Archive for July, 2008
July 31, 2008 at 9:26 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
It’s a bean, there’s jelly inside with candy roots back to Turkish Delight, and there’s the harder shell.
Actually, I’m a bit depressed/cranky tonight and as much as I want to keep going with this food holiday thing - I’m just not feeling the jellybean. My mood is currently such that when I think jellybeans, I think that to all of life’s wonderful variety you still have to deal with disgusting black licorice in the mix. And I forget and, upon encountering a new batch, hope for black currant. Maybe they could learn from winegums.
But no. Black licorice. You can taste it on the neighboring beans too. Then there are those green mint flavoured beans. Ewww…let’s not get started. This girl has got to get some sleep.
July 31, 2008 at 9:37 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
The most fitting start to cotton candy day. I woke up this morning and my blinds were glowing an electric pink. I opened them to see the most gorgeous cotton candy sunrise. The blue and pink standard cotton candy colours * must * be inspired by this kind of sky.
Before this morning I was planning on drawing cotton candy as I don’t see myself getting to the fair or a circus today but this sunrise says it all for me.
Still, cotton candy is a pretty cool thing. From Wikipedia:
It was introduced in 1904 by William Morrison and John C. Wharton, at the St. Louis World’s Fair as “Fairy Floss”[1] with great success, selling 68,655 boxes at the then-high $0.25 ($5.70 in 2007 dollars), half the cost of admission to the fair.
The center part of the machine consists of a small bowl into which sugar is poured and food coloring added. Heaters near the rim melt the sugar and it is spun out through tiny holes where it solidifies in the air and is caught in a large metal bowl.
It’s called Barbe à papa (Papa’s beard) in French - so is Barbapapa actually a cotton candy man?
July 30, 2008 at 9:57 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
A woman at work made us the most amazing cheesecake I’ve ever had last week. I don’t think anything I could eat today would ever compare so a drawing:
Cheesecake is interesting in that it’s been around foooorever and so many cultures have their own versions of it. Perhaps it is just something that humans need.
My favourite kinds are pumpkin cheesecake and a pistachio no-bake cheesecake that my mother makes. Your basic New York-style is good too but if I have it, a lot is riding on the crust and toppings.
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According to wikipedia, there is a “Vancouver-style” cheesecake.
Vancouver-style cheesecake is a light, airy style made without a crust, primarily in vanilla and chocolate and often served refrigerated with various local fruit toppings such as British Columbia strawberries, raspberries and cherries.
I wasn’t totally aware of that but while discussing places to eat cheesecake in the city today, a coworker mentioned most of them having a lighter cheesecake. But no crust?? I don’t know. One of the most incredible characteristic of desserts is layers.
July 29, 2008 at 7:06 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
I’m a little late but with reason. Last night there were BBQ and glacier slideshow going-ons at the Kommune. Faron was doing field work in the Yukon and the gathering was for the group who had been there to share pictures and stories. Amazing photographs and great to see how well a projector works in our backyard.
But earlier in the day I did get the chance to celebrate Lasagna Day. A co-worker recently stumbled upon a little Italian catering business / café nestled in the middle of our nowhere land company box park - taste of italy catering (website coming soon). It’s a great little places, the staff are smiley and friendly, all main items are between $5.00 and $7.00, and they taste yummy and fresh. If you are ever in Richmond, lost among the featureless boxes of the East side, hope that you might stumble across this little place.
I ordered the Lasagna al Forno:
Whenever I eat lasagna I think of Garfield and then I wonder - how Italian is lasagna really? Has anyone tried lasagna in Italy? The only thing I know is that their lasagne does not have ripply edges.
Yesterday was also “Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day”. “Sacrifice” and “Purchase” seem a little contradictory so I wasn’t quite sure what to do here. This was the best explanation I found:
Today is Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day. Apparently if you wish to get rid of mice you have to sacrifice some cheese and today is the day you purchases the cheese to sacrifice to the mice.
But I wasn’t entirely convinced. Neither did I connect with that definition in any way, not having ever lived with mice (that I know of). So I did the first thing I figured I had to do: I bought my favourite cheese: applewood smoked cheddar. On the way home I thought about making a cheese shrine or sacrificing the cheese to the carpenter ants or saying that I’m a mouse and hoarding the cheese to myself. In the end I sacrificed the cheese to the BBQ:
Not really a sacrifice at all. Besides, mice are not that into cheese anyway…but would they go for cheesecake? Stay tuned…
July 29, 2008 at 9:43 am · Filed under Photographs, Things Found Online
The American Museum of Natural History has a collection of old photos taken around the museum online. The ones of workers creating exhibitions are very interesting:
“Oops, so sorry about that….let me just put these back here…”
Photos found via Pruned.
July 28, 2008 at 11:06 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
This could have been a much more spectacular day but I spent 10 hours of it coding a prototype and felt that a good old vending machine chocolate bar would be suitable for celebrating chocolate in its milk/sugar goodness. But what happened to you aero bar? I remember you being so melty on my tongue and now you seem slightly waxy. Chocolate down in quality? My roommate suggests that maybe they started using a different kind of air for the bubbles.
Oh well, lesson learned. Things in my Aero bar:
MILK CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENTS, COCOA BUTTER, UNSWEETENED CHOCOLATE, LACTOSE, SOYA LECITHIN, POLYGLYCEROL POLYRICINOLEATE ARTIFICIAL FLAVOUR).
July 27, 2008 at 9:10 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Try making crème brûlée! It’s not too hard, the ingredients are basic, it’s fun and nobody can say they don’t like the brûlée. I made it following instructions from both Cooking for Engineers and the WikiBooks Cookbook.
My advice to add to those recipes:
Use vanilla beans. I made a small practice batch using vanilla extract and the taste difference is very noticeable.
Use the lower middle rack in your oven. I started my practice ones on an upper rack and they didn’t seem to get very cooked until I moved to a lower rack.
Some recipes say to use demerara sugar. I used that dark brown demerara sugar (sits with brown sugar on the grocery store shelf) for practice and it catches fire quite easily. My first brûlée was a bit too burnt. I didn’t know that demerara is also the name for raw or turbinado sugar and when I tried this type, it worked much better.
Mmm…I don’t know what else to say except…yum.
This will be made again. In the meantime, I’m brainstorming on other things I can do with ramekins and a kitchen torch.
July 26, 2008 at 11:40 pm · Filed under Art
This morning my pieces from last week were semi-dry and ready for trimming. Trimming involves putting the piece back on the wheel, usually upside-down, securing it at the bottom with clay, and using tools like these to trim away excess clay, rough spots, and add details like grooves and feet.
One thing enjoyable about trimming is the immediate feedback with almost anything you do. You can quickly tell if your piece is not centered or if you are spinning to slow or if your clay is still too wet. It’s harder to tell if you’ve trimmed to far (ex. break through the bottom), but a quick tap let’s you know.
The other great thing is that when you do make mistakes, you can trim them away, provided that you don’t trim your piece away and that you are flexible with how the resulting piece will look.
I’m excited to glaze these guys:
I think they’ll get into the kiln this week and maybe I’ll do glazing next Saturday.
In the meantime, I threw a bit more today and made three small cups with the intentions of making a sake drinking set. The cups were extremely simple cup shapes and more an exercise in hand memory - could I make three cups of the same shape and size? Not really. I also tried making the sake bottle (about 15cm high, pear-shaped with very tapered top) but it did not work out. Maybe next week. I have to learn how to make a tapered top without the piece caving into itself.
Oh - and maybe you noticed the handle on my coffee mug. Yeah…that didn’t work. I tried to make it with the pulling method but did a number of things wrong. Next time. But that mug doesn’t really need a proper handle anyway. It’s more a cup with both hands kind of mug ; )
July 26, 2008 at 11:10 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Coffee milkshake? Day?
Yes. And there are even greeting cards for it. (Be careful of that link, there’s a seizuriffic gif at the top of the page.) Wasn’t even sure what a coffee milkshake was. I imagined ice cream-milkshake flavoured with coffee but I guess it’s like an iced latte but with more (eggs). Found a recipe and made one today:
100 ml Chilled strong coffee
1 egg, well beaten
200 ml Cold milk
50 ml cream
tsp sugar
some vanilla extract
ginger biscuits to decorate —–>
It was so-so. I like my coffee hot and black. And in retrospect, I can’t believe I drank a glass of coffee with an egg in it. The all-in-one breakfast. Kind of a waste because I would appreciate milk, cream, coffee, and egg so much more if they were consumed individually. Finally, I wouldn’t recommend putting those ginger snaps in it. They melted into the coffee milkshake and became soggies from hell.
July 26, 2008 at 3:27 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
I’m not a huge fan of hot fudge on my ice cream. I eat it if offered but I don’t go out of the way to accelerate ice cream melt unless it’s on top of warm pie. So I didn’t have a sundae today. I appreciated takoyaki at the night market instead:
Bought at the first takoyaki stand, I didn’t realize that there were 2 or 3 other stands selling it that may have been better. This takoyaki was so-so but they were a bit frugal on the sauce and I think the cook was rotating the balls to quickly.
Anyway…back to hot fudge sundaes. They are beautiful things and who could pass up the chance to draw something that has become such an icon for dessert:
But was it the first sundae? If you believe the Two Rivers, WI tale, then yes, maybe. If you side with Ithaca, NY, then the cherry sundae may have preceded the hot fudge sundae. Either way, it is believed to have come after the ice cream soda, as a new invention and initially only sold on Sundays, hence being called a “Sunday” but that would be blasphemy so they changed it to Sundae.
Here is a collection of sundae related quotes, not all hot fudge but there are many good ones in there. I like these, the second one explaining why I get so sleepy after eating ice cream. It’s a lullaby for my tongue:
“His own government, suing him, that’s not Chocolate Sundae!”
- William Gates Sr. (Bill’s Dad)
“It may be said that ice cream is the best drug available for both mind and body. It is spiritually uplifting, nutritious and wholesome. According to many nutritionists, the calcium in ice cream has a calming effect. A number of psychiatrists, instead of prescribing tranquilizing medication, advise their patients to have some ice cream.”
- Prof. Ralph Slovenko, Journal of Psychiatry & Law
If you feel inspired to go make a hot fudge sundae yourself, don’t forget to pour fudge both under and over the ice cream, add whip cream, and top it with a cherry.
July 24, 2008 at 9:40 pm · Filed under Learning, Thinking
To end the day I sip tequila for happy tequila day.
I don’t know anything about tequila except that it’s more than the burning liquid people shoot back with salt and lime. This tequila is sweet and citrus-y. I love holding it under my nose.
Gregor’s take: “It’s nice…I’m enjoying this. Very nice aftertaste too. Delicate aroma.” (swishing around mouth a bit) “Powerful reaction. I dunno. It taste like any other spirits you know. When it hits your tongue your throat you have that kind of breathtaking moment. Soft and subtle aftertaste….man you type fast.”
July 24, 2008 at 10:14 am · Filed under Experiences
I’ve been biking to and from work since a few weeks after starting. It’s about 16km each way so I know I should be somewhat equipped with tools and replacement parts in case something breaks. My to-do list for a while: get tools, patches, inner tubes, a small pump, and a nice little kit to store it all on my bike to always be prepared. Also - learn how to use all of that. Maybe I’ve been avoiding this learning part.
But then this morning, halfway to work, I’m riding along a path that runs under and then onto a bridge going into Richmond. I see a few small boulders on the path ahead and a litter of beer cans. Kids :P It makes me think about my to-do list again, “maybe I’ll do that this weekend…”, and I kid you not, 5 seconds later I hear “ptfffffffffffffffffftt”.
Luckily a bus stop was near and I got to work but I’m currently feeling a little bad for my bike. I’m probably not taking care of it as well as I should. It does so much for me, carries me so far, and then I come home complaining how tired I am and leave it hanging in the basement to only get attention next time I need it to take me somewhere.
Now I have learned and I will try to learn how to take better care of my bike. A coworker gave me a very useful crash course on bike tires and how to fix them. Already understand so much more and I’m excited to get home (but not the taking a bus part) and try fixing my tire!
July 23, 2008 at 2:36 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
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Vanilla is an odd flavour to celebrate considering it’s something we consider default, but it does indeed deserve its praise. Especially considering how difficult it is to produce real vanilla. But with the ubiquitous vanilla substitute, we don’t think much about how lucky we are to have vanilla. It’s just there - like salt and pepper.
But in terms of ice cream, I’m enjoying the introduction of the “natural vanilla” flavour to the gang. I like it more and I know many others who do. But can I really taste the difference? Or is the difference in the colour (very white versus the colour of old stained walls that used to be white), the flecks of vanilla seeds, and the fact that the ice cream makers are also going for “extra creamy”? I’ll pretend I taste the difference.
Yummy vanilla ice cream at Montri’s Thai Restaurant.
July 22, 2008 at 10:31 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Wait a minute…fudge doesn’t come in a jar!
Penuche fudge day is celebrated with failed fudge. I didn’t think I could fail fudge. But I didn’t realize that there was such a long plateau between the caramalized state and the soft ball state!! I was impatient! My fudge was ruined!!
On the bright side, I ended up with the most delicious caramel sauce ever. I’ll have to try making apple dumplings to go with it. Here are the ingredients I used:
1 cup of light brown sugar
1 cup of demerara sugar (ran out of light brown)
1 cup of white sugar
1 cup of cream
about 2-3 tbsp of butter
a pinch of salt
1.5 tsp or so of vanilla
about 1 cup of chopped pecans
The sugar and cream were stirred to dissolve together in a sauce pan then the pan was placed over medium-high heat. Monitoring with a thermometer, I waited for it to reach 238F. It never did. It stayed around 226F for a long time. I tried drips in cold water but nothing. I thought the thermometer might be wrong, or our stove might not be good enough, or maybe I was wrong. And I was wrong…I should have waited a while longer.
But I didn’t. I took it off the heat and put the butter in, but didn’t stir right away. I waited until it cooled to around 140F and then stirred and stirred and added the vanilla too but by that point it wasn’t doing what the recipe said it would do. I was a little sad.
I threw the pecans in anyway, put it in a pan, and put it in the fridge. It’s still sugar, cream, and butter right? That has to taste something good right?
And it does…indeed it does.
July 21, 2008 at 10:28 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
I might have gotten the day wrong (it is wrong in my reference) but today I celebrated National Ice Cream Day with vanilla ice cream and berries:
Blueberries and ice cream hold a place in my heart, along with pistachios because one of my dad’s last wishes was for us to have a party and eat blueberries, ice cream, and pistachios for him. I guess that would have been his “last meal” if he knew and/or didn’t have stomach cancer. Sorry to be all sentimental - but when I eat any of those three foods, I feel like I’m eating it for him and it makes me happy.
Speaking of stomach cancer, it was also junk food day today. I didn’t really feel up to eating something I consider junk food (but I’m happy to eat things other people consider junk food) so, another drawing:
It’s interesting how what is considered junk food varies among individuals and cultures. I was surprised that a google image search for “junk food” turned up so many pictures of fast food hamburgers and hotdogs. Sure, they’re not necessarily good for you but they are real food (mostly sort of). To me junk food is food with ingredients you can’t normally buy individually in a grocery store and that is packaged to be preserved. Today I asked people at work what they thought junk food was and there was a consensus on chips. I agree to that - and the ultimate form of junk savory snack being the cheeto or cheezie or cheese puff.
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