get the suit back by Friday if I get it to them tomorrow.
It is a position that would supposedly involve interaction with clients, and as such, I would expect that if my personal appearance is too off, I would be docked. I think I am already unlikely to get this job for other reasons, though, but as I and Chopper said, might as well do it right.
re: 250
I suppose. French cuffs don't have to be particularly noticeable or flashy [although they certainly can be]. But doesn't Chopper work in 'creative' fields? Where the rules are slightly different. One of my bosses at work dresses incredibly well* and I think that stems from his art-school background.
* not remotely a pre-requesite. It's casual dress for everyone, more or less. This guy has, and has always had, a Don Draper sort of vibe going on. Like a 50s G-man at a gallery opening .
My interview advice is you should be aware that your job interview is happening, to which I would add: However, remaining oblivious does not necessarily rule out the receipt of a delightful offer.
On recipes: I idly picked up New American Plate at the library and have been quite liking it, perhaps more for idea-shopping then for precise recipes. The introductory blurb for each recipe gets a little breathless with its recitation of cancer-fighting goodness in each and every vegetable, but by and large it has some good and not horrendously ambitious starting points.
And finally, I must note that while chatting with the approximately 11-year-old grocery checker tonight, I had cause to understand that said young'un believes the first Superman movie to have been made "back in the '60s."
Well, '60s, 1978, it's all the same difference to somebody born in the '90s, I suppose.
I probably would have made a similar guess, in all honesty.
Have you seen the move, neb? I'm not remotely fashionable by any stretch of the imagination, and even I can remember the look of the movie was decidedly a late '70s or even early '80s one.
(On the other hand he did say he had seen the move "a long time ago," so maybe he was, says, six.)
I was mostly just amused at the incongruity. Dude starts talking about superpowers in the grocery store checkout, you assume he's literate in the basic vernacular.
243: I'm not really sure what those things are. I like the taste of duck's feet. It's more of a side dish or snack than a meal. I use to have it with dim sum a lot when I was a kid. It's been a while since I've eaten it.
Good heavens.
move s/b movie
says s/b say
I still have, I think, half a dozen pairs of cufflinks, from my days of wearing such things. If anyone is interested, they're free, assuming I can find them. I know where they'd be, in the chest of jewelry and scarves and such that I don't use any more.
I am getting a sudden flash of parsimon as Jo March.
The first Superman movie made in the 60s? The Christopher Reeve one?
Apparently the decades merge, and the 60s/70s are about the same, which from some perspectives they are. The 80s, though? But the supermarket checkout kid was 11, so he is probably not ready yet.
I had moments of absolute terror that something terrible had happened to my child*, and you people want to talk about French cuffs? Hmph.
The adrenaline hasn't completely worn off, but a couple shots of vodka infused with three different kinds of hot peppers plus some garlic has taken the edge off.
*Her sister was following me during the search, on the verge of tears and repeatedly insisting "She got stolen."
Oops. Exaggeration fail. The checker was probably 16 or 17. You can't work past 8 p.m. on a school night around here unless you're at least that old. I just said 11 because it seemed like a funny way to highlight how young he seemed.
The adrenaline hasn't completely worn off, but a couple shots of vodka infused with three different kinds of hot peppers plus some garlic has taken the edge off.
First you lose your daughter, then you get her drunk? You better watch out or CPS will be coming soon.
['Glad she's safe. Not that I have any idea what you were experiencing.']
Like how he highlighted how long ago the movie was made ...
I had moments of absolute terror that something terrible had happened to my child*, and you people want to talk about French cuffs? Hmph.
But you found her, so everything turned out okay and we can go back to French cuffs and Superman.
The adrenaline hasn't completely worn off, but a couple shots of vodka infused with three different kinds of hot peppers plus some garlic has taken the edge off.
Yum! Kinda makes it all worth it.
I can just barely imagine, JMcQ.* So glad it turned out fine.
*Last time I babysat an infant there was a tense hour involving some constricted breathing. I was a petrified wreck -- and he was in my arms the entire time. Not willing to think about how much scarier it would have been if I hadn't been able to locate one of the kids.
Wow. Glad you found her, Jesus.
Thinking you've lost your child is the worst feeling.
Anyway, take a 1.75 liter bottle of Monopolowa vodka, add one large negro (or other dried smoked) pepper, four jalapeƱos, two habaneros, four garlic cloves (all, peppers and garlic, roughly chopped), and a few bits of lemon peel. Let it sit for I have no idea how long (it's plenty hot and tasty after an hour); enjoy.
Jesus, your fear is felt from afar, belatedly. Your daughter is smart, though, and just went to sleep in the warm car? She just has to tell someone first if she's going to do that. God, you must have been frantic. I'm sorry, my friend.
Dear old Monopolowa! Sponsor of many a youthful experience of needing to lie quietly on the floor.
In my experience it is hard for anyone else to truly appreciate the "lost child panic" if they only hear about it after the child has been found. When my eldest was about 4 he would go to a class at a local museum with a friend. He got lost there one day when his friend and friend's father went into the bathroom while he continued on to a pastry shop a block away where they always went after class. The poor guy was still ashen when he told me about it, but with my clearly intact child standing there during the story, I found I just could not really connect with the sense of panic other than intellectually.
181: 94.57% Annette Bening. Huh.
I got 92.30% Annette Bening, followed closely behind by Arthur Miller. I don't know what that's supposed to mean.
I think my answers tended toward cynical or fatalistic, but I don't know whether their algorithm could pick up on that.
My Parisienne cousin grew up going to New York for the summer. When she was four or five, she disappeared at the airport and was eventually found buckled into her seat on the airplane, before any of the other passengers had boarded. She'd found it herself. I guess no one noticed her on the gangway.
126: My only disappointment was that we missed a good band at nameless field.
It's okay, Will. They might've denied you entry. It was a Young Alumni event, and I barely passed muster.
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Aw crap. I'm so tired from a weekend of re-doing my front yard that I could barely stand up to get myself food. I tried loud music, but it wasn't working. Not hiphop, not Gogol Bordello, not Prince. I was beginning to be afraid that music was broken. Or maybe sheer loudness had stopped working.
But then I finally hit on Rhapsody in Blue and that worked. Except it ended and I hardly know where to go from here. Carmina Burana? In the Hall of the Mountain King? It will have to be very dramatic, whatever it is.
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Crap. In the Hall of the Mountain King (Peer Gynt?) was good, but way too short.
When we were little, my Dad would promise us all day that if we were good, we could listen to it REAL LOUD after dinner. He's an acoustician and has very big speakers. He would play it so loud the windows would rattle. It was great.
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Sibelius 5th, finale. Turn up the volume and listen to the whole thing.
Awesome, thank you.
Round here, we need the majesty and grandeur of the Ride of the Valkyries to finish scrambling eggs. I can't think what it would take to carry me through folding my clothes.
285: I was about to link to this. Get out of my head.
Oooh, that was big and swoopy, with nice rumbly drums.
Which reminds me that someone or other has cannons in something something something. Cannons are about the right level of subtlety for tonight. 1812 Overture, here I come.
288: No credit for the link? I'm slighted. Off to listen to the saddest song ever.
It was being ominous, but maybe we're done with that.
No - the ominous is back. I'm alone in the house!
Holy crap, that is a shameless, shameless ending.
Up there a ways, too tired to go check a specific number. I work in medical device marketing (at least in theory, having been unemployed for a few days over a year). I have to be able to dress nice for trade shows, but day-to-day it's just slacks and a dress shirt. But I subscribe to GQ, and usually look at the articles/pictorials on businesswear.
The french cuffs thing--not a big deal, I wouldn't get them monogrammed or anything, but once you get to Sr. Manager/Director level or so, they start showing up quite a bit. And they say to dress for the next level up--makes it easier for your managers to envision you as peers.
If, fingers crossed, this gig I had a second interview for on Friday comes through, I'll then be at a marketing agency. I'm really looking forward to being able to buy non-business-casual clothing. (Especially since I have about 3 things that fit these days since I've lost 45 lbs. in the last year.)
Thank you too, Stanley! Your link was the perfect version.
Off to listen to the saddest song ever.
Yeah, it always breaks me up when Willem Dafoe reaches for the sky.
Stanley, I have no resistance right now. If I listen to the saddest song ever, I'll end up crumpled next to my clothes on the bed and nothing will ever get hung up.
295: Just don't watch Platoon. It will ruin the song for you, as Josh is trying to do in 294.
Not that I'm putting my clothes away anyway. It turns out that my priority is to listen to several different versions of "Bess, You Is My Woman Now". Who knew?
Fortunately, I completely missed the reference. But I'm still not listening to sad pretty strings tonight.
Megan, what you need to listen to now is MAGMA.
Here's part of Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh.
You'll do what I say or I'll know the reason why, Megan.
The reason why? I'll tell you why. Because.
298: I went a made a post of it. I hope not to make you sad, Megan. If so, throw two couches off the roof, and call me in the morning.
The Bernstein is too fast. Rostropovich's interpretation is by far superior.
I've nothing in the way of pumpkin soup advice but I do want to say that I am wicked stoked that autumn is here and it actually feels like autumn. I am going to carve a jack-o-lantern the weekend before Halloween. I am sooooooooo excited. I have a whole mountain of candy just waiting to be handed out and hopefully I'll be able to go out for drinks with some friends or something that night.
Also, the green sauce with a little pickle brine sounds fantastic.