Secret Server

Sweet Potato Biscuits, TWD

2009-10-25T15:50:00.003-05:00

I have never really gotten the hang of making biscuits. Or basically anything that requires cutting the butter and flour together. I remember my mother-in-law trying to teach me how to cut butter and flour for pie crusts using a knife and fork. Maybe it isn't just the butter thing. I worked in a fast food restaurant for awhile as a biscuit maker. They had a mix I would pour in a giant bowl and all I had to do was add buttermilk and mix and cut. Even those were not turning out right and rather than demanding some retraining, I quit. (That was also with a three month old baby and getting up at 4:00 a.m. to go make the biscuits. Maybe that is why I quit.)

I felt a little intimidated by this week's Tuesdays with Dori recipe, Sweet Potato Biscuits, chosen by Erin at Prudence Pennywise. It actually was a very easy recipe and I did a decent job getting the butter cut in. It may have been too floury still, but next time I am going to try grating the butter in and see if that helps. I mashed canned sweet potatoes with a fork and left them a little lumpy. I really liked the little sweet potato bits in the biscuits. These were really delicious and simple. I think mine did not rise much because I scraped baking powder out of the bottom of the can. It was pretty old.

I am going to get some new baking powder, grate the butter, and try these again soon. You can get the recipe on Prudence Pennywise or on page 26 of Baking, From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Two Tuesdays with Dorie

2009-10-05T21:16:00.006-05:00

I have been trying to get caught up on my Tuesdays with Dorie baking. I have actually only missed one recipe since I joined in January, the chocolate souffle. But my baking and posting has been late for many other recipes. Last week, I finally made the Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart, chosen by Carla of Chocolate Moosey, on Thursday. We had a ...situation...in our house and I didn't use my kitchen for several days. My brother knew we weren't using our kitchen and invited us over for dinner the day our situation was resolved. I decided to try to whip this tart up really quickly, and I did! I threw the dough in the food processor, pressed it in the pan, put it in the freezer, ran a kid on an errand, called home to have the other kid preheat the oven, came back and baked it while microwaving cream for both the caramel and the ganache and just threw this baby together to be chilled during dinner. The ganache was still a little runny, but I thought it was really great and even better the next day when it had set up nicely.

This week, I also made some super speedy split level pudding this afternoon and I am going to get my post posted today...on TUESDAY, god willing. I got called to substitute teach today and had a marching thing to do this evening. I came home from school, read P & Q, and decided to use Romaine's suggestion of using the microwave again. I had leftover ganache from last week's tart and made the vanilla pudding in the microwave. It was so simple. I also took someone else's suggestion of putting it in wine glasses to see the split levels. So thank you fellow TWDers whom I don't have time to link to for the great ideas!

And thanks to Garrett of Flavor of Vanilla for this week's pick, which can be found on pages 384- 385 of Baking, From My Home to Yours.

Cottage Cheese Pufflets; TWD

2009-09-23T09:12:00.003-05:00

Or as we called them, just "Pufflets" (so cute). I knew that my family would not like them (probably not even try them) if I called them anything with cottage cheese in the title. Jaques, of Daisy Lane Cakes, picked this interesting recipe, found on pages 148 and 149 of Baking, From My Home to Yours.

The cottage cheese is pureed in the dough, giving it a nice tanginess. I wish I had strained the cottage cheese, due to the stickiness of the dough. I know problems could have been overcome by repeated chilling, but I was too impatient and just kind of scooped and mangled some when I needed to. I also wish I had put more preserves in the middles. I think I will make these again soon. My family really liked them and I know I can do them better.

Flaky Apple Turnovers: TWD

2009-09-19T18:47:00.005-05:00

Apples mean fall. Fall means back to school. Back to school means I am super busy, especially this year. I have just started substitute teaching. For so many years,my main job has been caring for my kids and my grandma. I have worked slinging drinks a few nights a week. It feels so weird to have a real job.

I am excited and loving it though. My grandma's sister is helping me take care of her. This is a huge help, but it is also a huge stress because her sister isn't as able to care for her as I had hoped. My life is a whirlwind right now.

This week, I did make the apple turnovers. The dough gave me fits. I don't know what I did but it was a big crumbly mess. Well, I do know one thing I did, not cut the butter fine enough. I was afraid of overworking it I guess. But when it came to rolling it out, I may have overworked it a bit as I tortured it (and myself) with a marble rolling pin. I hated working with this dough. When the option came in the recipe to gather the scraps to re-chill and re-roll to make more, I quickly and emphatically gathered the scraps and threw them in the trash.

All in all though, I guess it was kind of like childbirth; the pain was forgotten once I had that delicious little turnover. I think I undercooked mine a bit (unlike childbirth with my late, 10 and 11 lb. babies). They turned out tasting better than I thought they would after fighting with the dough.

Thanks to Julie of Someone's in the Kitchen for picking this recipe which can be found on pages 317 and 317 of Baking, From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Espresso Cheesecake Brownies

2009-09-05T10:44:00.003-05:00

I don't even know what to say. It is Monday night and I am writing last week's post. I shouldn't even post at all probably. But once again, I *did* make the TWD project. I just didn't post about it. So nothing like the last last minute, I wanted to say I did it; I loved them, and here they are:

Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell chose Espresso Cheesecake Brownies, pages 104 and 105 of Baking From My Home To Yours.

Up for tomorrow: Find a suitable souffle pan or substitute, take Grandma to aqua aerobics class, bake souffle, shampoo carpet in three bedrooms, take Little E to music lesson, Chaperone Big E's evening marching band practice for 3 hours, and write a post about the souffle, assuming it even turns out. Right.

Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, TWD

2009-08-25T18:56:00.007-05:00

This was quite a pie. (With quite a lot of butter.) I got excited about making this when Jennifer brought it to book club. Our host provided a wonderful citrus themed dinner, including dessert, but Jennifer provided another dessert, serendipitously citrusy as well. (And Ms. PH brought an incredible pesto dip, which complimented the citrus theme too!)

The lime cream for the pie has a hint of ginger. I stole a page from Romaine's book and made my cream in the microwave. I have done curds in the microwave before, and it is so simple and getting it to 180 degrees just took a few minutes. Then I strained it into the blender and slowly added the two and a half sticks of butter. The cream was nice and thick, so I think the microwave cheat was fine.

One advantage to procrastinating when making the TWD recipes, is I can learn from Jennifer's suggestions. She felt her crust was too dry and crumbly and suggested doubling the butter. As if this pie did not already have enough butter? But I followed her advice and the crust turned out fine.

I was worried about burning the meringue and may have pulled it out a tad to soon. Next time I will be braver and toast that top a little more.

Thanks to Linda at Tender Crumb for choosing this pie. She made tartlets from this recipe that are the most beautiful I have seen. You can get the recipe on her blog or on pgs. 337-339 of Baking, From my Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Peoria Dining Tour Books

2009-08-22T10:49:00.002-05:00

Big E is a junior this year in the Washington Community High School band. He actually has a (4 note) solo in the song "Going to California" by Led Zeppelin. Yes, the marching band is doing The Music of Led Zeppelin for their show this year. I'm sure later in the season I will post a video of their show, showing all their hard work (and Big E's 4 note solo).

One of their fundraisers is selling Peoria Dining Tour books. This is a book full of Buy 1 Get 1 Free coupons for area restaurants. These are really nice to have. I am happy to have purchased my own this year. The past few years, I have had a relative who bought one of these to our family Christmas gathering and we all passed it around and shared the coupons. (These make great gifts!) Using it just a few times recoups the cost of the book. The book costs $30. You can buy them other places, but if you purchase one from the WCHS band, the band gets $10 of that.

I am listing all the businesses included here. If anyone would like to purchase one of these from the band, please call Scott or Vickie Williams at 309-745-5020 or you can email me at snicketmom@yahoo.com and I will hook you up.

Fine Dining, Casual Dining & Theater
Aachis Indian cuisine
Adams Street Café
Angie’s Family Restaurant & Buffet
Bananas Ale House
Bar Louie
Beef ‘O’ Brady’s
Bellacino’s
Bennigan’s
Burger Barge
Butler’s Chicken
Café Evergreen
Carnegie’s 501
Castaways
The Chateau
Chilliworks
CiCi’s Pizza Buffet
Club Lacon
Cornerstone Family Restaurant
Cracklin Jake’s
Crusen’s
Dairy King
Davis Brothers Pizza
Denny’s
Double A’s Pizza Pub
Eamon Patrick’s Public House
Eastlight Theater
El Sombrerito
Feldan’s
Firehouse Bar & Grill
Firehouse Pizza
The Galley
Geo’s Pizza
Germantwon Grille
Godfather’s Pizza
Good Tequila
Haddad’s
Hickory River Barbecue
Hooters
I-Hop
Jane’s Ice Box
Kaiserhof
Kelleher’s Irish Pub
Khoury’s
Khoury’s Cuisine Knickerbockers
Kobe Japanese Steakhouse
Kouri’s Bar & Grill
Lian Wang
Los Jimadores
Maid Rite
Michael’s Italian Feast
Nick & Willy’s
Par-a-dice Hotel Casino
Peoria Pizza Works
Peoria Players Theatre
Pita’s Mediterranean Wraps
Pizza Inn
Pleasant Hill Antique Mall
Ponte Vecchio
Qdoba
Rhythm Kitchen
Richard’s on Main Street
River Beach Grill
Second Street Bar & Grill
Sizzling India
Star Struck Hollywood Grill
Sushigawa
Tailgaters Sports Bar
Taj of India
Thanh Linh
Vertucci’s
Village Inn
Water Street Café
Yesterday’s Bar & Grill
Youssef’s Deli
Zim’s Diner @ Campustown

On The Lighter Side
Auntie Anne’s Pretzels
Baskin Robbins
Blimpie’s
Burger King
Charley’s Grilled Subs
Chicago Hut
Chicago Pizza & Grill
Cold Stone Creamery
Cookies By Design
Culvers
Dairy Queen
Domino’s Pizza
Dunkin Donuts
Dunkin Donuts & Baskin Robbins
Garner’s Pizza & Wings
Kentucky Fried Chicken Lou’s Drive Inn
Mister G’s Chicago Style Hotdogs
Nut House
Papa John’s Pizza
Quizno’s
Roly Poly Rolled Sandwiches
Smoothie King
Sonic
Spotted Cow
Subway
Sweet Treats
Taco John’s
Trefzger’s Bakery
Udder’s Ice Cream
Velvet Freeze

Applesauce Spice Bars

2009-08-18T16:51:00.007-05:00

Look! I'm here. I didn't fall off the face of the earth. Or in a hole. And I have been baking my TWD assignments. (I just haven't been posting about them the past two weeks.) But I made the Banana Bundt Cake.

And the Brownie Buttons.

But summer has just gotten busy. And now it is over. The kids went back to school today and the Applesauce Spice Bars made a perfect after school snack (and a mid-morning snack for me while they were gone.)

This recipe was chosen by Karen and the recipe is on her blog, Something Sweet by Karen. Or you can find it on pages 117 & 118 of Baking, From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I loved this simple recipe. I substituted walnuts for the pecans and since I didn't have heavy cream, I doubled the glaze recipe and used half sour cream and half half and half. That was weird to write. But this cake was great, and hopefully I will be blogging more frequently (but maybe changing the name from Secret Server to Secret Substitute.)

Memories of Vanilla Ice Cream; Tuesdays with Dorie

2009-07-28T20:21:00.005-05:00

Remember when we made the Perfect Party Cake? With eight egg whites (which I doubled, ending up with 16 egg yolks)? In June? I decided to use my egg yolks to make a double batch of Dorie's Vanilla Ice Cream (pg. 428, 429 of Baking, From My Home To Yours). I "played around" and made a mint chocolate chip version and a chocolate swirl version.

Chocolate Swirl Ice Cream With Katharine Hepburn Brownies

I didn't really take any notes or any pictures because I figured it was a dry run for this week's Tuesdays With Dorie, in which Vanilla Ice Cream was chosen by Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu. I figured in the month's time since then, I would make the ice cream again for real and take some great pictures. And write a great post.

Ooops. A month has flown by quickly, and it is Vanilla Ice Cream Tuesday, and I sit before you empty handed. No ice cream, no pictures, no post. I am sitting here on a cold, rainy summer night being challenged by my teenager to take him to the Ice Cream Shack to make good on a bet I lost today. I'd rather be visiting the TWD blogs and eating some rich creamy homemade vanilla ice cream.

Blackberry Blanc-Manger, (TWD), a post including crushed bones, wobbly breasts, seaweed, rocks, and a delicious dessert

2009-07-21T11:15:00.010-05:00

What an interesting Tuesdays With Dorie recipe this week. Susan, of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy chose Dorie's Raspberry Blanc-Manger. I found this to be such an and intriguing recipe. First, I needed to learn to pronounce blanc-manger. I failed French I in high school. "Blah-mahn-jhay". Répètes. "Blah-mahn-jhay". Très bien!

Next, I needed to learn what the heck it was. It looks to me like a panna cotta. Only with ground almonds in it. In fact, Dorie calls it the kissing cousin of panna cotta. This wasn't extremely helpful to me either, since I don't have a lot of experience to with panna cotta, except one near successful attempt at a coconut milk panna cotta made with agar agar. But I did learn something about panna cotta last week. According to Jay Rayner, on last week's Top Chef Masters, "A good panna cotta, if it's set right, is meant to wobble like a woman's breasts." Just thought I'd share that, in case you missed it.

So the blanc-manger may have been around for a couple thousand years. Today's version uses gelatin instead of crushed bones. That's great, unless you are a vegetarian who doesn't use gelatin because it is made of crushed bones. (Me!) So I decided to use agar agar as my gelling agent. Agar Agar is "a gelatinlike product of certain seaweeds, used for solidifying certain culture media, as a thickening agent for ice cream and other foods, as a substitute for gelatin, in adhesives, as an emulsifier, etc.". I substituted agar agar powder 1:1 for the gelatin in the recipe and followed the recipe instructions.

I questioned my judgment on that after I microwaved the agar powder with three tablespoons of water for 15 seconds. I ended up with a glob of what looked like an eraser.

Once I added it to the milk/almond/sugar mixture, it dissipated and was OK, but in the future, I might try just adding the agar powder directly to the milk on the stove. When I started to cool my mixture in the ice bath, the agar started to jell really quickly. My almonds were not ground very finely, and I was really worried because at this point, this recipe looked like Malt-o-Meal.

I quickly mixed in whipped cream and blackberries and was pleasantly surprised that it turned out really well. I made a blackberry coulis and was very pleased with the result.

The only aspect that maybe wasn't quite right was the texture of my almonds. I had whole almonds that I blanched and ground in the food processor. I have had trouble getting the skins off before, but this time followed these easy instructions from Amanda. I recruited my grandma to help with the almonds, but I couldn't get them ground very fine and the texture in the final blanc-manger was like rice pudding.

Speaking of pudding, this is really off topic, but it was a great "ah ha" moment for me. I am a rock hound and every year I assist with a class at a summer camp that teaches kids about rocks and fossils. The instructor has a PHD in geology and oceanography and is a great mentor, but sometimes explains things in really technical terms and doesn't show examples of what he is talking about. One of the rocks I have yet to find is a puddingstone, a "metaconglomerate of large dark crystals in a lighter fine grained matrix, that looks like a pudding". What? With that description I have never really been able to picture what I am looking for. However, when Jennifer brought her blanc-manger to book club, and cut it, as soon as I saw the way the berries were suspended in her "pudding", I immediately pictured the elusive puddingstone!

Peach Blackberry Brioche Tart, TWD

2009-07-14T13:22:00.007-05:00

I did not do justice to this weeks's TWD recipe, Plum Brioche Tart, chosen by Denise, of Chez Us. I wimped out on making the Dorie's "poor" brioche. I don't have a stand mixer, and I didn't think I could do it by hand. I had a pound of Brioche dough from Artisan bread in Five Minutes a Day in the freezer, so I used that for my dough. I didn't have plums, but I did have peaches and blackberries.

I pressed the brioche dough into the tart pan and covered the bottom with seedless blackberry jam. I arranged some peaches and blackberries to look pretty. (I may have used a few too many.) I finished it off with some almonds and sugar.

After baking for the recommended time, my tart looked like fruit soup in a bread bowl. (Which might not be a bad idea.)

I removed some of the liquid and baked it longer. It turned out very good, but my brioche did not puff very tall. I don't know if it was because I did not let it rise much, since ABin5 bread does not usually need rising time, or if I had too much fruit and juice weighing the whole thing down.

I'd really like to try this again and attempt Dorie's brioche and use plums. My version was pretty tasty and made a good breakfast, but I have a feeling it wasn't as good as it was supposed to be.

Tribute To Katharine Hepburn Brownies; TWD

2009-07-07T20:56:00.005-05:00

This week, we had a guest host who chose our recipe, Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies. Lisa, from Surviving Oz, is not a regular Tuesday With Dorie baker. In fact, I don't think she is a regular baker at all, but she did a spectacular job of making these brownies and writing an entertaining post about her experience with it.

How did she get the honor of choosing the recipe, when I have to wait about 100 more weeks for my turn? She designed our new TWD logo! (To the right.) It is beautiful and I am glad she got to slip into our rotation schedule and pick this fabulous recipe.

These were the *best* *brownies* *EVER*! They have cinnamon, a kick of coffee, and advice from Katharine Hepburn, "never put too much flour in your brownies".

I told KPOW I would bring these to her house on the fourth of July, but I couldn't get them out of the pan because they were so gooey. I know she had an abundance of desserts anyway, so I put them in the refrigerator and headed to her house without them. (More brownies for me Mwa Haa Haa.)

When I got home, they had firmed up and I was able to get them out of the pan. My whole family loved them. We put all arguments about cakey brownies vs. fudgey brownies behind us. These were definitely the fudgey type, but were so well liked, they bought peace into our home and made happy tummies.

When I had lots of egg yolks left over from perfect party cake, I made a double batch of Dorie's vanilla ice cream. This one was swirled with fudge and made the perfect accompaniment for the brownie.

My kids are already asking me to make them again and I cannot resist the simple requests of my sweet little children. As soon as I get more chocolate, I am making more of these brownies!

The Perfect Party, and a cake; TWD

2009-06-30T09:56:00.007-05:00

My grandma (who has Alzheimer's and lives with us) is 88 years old. She has a sister, Helen, who is 89 years old. They have always been the closest of sisters, even though for the past 48 years, Helen has lived in Arizona. My grandma used to spend several months of the year in Arizona with her sister, but hasn't been out there for about three years. It had become clear within the last year that she would not be traveling out there, definitely not alone, and even if I took her, I think it may have been stressful and disorienting. Helen's husband had been chronically ill and she was unable to travel here. I was worried these sisters would never see each other again.

Earlier this year, Helen's husband passed away, and just last week, Helen came back here. For good! She is moving back here. She has been to see my grandma every day and I am soooooo happy to see them together again. Of course, I had to have a party so all the family members could get together and see welcome Helen back. Of course, I had to make a cake to celebrate. I was thrilled that this week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was The Perfect Party cake, chosen by Carol of mix, mix...stir, stir.

I baked my cake Saturday and figured I would fill, frost, and assemble it Sunday morning. One of my layers turned out really lopsided though. I wanted it to be perfect. (No pressure from the name of the recipe, right?) Sunday morning, I decided to bake another one. Both layers turned out perfect. I decided to shave the lopsided part off the one cake and use the rest. Seven cake layers would make a spectacular cake. I also had some lime curd needing to be used, so I alternated the layers with blackberry preserves and lime curd.

I hadn't actually started frosting the cake when my guests started arriving. One uncle brought his own cooler of Budweiser he started drinking out of. (He actually does this every time he comes to my house, regardless of whether there is a party going on.) Another uncle put some Moosehead beer in the refrigerator and offered me one. I accepted and drank a Moosehead while I was beating the buttercream with a hand mixer. Yes, it takes that long to make this buttercream. I started feeling a little tipsy and commented to my husband that it must be strong beer. He asked what I had eaten so far that day, and I realized I had only had about 8 cups of coffee.

I put wax paper strips down on the plate, got another beer, and proceeded to assemble/ fill/ frost the cake. I would bet that spreading buttercream over jam and/or lime curd is not easy sober. It was sloppy fun being a little tipsy and I finally got all seven layers stacked. When I pulled the wax paper from underneath on one side, part of the bottom layer came with it, so my cake ended up lopsided after all!

We had a great time visiting and catching up. Someone else bought some Heineken and some Miller Chill, and my cousin kept offering me some Jack Daniels from a bottle he was pulling from his pocket. I declined the Jack, but someone headed out for more beer. We finally cut the cake and it was delicious. Cousin J decided to stabilize it with a knife.

That worked for that side, but part of the cake ended up on the stove, and for some reason, that seemed really hysterical to everyone and we laughed and laughed. And had more cake of course! And beer of course!

For some reason, these pictures are fuzzy and unclear. I thought it was just my perspective at the time, but I guess I am about as good at drunken photography as I am drunken frosting. I loved this cake and loved having the family together laughing and eating and reconnecting.

Summer Days In Da Club

2009-06-25T08:55:00.003-05:00

During my shifts at work, business has been painfully slow. Summer is a slow season for us anyway. This summer, the economic climate has brought a harsh drought to the money of the club. (I learned the phrase "make it rain" recently from Little E. He was with me somewhere when I pulled out my stack of dollar bills to pay my bill in singles. [Hey, at least I wasn't writing a check.] Little E asked why I carry around large amounts of dollar bills and I told him because I am a server, I make most of my money I take home in dollar bill tips. He said "you always look like you're getting ready to make it rain." I asked him what "make it rain" means and from behind us in line my husband laughed and said "You don't know what 'make it rain' means? Remind us where you work again." So I guess I have seen it many a time, but never knew it was called that.) Anyway, there hasn't been much rain in the club lately. Everyone gets irritable. I usually try to keep good spirits and do my job well, even when I am making very little money to do it.

The dancers have been getting a bit mouthy with the customers for not tipping and I have been becoming increasingly uncomfortable about it. I understand their frustration. They PAY to work there. Not only do they not make an hourly wage, they pay a fee everyday to be able to come into work. So they start out their day in the hole and it would be infuriating to go on stage after stage to dance and not have anyone coming up and tipping them. But they are not allowed to solicit tips. They definitely are not allowed to DEMAND tips, which is what one woman has been doing.

Last Wednesday (my day shift), a regular customer said "M has been getting really bad and driving away customers." I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do about it. There is usually no manager there during the day. I'm just a bartender. They are independent contractors. I'm not their boss. But I do represent the club and it is important to me that we make our customers comfortable. So I had been pondering it and decided to talk to her yesterday morning.

I told M that I know it is upsetting when people don't tip, but I would hope she would not try to embarrass them or make them feel uncomfortable. That didn't go well since she pointed out that it makes her uncomfortable and embarrassed to have to dance naked for free. I pointed out sometimes customers don't tip her if they are waiting for another dancer to go spend money on. (I had noticed that last week, her calling a customer a cheap ass because he wasn't coming up to her stage and he was waiting for another dancer to come out, whom he spent $100 on.) She countered that even if a customer is waiting for another dancer, he should show her respect while he is waiting.

These are good points, but customers are not obligated to tip. I also asked her to consider that sometimes, customers spend money on dancers, but don't tip the bartender and sometimes it works the other way. Sometimes I am making money off of people even if the dancers are not. So could she please consider that before harassing them?

It turned out that was exactly the situation yesterday. The first part of the day, several customers got drinks from me without tipping, but were tipping dancers on stage and getting private dances. My tip jar sat completely empty while the dancers made some good money. In the afternoon, a group of three guys came in and tipped me $5 for their first round of drinks. Whoo hoo! Not spectacular, but better than the $0 I had gotten from most of the other customers. They sat and talked while M went on stage. Another round, another $5 tip. M yelled "I'm not getting naked for free here!" Grrr. Whatever. Fine, I understand her not wanting to get naked. She seemed to think that the guys were watching TV and sat on the couch onstage saying "OK, well, I can watch TV too." They looked a little confused. M asked, "Are you so cheap you can't even give me a dollar?" A couple of them reluctantly approached the stage. I walked by and told her to cut it out and went to the table and they ordered another round and gave me another $5 tip. M yelled to the table, "You know those beers are cheaper somewhere else." The next time she got on stage, they got up and left.

We had the same argument we had earlier and she really feels she is right in acting this way. I feel it makes the club look bad. When a manager came for the evening shift, I told him about it and he said he and the house mom would talk to her about it. Great. Now I am going to be considered the tattletale. Once, I told the (same)house mom when I saw a dancer giving a blow job in the couch dance area and was chastised as being the tattletale for years.

On a more humorous, weirdo factor note, the other day a guy came in with a flier rolled up and I could see the top said "wanted". He didn't want to buy a drink, but I told him when there is no cover charge, he has to buy a drink and he reluctantly ordered a cranberry juice. As dancers approached his table, he kept showing them the flier. It turns out he was hoping he could post it in the stripper dressing room. It said "Wanted. Roommate."

Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise; Tuesdays with Dorie

2009-06-23T12:35:00.006-05:00

I made this week's TWD recipe on Sunday. I knew it would not get done in time for Father's Day dinner dessert, but hoped it would be done on Father's Day. This recipe just had several steps that took a lot of time. "Bake for three hours, chill for three hours, once assembled, chill for four to six hours."

I had everything I needed for this, except for a pineapple and parchment paper. I even had some white chocolate that I had been thinking would never get used. So I bought a pineapple, decided to use silicone mats, and decided to follow the recipe and make the white chocolate ganache, even though I had a feeling I would like this more with a whipped cream. I decided to just take my time and work on the recipe throughout the day.

I baked the meringue sheets on silicone sheets, so I didn't exactly make neat 6'X 12" rectangles. My camera batteries died, so I couldn't take pics of my steps, but knew that they would be charged by the time this recipe got done.

I made the ganache, and roasted the pineapple and had them chilling, when my brother called wanting to know if I would babysit my 18 month old niece for a few hours. Baby E came over and shortly thereafter was scratched by a cat and started crying. And crying and crying. I knew she was tired and would be more comfortable at her house so I had my husband hold her while I threw the dacquoise together so it could be chilling while I took her home and got her a bath and in bed.

He calmed her for a few minutes by getting a Yo Gabba Gabba song on Youtube. I decided to try to trim my meringues to make them more neat and even, but they cracked. Baby E started crying harder in the other room. Knowing this needed to chill for a few hours, I wanted to get it assembled, but it was hard to piece the meringues together attractively with the crying baby wailing and I felt hurried.

Wah Wah Wah Wah! I hurried and made a layer of meringue. Wah Wah Wah Wah! I pulled the ganache and pineapple out of the refrigerator and made layers. Wah Wah Wah Wah. More meringue, ganache, pineapple. Wah Wah Wah Wah! Finished it off by pouring the rest of the ganache on top and slapping on the rest of the pineapple.

I looked at it, wondering if it was supposed to be sitting in a lake of ganache? Threw it in the fridge and the baby in the stroller and headed to her house. Her cries subsided as soon as we were out the door.

We went to her house and she got a bath and a snack and we read some stories and she went right to sleep. It's been a long time since I have taken care of a little baby. I sat down in the quiet house, and just then it hit me; I forgot to whip the ganache! When I got home around midnight, My dacquoise had been chilled long enough, so I pulled it out and realized it was more of a floating island than a dacquoise.

It was really too sweet too. I think I would have liked this with whipped cream. I liked the meringue (eating my left over chipped pieces) and the pineapple. Maybe whipped, the ganache wouldn't have been so overpowering. I'll have to try this again. Thanks to Andrea in the Kitchen for this pick!

Honey- Nectarine Ice cream; TWD

2009-06-16T09:24:00.007-05:00

This was summer on a spoon. We all loved this refreshing treat. This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe, Honey-Peach Ice Cream, was chosen by Tommi, of Brown Interior. The recipe can be found on her blog, or on page 437 of Baking, from My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

I had an exhausting week, volunteering at a summer camp, for a class that teaches kids about fossils and rocks. It is my favorite week of the year, but it is more physically demanding than my regular job, which mostly consists of sitting on a cooler, waiting for a customer, or occasionally having to lift an ice scoop and pour a Captain and Coke.

At camp we walk for a half a mile to a creek. Then we walk though the creek looking for rocks. Then the kids collect too many rocks. And their five gallon buckets get too heavy. Then the instructor wants to go farther down the creek. And I realize, "Hey this water is higher than some of the kids' heads and there is a pretty strong current, so I can barely stand and the water is only up to my thighs." So I yell to the instructor who is way ahead but he can't hear me. And the little kids start crying because of the cold current. So I end up carrying small children and heavy buckets of rocks through a rushing stream until I am almost crying too. Then we go back and do the same thing the next day. Actually, it is more fun than it sounds, but I am just trying to describe my level of physical exhaustion.

So I didn't even know if I would have the energy to make the ice cream. I went to the store and they had only five shriveled, bruised peaches. I remembered that Dorie says you can use nectarines, but I had nectarines all week for lunch and the nectarines at the store were hard and not very appealing. I bought them anyway and hoped for the best.

You don't need to peel nectarines, so that was nice. I just diced them up and boiled them with honey. (I did not notice that I was only supposed to chop half, and save the other half for when the ice cream gets frozen, so all my nectarines went in.)

Then the nectarines get pureed and a simple custard base gets made.

When the custard and the fruit combined, it tasted like peach baby food. Yum. My favorite. Seriously. At this point, I substituted Absolut Peach Vodka for the vanilla.

After being chilled overnight, I poured it in the ice cream maker, froze it a little more, and we had this lovely nectarine ice cream.

Parisian Apple Tartlet; TWD

2009-06-09T20:20:00.009-05:00

I really liked this week's recipe for Parisian Apple Tartlets, chosen by Jessica of My Baking Heart. The recipe was sooo simple, but sooo tasty. It would make such an elegant little dessert for a party.

I showed the recipe and picture to little E, and he said, "It just makes one?"

So I explained that the recipe was so simple; apple, a dab of butter, a sprinkle of sugar, and some puff pastry, I could easily make however many I wanted.

I asked how many he thought I should make and he quickly replied, "Twenty-five. There are five of us and we could probably eat about five each." Little E is a thirteen year old boy going through a growth spurt.

I am sure these would be great with store bought puff pastry, but I had never made puff pastry dough and wanted to give it a try. I used this recipe. It didn't turn out perfect, but it was my first time so I did not stress about it. My husband came in and asked if I was making a relief map of Iceland.

Also, that is white thing is a Countrytime lemonade canister lid, about 3 3/4", used to cut the circles. My apple chunks were really too big, but rather than cut them again, I just stacked them a little haphazardly.

I may have wanted to make my apple slices thinner, and/or my circles bigger, because the butter and brown sugar overflowed quite a bit and kept the pastry from puffing in places, and the apples toppled a bit. (Note- I only made ten.)

But they tasted really really good. Even though Dorie says they should be eaten soon after being made, certainly the same day, I had one two days later and it was still good. I wish I had made twenty-five. A couple were almost picture perfect.

Cinnamon Squares; Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-06-02T11:00:00.012-05:00

It's a picture game. What is this?

Did you guess tents in a sandstorm? Or chunks of Starbucks Mocha Dark Chocolate, dusted with cinnamon, sugar, and espresso powder? If you guessed the latter, you are correct!

I wish I could give you a cinnamon square as a prize.

Cinnamon, chocolate, and espresso, all bold flavors, play nicely together in this week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe, Cinnamon Squares, on pages 210 & 211 of Baking, From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan. This simple, but elegant snack cake was chosen by Tracey, of Tracey's Culinary Adventures.

This recipe came together so easily. The batter is mixed by hand, and half is poured in an 8" X 8" pan. Then It is topped with chopped chocolate, cinnamon, and espresso powder.

The rest of the batter goes on top, and it is ready to go in the oven.

The recipe included a chocolate frosting, which looked delicious, but it was very hot and humid in my house, and the frosting seemed too heavy. I just dusted it with powdered sugar and cocoa.

(My cake had a couple of stab wounds from testing.)

I served this to the kids as an after school snack. Big E said "If you want to make this again, you can." It is always nice to have to have the sixteen year old's permission to make him snacks. I was glad they liked it though. I thought is was great and I'm sure I will make it again.

Chipster Topped Brownies; TWD

2009-05-26T11:32:00.007-05:00

These brownie/cookies are Greek Sirens, calling me, seducing me with their sweet voices until I, in a tracelike state, eat one against my will and one is too much. I remember this feeling from my childhood, eating a whole solid chocolate Easter bunny. I smother the Sirens in plastic wrap, but later I hear their voices calling me again. I want them so badly, because they are soo good, but I think this may be a case of too much of a good thing, which is a bad thing for someone like me, someone with no self control.

This week's recipe, Chipster Topped Brownies, was chosen by Beth of Supplicious. It is a brownie, with a layer of chocolate chip cookie on top. It has a lot of butter and chocolate.

That is just for the brownie layer! These were also a little tricky to make. I was worried about spreading the cookie dough on the brownie batter, but it went fairly well.

I did some dollops with a cookie scoop and spread it with a rubber spatula.

I baked them 10 minutes longer than suggested and let them cool, but in the middle, some of them weren't done. The brownie batter was still too gooey and the cookie had crisped and broken on top, but I could see raw cookie dough beneath. I needed to take some to a recital, so I took the outer ones that were done.

When I came home, I re-baked the rest of them, and have been eating them and reaping the consequences every since. This recipe made a lot! It can be found on pages 94 and 95 of Baking, From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan and this week on Supplicious.

Warning: May Contain Offensive Content. For Immature Audiences Only

2009-05-21T11:13:00.004-05:00

I have received some strange texts lately. Last week, someone I don't know texted me, "Tmorrow is where red day. Tell all ur friends to where red." A few days ago, the same person texted me, "Where did you kick him? he's on the floor now." My friend, Jennifer, suggested I reply, "in the balls obviously, or he'd still be standing." I did not take her advice and just ignored them, assuming they'd been sent to me by mistake.

I have been receiving other crazy texts though, not by mistake, from my coworker, P. I have worked with her for about 6 years and we have never interacted socially. We are polite and I like her, but I haven't had any relationship with her outside of work. Until a few months ago.

We discovered we both enjoy walking hills and she invited me to walk with her. We have met a couple times a month to go walking and I have enjoyed doing so.

About as frequently as we have been walking, she has also been sending me text messages. Keep in mind, I have never even spoken to her on the phone, if it wasn't work related, in 6 years. These are some of the texts I have gotten from her:

Great news! I found a prostitute who charges by the inch!! Obviously, I can’t afford her, but it’s a great deal 4 u!

How does a vagina look before sex? Like a lovely pink rose. And after sex? Ever seen a bulldog eat mayonnaise?

Y r blk people nose so big? Cuz god stuck his 2 fingers up their nose y he was painting them blk.

Cheap mexican pregnancy test: insert burrito in vagina and remove after 30sec. If half eaten, there’s a little beaner on the way.

Im from laos. Sao in laos means miss like single and na is My middle name

The best engine ever made is a vagina. It takes any size piston, self lubricates, starts w/ 1 finger, and does its own oil change every 28 days!

It was once said that a black man would be president when pigs fly. Indeed, 100 days into Obama’s presidency, swine flu.

WTF? I assume she sends these to everyone in her phone book? Doesn't that seem strange? I barely know her, but I hope she knows me well enough to know I wouldn't appreciate the racist jokes. I don't really appreciate the political or sexual jokes either. I'm not sure how to feel or what to do. I don't get charged for incoming texts, so I guess it doesn't bother me THAT much. It just seems strange to me.

We were walking the other day and I was considering bringing it up, but wasn't sure what I was going to say. I started the conversation by telling her about the text I had received about kicking someone. She said "Oh my gosh, I did that the other day too. I had this picture of this pussy that was all burnt and blistered so I sent it to some people, and then then my phone rang and I had sent it to this woman I didn't know who told me it was really inappropriate." So I said, "well, at least it was an adult and not a kid." But in my mind, I was thinking, "*what* *the * *fuck*?" And also, apparently she does select who she sends the messages to, because I did not get the picture message (thank god). Or maybe she tried to send it to me, but sent it to the stranger lady instead.

As I write this, I just got another message. "Roses are red. Pickles are green. I love your legs and what's in between."

Fresh Mango Bread; Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-05-19T10:32:00.012-05:00

I learned how to get the flesh out of a mango. This may be a rudimentary skill, but I am going to go ahead and give a tutorial, in case there are any other people (like me) nearing 40 years of age who don't know how to do this! I made this week's Tuesdays With Dorie selection, Fresh Mango Bread, twice. The first time, I had some trouble with my mangoes. I guess I haven't really worked with them before. I have seen images similar to this many many times while surfing the food porn.

I never actually read about what that image was. I just assumed it was half a mango, and that you could slice a mango down the middle, score it like that, and pop the fruit out. I learned that if you try to cut a mango down the middle, you run into a giant pit, about as big as the mango, and then the flesh gets all stuck to the pit and the skin in really strong strings, and if you try to pull it apart that way, you ends up with globs and strings and tears and not much mango to put in your bread.

After reading the instructions, I learned that you need to cut the cheeks off the mango.

Then you can score the cheeks like so:

Then you can pop it inside out and cut the flesh off into neat little chunks:

Then you can trim what you can off the giant pit:

Then you can make your mango bread. I used a little extra mango and omitted the raisins this second time around. I also used the zest from a whole lemon and a whole lime.

Kelly, from Baking With The Boys, chose this recipe. Over on her blog, she also includes a version to make it lighter. Lighter in calories and fat, that is.

When baked, this bread turns a lovely dark brown. It is spicy and chewy, and bejeweled with mangoes. I thought this was beautiful and delicious!

Tartest Lemon Tart; Tuesdays With Dorie.

2009-05-12T13:01:00.008-05:00

This tart is bold. It is simple and delicious. It is made with whole lemons. Or if you are a scardy cat like me, whole lemons minus the pith.

I really did not know if I would like this tart, chosen by Babette, of Babette Feasts. I had some extra filling , which I baked in a little ramekin, so I did get to taste the filling before I served the tart on Mother's Day. I wasn't sure how to describe it to my Mother's Day guests either. Most of them tried it (in spite of my description, "ummm, really tart, and a little lumpy.") Everyone who tried said they really liked it and asked me for the recipe.

I wasn't sure how to describe Tuesdays With Dorie to a group of mostly tecnologically challenged people either. I said it was like my baking club, where we all bake the same thing each week and compare notes.

"But not a real baking club?", asks my brother. "You don't actually get to taste each other's food?", asks my mother. I include my whole family in the technologically challenged description, not excluding myself, as having some sort of impairment, with me being on the higher functioning end of the spectrum. (I suck at editing photos, but am somewhat familiar with "web logs".) The other end of the taxonomy does actually include those who have NEVER used a computer ("And never will!") Most of them email and google and a few even have facebook pages.

So this is where the situation starts to get a little sticky. How do I describe a group like TWD or an activity like blogging? I start to explain about food bloggers and baking bloggers, but don't want to misrepresent my blog as being part of that group, when a lot of my blog is about how fucked up my family is, but I don't want to go there either in this Mother's Day conversation. (To any family members who have found your way here, I am not talking about YOU, I am talking about other family memebers, of course.)

I was glad that everyone, myself included, really loved this tart. I will definitely make it again. You can find the recipe on page 336 of Baking, From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or at Babette Feasts, or family members with email adresses, I will email it to you.

Tiramisu Cake and Questionable Parenting Practices; TWD

2009-05-05T08:37:00.008-05:00

Dorie introduces this cake by saying that in the 1990s, the only way to avoid tiramisu was to go to Antartica. I cannot figure out why anyone would want to avoid tiramisu. Heck, I would probably be willing to travel to Antartica to get it, if that was the only place it was available. Luckily, Dorie makes it available in a layer cake form, with homemade yellow cake instead of storebought ladyfingers. This cake is wonderfully delicious, drenched in espresso syrup and a little amaretto kick. It is the perfect "pick me up".

Traditionally, this is a dessert made with the ladyfingers, mascarpone cheese mixed with some liqueur, espresso, and a dusting of cocoa powder. I didn't have any mascarpone, but had ricotta I needed to use, so I used that. I had read you could use ricotta and to whir it in a food processor to make it smoother. I was rushed, so I skipped that part. I was worried it would make the filling and frosting too grainy, but after sitting in the refrigerator over night, it is very smooth. I knew I would love this recipe at this point:

This cake gets more than just a dusting of chocolate. The layers are filled with chunks of chocolate. I had some of this on hand:

A perfect choice for this cake. Making the cake was fun and simple. I was getting out the ingredients and asked Little E to do some quick math for me to figure out how many grams of cake flour I needed. After telling me the answer was 224, he came to see what I was doing. I was pouring the cake flour onto the scale. Oooops, 225 grams. I pulled a spoon out and got lucky and scooped exactly one gram. So I said to Little E, "If you ever need to eyeball one gram of white powder, this is what it looks like. hee hee." I'm not sure what is wrong with me, that I would make a drug joke to my thirteen year old. He responded, "Well, hopefully I'll be dealing in kilos, not grams, hee hee." So I stopped giggling and made it clear that it is not really funny.

Little E brought home a stray cat two nights ago and we are letting it stay here while we find it a home. It is mentally ill I think, and continuously sucks on your shirt and kneads at you like it is nursing. Constantly. It has kept him awake for the past two nights so he was really dragging this morning. Of course, I offered him a piece of the tiramisu cake for breakfast. He really needed a "pick me up". He was running late, so he grabbed a piece and headed out the door. There goes my teenager, heading to school eating a 'breakfast' not only filled with sugar, but laced with alcohol and espresso as well. At least I did not make any more cocaine jokes.

I would guess this cake has the potential to be addicting though. It is really delicious. This recipe was chosen by Megan, of My Baking Adventures. She has the recipe and great step by step pictures on her blog. It can also be found on pages 266-268 of Baking, From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It Too

2009-05-04T10:15:00.006-05:00

I really like my church. I spent a lot of my life searching for a religion. When I was four, I asked my parents for a Bible and got a giant children's Bible that I read cover to cover. I rode church buses to different churches because my parents never went to church. I took it upon myself to go with my giant bible to various churches looking for "the one". When I was in high school, I was ~~brainwashed~~ saved at a fundamentalist Christian church and spent a few years trying to convert my friends and enemies to the Assemblies of God. I could write a book about how crazy that church was and how fucked up I still probably am from it. Amazingly, my atheist BFF remained friends with me, and it's how I met my husband of 18 years, so it's all good.

Fourteen years ago, I started going to this church where you don't have to believe anything. The whole idea of the church is that each person should make up his or her mind about what to believe. At that point in my life, it is exactly what I needed.

There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote: (from The Universalist Unitarian Association; the church in Peoria is called the Unitarian Universalist Church of Peoria.)

-The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
-Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
-Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
-A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
-The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
-The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
-Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

When I first started going, I was a very active member and on all kinds of committees and volunteered for everything and taught Sunday School. Over the years, my attendance has become way more sporadic and my involvement ebbs and flows. Lately, I have been trying to be more involved and connected.

UU churches also have this really important tradition called coffee hour. After every service, everyone gathers to have coffee or tea and snacks. Usually a committee or several people join together to host coffee hour and provide the snacks. I guess I still have some over-zealous tendencies and decided I could host coffee hour myself, or with the help of my immediate family. It is kind of a lot of work, but I thought it would be fun.

About a month ago, a woman called me wanting to know if she could have a cake at our coffee hour, for her wedding anniversary. Sure, of course. A cake would be great. Then she hunted me down at church the next Sunday, to see what else I was going to serve. She seemed really distressed that I did not know at that point. In my mind, cake goes with everything. It is also not cheap to serve 150 people and I thought I would see what is on sale at the time and plan a menu from there. The next Sunday she found me again, wanting to know if I would be serving the food from one long table, or two separate tables. Again, I did not know and again she seemed unhappy. She was very concerned about my coffee hour and her cake, or cakes. So I told her I would probably have 2 tables, to facilitate the line moving faster.

The last few days have been really hectic because there is only so much you can do ahead of time for serving so much food. So I have been frantically baking and prepping and have been a little stressed and PMSy to make it even more fun.

Sunday morning there was also a breakfast before church hosted by the religious education committee. This also made getting ready for coffee hour a little more difficult because I had to wait for all the people to clear out from breakfast (which ended up being after the service had started) before I could set up. I helped the RE committee clean up after their breakfast while my husband made coffee. It was a hectic scene in a crowded kitchen. The RE committee had used one long table and I saw the anniversary woman had brought one cake, labeled "For Coffee Hour". So I decided to just use the one table, put her cake right in the middle with an anniversary figurine she had left for display, and put my pairs of dishes symmetrically on either side of the cake. I had labels as to what my items were and labels for vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free (because UUs welcome many diverse diet choices and facilitate informed decision making in that regard).

The RE people decided to offer their leftover breakfast foods for coffee hour and started filling in the spaces on the table with leftover bacon and quiches etc. Then another cake appeared from the welcoming committee to welcome the new members. So I tried to stop stressing over the bacon in the vegan section and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do with this cake. Luckily someone from the welcoming committee came and put the cake on a separate table and cut it up. He suggested I do the same with the anniversary cake, so people could eat it. I was unsure about whether or not to cut it, but I know what 150 people wanting free food are like and how it would not be easy to cut it up while they are going through the food line. My husband went and cut up the cake and we stood ready to serve coffee as church was letting out.

Anniversary cake woman approached me with her arms around her daughter to tell me I had ruined her cake. She hadn't taken a picture of it yet. She started crying on her daughter's shoulder. I apologized and the daughter said it would be alright, but anniversary woman was collapsing in her arms and sobbing on her shoulder. She wailed, "Just, in the future, don't cut the cake!"

Did I mention I was PMSy? I retreated to the restroom and cried. My husband served the coffee and observed the bizarre spectacle of the anniversary couple getting a picture of the cake while the people were moving through the line to get the rest of the food. I came back and hid my tear stained face in a sink full of dishes.

In hindsight, I should have known better than to cut the cake. I regret not thinking more clearly. I wish I would have just left the uncut cake and let her deal with it if people had started scooping fistfuls of cake. I know, more than likely, people would have come back for cake if it wasn't cut when they went through the line, then anniversary woman would have been able to get a picture. So I really am sorry.

But, let me say this. If it is important to you that a cake be served in a certain way or at a certain time, maybe you should leave a specific note saying so. Or talk to the person setting it up directly. If you want a picture of it, it might be a good idea to do that before there are 100 people wanting to eat it. I understand that you want your cake your way, and would be happy to help you make that happen, if I had known. So please "in the future", give me some freaking clue what you want, or better yet, host the coffee hour yourself.

Chocolate Cream Tart; Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-04-28T12:54:00.006-05:00

This tart, chosen by Kim, of Scrumptious Photography, was luscious. It is perfect for a day that is only 50 degrees, after several 80 degree days that made me feel like summer. It is perfect for a day after your basement is flooded and your grandma, who lives there, is being a nervous-wreck-basket-case (understandably so). It is perfect for a day when your dryer isn't working and you hang laundry out on your new clothesline that you are thrilled to have, only to have it rain non-stop. It is perfect for a day when you are being a nervous-wreck-basket-case with PMS. Today I NEEDED chocolate, and this tart delivers the chocolate. Some of my fellow TWDers expressed the opinion that this may be too chocolately. I really can't wrap my head around such a concept, but they are entitled to their (crazy) opinions. For me, it was exactly the right amount of chocolate.

There are three components to this tart: The crust is dark and crisp, almost bitter. The cream is velvety and rich. And the topping is light and sweet. It is a veritable ~~menage a trois~~ triptych of flavors.

For the recipe, lots of pictures, and even nutrition info, please go to Kim's site. The recipe is on pages 352 and 353 of Baking, from My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Namaste

2009-04-23T08:34:00.004-05:00

Eight hours is a long time to be behind the bar when you have a total of eight customers in that time frame. I thought maybe my boss would come have a drink, so I stuffed some blue cheese olives. I cleaned everything that could be cleaned, even though it was already clean. I did the waitress side work for the evening. The owner's decorator was in taking some pictures of different elements he had done, so I watched him and his assistant work for awhile. I thought they left and after awhile when I couldn't think of anything else to do. I was sore from standing, but also tired of sitting on a cooler. I thought, "I'd probably feel better if I stretched, or got some exercise."

I went to the side of the bar where the club was not open. (There are two rooms to the club and the bar is in between.) I went to a spot where I could see if anyone was coming in the door and decided to do some yoga. I was somewhat limited because of space, and because I a new to yoga and don't know a lot of poses, and because I was wearing a corset. I started in Warrior II, then did what I think is called an angle, or an arrow, I'm not sure which. I did several of what I'm sure are called sunflowers. Back to Warrior II facing the other way. I saw someone was coming in, so I walked around to the other side of the bar feeling a little better.

I waited on the customer, then saw the decorator standing there. He asked me if I could turn off a TV, so I asked which one. "The one you were just...ummm.... standing... under." He had been up in a VIP suite behind two-way glass, where he could see out to the bar, and the TV was in the background of his pictures. And the crazy bartender below the TV. At least I wasn't doing Happy Baby.

Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

2009-04-21T09:42:00.009-05:00

I made my first bread pudding, and my first brioche in the process. Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle (soon to be A Baking Blog as she moves to the Upper West Side) chose Dorie's Chocolate Bread Pudding for our Tuesdays With Dorie recipe. Usually, I pretty much wait until the last minute to do everything. It's not something I'm proud of, but it is something I accept as part of my personality. Occasionally I try to overcome it and plan ahead a little. I am glad that I was in that mode this week with this recipe, because although there are short cuts, you want to start with a good bread, and let it get stale, before you make your bread pudding.

So luckily I started several days in advance by making the brioche dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. I realize Dorie has a brioche recipe, but I was intimidated by her story of making brioche with a wooden spoon when she "huffed and puffed harder than when I had run a half marathon". She suggests not using a hand mixer because "in all likelihood, the mixing will wear out the motor". I don't have a stand mixer, and I knew the spoon mixing would wear out my motor. Someday I will try Dorie's brioche, but because I am a wimp and because I have been loving my Artisan Bread in Five book and want to make every recipe in there, I made a batch of brioche that makes four, one pound loaves. I baked a loaf, sliced it, and set it out to stale.

Isn't that gorgeous? I did also toast it in the oven for ten minutes to make sure it was dry enough on baking day. This recipe was very easy. I had some half and half I needed to use, so I used it in the custard.

The custard gets poured over the cubed bread.

Someone in the TWD problems and questions described this looking like a dish of mud...or something worse. I wasn't sure if I should take it to a party I was going to. It didn't seem like a party type food, and it wasn't super attractive.

Since I am a procrastinator and had nothing else to take, I took it to the party. Some of the guests became too intoxicated to have dessert. But one guest, S, whom according to the hostess, and I quote, "most likely has an attractive penis" (she was not drunk when she said this), ate about half of the dish. A couple others who tried it also liked it; even my husband, who does not like bread pudding. I have been eating the leftovers chilled for breakfast. I will definitely make this again.

And with some of the leftover brioche dough, I tried my first braided bread:

Chocolate Amaretti Torte; A Grown Up Cake for a Grown Up Kid

2009-04-14T09:08:00.015-05:00

Yesterday was Big E's 16th birthday. I was not totally prepared for it. (Well, emotionally, of course I was not prepared; it seems like just yesterday that he was a little, ten pound baby!) With the kids being home all week, and with the holiday, and working extra hours at my temporary online job, and with my general failure as a mom, yesterday morning arrived and I had no presents and no cake. I actually was going to do these tasks Sunday night while Big E was spending the night with Jennifer's kids. (And I wonder where he gets his procrastination tendencies from.)

Unfortunately, I spent that time in the ER with Gram instead, until 2 a.m. Grandma was fine, but birthday morning I felt like I was operating in zombie mode all day. Stress and lack of sleep made it difficult to think or function or make a cake. I knew I also had to do my Tuesdays With Dorie project, Chocolate Amaretti Torte (chosen by Holly, Phe*MOM*enom.) Luckily this cake is also called "Fifteen Minute Magic" and Eli told me he wanted a cheesecake or an ice cream cake. I knew what I could do. I sure as heck wasn't making a cheesecake (like I did for little E's birthday, just now remembering). Dorie says this torte is good served with coffee ice cream or vanilla ice cream. Big E likes coffee ice cream and vanilla ice cream. I decided to make this fifteen minute magic torte into a thirty minute magic ice cream cake.

It is called a fifteen minute magic torte because you just throw the ingredients into the food processor, put in a pan, and bake it. Super Simple.

I had Jennifer's torte on Easter and knew what it tasted like and it was very delicious.

Jennifer's torte

I baked the cake in an 8 inch springform, took it out, and cooled it. Then I put it back in the springform, topped it with Breyer's coffee and vanilla ice cream, then froze it a little and topped it with the chocolate glaze. I thought I would try to make a white chocolate "16" for the top. I couldn't really make my 6 look right.

In my sleep deprived, zombie mode I started feeling like a demonic candy maker.

It was not the most attractive cake, but it was really good and Big E liked it.

Everyone else, except for my husband liked it as well. Husband only ate a few bites and threw his away. I retrieved his piece from the garbage and finished it for him. (It was sitting right on top and was not touched or contaminated by the other garbage and I was really sleep deprived.) This reminded me of a really sophisticated brownie sundae.

Big E said he had a nice birthday. We wanted to play a game together and he picked poker. Here is a picture of him and grandma:

This is literally 30 seconds later, when he sat down to play cards:

Quickly transformed into his poker face, just how he seemed to grow up in an instant.

You can find the recipe for the super delicious and easy Chocolate Amaretti Torte on pages 276 and 277 of Baking, From My Home To Yours, and on today's post at Phe*MOM*enomom.

Banana Cream Pie, Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-04-07T08:54:00.014-05:00

This week, Amy, from Sing For Your Supper, chose Dorie's Banana Cream Pie, on pages 342 & 343 of Baking, from My Home To Yours.

Jennifer made this pie and brought it to our book club meeting Sunday, so I got to taste how good it was. I really liked the fresh bananas and the pastry cream was sooo good. It had a nice complex flavor, with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I adored the topping, which had sour cream in it, so it was not too sweet. I actually convinced myself this is a healthy snack or breakfast. It has lots of protein and vitamins and minerals from the 6 egg yolks and 3 bananas, and is not too sugary. I mean, it is definitely more healthy than eating a doughnut for breakfast.

I really hoped my pie would be ~~better than~~ as good as Jennifer's. But unfortunately, I made a mistake with the crust. Why do I do that?!? I always mess up one little thing. Also, I have never understood the expression "easy as pie", because I think one of the major components of pie, the crust, is not known for being easy. (Well, maybe with the exception of among the TWD bakers. I'm sure many are experts at pie crust.)

Actually this crust was pretty easy (thanks, Dorie!), and I was pretty confident that it was going to be a success. The suggested technique of rolling it out between sheets of waxed paper made that part easy peasy.

(I actually rolled it thinner, a little past the edges of the waxed paper, after I took the picture.) I think I got it into it's plate pretty OK.

So far, so good. Then I didn't bake it long enough. After the 25 minutes and taking the foil off, I thought it was supposed to be done. It didn't look done. So instead of checking the recipe to find out I am supposed to cook it for ten minutes more, I just thought "hmm, I'll put this in for another 5 or 6 minutes."

Then I took it out and filled it.

It was only this morning, while having a slice for breakfast (healthy, remember?), and instant messaging Jennifer about my crust being gummy, that I realized my error. So, I think I will scoop the filling into some bowls and serve it sans crust to the rest of my family this evening. If you want to try this pie, you can get the recipe on Sing For Your Supper.

(Note- undone crust, argh)

Another thing to not do in a strip club

2009-04-05T13:39:00.003-05:00

Last night, when I opened the bar I had one customer and one dancer. The customer sat at the bar while the dancer was on stage, then asked if I would send her over to him if he moved to a table. I called back to the dressing room and had her go see the customer, who was sitting against the wall furthest from the bar. She came hurrying back to the bar and said "I don't know where that guy is from, but someone should tell him he can't smoke in here." I sent a security guy to go tell him to put his cigarette out. It turns out, it wasn't just a regular cigarette. He was smoking a joint. He seemed really shocked that we thought this was a big deal and made him leave. It is not like this was a smoke filled bar, jammed with people, where one might be able to take a few hits without anyone noticing. (I remember a certain bachelorette party with a couple of local bloggers, when the bride-to-be was in a club smoking a bowl at our table, and my friend kept screaming hysterically. Even then, it was so crowded and smoky and loud, no one noticed.) He was the only customer in a big room, in a non smoking bar. He came back later and the manager made him leave. He was really baffled as to why he couldn't be there and wanted his money back.

Coconut Butter Thins (in the snow), Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-03-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

Coconut! I love coconut everything, and I loved these cookies!

This week Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch chose Coconut Butter Thins on page 145 on Baking, From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

These cookies were a delightful combination of lime,

butter (two sticks),

and COCONUT!

(sorry, no picture)

This recipe was easy and fun to make, I loved the technique of rolling it out in a zipper bag, chilling it, then cutting the bag away.

These were so great, I almost did not notice the several inches of snow that got dumped on us Sunday morning.

Two25, A Treat

2009-03-27T11:44:00.004-05:00

Last night, I was among a group of bloggers who went to Two25 for dinner. (Edit: This dinner was provided free of charge by Two25 in exchange for writing a review.) Rotund Reader and I were the first to arrive and sat at the bar. I ordered a Grey Goose and tonic. When a few others arrived, we moved to the table, and were soon joined by the rest of the bloggers. Manager, Shane, thanked us for coming and told us about the upcoming wine flights the restaurant will offer starting next week. (More info in the Journal Star article here.) He introduced us to one of the co-owners, Bob Eid, one of the owners of One World Cafe (one of my favorite restaurants in Peoria).

At the table, I ordered the Dark Horse IPA, on the recommendation of Problems Are For Solving. I didn't order an appetizer, (the only vegetarian appetizer was baked brie, which I love, but I knew I was ordering Fettuccine Alfredo and felt that would be too much creamy-cheesiness for one meal.) The other diners near me sampled each other's calamari, escargot, and crab and artichoke dip, and seemed very content.

I had a small house salad that was fresh, crisp, and perfectly dressed with a red wine vinaigrette. I liked that the menu offered size choices for the salads. There were a variety of salads to choose from as well as French Onion soup and soup of the day.

I chose the Fettuccine Alfredo with a side of steamed asparagus as my entree. Shane verified from the chef that the Alfredo was vegetarian. The pasta was perfect and the sauce was creamy and rich. I ended up mixing my asparagus in the dish and it was heavenly. I had a glass of the Ridge Geyserville Zinfandel ordered by PAFS and it was delicious; not too sweet, not too acidic.

I ended the meal with a lovely creme brulee. The whole menu can be found here. I was a little disappointed there were not more vegetarian offerings, especially after learning that Eid is one of the co-owners, because One World is a vegetarian Mecca here. But between the pizzas, pasta, and salads, I could eat here many times without being bored.

The highlight of the evening for me was the great service from our server, Sam. I know from experience it can be a challenge to wait on large groups arriving at differing times, ready to order at different times, etc. Sam was perfect as far as I could tell. His wine presentation was great. He got everyone's order correct, as far as I know. He was helpful describing items such as the 30 layer au gratin. The meal was timed perfectly and he was prompt with drink refills and offering cracked pepper. Also, he was pretty cute. I'm sure it is a joy working in such a well thought out and unique restaurant. Thanks, Shane and Bob, for inviting us to experience Two25, and thanks Sam, for making our experience wonderful.

If You Ain't Got No Money, Take Your Broke Ass Home

2009-03-26T08:39:00.006-05:00

We have been singing that refrain a lot at work lately. (Well, I mean aside from the fact that every dancer wants to dance to it, and it is played several times a day, and it gets stuck in your head.) It really has become kind of a theme song.

I used to think that The Club was pretty much recession proof. Until pretty recently, the news about the economy was not really manifesting itself in my work day. We still had big crowds, big spenders, and big tippers. Maybe we still do for the most part. I don't work the busiest shifts so I am not sure my experience can be extrapolated to say how business is doing overall. But I have noticed some trends.

Many drinks cost $7.75. It used to be, customers would tend to hang on to the quarter and tip a dollar. Now, many hang on to the dollar and tip the quarter. Many do not tip at all.

At night, patrons pay a cover charge. They can come in to watch the show without buying any drinks or spending any money. That used to be somewhat rare, but has been increasingly more common lately. One practice that is frustrating for a server is when a group of ten guys come in together, then each sit at a separate table, alone, and do not order anything. They have taken up the whole section, and the server has no hope of making any money as long as they stay, which is usually for several hours. We have started "arranged seating" when this happens and making them sit together, or stand, so they are not preventing paying customers form sitting in a server's section.

During the day, there is no cover charge, so customers have to buy a drink (technically two). Some people get REALLY upset by this and think it is completely unreasonable. But if we did not enforce this, where do you think the most popular place to loiter might be? I hate it when people complain that I am trying to make them buy a drink and they say, "but I don't have any money", like that is a perfectly legitimate excuse to sit there, making the dancers go on stage and dance and get naked for free.

Yesterday I worked the day shift and had to make a few guys buy a drink or leave. We had a total of ten customers in the 8 1/2 hours I was there. Towards the end of the day, a gentleman had gotten a couple of dances and wanted to open a credit card tab and put the dances on there. No problem, we take the credit card and the license and keep them behind the bar. He also decided to order some food and have another drink. He wanted to close out his tab, but his card was denied. He didn't have another card or any cash. He asked if he could try to get money out of the ATM, so I gave him his card. A dancer wanted a glass of wine and I needed to look for a wine key, so I said, "let me know if that guy runs." About five seconds later, I heard, "He's running!" The DJ went out one door, and a security guy went out the other, so he had no where to go and came back in. The security guy called the police and four officers came and guarded him while he called everyone he knew to try to get someone to bring him the $55. An hour later, he finally got someone to bring him the money, his wife. Hopefully she thought it was better to come pay his stripper bill than to go pay his bail for theft of services.

All in all though, it is still a pretty good gig. Most days, I get a couple generous tippers that make up for the lack of tips from others. I know of a couple other servers who have gotten very generous tips recently. One got $1500 for coming in on her day off to wait on a very demanding customer. Another just made $500 for flashing her breasts. Such windfalls are probably a combination of talent and timing, and I am sure I will get my turn too. (And FYI, I am more than happy to flash my breasts for $50, so if you all want to start forming a line, that will be fine.)

Blueberry Crumb Cake; Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-03-24T10:10:00.006-05:00

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie Recipe was chosen by Sihan of Befuddlement/ Walking In The Rain. The recipe can be found on her blog or on pages 192 &193 of Baking, From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

I baked this cake twice. Sunday, I was going hiking with some friends, Lemur, Coyote, and Jennifer, and I thought I could get it done before I left. I was kind of in a hurry and made a couple mistakes.

This is my fairly new food processor. I can't decide if I like it. It is a Food Network Brand that I got at Kohls. I had about $100 to spend and couldn't afford a Cuisinart. This one seemed similar in horsepower and features, so I got it.

So far though, I think I liked my 15 year old Black and Decker Power Pro better. (Unfortunately, I found one of the blades all bent up after Husband had shoved a bunch of frozen food through it, making food for the sugar gliders. I told him to never do that again. The next time he made sugar glider food, the other blade turned up missing. I suspect it ended up all bent up and got thrown away.) I am still open minded about this one, as I realize some unsatisfactory results are due to operator error. Like when I hit pulse one more time making the topping for the recipe, and the crumbles turned into a dough.

Also, I could not find an 8" X 8" pan and put my cake in a 7"ish X 5"ish dish. It took longer to bake than I thought it would. So I pulled it out of the oven, took a quick pic, and ran out the door to hike.

When I returned, the whole cake was almost gone. The family liked it a lot and wanted to know when I would be making it again. Last night, I made it in an 8" X 8" pan, didn't overmix my topping, and pulled it out of the oven about 10:00. Grandma and I had a warm slice with vanilla ice cream before bed. When I got up this morning, most of the cake was gone, so I am thinking this one will be a favorite that I will make again and again.

French Yogurt Cake; Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-03-17T00:01:00.001-05:00

This week, Liliana, of My Cookbook Addiction chose French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze on pages 224-225 of Baking, From My Home to Yours.

This recipe was exciting because there were so many "playing around" ideas. I will definitely make this again and try the Riviera version with olive oil and rosemary. I decided to make mine like a party cake, filled with lemon cream and frosted with whipped cream.

I used coconut oil in the cake. Coconut oil can be bought either virgin or refined. Virgin oil smells and tastes coconutty. I used refined oil which is flavorless. Coconut oil can be tricky to bake with because it solidifies at temperatures 76 degrees or cooler.

I melted the oil in the microwave and warmed the batter in a sink of hot water so the oil wouldn't solidify. (I should have added flour to that batter before the oil. Oooops.)

My favorite part of this recipe was rubbing the zest in the sugar. It was so fragrant and pretty.

Here is a mystery though. A few weeks ago, Jennifer made a lemon tart using Dorie's lemon cream. I really did not care for it. It tasted metallic to me. I thought maybe it was an effect of her tart pan, or maybe I am just weird because I do taste metallic sometimes when others don't. I decided to go ahead and make this lemon cream because I had never made it and wanted to give it a try. Out of the blender, it was heavenly. I ate a spoonful and kept scraping the blender to get more. It was soooo good. I almost just ate the whole batch, until I thought about the 10 1/12 ounces of butter I had just put in in there. I refrigerated it and put it between the two cake layers. (I made 2 nine inch cakes.)

When I tried it, it tasted metallic! I loved it fresh and warm, but chilled, it tasted completely different to me. My kids liked it, and my grandma liked it. My husband mentioned the metallic taste, so I don't think it is just me. Once I slathered it with whipped cream though, it toned it down and I enjoyed the cake too.

Artisan Bread in Five

2009-03-16T12:50:00.008-05:00

If you like fresh bread, you have to get this book-

I got this book about a month ago and have been loving it. It has an easy method of making large amounts of bread dough, that can be kept in your refrigerator for two weeks. When you want fresh bread, you just take out what dough you need, let it rest a bit, and bake it. It is SOOO easy and delicious. What is also absolutely cool about the book is the authors have a blog, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day , which they update frequently. They post new methods, ideas, and recipes, and they respond to readers comments and questions. There is a wealth of information on the site. I am still sorting my way through it. Also, they often have giveaways of their book.

Yesterday I had some olive oil dough I wanted to use up. You can use this dough to make foccacia, pizza crust, pitas, calzones, and lots more styles of bread. I decided to make calzones. I made some alfredo sauce and steamed some broccoli and garlic. I had a half a container of ricotta, so I just mixed an egg right in the container.

I rolled out the dough and filled them with some sauce, ricotta, broccoli, and a sprinkle of shredded italian cheese mix.

So, in about a half hour's time we had these delicious calzones.

I am having a lot of fun with the Artisan Bread book and am still learning and experimenting. Next I am going to make some whole wheat bread for sandwiches. I will keep you posted.

Little E's Muse

2009-03-14T20:36:00.004-05:00

Little E performed his solo today for IMEA solo and ensemble contests. He asked for this particular piece of music for his birthday in December. You can't complain when your 13 year old son asks for sheet music, theater tickets, and piano lessons for his birthday. (You can make gay jokes, Husband and Rotund Reader, but I am quite proud of his talents and interests.) He wanted to play Pachelbel's Canon. This was a little difficult for his skill level, but I thought he did a great job and wanted to share. (The first 2 seconds of this are him trying to ask his accompanist if he can warm up a few notes, since his performance was delayed. It is kind of funny.)

What is also funny is his inspiration for wanting to do this song. He likes this routine by Rob Paravonian.

Lemony Fun; TWD

2009-03-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

This week for our Tuesdays With Dorie assignment, Jennifer and I collaborated and baked together. We made Lemon Cup Custard, chosen by Bridget, from The Way the Cookie Crumbles. The recipe is on page 387 of Baking, From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

My kids had spent the night at Jennifer's. Being the gracious host she always is, she was preparing dinner when I arrived. She had chosen a duochromatic theme, serving food in the hues of pink and yellow. We had ham, apple slices, smoky macaroni and cheese, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots in cheese sauce, and banana pudding for dessert. I unwittingly created another theme, having brought the game Bananagrams to play. We played Bananagrams while having banana pudding, our first dessert.

Making the lemon custard was pretty straightforward. I got it started while she was finishing dinner. Neither she nor I had a complete set of matching six ounce custard cups. We combined our resources and tried to divide the liquid evenly among them.

They baked while we ate dinner. We tasted them before they chilled and decided they were like lemony eggs. Interesting. Some other interesting tidbits from the afternoon: Jennifer may have had a chest hair on her milk bottle (which I was not going to mention but since she posted it, I'd say it's fair game). She also told me she wore clean socks to yoga last week, and while her son struggled to fit "queer" into his crossword, my son succeeded in fitting "ass" and "sex" into his. Another day of good clean fun in Jennifer's Kinky Kitchen.

(I was hoping these little tins I got at the Goodwill would form pretty custards. I did NOT mean for this picture to look like pock marked breasts.)

Chocolate Armagnac Cake- full of chocolate, liquor, and flaming prunes

2009-03-03T09:29:00.012-06:00

This week, Lyb of And then I do the dishes chose Dorie's "Chocolate Armagnac Cake - The Cake That Got Me Fired" on pages 279-281 of Baking, From My Home To Yours.

Dorie tells the story of getting fired as her first job as a pastry chef, for "creative insubordination", after making this cake in place of the whiskey raisin cake the restaurant normally served. I was glad that Lyb chose this, because at first glance, there are a couple things about it that may not inspire confidence that it will be delicious, like the little part in the title about "the cake that got me fired". Or one of the main ingredients, which Dorie calls "the world's most misunderstood fruit", prunes.

I had my helper, Little E with me when I went shopping, and he was tired of running errands. I told him I needed to run into the store for a few things and he asked what we were getting.

Me- "Cat litter, pecans, prunes, milk."

E- "What do you need prunes for?"

Me- "Ummm, it's a surprise."

E- "But I don't want a pruny surprise."

Me- "Well, what if I told you we get to set them on fire?"

E- "O K!"

Making this cake was really fun (although in my version, it is 'Chocolate Grand Marnier Cake- The cake that makes a lot of dirty dishes'). Not only did we get to light prunes on fire, I got to use my new digital scale. (No, I couldn't have just guessed what 7/10 of the chocolate chips were to get 7 ounces.)

What I really need is a new camera. When I took this picture, there were flames coming out of the pan, but they are like vampires apparently, and don't show up in pictures.

When we were done, we made some Grand Marnier whipped cream. Everyone liked the cake a lot, even my picky teenagers, prunes and all.

Caramel Crunch Bars; Tuesdays with Dorie

2009-02-24T00:01:00.000-06:00

This week, I have a houseguest, my sister-in-law, L. It is good to have good things to feed family, so I was glad she liked this dish. She seems to have very particular tastes, with no method of logic that I can discern, so it is terribly hard for me to know what she will like. She likes spaghetti, but not macaroni, and NOT fettuccine. She likes 1% milk. Other percentages of milkfat are not pleasing to her. I could go on and on. I'm not complaining or calling her picky, because I strongly believe in people's right to eat what they want. It is just hard to know what I could feed her that she might like. I ask a lot of questions, lists of foods, whether or not she likes them. Oil glaze- yes, creamy sauces- no. Feta- yes, Blue Cheese- no.

So I was happy tonight that she liked not only this dessert, but the whole meal of lasagna, fresh bread, and Dorie's Caramel Crunch Bars with coffee ice cream. (She doesn't like coffee, but she likes coffee ice cream.) This week's recipe was chosen by Whitney of What’s left on the table? They are on Pages 112-113 of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

This recipe seemed pretty straight forward and I had fun making it. I could not find espresso powder, but found instructions for making it. My espresso powder did not exactly dissolve in liquid though. I ended up with some fine grounds using it in the coffee ice cream recipe I found on Chop Chop A to Z.

I made my bars in a 9" x 11" pan, so they were a little thick, and the ice cream sandwiches were cute, but difficult to eat, so I just served the bars with the ice cream.

They were a hit with everyone.

Devil's Food White Out Cake; TWD

2009-02-17T00:01:00.001-06:00

For this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Stephanie, of Confessions of a City Eater chose Devil's Food White Out Cake, on pages 247-249 of Baking, From my Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan. It is also the cake on the cover of the book!

I was a little intimidated by this recipe; adding boiling water and melted chocolate to the batter, bringing the syrup for the frosting to 242 degrees, while whipping the egg whites when the syrup is at 135 degrees. It seemed somewhat complex and I didn't expect mine to turn out great. I could have had great expectations though, because this cake turned out, ummm, dare I say, divine?

For the chocolate chunks in the cake, I did not have any semi-sweet or milk chocolate, so I used Ghiradelli Intense Dark Espresso Escape. This was really delicious in the chocolate cake.. I could add coffee to any chocolate, I believe.

My grandma gave me a hand pouring the 242 degree syrup into the egg whites I was beating, and we achieved a shiny, marshmallowy frosting. It really tasted like marshmallow cream.

I was able to lure the 15 year old away from the video game to lick the beaters. I assembled the layers of cake and frosting.

We had a late afternoon snack, and might have ruined our appetite for supper. Oh, well, Dorie says this is "not to be cut daintily or eaten with restraint". I would add it is not to be only an after dinner dessert.

Do you get a "subtracted you as a friend" message?

2009-02-16T18:43:00.004-06:00

I am not *new* to facebook. I have been facebookly active for a couple of months, but I am still learning a few things and getting accustomed to the exponential interconnectedness of it all. I have one friend who is a co-worker. I had another friend who is friends with him, send me a friend request. (Confusing, yes, that's the way the facebook is.) I know her because she was my child's teacher one year and she also went to my church once. I don't know her very well, but have always really liked her. She seems like someone I would really want to be an actual friend to, so of course I accepted her friend request. I assumed she found me through my co-worker, P.

When I would look at P's page, it would show her as our only friend in common. When I would look at her page, it would show P as our only friend in common. As of a couple days ago, I noticed that it is not showing me either one as a friend in common. So I went to each of their pages, and looked at their friend lists, and neither one lists the other as a friend anymore.

I feel kind of like a stalker, looking at who they are friends with, and dwelling on it. But I feel a little confused. How do you unfriend someone on facebook? And why would you? What sort of offense would it take to unfriend a facebook friend? I mean, I have people I have kind of regretted befriending, but I can't see cutting them off as a facebook friend.

I have a couple religious people that are always writing religious updates and such. Most annoying is someone I don't think I have seen in person since grade school. I barely remember her, except that she was annoying and smelled bad. When I got a friend request from her, I thought "well, I can't smell her through the computer, and how much could she annoy me on facebook?" It turns out she can annoy me a lot actually. What's weird is that she doesn't even say anything to me directly, it's just that she joins so many groups and becomes a fan of so many things, that for awhile my whole page of information was listing all of these things. But then I discovered that I can choose the option of seeing less information about this person. Problem solved. Now it does not tell me anything about her, but she is still listed as my friend.

I am wondering should I ask my coworker friend about this relationship change? Is that being too nosy? On facebook, you can see everyone's friends and who is interacting with who, so is there any privacy? I'm just not sure how I feel about the facebook world. And how it merges with the real world.

"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." Tomorrow .

2009-02-15T19:41:00.007-06:00

OK, "tomorrow" is an addendum, by me. Without the "tomorrow", that is a beautiful quote, by Persian poet, Rumi. I have been happily married for 18 years. Our marriage is not perfect, but in general, I would say we have something very special. Some things about out marriage are a little unconventional, but we do what works for us.

One thing we don't do is celebrate greeting card holidays, so we don't celebrate Valentine's Day. I don't think we ever have. I don't remember discussing it or anything, but we just have never celebrated it. (Well, except for maybe the first V day we were together, which was the first time we had sex.) I don't consider it unromantic or anything, but it just seems like a superficial kind of holiday to me.

It's a good thing we don't traditionally celebrate it I guess, because I was mad at my husband this Valentine's Day. I won't go into details, except to say I was right and he was wrong, and I was mad. But not celebrating V day also means you can't play that card of "and on Valentine's Day, of all days you did this!?!"

I normally am very quick to forgive and try to live by the Rumi quote. But I was very upset all V day. (The offense happened very early in the morning, way early, when I had not had any sleep the night before.) So I moped around in an angry funk until it was time to go to work. I tried to think of some way to demonstrate how angry I was, and decided to eat the Green Premium M&Ms I had gotten him. (He had told me he thought the mint ones sounded good, so when I saw them on sale for $2 and had a $1 off coupon, I thought of him and bought him a package which he had set on the baker's rack.) I sat at the table eating the M&M's until he came in, and then I announced, "I am eating your M&Ms". He had forgotten I had got them AND said he didn't know I had gotten them for him. Somehow, then I felt even more mad and upset, but I think lack of sleep can really exasperate emotions.

I am just not good at being mad, or staying mad. I am not good at expressing my anger. I finally just had to say in a non dramatic way, "I want you to know I feel really angry with you." He apologized, saying he was sorry that I thought he did something wrong. That didn't help much either. He did clean up a bunch of branches and things in the yard that I had asked him to. So I think that is his way of trying to make peace. So I think I will just let myself feel this anger. And then let it go. Tomorrow.

Mary needs...some literary education

2009-02-12T10:37:00.004-06:00

A Facebook friend posted this little game which I thought was funny. You type your name followed by the word "needs" in a google search and post the top ten results. Most of my adult life, I have been going by my first name, Mary. Most of my close friends and family, however, know me by my childhood name of Mary Sue.

At first I typed "Mary needs" for the search and came up with a few amusing results:

Mary Needs the Lamb in School
- This was a poem about school violence. I didn't read it.

Mary needs to determine the best day to work her magic - Hmmm, I had never thought of that before, but now I will consider, "what is the best day to work my magic?"

Sexy Mary Needs Attention on her Feet - ahh, true, true. I'm actually not sure what that means, but I am considering going to the doctor for a severe pain in my foot, which may be caused by sexy shoes.

Then I decided to type "Mary Sue" and came up with some confusing (to me) results:

your mary sue needs a name - hmm, Does that even make sense?

There are many opinions on what precisely defines a Mary Sue. Some say that it's extreme beauty or simply perfection. - Ok, That seems like a good opinion.

I have a feeling we will hear alot more from Mary Sue, it's artist like her we need more of! Keep up the excellent work Mary Sue your AWESOME!
- Why, thank you. You need some work on your spelling and grammar, but I will keep up the excellent work.

Who is Mary Sue, and why is she impossible to kill? - I am impossible to kill? That is good to know.

This Mary-sue needs to be fed to Gluttony10
- Well, keep in mind, I am impossible to kill.

Mary Sue gets mean. Has anyone else noticed this little madam cropping up a lot recently? - Well, now that you mention it, I have been more assertive lately. Some might be surprised at my new badass nature.

A badass Mary Sue who'll fuck anything. She's occasionally forced by mystical circumstances to fuck everything in sight. - uhhh, not that kind of badass, but I am intrigued bu what sort of mystical circumstances cause this phenomena.

Yes, Mary Sue is a woman and she repels us. So how does the slasher insert her generously lubed self into the well-stretched slash story? Carefully, tenderly and not just ramming in. Subtlety there must be, and no perfection. Because perfection is a trade mark of Mary Sue, Inc., and good characterization needs the struggles, weaknesses and insecurities of the character to be transmitted to the reader.

All my life, of being a Mary Sue, I have never encountered this literary characterization. I never knew "A Mary Sue is a character in a work of fiction who exists primarily for the purpose of wish-fulfillment on the part of the author. She plays a prominent role in the work, but she is notably devoid of flaws or a complex personality, and she usually represents the pinnacle of idealized perfection. All of the other characters love Mary Sue, because she is extraordinarily helpful, talented, beautiful, or unusual, and she often drives readers absolutely crazy because she is one-dimensional and too idealized to be realistic." I wonder if that would be called dramatic irony?

An Island Adventure: Tuesdays with Dorie

2009-02-10T00:01:00.000-06:00

I was out of my league with this recipe. I think I messed up every aspect. This week's recipe was Floating Islands, chosen by Shari of Whisk. Little E was home with the pink eye (again). After having him shower, wash his hair, disinfect his glasses, and wash his hands, we worked on this together.

Dorie says this recipe is a "French classic" and often a "childhood touchstone" because it is "so easy". Basically, islands of meringue are poached in milk then served on a creamy base and drizzled in caramel strands. I think our first error occurred when we read that the recipe served six. Somehow, Little E and I both missed the fact that a serving is two islands. We thought we were supposed to have six islands, so our islands were gigantic. The recipe tells you that you can smooth your islands or let them have a more volcanic look. Little E wanted to go for the volcanic look (and I couldn't figure out the 2 oval spoons technique). So here are our giant volcanic islands poaching.

Before they erupted. Our islands didn't quite look done, so we turned up the heat a little and within a matter of seconds, our giant islands exploded and mixed with the milk, forming a giant supercontinent. Pangea went in the garbage and we started over.

This time, I was able to smooth the islands more (but neglected to get a picture). We poached them for two minutes per side and they survived. We proceeded to make the creme anglaise. In our case, creme failz. The eggs and sugar were supposed to thicken, lighten in color, and cook to 180 degrees. Our creme anglaise curdled (scrambled?) at 140 (even though we did temper the eggs, we really did). Luckily, I had read someone else's advice to use a stick blender if this happens.

When it came time to serve them, I made the caramel sauce, but couldn't lightly drizzle it with a fork. My caramel was a little heavy handed, but Little E and I present our version of Floating Islands:

Then I did have fun with the caramel threads:

World Peace Cookies; Tuesdays With Dorie

2009-02-03T00:01:00.000-06:00

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.
-- Lao Tzu (570-490 B.C.)

The ingredients for peace in the heart and home?

This week, Jessica, of cookbookhabit chose Dorie's World Peace Cookies, on page 139-139 of Baking, From My Home To Yours.

I thought these were the best cookies I have ever had. I told my husband that Dorie said these cookies "were as important a culinary breakthrough as Toll House cookies". He is a big Toll House fan and disagreed. My son ate one and said he liked it, but when I offered him another, he asked if he could have a FiberPlus Antioxidant snack bar instead. Ummm, sure, more fiber and antioxidants for you, more cookies for me.

I made the first batch to the letter of the recipe.

For the second batch, I added a little sprinkle of sugar and salt on top. I have these salt flakes that are pyramid shaped, so I thought it would be an attractive and tasty accent.

Some of the bigger pyramids were a bit much, but all and all, I would say this is a perfect plate of cookies.

All Kinds of Fucked Up- In which I explain agnosticism to the Christian

2009-02-02T08:43:00.005-06:00

(I spent the whole Super Bowl writing lengthy boring posts about the past 19 years of my relationship with my step dad and how crazy he is. I posted it , but then regretted it and removed it. Since this is more recent and relevant, I want to post it.)

Never in lo, these 16 years that my mom and my step dad, T, have been married, out of all the things we have argued about, never have we discussed religion, thank god. There have been several times when T has proclaimed his moral superiority over me, but we have never discussed "religion". When I modeled nude for art classes, he shamed me for shaming our family with my Bohemian ways. When I started waitressing at the strip club, he was shocked that I would work for the promotion of promiscuity. When I stripped at the strip club (OK, so yes, I had a bit of an exhibitionist phase), he told me how I broke my mother's heart. She never mentioned such heart breaking, but maybe she was just putting on a strong face for the sake of our relationship. In all these times, he always mentioned how he would continue to accept me for the sake of my mother, but he never mentioned religion.

We have often disagreed about politics and social issues. He is one of those, "I'm not racist" racists. He brags about toting guns and roughing up bad guys. I try to change the subject when these issues come up (and they usually do) because I know we disagree. I know we have different ideals about what is right and good. I always figure he is entitled to his opinions, and me to mine, and we can agree to disagree.

I'll be honest. I have been judgmental about him. I have thought he is racist, violent, selfish, arrogant, insensitive. I generally try to be loving and compassionate and fair, but it is a struggle with him.

So, anyway, I was baffled by a Christmas interaction with him. He and my mom were going to bring a ham to my house for Christmas this year. Christmas morning, my mom was not feeling well, so T called to get my opinion about whether or not she should come over. She wanted to see the family, but didn't feel like going out. She wanted to contribute the ham, but didn't want to contaminate anyone. I told them to do whatever they felt was best. Then T started telling me about some health problems he is having and how he has made peace with god. Of course, I hoped he felt better, and although I thought his proclamation about god was a little dramatic, I didn't say anything like that. Then he told me that he had heard from a former coworker of mine, that I was an atheist. He knew it couldn't possibly be true, but he wanted to ask me about it.

WTF? ? So, I said, "umm, yes, actually I am an atheist". He was clearly shocked, and said "sorry" several times and hung up.

After I got off the phone, I had the same conversation I have had with my husband many times before about why I say I am an atheist. Because I don't believe in god. My husband has this weird obsession with trying to convince atheists, that they are in fact, agnostics. (Once we were part of a weight loss team called 4 Atheists and an Agnostic. Seriously.) Anyway, for some reason, this Christmas morn, something clicked in me, and I thought, "hmmm, it is possible that I am wrong. It is possible that there is a god. I guess that makes me an agnostic." It was a Christmas morning religious conversion.

Mom and T did not call back. So shortly before dinner time, I called her number back. He answered the phone and I kid you not, was crying. He said that he and my mother had been crying since we last spoke over my lack of Christian faith. They would not be coming over. I was dumbfounded. I still am dumbfounded more than a month later. What?? Why does he care? I don't understand. Anyway, I said, "well, since we last spoke, I realized, I identify more as agnostic, if that makes you feel better." He didn't know what that meant and I explained it to him, and he said yes, it did make him feel better. And he wanted me to know, as upsetting it is to him and Mom, they DO still love me. OK.

I have just been totally baffled. He had previously never ever mentioned to me being a Christian, and I never would have guessed that he was by his behavior. Luckily he has pretty much dropped it and we just haven't discussed it anymore and I would prefer to keep it this way.

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got*

2009-01-29T12:57:00.000-06:00

It is the dead of winter. The point where it almost seems like I can’t stand it any longer and ask “when will this let up?” There must be some commonalty in this feeling since Groundhog Day is approaching. I don’t know much about the history of that holiday, but it makes me feel a sense of connectedness in the shared experience of wanting to know when winter will ever end.

Overall though, I have been feeling kind of surprised at my sense of contentment lately. I have been reviewing how my life is different from this time last year and how somehow I am very “at peace” with how my life is going. Is there a tantric yoga pose called “sitting at the keyboard, blogging”? Everything that we need in order to be complete is within us right at this very moment. It is simply a matter of being able to recognize it.**

Last year at this time, I was frustrated working at a place I didn’t like. I kept putting off leaving and it caused me a lot of prolonged grief. Hopefully I am learning to address issues more quickly. A stitch in time saves nine.***

Last year, I was overwhelmed with the thought of caring for Grandma. I was so depressed by her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and I felt so trapped, thinking about caring for her every day. I don’t think she has gotten much worse, and not only is it not a “burden”, but I have grown to enjoy spending most days at home with her.

Last year, I was codependent on my heroin addict friend. I don’t know if anyone noticed that few months ago, in my “About Me” on this blog, I removed the part that said “recovering codependent to recovering heroin addict”. I didn’t write about it much, but there was a period of time, when several times a week I would fly to his house like Mighty Mouse, singing “here I come to save the day!” Since I have stopped trying to help him, I have been so much happier.

Right now, I am enjoying simple things, books, baking , blogging. (Hmm, do all my hobbies start with the letter “B”?) I am looking forward to the year ahead. I want to continue doing what I am enjoying. I hope to spend some time soon researching the history of my work building. I think it will be demolished soon, and am curious about what happened in the building during the prohibition era. There are entryways to what may have been tunnels leading under the street and I would love to learn more about this soon.

I am looking to the spring and summer and being able to exercise more outdoors. (Yes, I know I CAN exercise outdoors now.) I will start running again and will do the outdoor things I love like rock hunting. I would love to learn about geocaching and give this a try. I always look forward to the Sun Foundation Arts and Science in the Woods Camp. It is my favorite week of the year and I get to do a lot of rock hunting. I just found out last night I am not going to get to go to Utah this summer to see one of the most spectacular geological sights in the world, Arches National Park. (I thought Little E and I were going to go to a church choir thing in Utah, but it got postponed to 2010 in Minnesota.) Maybe we will take a more local field trip instead. I also hope to get to go on a trip of some sort with Jennifer and her family. I am looking forward to the warm days ahead!
* Sinead O'Conner
** Tibetan Buddhist Tantric practitioner Lama Thubten Yeshe
***Thomas Fuller. It is unknown if he coined the phrase, or simply used a proverb popular during the time.

TWD- Chocolate Gingerbread for Baby and Me

2009-01-27T00:01:00.000-06:00

This week, Heather, of Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread on page 212 of Baking, From My Home to Yours.

I LOVED this recipe. Some TWD colleagues felt the ginger was too strong, but mine was perfect. (Not perfect looking, but the amount of ginger seemed just right.) I did omit the optional stem ginger in syrup though. Jennifer and I had decided that we will do our best to include the optional ingredients. Unless it is a real hardship, we will try to adhere to the spirit of each recipe and go all out. We do have a well-stocked Asian store in Peoria. We were going to pop in after spin torture and grab the stem ginger. After spin torture, we went to Cub Foods with Rotund Reader. All three of us needed to go to the service desk to get money back for errors. Then we headed to the new Indian restaurant, where, in addition to other oddities, there was no restroom. In spite of Rotund Reader and I desperately needing a restroom, we decided to go to CVS before the Asian store, where they also did not have a restroom. Rotund Reader warned me, "You will need to drag Jennifer out of the make-up section". I threatened to pee in her car and we made haste to the Asian store, went to turn into the alley to park, but a car came barreling out from the wrong direction and stopped in front of us. Forever. Or at least long enough for another car (also heading the WRONG way down the alley) to take the one parking place. We would have had to park a mile away and the temperature was about 15 degrees. We decided that this qualified as a hardship and decided to forgo the optional stem ginger in syrup.

No worries though. Apparently the powdered ginger and the fresh sugared ginger was just right for my tastes.

Odd conversation with husband:
-"Honey, do you know if we have any cloves?"
-(He finds a jar way in the back of a never used cupboard) "Umm, we have these", holding up a jar his mom gave to me to use to make Christmas ornaments fifteen years ago.
-"Well, they smell fine and I just need a couple; I think they will be fine"
-"You just put two whole cloves in your gingerbread?"
-"No, I need to grind them up."
-"How are you going to do that?"
-"Umm, probably with a mortar and pestle"
He starts laughing hysterically, "yeah right", continues laughing.
-"Well, it would be silly to get out the electric spice grinder for a couple cloves."
Still laughing,"ha ha, ha ha, you want to make this recipe TODAY? OK, see you in a couple of hours, you will never be able to grind up those cloves!"
- 5 Seconds later, while he is still laughing-

Apparently my husband believes cloves have the hardness of diamonds.

My cake did break coming out of the pan.

I decided to snack on some then and take the neater parts and frost them. I gave some to my niece for her birthday.

And made some of the ginger infused whipped cream for us to have the next day.

My favorite recipe so far!

Thank Goodness This Weirdo Doesn't Do a Wordless Wednesday

2009-01-23T11:24:00.005-06:00

I'm sure my many readers who love to hear about The Strip Club have been disappointed by all the baking blogging I have been doing. Wednesday, I was busy at work because there was a fertilizer convention in town. Unfortunately, the fertilizer crowd, they are pretty shitty tippers. I would estimate a full 75% of my customers did not tip me at all. One man did show me several Polaroid pictures of his penis though, that he was carrying around in his jacket pocket. Like ten of them, at least. I wonder what really goes on at these fertilizer fests?

Tuesdays With Dorie (and Jennifer): Berry Surprise Cake

2009-01-20T00:01:00.001-06:00

Jennifer (Keep Passing Open Windows) and I collaborated on the Berry Surprise Cake for our Tuesdays with Dorie assignment. This recipe was chosen by Mary Ann of Meet Me In The Kitchen and can be found on pages 273-275 of Baking, From My Home To Yours.

I could tell the recipe looked difficult. That was before I read the 60+ comments in which many of my TWD colleagues described cakes that fell flat, or turned out like rocks, even after second attempts. I was relieved and excited that Jennifer invited me over to bake this cake together and play Wii. I looked up the correct pronunciation of genoise, picked up some Framboise, and headed to her house for a berry delightful afternoon. (For some reason I had Strawberry Shortcake in the back of my mind all afternoon.)

At the liquor store, I just went and picked up a bottle of the only Framboise I knew about, Framboise Lambic, which I knew was a fermented raspberry beverage. In hindsight, I'm not sure that this was what Dorie meant by Framboise. From Wikipedia, "This framboise article concerns a fruit beer. Framboise is also a French raspberry eau-de-vie, or clear brandy distilled from fermented fruit." Hmmm, I think that sounds more appropriate to this recipe. So that was probably the first mistake of the day, one I feel particularly stupid about, since I am a bartender.

There were a few other things we didn't do exactly per the recipe. It called for an 8 inch springform pan, and we only had 9 inch or larger ones. So we used a 9 inch pan. There were little things like adding too much cream cheese to the filling and adding the liquor a little too soon to the syrup. We had read about other people over mixing and used a very light hand to fold the dry ingredients into the wet, so we did have a few little flour clumps.

We thought we beat the eggs enough. We thought we got them to the ribbon stage. We thought we treated them like the divas they are, but apparently Jennifer and I do not know how to treat divas.

So, we couldn't cut a half inch off the top and hollow out the middle for the berry surprise. We just put the berry surprise in the sunken middle of our cake and put the topping over it. We had a drink,

ate some cake,

and played some Wii.

Actually, Jennifer kicked my ass in bowling and boxing. So I thought I would post her picture looking like the Peculiar Purple Pie Man of Porcupine Peak. Yah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah, tah-tah-tah-tah! Cha! I love her.

The Jackfruit Adventure

2009-01-14T00:01:00.001-06:00

I'm a vegetarian. For some reason, typing that proclamation makes me think of Zed in Police Academy proclaiming "I'm a vegetarian" in that crazy voice. I just did a Bobcat Goldthwait imitation for my husband and he doesn't remember that part of Police Academy. I also tried youtubing it, to no avail. So maybe I am crazy and just have a screechy man voice in my head that says "I..I..I'm a vegetarian!"

I've seen several jackfruit recipes lately. I had never heard of jackfruit until a few weeks ago when I started seeing jackfruit posts while browsing the food porn. I was intrigued by recipes such as Tender Pulled Jackfruit with Gravy , and BBQ jackfruit sandwich. I decided to try this barbecue jackfruit recipe from the blog Vegangelical. It has a home made Irish coffee barbecue sauce with Irish whiskey (I used scotch), coffee (acidic, that will come into play later), ketchup (again, acidic), and apple cider vinegar (very acidic).

I thought I would try to contact the author of the blog, to get her permission to post her whole recipe on my blog, rather than just post a link to it. When I went to the blog, I realized that the posts were almost a year old, and after some reading, discovered a new blog had taken its place, called Hezbollah Tofu, which apparently is an anti-Anthony Bourdain blog. And I quote, "Little Tony Bourdain may have started out like a nice normal little guy, but then he started playing with entrails. End of normal. Now he's kind of pushy. He has meat fascist followers. He is allowed to say fuck without being raked over the coals for it." I'm kind of a fan of Anthony Bourdain, but whatever. I figured I could still contact the blog's author about getting her permission about the recipe. But after some reading there, I learned that she is not reading any emails because she is getting a lot of hate mail about her agenda and now has a different blog called cupcakes and liquor. This looks like a nice blog, but by that point, I was exhausted and just decided to post the recipe and give her credit.

It was a good recipe. The jackfruit was interesting. Apparently here in the US you can by canned jackfruit, either young jackfruit in brine or ripe jackfruit in syrup. For this recipe, you need the young kind. Here is what it looked like out of the can.

As it cooked, it became very tender and pulled apart, eerily looking meat-like.

But do you notice what I'm cooking it in? A cast iron skillet. I know you are not supposed to cook tomato based things or acidic things in cast iron. When recipes call for a non-reactive pan there is a reason for that. My barbecue sauce kind of reacted with the pan and left the jackfruit with a metallic aftertaste. I couldn't get past it. My husband, grandma, and Little E finished their sandwiches. Little E pointed out that I get a metallic taste in my mouth from using my laptop, so maybe I am ultra sensitive to it, or maybe I am just weird. True. All and all it was a great experiment and I can't wait to try it again, or another recipe, in a non-reactive pan.

Recipe from Sarah of Vegangelical, Hezbollah Tofu, and cupcakes and liquor. (Notations in the recipe are her comments)
Irish Coffee Jackfruit Barbecue
For the sauce:
1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/4 cup Irish whiskey
1 1/2 tablespoons cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
cayenne to taste (I used about 3 teaspoons, but I like things to be lethally hot)
3/4 cup ketchup (and all you Easterners can SUCK IT)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup strong black coffee
1 tablespoon liquid smoke

Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat, add the onion and saute for a few minutes. Add the whiskey and saute for a few minutes more, until the onion is soft. Stir in the spices, then add the remainder of the ingredients and mix well. Reduce heat and let simmer for 30 minutes. Some swear by letting it sit refrigerated overnight so the flavors can develop more, but I'm too impatient.

For the jackfruit:

2 1-lb cans green (young) jackfruit in water (NOT cooked jackfruit in syrup)
2 tablespoons canola oil
sea salt and pepper to taste
1 recipe Irish Coffee Barbecue Sauce (above)
1 tablespoon liquid smoke (more or less if you prefer)

Saute the jackfruit in the oil with the salt and pepper over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Pour in the barbecue sauce and mix well. Add more liquid smoke to taste. Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer for 1 hour.

Tuesdays With Dorie; Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins, yum

2009-01-13T00:01:00.001-06:00

For my second week of Tuesdays With Dorie, I made Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins, chosen by Rebecca, of Ezra Pound Cake. This recipe was super easy and super delicious. With jalapeno and bell peppers, corn and cilantro, they were like a bright burst of summer in the middle of this bitter cold. Even my cilantro hating husband enjoyed them. They contained a whole stick of butter. Who wouldn't love them?

You may be wondering what the heck I served them with. I am a vegetarian and don't cook meat, so what the heck is that? It is Barbecue jackfruit. It was intriguing to experiment with, and I will post about that next, but it was definitely upstaged by these wonderful muffins.

Maybe I am Dense

2009-01-12T12:44:00.004-06:00

OK, so I am trying to learn to be a better baker. I have a muffin recipe I have been making for 10 years that I love. It is made with whole wheat flour, yogurt, orange juice, and berries. I think the muffins are delicious and I love the texture. My kids eat them and like them, but they were practically raised on them, so I don't know if they really know any different. My husband calls them hockey pucks and complains that they are gummy and very dense. Ummm, that is why I love them so much! I have briefly read things about ways to lighten up the texture of whole wheat. I have seen recipes that use half white flour and half whole wheat. I have used the whole white wheat flour. But I like this muffin recipe the way it is. Maybe it is like enjoying butter on Saltines and not realizing there is anything wrong with that until your friend blogs about it as though it was weird.

Anyway, one day I had made a double (or was it quadruple?) batch of muffins and I had a lot. Little E was going to his friend's house across the street, so I sent some with him to take to his friend's family. The mom called and thanked me and said they were good, her dad is diabetic, so she might give some to him. I was a little puzzled, but oh well.

Last night, Little E's friend showed up at our door, with a bag of home made granola bars and a index card that said simply "WHOLE WHEAT & FLAX SEEDS". The little boy said, "My mom made these and no one in my house likes them. She said to bring them to you."

They are actually quite delicious. I have eaten all but one of them.

I've probably made my muffin recipe sound really appetizing. I will probably never hear the end of it if I finish this post without sharing it. OK. But I don't know where I got it. It is handwritten in a journal, so I don't know to whom to give credit.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

1 1/4 c. oatmeal
3/4 c. yogurt
1/2 c. orange juice
1 1/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/3 c. sugar
1/4 T baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
2 egg whites
1 c. blueberries

Combine 1st three ingredients. Set aside. Combine rest of ingredients except eggs. Add oat mix and egg whites. Stir until moist. Fold in blueberries. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

The Weirdo Factor, Part 3- Some make me mad, some make me sad

2009-01-12T09:18:00.004-06:00

I called in to work last Wednesday, after having to put Doobie to sleep. The owner and wife are dog lovers and the same bartender who covered my shift for Little E's birthday worked for me. I feel really thankful.

Friday night I successfully sabered three champagne bottles for the owner and his friends, so I felt a sense of redemption after the Dom disaster.

Saturday night, I worked a short shift behind the bar and it was really slow. I did serve a few weirdos. After the waitress was there awhile, she commented on the full moon. Many in the bar business believe that the moon phase affects the behavior of patrons.

What stands out in my mind are two separate couples I served. The first couple came in early and told me they were celebrating the woman's birthday. She was very friendly and showed me her "bustier". They ordered dinner and I served them a few drinks. They decided to move from the bar to a table, so I climbed under the bar and took all their plates, drinks, and condiments to a table for them. They did not ever tip me. Some people, especially if they don't go out much, don't really understand the etiquette of tipping. I tried not to think much of it and continued to be super friendly and help this woman enjoy her birthday. After awhile the gentleman came to the bar with a hundred dollar bill and wanted all singles. So apparently he did understand the concept of tipping, he just was not going to tip me. I let the waitress take care of them after that.

Later, another couple came in. I would not have identified them as a couple at first. They looked like father/daughter, father/granddaughter possibly? The woman did not look to be of drinking age, but she had some sort of physical(?) developmental(?) disability. That can make it difficult to judge age. I asked them if I could get them anything and the man wanted a Bud Light. I asked the woman what she wanted and she said nothing. I addressed the man, "that will be $3.25". He responded in a gruff voice, "She pays". OK. She counted out $3.25 exactly. I thought, well, maybe she works for him. Maybe she is his assistant or something. Then he leaned over and started making out with her. She seemed very uncomfortable the whole time they were there, which was for two more beers for him, nothing for her. At one point, he asked me to watch his beer while he stepped outside to smoke. The woman stayed at the bar for a minute and I was considering asking her if she was OK, but she put on her coat and said she was also going outside before I had made up my mind about what to say or if I should say anything. So I guess if she was being coerced, he wouldn't have left her there, and she could have said something to me while he was gone. It was just a bit disturbing to me and I hope the woman is capable of making informed decisions and hope she is happy if she is choosing to be with this creepy guy.

Good Bye Doobie Dog

2009-01-08T09:51:00.003-06:00

After a traumatic couple of days, Doobie was put to sleep yesterday. He was part of my family for 10 years and it was sad to lose him, for myself and for my kids, but Grandma is beside herself with grief. I am scared about dealing with this and how her Alzheimer's will affect the situation.

On the way to the vet yesterday, after Doobie had fallen down the stairs and couldn't move his limbs, I knew that he would not recover. We had just been at the vet the day before, and Doobie was put on pain medicine that he would have to take for the rest of his life, so we had already been discussing his quality of life. In my opinion, it would be best not to even subject Doobie to X-rays or tests and just end his suffering. She agreed and we drove a few minutes more. Then she said "we can just leave him there while they do the X-rays", not remembering the difficult conversation we had just had.

Luckily, the doctor there was the one I like more and is more compassionate and logical in my opinion, and did not recommend tests. She said she could tell his spinal cord was injured and that even a young, healthy dog might not make it through surgery and intensive physical therapy. We decided to put him to sleep and Grandma and I stayed with him while his suffering ended.

Most of the day she wouldn't eat or take her medicine and didn't want to talk to anyone on the phone. She cried off and on throughout the day. In the evening, she did not want to watch Top Chef with us and went downstairs and I helped her call her sister who had lost her husband two days ago. Later I went down and got her eye drops for her, that she usually does when she gives Doobie his medicine at night. I told her I was going to take Doobie's medicine off her table now. She asked why and I responded that he doesn't need it anymore and I was worried she would get confused and think it was for her.

"Why doesn't he need it anymore?"

Fuck. She did not remember. And I had to remind her that Doobie had died and she started crying again. What a cruel torture.

At the end of 2008, I was reflecting on how it really was not a bad year. I remember at the start of the year feeling overwhelmed with caring for Grandma and thinking "I don't know if I can do this". But I adjusted and she really did not get any worse I don't think. I am grateful for that and have been thinking "so far so good; I can do this". I hope I was right.

Pathetic Pears Turn Into Tasty Tart: TWD

2009-01-06T16:37:00.010-06:00

OK, this is my first Tuesdays With Dorie post. This was a great week to start, not only because it is a new year, but because this week's recipe was selected by Dorie Greenspan herself! The recipe is for a French Pear Tart and can be found on her blog.

All the other bakers are saying how easy this recipe is. Mmmm, I guess it would be easy the second time around, now that I have more of a clue what I am doing. I had never made a tart so I ran into a few little bumps in the road. (My only tart pan is glass; can it go from freezer to oven without breaking? Yes it can, or at least this time it did.) Overall, the final result was DELICIOUS.

The first step was making almond cream out of ground blanched almonds. Again, this was a new concept for me. I had some almonds, so I figured I would just blanch them. The instructions I had warned against oversoaking the almonds and making them too soft. So I was careful to soak them only for a minute and then started peeling. It took forever and I kept hurting my fingers. After a long time, the skins did start to slide off easier and I realized this was what they were supposed to be like from the start. Next time I'll know.

One nice thing about this recipe is it allows you to choose between fresh pears, poached pears, or canned pears, saying that canned pears work splendidly. That is good to know, but I so happened to have some fresh pears that needed used (or thrown away.) Usually pears would not get to this sorry state in my house, but with Big E's fruit sale, and with me accidentally ordering an extra box of fruit, I have been overwhelmed with fruit and these little guys were teetering on the brink of rotten.

I didn't want to poach them and have them get any softer. After peeling, coring, culling a few spots, and dousing with lemon juice, they looked quite appealing.

Here is the assembled tart before it got baked:

Ooops, I forgot to dry off the pears before putting them on the almond cream. Maybe that is why it didn't brown very well and I had to put foil on the edges and cook it a little extra.

When it was finally done, I sprinkled on a little lemon zest (from the lemon I needed the juice from earlier) and a lot of powdered sugar. I didn't mean to do that much and tried to blow some off so the picture would look prettier, but that didn't work very well. The tart tasted wonderful though. I think I could have just an almond cream tart. I can't wait to try this with other fruit too.

Upcoming Year of Baking

2009-01-05T20:48:00.004-06:00

My friend, Jennifer, loves to cook and bake, and she is really good at it. We both recently got the Kama Sutra of baking, Baking: From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, I am not nearly as an acomplished baker as Jennifer, but we joined a group together called Tuesdays with Dorie. It is a group of several hundred blogging bakers who cook the same recipe from Baking each week and post about it. I am really looking forward to this weekly adventure.

I have already made a couple recipes from the book and am already loving it. For Little E's birthday, I made a Tall and Creamy Cheesecake. For my work Christmas party I made Real Butterscotch Pudding with my boss's favorite scotch, Johnnie Walker Black Label. To remain in the group, we are supposed to make the assigned recipe at least two times a month. I am hoping to participate every week. Tomorrow's treat is a French Pear Tart. Pears are a favorite fruit at my house. I think my family will like this new baking adventure too.

I can't decide if I should just post my baking posts on this blog, or start a new blog for food stuff. For now I will put my food posts here.

Tomorrow, I Will Have Two Teenagers

2008-12-30T11:57:00.002-06:00

Little E turns 13 tomorrow! I cant believe how quickly my children have grown up. I know every parent says that, but until it happens to you, it is just so abstract.

Being in the bar business, there are a few days of the year that are about impossible to get off. New Years Eve is one of them. I've been really lucky, and work for good people, and haven't had to work on Ethan's birthday for the past several years. This year though, we had a couple servers quit at work and I was told I have to work the day shift that day. At least that was better than working at night, but I was not thrilled.

Another bartender, K, came to my rescue and is going to work my shift for me! Even though he has to work at a different bar that night. So, he will work 10:30- 7:00 at The Strip Club, then 7:30 until 5:00 a.m. at JP. I was so happy he would do this, I gave him $50, even though he told me it wasn't necessary.

When I told Little E this, (thinking he'd be thrilled to have me home on his birthday) he said, "You could have spent the $50 on a present". Yep. I have a teenager.

Ghost of Christmas Past?

2008-12-25T08:29:00.004-06:00

Christmas Eve, day shift, the strip club was deserted, quiet as a graveyard. There were 3 customers, one at the stage, one at a table, and one at the bar. The cook came to the bar and asked for a bottle of water and sat down next to a dancer. He opened the bottle, took a sip, and suddenly jumped up and ran back stage. The dancer and I wondered why he suddenly departed. Maybe he had remembered something in the kitchen that needed immediate attention?

Several minutes later, he returned, clearly agitated. He said he saw a man standing by the stage who started to go back stage. The cook went to stop him, and the man disappeared through a door. As he related the story, the man and the bar spoke up, "I saw him too, I thought he worked here." The customer at the bar got up and walked over to where the "man" had been standing. "He was right here, and then he turned and went back there", he said, pointing at the door that leads back stage.

I stood by where the customer had been sitting at the bar and when looking towards the spot, could see a shadow caused by Christmas greens. There are lots of moving lights and shadows. I suggested maybe the shadow looked like a person moving. The cook snapped back, "No, that dark shadow doesn't have any definition. This was a white guy in a hat!" The customer agreed.

I have worked there for eight years and heard many such stories over the years. Most of the stories involve a pale woman in a white dress, often crying. Once a dancer said there was a woman crying in the bathroom. She approached the woman to console her, and she disappeared. Lots of people have seen the woman in white, some have seen men, some have had lights tun off and on or items fall to the floor. I have never had any such experience. I don't know what to think. I have heard the building has quite a history. If it is going to be torn down soon, maybe Ghost Hunters will come investigate. I don't think I believe in the ghosts, but it is intriguing that many different people have similar perceptions, what they believe they see. At any rate, thinking about the past, and people who have been in the building before, make me feel interested in at least doing some research into the history of it.

That might Not Qualify For Per Diem Reimbursement

2008-12-22T11:45:00.004-06:00

Before we opened Saturday night, I answered the phone. The caller told me he had a problem. He had been in Monday night and charged over $9,000 to his company credit card. Now he was worried that he might get in trouble at work when they find out. He wanted to know if he could transfer the charge to his personal card.

It is something he will have to discuss with the office manager during business hours, but I wonder, would it ever be a good idea to charge $9,000 of strip club services to your employer? Does it take five days of pondering it to decide that it was a bad idea? I wonder if he has a wife that might also be very upset about a $9,000 strip club bill on his personal card. Tough choices, and hopefully lesson learned.

'Tis The Season to get over a petty grudge against a rock group

2008-12-12T12:04:00.007-06:00

Part One of this story is so I don't seem QUITE as crazy in Part Two. I hope.
Part One: A few years ago. Regular day at the strip club. A group of people came in and were super friendly and cheerful and were spending a lot of money. After waiting on them a few times, I learned they were with Pop Satirist, getting ready for his show the next day. I told them my kids love Pop Satirist and one guy said, "Oh, why don't you come to the show? Go to the ticket window tomorrow and I will have tickets and back stage passes waiting for you and your family." So, I told the fam and they were thrilled, but Husband was a little skeptical. We went to the ticket window, got the tickets and passes, enjoyed the show, met the musician and Husband and kids were quite thrilled.

Part Two: A few years ago. Regular day at the strip club. A group of people came in and were super friendly and cheerful and were spending a lot of money. After waiting on them a few times, I learned they were with Christmas Themed Rock Group, getting ready for the show the next day. I told them my kids love Christmas Themed Rock Group and one guy said, "Oh, why don't you come to the show? Go to the ticket window tomorrow and I will have tickets and back stage passes waiting for you and your family." So, I continued to wait on them all day, making sure to give them superior service. I even flashed my breasts for them. They really were fast drinkers who drank a lot. I ran non- stop all day waiting on them and they seemed really happy with my service. One of them gave me his cell phone number and told me to call once we were in our seats at the show and he would bring some stuff up to the kids. I kept confirming that they had my full name and such and were going to make sure there were tickets there. They totally assured me it was taken care of. I really didn't think much of the fact that they had gone through several bottles of Crown Royal, or even the fact that they kept getting warned by management to stop asking for things that were not on the menu. The snow outside wasn't enough for them and they wanted to light up more than a Christmas Tree.

When I brought my family to the ticket window, they did not have my name on a list. I called the cell phone number I had- no answer. I left a voice mail and we waited around, looking pretty pathetic. The show started and my little one started crying. It was a couple days before Christmas, and I hadn't bought my kids presents yet. But I had gotten their hopes up for this show, so I took my Christmas money and bought us four tickets to the show. The kids had a great time. Husband was pretty pissed, and I learned a Christmas lesson- to not be so naive and trusting.

I don't mean to whine about not getting a free handout. I know this was all my own fault. BUT I still feel a twinge of anger when Christmas Themed Rock Group comes to town. I felt a twinge of satisfaction last year when several of the road crew ended up in jail from their behavior in the strip club. I hope after venting a bit here, I will get over the last of my grudge. I know they bring a lot of joy to a lot of people and I was only dealing with a few of the hundred or so people they have on their tour. I think the story of the show I saw was about forgiveness. I am trying to learn that lesson and look back and laugh at my foolishness. And maybe I can enjoy that Miller Lite commercial again.

Brain Freeze

2008-12-11T10:31:00.003-06:00

After work last night, my back hurt, so I took some Tylenol PM. As I went to bed, my back pain lessened and luckily the diphenhydramine worked quickly, sending me off to sleep, bacause I started thinking, "shoot, I took some Xanax earlier, didn't I? I think I remember hearing it is dangerous to mix sleep meds and benzos, it may have Heath Ledger like consequences. But it was just some OTC sleep medicine, and I haven't had any alcohol." But before I could think it through or research it further, I fell asleep. I slept well, but was super groggy this morning.

When I woke up, Husband and Big E had already left, and little E was trying to rouse me to put his eye medicine in his eyes before he caught the bus. I groggily put on my glasses and squirted salve in his eyes, noticing his hair was sopping wet. "Little E, you need to dry your hair before you go." "OK, Mom, I will."

I laid back down and snuggled under the covers, but a minute later, Little E came running into my room saying "Mom, Mom, I just remembered I have to be at school early this morning to get filmed for the three words project! It is my turn at 8:05! Will you drive me? Hurry, hurry!"

So I jumped out of bed (8:00) without asking questions and raced to the car. On the way, I asked, "So what is this project?", noticing his hair is dripping onto his coat.
"All the seventh graders picked three words and then we get filmed for three seconds while we do something while we are saying the words."
"What three words are you saying?"
"I'm charged up!"
"Oh, and what are you doing while you say that?"
"Well, before the camera starts, I am going to rub my hair on a chair and then it will be standing up all over while I say 'I'm charged up!' I'm going to have to run to Mrs. W's room! Bye!"
(8:04; hair is now a popsicle) "Ok, well, good luck with that Sparky."

More Fun With Surveys

2008-12-09T10:11:00.005-06:00

Christmas in our household is probably a typical combination of joy and stress. We are not Christian, but try to emulate some of the Christian values that are supposed to be the hallmark of the season- compassion, giving, celebration of love and family. We don't do Santa Claus, but I do like to try to get my kids something special for Christmas. This year, I know they want an X Box 360. Also, they want cell phones and a membership to the health club. On the one hand, most of their friends have cell phones and gym memberships that are just given to them, not as part of a Christmas present or for any special occasion. On the other hand, I don't think I can afford all three, and through the course of a year, cell phones or a gym membership add up to be quite an expense, I would call present-worthy.

I decided to see what they are wanting the most by making a little written survey they could both fill out and then Husband and I could discuss what to get.

Please rank 1-3 what you would most like for Christmas:
__ X Box 360
__ Cell Phone
__ Gym Membership
Comments:

Instead of getting comments, I got questions and complaints. "What Kind of X Box 360? I don't want the Arcade. You can't get the Arcade."; "What kind of cell phones? Would they have full keyboards? Unlimited texting?"; "Would you take us to the gym whenever we wanted to go?"; "Don't you think you should just give us cell phones and the gym membership anyway? Don't you care about our health and safety?"; "Who's room would the X Box go in? How many games would we get with it?"; "I don't want a cell phone like yours. Yours sucks."

So I simply changed the survey a little:

Please rank 1-4 what you would most like for Christmas:
__ X Box 360
__ Cell Phone
__ Gym Membership
__ Not only do I not want anything for Christmas, I would like to help
children less fortunate than myself and donate my gifts to charity.

So they decided they would be happy sharing an X Box 360. I am going to try to get them cell phones though, to put in their stockings. Sucky cell phones like mine, but I do care about their safety, and they really are good kids who are not too greedy most times and do appreciate what they have.

Pieces of Flair

2008-12-07T14:45:00.001-06:00

Message from Facebook-

Sorry, we don't have any "gangsta ass niggas" flair.

You know what that means...

If you create the "gangsta ass niggas" flair, it will be the one and only!

Umm, no, I don't think I should create any gangsta ass niggas flair. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.*

AAM has been a good friend to me. I always enjoy hanging out with her. She usually inspires me to do activities which really enrich my life. I joined her book club. She invites me to walk, to run, to spin class, to exercise. She has helped me to better my frugal living habits. Usually our get togethers include some form of exercise, and often financial mentoring. On occasion, however, I have influenced her to do things that are neither very healthy nor very frugal. On one such occasion, I performed the song "Damn, It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta" at an open mic night.(Here is the scene from Office Space for which I would guess this song is best known among boring white girls like me.) This was a source of amusement for quite awhile, because, well, maybe it is one of those "had to be there" kind of things, but I guess it was funny because 1) I am really shy, 2) I can't sing, and 3)I don't use phrases like "cocksuckin, pussy-eatin prankstas" in my everyday discourse. So for some time, it was fun to use lines from "Damn, It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta" in our everyday discourse.

My favorite occasion was actually when we were running. Many runners have cool shirts which say things like "Pain is temporary, pride is forever", or "I'm the fast girl your mother warned you about". I thought it would be cool to make a shirt that says "Gangsta ass niggas don't run fast". But for some reason, we never did, and eventually the Getto Boys talk got old.

We haven't been running lately at all and AAM asked me to run the Jingle Bell Run For Arthritis with her. I was pretty excited about it and was also excited because I had just discovered Facebook Flair. I was spending way too much time looking through all of the Facebook Flair Friday night. It seems like you could find every line of dialogue from some of my favorite movies like Elf or The Princess Bride. There were even numerous lines from Office Space. This alone cracked me up, because one of the funny things in that movie is the waitress being chastised for only wearing the minimum required amount of flair on her uniform. So how appropriate would it be to find some Facebook flair, from Office Space, to send to AAM? I was hoping to find some Flair that said "Gangsta Ass Niggas Don't Run Fast" But, alas, I sent her this one and had a freezingly good time running with her Saturday morning. It was probably our slowest race time ever, but that's OK, because real gangsta-ass niggas dont flex nuts cuz real gangsta-ass niggas know they got em.
* Inigo, The Princess Bride

Resolved

2008-12-06T15:12:00.001-06:00

I went in and talked to the K Mart manager. He gave me a $10 gift card for my troubles. He didn't yell at me and I didn't apologize.

Customer...Service?

2008-12-05T08:20:00.004-06:00

IDNKM is right, they DO actually read those surveys.
I noticed in last Sunday's K Mart ad, they were offering double coupons, up to and including $2. I was excited because I had several $2 coupons that made several items free or close to it. Realistically, I spent way too much time sorting my coupons and walking through the store rummaging through my coupon file, trying to beat others couponers to the prize items like the free Gillette body wash I will never use, trying to keep track of the coupons I have used and the ones I want to use and the ones that I wanted to use, but the items were out of stock, etc.

A couple hours later, when I arrived at the only open checkout lane, I had twenty five items and twenty three coupons. The people behind me were glaring at me like Morton Malaise when someone is writing a check! After every other coupon the cashier scanned, the machine beeped at her and she would have to do something to get it to start accepting coupons again. A couple of times, she didn't notice this and went on scanning my coupons, and setting them aside, even though they had not been deducted. I was trying to keep track and point this out, much to the chagrin of the people waiting behind me. But when my son called to give me directions to where I was supposed to pick him up promptly two minutes later, I lost track and gave up on the coupon scanning.

I then pulled out my checkbook and started to...just kidding. I quickly scanned my debit card and was thankful the harrowing ordeal was over and left the store questioning whether the $26.50 I saved was worth the time it took to accomplish that savings. I also was thinking, "hmm, according to my calculations, I should have saved more than $26.50", but I needed to pick up my son and avoid the angry mob forming behind me, so I took my receipt and left. It's not like they could have taken each coupon and matched it up with each item to see which ones rang up and which ones didn't. That would take forever.

It was frustrating when I got home and looked at my receipt, to realize that only eighteen of my twenty three coupons had rung up. Since all my coupons were valued at $1-$2, that would be a $5-$10 savings I should have received. I noticed on the receipt, I could take a survey and possibly win a $2,500 gift card, so I decided that would be an ideal way to voice my frustration and possibly recoup my loss.

I completed the survey fairly and wrote in the comments section that not all my coupons were scanned accurately. Ahh. I felt a sense of relief and closure. End of story.

Not really. Last night, I answered the phone to have K Mart Manager wanting to know what my problem was. It was a pretty confusing and probably pointless conversation.
Manager- "This is K Mart manager. I understand you had a problem in my store yesterday?"
Me- "Umm, actually, it was Sunday, and yes, some of my coupons did not scan, so I commented about it on an online survey."
Manager-"Sunday? I thought it was yesterday."
Me-"No, it was Sunday, but it doesn't really matter, does it?"
Manager-"My message says it was yesterday."
Me-"I didn't leave you a message, and I am looking at my receipt and it says Sunday, plus, I remember it was Sunday."
Manager-"Well, I was here Sunday."
Me-"OK?... So was I."
Manager-"hmmm" ...Long silence... then suddenly, "I've tried to contact you twice! I called yesterday and couldn't get through, AND I called today and left a message for you to call me back! When you didn't, I tried to call a third time!"
Me-"I'm, sorry, I didn't get the message." (from my grandma who has Alzheimer's)
Husband, from the other room- "Don't apologize to him!"
Manager-"Well, I was here Sunday!"
Me-"Ummm, OK??? Here's the deal, I did not take the time to complain right then. I needed to leave, and after I got home, I counted the coupons on my receipt, and I knew that there would be nothing that could be done at that point, once my coupons have been put in a drawer with hundreds of others, and..."
Husband- "Don't apologize to him!"
Manager-"Yes, yes, I could have done something right then. I could have gotten the coupons out of the register, and matched each one up with a code that shows on the receipt and then we could have matched those up to the items you purchased to see if there were any coupons that did not ring up! I did that with another lady who took the time to complain in person, rather than going online!"
Me-"I'm sorry, but.."
Husband- "Stop apologizing to him!"
Manager-"Well, why don't you come back in and bring your receipt and I will look at it?
Me-"umm, sure, OK, I'll do that"
Manager-"When?"
Me-"I don't know? Will you be there tomorrow afternoon?"
Manager-"Yes, I will be here, except for when I go to lunch from noon to 1:00."
Me-"OK, I will try to come in tomorrow afternoon."
Scary Manager-"Good, Good. I will see you then."

I did also notice that one of my items that should have been on sale didn't ring up correctly. And I did find a $5 off coupon I could have used. So I guess I will go in and see what he wants and maybe he will price adjust the sale item and take my $5 coupon. Or maybe he will shine a laser scanner in my eyes and try to kill me. I'm kind of scared. I will probably end up apologizing again.

A Long Ride

2008-11-25T11:15:00.002-06:00

I had a busy weekend, celebrating my anniversary, going to Princeville a couple of times, going to an open house in Chillicothe, a painting party in Bartonville,and going to the high school's musical (not the movie; my son's high school's musical where he was playing in the orchestra pit). Saturday night, it worked out that I would be in Bartonville near my son's friend who would be going to our house. T recently got his driver's license and later that night, would be driving my son, Big E, to Princeville. I decided I would have T take me home from Bartonville. Jennifer wondered if it would be awkward, riding with this kid who just got his license. I didn't think I should be sending my son with him if I wasn't comfortable riding with him; I told her it would be fine.

We didn't crash or anything, but it did turn out to be a little "awkward". As we pulled out of T's driveway, he said, "This is weird, usually you are driving me". So I joked that I would be critiquing his driving skills. I told him I am sure he is a very safe driver and was very comfortable riding with him.

After some silence, T asked "Do you like Fountains of Wayne?"
"I don't know, what do they sing?"
"Do you know the song 'Stacey's Mom'?"
"Umm, yes, it is OK."
T put in the CD. When "Stacey's Mom" came on, he said "Oh, here it is" and increased the volume and started singing along, "You know, I'm not the little boy that I used to be. I'm all grown up now, baby can't you see? Stacy's mom has got it goin' on. She's all I want and I've waited for so long"

And then, I think it dawned on him that this was a little strange. He looked at me kind of horrified, turned down the volume, and said "umm, just so you know, this is the only CD I have in this car."

The Weirdo Factor, Part 2

2008-11-23T09:48:00.004-06:00

Sometimes weirdos are not really creepy; They are just weird. There is one customer who has been coming in every day for years. I think I will call him Neon because he often wears a reflective safety vest, because he rides a bicycle. I kind of feel bad even classifying him as a weirdo, because he is most likely mentally ill and probably can't help it that he is so weird.

He works for the hotel that is adjacent to The Strip Club. He takes out garbage for them and I often see him in the alley behind my work, where the hotel dumpsters are.

Neon talks a lot. He talks to himself or anyone who is near him and often makes no sense whatsoever. He thinks he is really smart and he is very opinionated. He likes to talk about politics, but listening to him talk is like listening to Sarah Palin. He will start off with a bold statement about something and then degenerate into fractionated sentences and eventually unintelligible muttering. I usually try to avoid talking to him because I can't figure out what the hell he is trying to say and I feel awkward not knowing how to respond to nonsense.

My back was hurting and there is spot behind the bar where I can kind of sit on a cooler. It is right next to where Neon stands, but I decided go ahead and have a seat for a minute. I started some small talk . "How are you? How's work? Did you have to be out in the cold much today?" So far so good. Then he said, "I broke up a gang fight".

Wow. I am wondering what happened out in the alley. Was there really a gang fight? Did I just miss it? So I asked him "When?"
"In 1994."
"OK? Where was this?"
"In Waukegan, IL."
"Oh, how did you break up the fight?"
"I called the police."
"Well, good for you, that was the right thing to do."

He started mumbling unintelligibly about the gang fight I guess, in 1994, and I kind of zoned out, still not wanting to get up, but not really wanting to take the effort to continue the conversation. Luckily the door guy came to the bar, so I could divert my attention and ask him what he needed. The last I had seen him, he had hurt his back, so I asked how his back was doing. He said it still hurt and Neon spoke up.

"I have some Ben Gay in my bag. I'll let you use it."

The door guy said, "No, thank you", and left. Neon stood there in silence for awhile, then said to me "I carry Ben Gay because I rub it on my boils."

So I walked away to the other side of the bar, where another everyday customer, hmm, I'll call him Red, was sitting. Red sometimes gets a kick out of my interactions with Neon. Once, Neon threw an empty water bottle behind the bar, trying to make it in the garbage, but missed. So I picked it up, and jokingly said "Did you throw this at me?" and threw it back at him. Neon apologized profusely, calling me maam a lot. I felt bad, but Red thought it was hysterical. So I lamented to Red how hard it is to carry on a conversation with Neon and told him about the Ben Gay and the boils. Red said, "Maybe he has a speech impediment, and he really rubs it on his balls." So I laughed, but really that would not be beyond the realm of possibility.

The Weirdo Factor (Part 1?)

2008-11-20T11:34:00.004-06:00

Ring Ring
"Thank you for calling The Strip Club, This is Secret Server, may I help you?"
"Yes, Secret Server, I have a question for you. I might be bringing some buddies in for lunch, and we were wondering, can you wear hats in there?"
"Good question caller, we do have some hat rules. We do not allow stocking caps. Other hats are allowed, but baseball caps have to face forward." (Honest to god truth, this is the rule.)
"OK, so we can wear baseball caps, as long as they are facing the front?"
"Correct"
"OK, I'll see you later"
Ummm, yes, I'm looking forward to it. Who calls ahead to ask about hats, would he have changed his mind and not come in if he had to remove his hat??

A little while later, Ring Ring
"Thank you for calling The Strip Club, This is Secret Server, may I help you?"
same caller as before- "Yes, Secret Server, how are you doing?"
"Fine, Thank you"
"Well, I have a question for you, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I was thinking about coming in, and I hope you're not too busy, because I just want to ask you a quick question, I appreciate you talking to me, because I was wondering something and wanted to ask you a question"
"OK! What's your question?!?"
"Is H working today?"
"No"
"No?"
"No, H is not working today"
"Oh, well I thought she was"
"Well, she is not here"
"Well, is she coming in later?"
"I don't know" (We are not supposed to give out dancers' schedules for their own protection, in case some weirdo is stalking them in some fashion, but sometimes customers get really upset and offended if you say that. "Well, I just wanted to come spend some money on her, but if I don't know when she is working, well she's losing out on money if you don't tell me". I try to avoid saying "we are not allowed to tell you her schedule")
"Can you find out?"
"No, I am behind the bar and I have customers waiting"
"Hmmm, well, ....OK...ummm....well, I was wondering... ummmm"
"Yes?"
"Well, nevermind, I'll talk to you about it later."
???

So, a while later, a guy approached the bar with a huge grin on his face and told me he has spoken to me twice today, do I remember?
Ummm, Hat Guy?
He turned his hat around backwards and started giggling.
He said he has something to talk about but wants to order lunch first, so after looking over the menu, he ordered a Build Your Own Wrap "Tell the cook to put whatever is good on it".

He kept alluding to wanting to talk to me about something. He giggled a lot. I was washing some glasses and he got up and walked over to me to tell me anything he asks me, I can ask him the same thing. WTF? Does this man think we are playing some sort of game? When his lunch arrived he said he couldn't eat it because there was a naked girl on stage, even though he was facing the bar with his back to the stage.

Basically, something about this guy creeped me out. Talking to some friends about something unrelated, we were discussing how some of us are very trusting and think the world is full of good people, whereas some of us are suspicious and guarded. I am the former type. I know am too naive and sometimes trust people I shouldn't. So I guess when *I* have alarm bells going off, it is so unusual, it really gets my attention.

Luckily, his wife called him home, or so he said. I threw away his untouched food and went about my business. Later the door guy paged me and said I had a phone call on line 1.
"Hey, Secret Server, it is me. I wanted to call and tell you you have really given me a lot to think about. I came in the with some questions and I didn't really get any of them answered, but my mind is thinking and thinking. I mean really, I will probably write a book. Do you want me to change your name?"
Silence.
"Seriously, I think you should write a book, or I'll write a book, so seriously if I write a book, do you want me to change your name?"
"Uh, yes?"

I called the door guy and said, "If that guy calls back, tell him I'm not available, or tell him, I can't take phone calls, ever."

Darn, no more bathroom cleaning at sub -legal wages for me

2008-11-18T09:13:00.004-06:00

I am done working at The Bar. I tried to give my two, three, four week notice, but was told to finish out the weekend, then be done. Friday morning I had called the business office to ask to speak to either owner and left a message for either owner to call me back. A called me and was very nice and understanding. When I got to work that afternoon, J was upset that I had talked to A first. He had an odd attitude and it was awkward working all weekend.

I wish them the best and all success. I will see about adjusting my schedule at The Strip Club. There may be some interesting times ahead there. And I have never been asked to clean a toilet.

I'm Kreativ, and requesting photos of scantily clad bloggers

2008-11-11T19:55:00.014-06:00

I got this award from Katie, at Notes From the Trailerhood. It is so pretty and makes me feel like a real blogger, with real people who read my blog. Thanks, Katie! I guess the award comes with rules-
The rules:
(1) List six things that make you happy
(2) Pass the award on to 6 more kreativ bloggers
(3) Link back to the person who gave you the award
(4) Link to the people you are passing it on to and leave them a comment to let them know.
(5) Request scantily clad photos of your blogger friends of the opposite sex.

I don’t know six more kerativ bloggers who haven’t already been tagged, and I’m not sure I am comfortable asking people I don’t know to do something that has rules. So I am skipping the part about passing it on to 6 more bloggers. I noticed that everyone else is skipping the part about requesting pictures, so I don’t feel too bad about skipping a part. I’m not going to shy away from requesting scantily clad blogger photos though. Heck, I’ll even extend the request to bloggers of the same sex. If anyone wants to send me some photos, I will be happy to give you kreativ kommentary.
Six things that make me happy-
1) My family. I love spending time with my family. My wedding anniversary is coming up soon, and it makes me happy that I am still very in love with my husband. Our kids are wonderful and make me very happy. It is rewarding having Grandma live with us. I love my little brothers and cherish time spent with them. I love our animal family members too.
2) My friends. Jennifer puts a smile on my face every day. My other friends are all wonderful too and I value each one of them and how they support me.
3) Food porn. I love food bloggers and spend way too much time looking at what other people are doing in their kitchens with toys I don’t have, and fantasizing about techniques I’ve never tried. I spend hours ogling seductive pictures on foodgawker and fancy rolling fondant. (yes, Jennifer, foodgawker makes me think naughty things. I’m coming out as fondant curious.)
4) Clearance stickers at Krogers. I can spot these out of the corner of my eye an isle away.

5) Successfully cooking something delicious. This especially makes me happy when everyone in my family likes it too. Tonight’s delight was inspired from too much milk in my fridge from being tempted by too many orange clearance stickers- chocolate pudding. Yum.
6) Balderdash. I love that game.

Wow, I could go on and on. It’s kind of like being thankful at Thanksgiving, which also makes me happy. Thanks, Katie for asking me to stop and think about things that make me happy.

An Old Leaf for the old restaurant- some things just aren't changing

2008-11-07T11:46:00.005-06:00

I hadn't been to work at The Bar since last Friday. I could see at the top of the stairs there were a lot of black marks all over the floor. WTF? Maybe someone spilled something? And it just got smeared around? K says, "hey, glad you're here, they need me to work downstairs". OK. I went behind the bar and opened the fruit tray to find moldy fruit. Hmmm, we had been open two hours; did the citrus fruit get moldy in that time? Or maybe it is just left over from last night? Or last week?

I went to check on a group in the back of the room, to find a group of drunk guys grinding Chex mix into the carpet. The carpet was also where they were depositing the shrimp tails. Gross. Gross. Gross. They wanted a round of drinks and seemed unhappy that I wanted to get the shrimp off the carpet. I made small talk and repeated their orders back to them while picking up the shrimp tails with napkins (I have a seafood phobia.) "Can we get our drinks now? Oh, and some more shrimp?" I brought the drinks, the shrimp, and a bowl to put the tails in, and told them, politely, that is what it was for. Luckily, they went downstairs after that round, and I spent more time cleaning more shrimp off the floor.

I cut up some fresh fruit, waited on a few more customers in the course of the next 5 hours. I made $8 in cash. We don't get our credit card tips immediately. In fact, I think we might not get them at all. I have been asking about getting tips from two weeks ago, but that money isn't ready yet. So, last night, B brought me some tips with post it notes saying 10-30, 10-31. I thanked him and told him that I still hadn't received any money from 10-23 or 10-24. Well there isn't any more money. I need to talk to J about it. But I couldn't leave the bar upstairs, so I wrote J a note and asked B to take it to him. "Oh, he'll be up soon. You can talk to him then". Nope. J left and the other employees are complaining about not getting tip money either.

So I was finally able to start cleaning, getting ready to close. Our vacuum was broken, so I attacked ground in Chex mix with a broom and got most of it out, working up a sweat. In the bathrooms there were no garbage bags in the cans, so I emptied the trash into bags, and put fresh bags in. The sinks and mirrors looked like they hadn't been cleaned in a week, so I cleaned those. There was a big pool of partially fresh, partially dried urine under the urinal that was fun to clean. I polished the crystal, polished the glass bar, mopped the floor. B came up and told me we had a new vacuum. Yay, now I can vacuum the carpet to make sure I got all the Chex mix.

I left with $8. Oh, and a $10 tip on a credit card. Maybe I will get that in a couple weeks.

Celebrate (or mourn) the Election with Champagne! and a Knife!

2008-11-04T15:04:00.016-06:00

I know a little bar trick. That’s really all it is, except rather than playing with quarters and cigarettes, it involves a big knife and expensive champagne. “Sabre a champagne!” A corked bottle of champagne is sliced neatly across the neck. Technically, it’s not the best way to open a bottle if you want to preserve the quality of the champagne. (It should be opened as quietly, with as little ‘pop’ as possible.) But it is really cool.

By calling it a bar trick, I don’t want to imply that I take it too lightly and run around wielding knives and chopping bottles without regard for safety. I’ve actually done hours of research and practice. Maybe I will write a post of all the details of how to do this and the alleged traditions of ‘the art’. But this post is about a particular story from my work and how maybe I don’t know as much about the practice as I thought I did.

I first became intrigued by this after watching Stephen, on Top Chef Season 1, do this on the show a few times. I learned how and practiced on cheap champagne and sparkling juice. The first time I did it in public was with a bottle of Cristal on A’s birthday. This was an EXPENSIVE bottle of champagne and I was pretty nervous, but at this time, I was not really happy working for him, and thought, “what the hell, if the bottle explodes, that’s the kind of thing I want to get fired (sued) for”. The glass popped clean, the crowd ooohed and aaahed and I have been doing this ever since. I’ve done it for the mayor; I’ve done it at a wedding; I’ve done three bottles right in a row at a PAWS fundraiser. Some bottles sliced more clean and straight than others, but overall, there were no major disasters, like I’ve seen on the YouTube. Until last weekend.

A’s friend (and competing strip club owner) was at the new bar with a date. A’s attorney joined them by the fireplace. Our other owner, J, had just gotten off the phone with A and had told him his friends were here. A wanted to buy them a bottle of Dom Perignon and wanted me to saber it for them. I put the bottle in ice, went to the kitchen and couldn’t really find a knife as heavy as I like to use. One of the guests needed to go to the restroom. Then another. So I am just standing there waiting for everyone to return (that’s what J told me to do.) So finally, all eyes on me, I take the knife to the bottle, slide it up the seam to the neck, and instead of a sexy little “pop”, there was an awful crack as the top two thirds of the bottle went flying across the room as a jagged, deadly projectile. Champagne was everywhere, all over me, the carpet, the guests. I am left holding the bottom third of a bottle of Dom in one hand and a shaking knife in the other. I asked if everyone was OK and walked away holding back tears, humiliated, as J got another bottle and opened it in the more traditional, less deadly, manner. A arrived, looked at the bisected bottle lying on the bar and moved the party downstairs.

I awaited my fate by emptying the remaining champagne into a pint glass and downing it. (I KNOW that the force of the champagne blows any glass shards outward so I wasn’t really worried, but in my mind, I was thinking maybe drinking glass would be preferable to A’s wrath. Maybe they would have to rush me to the hospital sputtering blood and then, when I got fired, the pain would be deadened by pain killers.) Eventually, the party, now increased by many members, returned and A acted as if nothing was wrong. I waited on them without crying or spilling anything or breaking anything else. At the end of the evening A called me a goddess and left me a very generous tip, as did his friends whom I had almost decapitated earlier in the evening.

So I feel confused. I have seen A fire people for standing with their hands crossed or for using the restroom mid-shift. I’m not sure why he reacted without ire. I am confused about why the bottle did react with ire. Maybe it had gotten too warm, maybe my knife wasn’t heavy enough, maybe I just made a mistake. I need to do some experimenting with different knife angles, different brands and bottle temperatures. I need to gather a group of people who want to consume a large amount of champagne and aren’t afraid of a little potential flying glass. Any volunteers?

Pumpkin I Carved for The Bar

2008-10-28T11:15:00.001-05:00

Slow Going at The Bar

2008-10-28T08:14:00.004-05:00

I may have to start calling The Restaurant "The Bar". A had told me we were going to have a menu of small portions of hot and cold appetizers ranging in price from $4-$8. But it turns out there is no menu. We are offering complimentary appetizers each evening.

Business has been slower than I had hoped. A couple nights, I have waited on A and he has tipped me quite generously, but other than that, it has been fewer customers and longer hours than I expected.

My new co-worker, K, is getting frustrated too. I worry he will quit. I am starting to question a couple things about him, though. This is his first food and beverage job. In general, he has been a fast learner and has been doing great. He made a mistake Friday night though that cracked me up. Our red wine glasses are really big. I would guess they could hold 16 ounces of liquid, but we only pour about 5 ounces per serving. This gives the customer room to swirl and smell their wine, as red wine drinkers oft do. I did teach K the proper portion to serve and where to pour up to on the glass. He must have forgotten though. On Friday night, I went to check on some customers and came back to the bar, where there was a customer sitting with a glass of wine, filled all the way to the top. I guess you have to see it to picture how funny it looked. What is worse, is this customer had already had four martinis and was switching to a glass of wine before he left because he was feeling tipsy. After K poured half the bottle in the glass, the customer stared at it and took a couple of drinks before leaving.

I didn't work Saturday because I was in Champaign, at a marching band competition. I am wondering what I missed because someone posted on Peoria.com saying the upstairs bartender was a jerk. I hope that it was just this person's misperception, but I can see how if you aren't happy with your job, it may seem like you are being a jerk. So I hope that business picks up and K can act happy and I hope people don't think that we are stuck up jerks.

Doobie Dobbie Doo

2008-10-21T09:49:00.001-05:00

My Grandma’s dog, Doobie, has been hanging in there, but he is not doing well. He has congestive heart failure and kidney failure and allergies and is mostly blind and deaf. He follows my grandma wherever she goes and sleeps with her on her bed. He often pees in her bedroom. But she absolutely loves this dog and dotes on him constantly. I know that any little stress exacerbates her dementia and confusion, and I am often torn between wishing he would die (to end his suffering and end the problem off his disgusting urine making the air unbreathable) and dreading his death and the grief and trauma it may cause Grandma.

Mostly I try not to think about it and deal with Doobie as little as possible. I let him in and out constantly when I am home, but other than that Grandma takes care of him, feeds him and brushes him and gives him his medicine. I keep her medicine upstairs because it had occurred to me it would be possible for her to get the medicine confused. Doobie’s meds have animal pictures on the caps. He gets them morning and night and she gives them to him and marks them off on a chart we have made to keep track of whether or not she has given them. It has been working pretty well.

Sunday morning, I went down to check on her and found her shaking and crying. “I just did something awful”! She had accidentally taken Doobie’s medicine. I called poison control right away and they assured her that what she had taken was harmless to her, but it was pretty upsetting for both of us. She doesn’t want to give up any more independence and wants to feel useful. All day Sunday she kept saying she was worthless. I kept reiterating that I really hope making a silly mistake doesn’t deem one worthless, or that means she has a very worthless granddaughter.

About a month ago, he had to have some routine blood work done and I asked if he could see the vet because he had been scratching and biting a spot on his back. He had a staph infection and they gave us antibiotics. When the antibiotics ran out, he was still itching so I called and they gave him some medicine for the itching. That medicine doesn’t seem to be helping either and now he has a bloody spot on his back and is scratching all over. He looks miserable. Does he have some antibiotic resistant staph? Has my grandma been taking his antibiotics herself? So it is back to the vet today.

My husband and I have joked about just replacing Doobie with a younger lhasa apso. Would my grandma even notice? Just putting Doobie out of his misery and getting a dog that looks just like him that doesn’t pee on the carpet and need all this extra care. I could never be the one to initiate that conversation at the vet though. I cried for days when I had to euthanize my son’s fish several years ago. But I secretly wish that when I take Doobie in today, that they tell us that he would be better off humanely euthanized and then I would get my grandma another dog. It seems the route of least suffering for us all.

A New Leaf for the Old Restuarant?

2008-10-20T13:52:00.002-05:00

I’ve been working few hours at the Strip Club, and enjoying my freedom to spend time with the family and friends. Within the last month, I had heard that A had a new co-owner for The Restaurant. J and his partner, B, have been at The Club, having meetings or sitting at the bar. No one introduced them to me; I made my own introduction. I told them I used to work at The Restaurant and asked what they were doing with the place. I was told they were making a lot of changes including a new staff. OK. I thought, “Good, I wouldn’t want to work there anyway.”

So what did I say on Wednesday, when A called me down to the office, to ask me to work at the new place, starting FRIDAY? “Oh, yes, sure, that sounds exciting!” I don’t know what my problem is. I can’t say no to that man. They want me to work at the upstairs bar, which is only open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, for now.

I have to admit, it is a little alluring, a little exciting. I love the upstairs area. There is a fireplace, a gorgeous view of the river, small quiet areas with couches and coffee tables. It is so romantic and cozy. I got a little busy Friday night. Saturday night was pretty slow. I mostly stood around, getting to know my new co-worker, K (who has never worked in a bar or restaurant before, ever).

I hope the new place does great. I think it is an awesome bar and has a lot of potential. But I’ve thought that before about The Restaurant. And no matter how busy or wonderful it is, I don’t think any bar can compare with the money making potential of working at the Strip Club. I am going to give it a try for awhile. My husband isn’t thrilled with my new hours. My grandma isn’t adjusting well either. She won’t go to sleep until I am home. I am going to see how it goes for a month and promise myself to make a decision about whether I enjoy it and find it valuable at that time.

"I'll Love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as your living, my baby you'll be"- Robert Munsch

2008-10-09T11:51:00.005-05:00

My older son, Big E, is a sophomore. He has a challenging course load. He is in the honors track for English, Algebra, Chemistry, and Political Science. He is also in marching band, which fills his schedule in the fall. He struggled a lot with honors English last year, and I really questioned whether he should continue at honors level this year. He really wanted to and we agreed to let him. I feel frustrated with his mediocre grades but try not to be a perfectionist. What really bothers me though, is he does not like to read.

I read to him in the womb. When he was born, we chose Atticus for his middle name, after Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. His earliest “toys” were board books, Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs and the whole Sandra Boyton collection. When he was a toddler, we spent hours with Dr. Seuss, Arthur, Little Bear and Thomas the Tank Engine. When he was four, he started reading to us. It started with Where the Wild Things Are, which he may have memorized, but soon he was reading and loved to do so.

All through grade school we read as a family every night. Junie B. Jones, Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket. Of course we included your childhood classics, Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, Bridge to Tarabithia, etc. We finally decided both kids were ready to experience the book that I loved from first reading in 8th grade, the book that shaped my morals and impassioned my love of justice and longing to be a loving parent, To Kill A Mockingbird. The boys liked it. We watched the movie. A little while later we read it again.

Somewhere along the line our bedtime readings gave way to bedtime audio books, listened to in separate bedrooms. Somewhere along the line, audio books fell to T.V. And somewhere, Big E lost the joy of reading. He now says he hates reading. Ouch. How can this be? I realize it may be a phase. I realize it may be a personality trait or just something we differ about. He is becoming his own person with his likes and dislikes that are usually quite different than mine. It’s hard to let them grow up. He has a C- in English right now. He got 2 Cs and an F on the last 3 quizzes. I implored him to read and study for the final test and he got a C. What book are they reading? To Kill A Mockingbird! I don’t understand what he could possibly not understand about the book at this point. I think I need to read it again and ask myself, “What would Atticus do?”

2008-10-07T13:17:00.003-05:00

It has been almost a year that I have been blogging. I still feel like I don't really know what I'm doing and don't have much focus. Maybe I need to rename and refocus. I'll think about it the next couple weeks leading up to my one year anniversary. But I do want to make a commitment to write more frequently. My goal is to write at least once a week.

I am not working very much and don't really have much to write about work. The Strip Club is really pretty boring. I haven't had any more problems with the dancer, D. I don't have any exciting tales to tell or any entertaining stipper stories.

I imagine I will write more about the kids, the pets, the grandma. Maybe occasionally peppered with tidbits from work. That's pretty proportional to my life actually.

Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger

2008-08-26T13:52:00.007-05:00

I am settling in at the Strip Club. So far, so good, except I am having a problem with a particular dancer who is really...um, aggressive about getting money and drinks from customers. I am resisting the urge to call her a money grubbing whore. She really irritates me though. She tries to order drinks for herself and others and put them on other customers' tabs. She will say she wants to order a drink for a customer and to put it on her tab, then wink at me. She wants me to charge the customer for his drink and hers when she says she is buying the round. Or not charge her for the drinks at all maybe?

I'm not stupid. I am not going to risk my job so she can get drunk or get customers drunk and steal from them (which I have seen her do). Also, I like my customers to be happy, not pissed at me for drinks charged to their tab that they didn't want to buy. I need to have a talk with her about this, preferably before her next shift, before she is drunk. I also feel irritated that when she could tell I was getting upset with her, she started to try to flatter me I guess? Telling me I could be stripper! We could play the good girl/ bad girl routine! I did not appreciate the attempted distraction.

I think she also thought I was telling on her at one point and came to intercept the conversation. I was talking quietly to a manager to tell him about an interaction I had just witnessed between another dancer and a customer. (Dancer: "So what do you do for a living?" Customer: "Construction" Dancer: "Oooh, What are you working on?" Customer: "Building a fence" Dancer: "How big is it?" Customer: "11,000 feet" Dancer: "Wow, that's a tall fence".) D snuck up behind me and as J and I started laughing, she started laughing and said "I have a joke too". I think she thought I was telling on her, which I probably wouldn't do, unless I couldn't handle it myself. So I need to try to handle this myself and have a talk with her. I hate confrontation. But I hate dealing with her deceitfulness more.

I get to work at The Restaurant Saturday night. The kitchen has been closed there for about a month, and it has just been operating as a bar. One of the Owner's friends wants to have a birthday party in the Red Room Saturday night, so I am going to work for that. Which will mean a lot of work readying the room. Cleaning, vacuuming, polishing crystal and silverware, setting all the tables, etc. Ugh. I just think it will be a lot of work for not a lot of money probably. But I agreed to do it and can use the extra money I do get. I like earning my money honestly.

The Red Room, The End

2008-07-25T17:01:00.004-05:00

I went into work at The Restaurant this evening to find out it is CLOSED. Well, the part I work in is closed. No one bothered to call and tell me, or mention it to me when they saw me earlier in the week at the other establishment. I am not shocked. I am just shocked that it was so sudden, and no one bothered to tell me.

Working at The Strip Club has been going well. I like it. It is pretty easy and I have made more money working a couple shifts for a few weeks than I have all year at The Restaurant. Now I need to see if I can pick up more shifts there, but I am kind of picky about my schedule. I don't want to work until 4 a.m. The shift I have been doing is behind the bar from 4-10 p.m. Behind the bar, I can wear pants and comfortable shoes, and it doesn't really matter that I have gained 20 lbs since I last worked there. I think the only shifts available will be to waitress. I will have to wear 4 inch heels, and fishnet stockings, and a skirt that has to be higher than my fingertips when my arms are at my sides. I think I will feel a little self-conscious about that extra weight. And very uncomfortable in those stupid shoes.

"Bug Feather Bottom" Returns Google Search Results About Hallucinations

2008-07-01T23:54:00.006-05:00

A couple days ago, my friend, Jennifer, told me to be on the lookout for interesting bugs, for Taylor's upcoming insect project for freshman biology. She knows I am not comfortable killing bugs, so she requested that I save any interesting bugs that were "dead, but in excellent condition" for Taylor. I admired Taylor's ambition, getting such a head start on this project, but doubted I would actually be of much assistance.

Last night, however, I observed the weirdest bug ever. Big E pointed it out to me, and we got out a magnifying glass and a camera and watched this bug crawl around a mug for about 15 minutes. (My camera sucks and I could not get a good picture of it.)

This bug looked like a big spider's head, walked around on 6 legs, and had a feather on its butt. It was definitely an interesting insect. Maybe I would be able to help Taylor after all. There was only one problem. It was very much alive. It kept crawling around the mug as we held it over the sink. My husband was on the phone and I kept interrupting him to come look at the bug and finally asked him if he could humanely euthanize the bug, but when he showed up with the alcohol and cotton ball, I felt bad and changed my mind. I called and left a message on Jennifer's answering machine wondering if she had any advice. While I was waiting for a return call, the bug fell off the mug and went down the drain. Dang it, I should have killed that bug. I bet Tay would have gotten an A with a crazy bug like that.

I really was fascinated by it and still wonder what it was. My husband thinks it got a feather stuck to it somehow, but I think it was part of the bug (maybe it was actually a spider and it was some sort of web coming out of it? maybe it was a deformed wing?). He finally said, "I can guarantee you that feather was no part of that bug. I am certain of it. Do you know how I am certain?"

Me: "How are you certain?" (thinking maybe HE stuck the feather on the bug?)

Him: "Because it's a BUG! Bugs don't have feathers!"

But, really, this one did! I have a picture of it. Maybe Taylor will learn about bugs with feathers, and I am going to try to be on the lookout for bugs that are dead, but in excellent condition.

I'll be out with your salads as soon as I clean this toilet

2008-06-30T15:03:00.001-05:00

Bread boy is gone. I came into work one day last week in the middle of an argument between manager, L, and Bread Boy about cleaning the toilets. Since the Restaurant no longer has a cleaning service, we should have known this is our job. Bread Boy got sent home for being disrespectful and by mutual agreement between him and the Owner (there is only one now; no Owner 1 and Owner 2), he is not coming back.

This sucks for me. Not only will I miss him, but I prefer to have as little responsibility as possible there. The whole restaurant (or at least the part I work in) has been a downward spiral from the get go, and I try to do my best, and keep customers happy, but the plight has gotten ummm, just ridiculous, really. I don’t make enough money to spend my evenings cleaning toilets and waiting around for customers. The other server, J, is gone now too. Owner is on vacation, so I’m not sure exactly what the plan is, but we have hired a new server to work everyday. I think my plan is to pick up a couple shifts at another establishment and work at The Restaurant Fridays and Saturdays, or to help with bigger parties.

The other establishment is a strip club. I bartended/ served there before The Restaurant opened. I kind of miss it. I definitely miss the money. I didn’t like working late nights and couldn’t work during the day because of Grandma’s condition, but The Strip Club has recently made a new 4:00- 9:00 p.m. shift that will be perfect for me. Really, I am more confident recommending a stripper for your lap dance than a steak for your dinner anyway. And it will definitely provide better fodder for blogging.

The Good Ole' Summertime

2008-05-28T15:23:00.002-05:00

There’s not much to write about my restaurant world. Chef G has been fired. Manager, C, whom I liked and respected, has been fired. J, the cook, quit. We have hired another server, J. And a manager from one of the other establishments is now running the kitchen. His name is also J. I just hope server J works out because I am taking a week off in June to assist at the Sun Foundation Arts and Science in the Woods Camp.

That is my favorite week of the year. I have been doing it for about 8 years now. I help with a rocks and fossils class. Family members are going to help care for Gram and it is like a vacation for me.

Big E is 15. This is the summer after his freshman year. Really, we only have these next three summers left as a family before he is grown up. I really want to make the most of this summer and wish we could take a real family vacation. I worry my children will grow up and I will regret never having taken a real vacation.

I guess I survived childhood without a real vacation. And I have fond memories of the mini vacations we did, like going to Six Flags in the back of a pick up truck. Those are the kinds of things I do with my kids except they ride inside the vehicle in seatbelts. Back of the truck was not so much fun anyway, especially when it rained the whole trip back and we eventually squeezed all six of us, sopping wet into the cab. The vacations I take my kids on have to better than that.

So I am looking forward to summer. I like this cool weather easing into summer. I have a garden planted. The kids have music camps and we all have the Sun Foundation camp (with Jennifer's kids, the kids will be honing their survival skills). I have been buliding up my running again and hope to get in shape. I am going to enjoy the weather and enjoy time with my family and friends as much as possible. And hopefully blog a little more about all those good things.

I had a lime thrown at me

2008-04-09T11:39:00.003-05:00

Wow. I have been so busy, yet busy with boring stuff, I think all three of my readers may think I have fallen off the face of the Earth.

Well, auditioning for Deal or No Deal was not boring. Even though we stood in line for six hours, I don’t think I got bored at all. I was having fun with Jennifer and it I was excited with anticipation of the audition, which lasted 20 seconds.

Work has been mainly uneventful except for one night of waiting on a rock star and some TV celebrities. It was a lot of dealing with the attitude “Don’t you know who I am?!?” (No, I don’t actually, and even if I was big fan, I doubt I would know you didn't want a lime in your drink.)

Our chef, G, has still been putting out consistently good steaks and seafood. Yet she still has some….creative? ideas that I don’t quite understand. Our special last weekend was Seared Sea Scallops (say 5 times fast) and mashed potatoes. Plated together. With a White Sauce. I don’t eat meat and especially hate seafood, so I should not be pretentious enough to say these flavors would not go well together. How would I know? At some point the special did get changed to Sea Scallops and asparagus. I’m not sure of the details of how it was changed. I just know no one told me about it until I saw a plate come out of the kitchen with asparagus instead of mashed potatoes. Luckily it was for Bread Boy’s table and he was already aware of (maybe initiated) the change.

Something else no one told me was that our new dishwasher is deaf. So for the first few days he worked there, I went from thinking he was ignoring me, to getting frustrated over serious communication problems. Since seeing someone sign to him, and figuring out I need to make sure he is at least facing me if I want to talk to him, (He is a good lip reader) everything has been fine and he seems nice and interesting. I’m not sure if he will stay with us though, since our dishwashing machine has been broken since he has started, and he has to wash everything by hand and his skin is getting raw.

My husband got me a new notebook computer, which is cool. I have started another job grading the written portion of standardized tests which I can do online. Too bad it is temporary, just for a couple months. The plan is, that I can take my computer to work with me, and when we have no customers, I can grade tests.

Yesterday, I used my new computer for a few hours with it sitting on the kitchen table, which is several inches higher than my computer desk. Last night my shoulder was hurting me, from having my mouse arm higher than normal. I was complaining about it and my 12 year old, Little E, said, (in a slow, condescending voice) “Mom, it is called a LAP TOP so you can sit it on the TOP of your LAP, and you won’t need to reach up to use it”.

Osso Buco means "bone hole"

2008-03-09T16:24:00.008-05:00

The weekend at work was pretty uneventful. I had a few tables each night. I like our new chef, G. She is making a new menu; She has been making a chef's special dish each day. She has even been making a dessert each day. This weekend she made cute creme brulees in cappuccino cups, which was a nice dessert and also made good use of the cups since they have been going unused since the cappuccino machine is broken. (Also, for awhile, when Bread Boy and I were contemplating making desserts, C hid the kitchen torch from us, so I was glad he returned it and we can have creme brulees again.) So, overall, it has been great having her, but I have noticed that sometimes she seems , umm, unknowledgeable about things I think a chef should know.

I am not a culinary expert. I am still learning A LOT about food and wine. So I do not want to sound critical. But it is odd, how she could NOT know some things and it may affect some customers' satisfaction. When Owner 2 told us about hiring her, he said she went to a Cordon Bleu school, she cooked him a "ballsy" dish, and the dessert she made looked "very homemade, but had an incredible flavor". He seemed pleased, but hesitant.

G has contributed a lot so far, adding some sauces, demi-glaces, and other additions to some of the dishes, improving the presentations, and making desserts. I felt surprised one day, though, when she came across some Cappicola in the cooler and didn't know what it was. But again, I wouldn't have known either, had we not had it on a previous menu. This weekend, she had bought some precooked "Osso Buco". We have also had Osso Buco on a previous menu and were told Osso Buco was a veal dish. When I did some research about Osso Buco, it always referred to veal. The dish G made was a pork dish. Which, apparently you can have pork Osso Buco, (in fact a customer this weekend told us she had just had pork Osso Buco in Florida). But G had never heard of Osso Buco before and didn't think to specify to us it was pork. I finally figured it out and asked. Also she decided to serve the pork Osso Buco with "Risotto". I served one early in the evening and could tell though that the risotto was not risotto. She just cooked plain Arborio rice and called it risotto. I did not want to question her about it. (I am just a novice server and she is a trained chef.) I just adjusted the way I was describing the dish to customers and said it was served with rice.

I wish I was more assertive or had figured out a way to question her about it though, because it turns out that some customers were really looking forward to actual risotto. G was talking to the party of 6 (who had just had a pork Osso Buco in Florida)and told them she was serving it with Risotto. One woman started going on and on about how much she loves risotto, and maybe she would like risotto even if she doesn't have the Osso Buco. Then another woman said "me too, I am going to get risotto too". This was Bread Boy's table, so I pulled him aside and told him I was worried that these people were really excited about having risotto, and I was pretty sure G had just made rice. So, he went and confirmed this, and had to explain to her what risotto actually is and she tried to "whip some up real quick". Needless to say, the customers were not very pleased.

I just feel so frustrated that it seems we continually take a few steps forward, only to take a few steps back. Luckily, G is very friendly and "down-home" and maybe in the future I will feel more comfortable questioning her if something doesn't seem right to me.

Comfortably Numb

2008-03-07T12:09:00.001-06:00

I had Wednesday night off work. I went out to Sully’s open mike night to watch my friend, T, play. I got a text message from Bread Boy, saying, “Happy one year anniversary to us, taking tomorrow off, we have no resos”. So, the Restaurant has been open a year. We still have a very inconsistent crowd. Most nights, it is very slow. The past couple Saturdays have been really busy.

We have a new manager and a new chef. Our manager, C, seems very detail oriented and assertive. He has initiated a lot of changes to make things more consistent, which I appreciate. Our new chef, G, is working on a new menu. She seems very down-to-earth and practical. I like her. Our cook, M, is leaving us in a couple weeks. I will miss him.

I am still feeling (inexplicably) hopeful that The Restaurant will be successful. I am also pretty indifferent about looking for anything else right now, though, and am content to work only a few days a week. I hope for customers, but when we have none, I take advantage of the quiet atmosphere to work on my book club book. My schedule is working out in regards to taking care of Grandma and I also have a temporary work from home job starting in April. This slow complacency is feeling pretty comfortable right now. I know that feeling will soon pass, however, when I balance my checkbook or pay my overdue CILCO bill.

Spring E- Cleaning

2008-03-05T10:15:00.003-06:00

I have been putting off cleaning out my inbox and changing the settings for my email groups, or unsubscribing to them. After reading this post, by Eyebrows McGee, I realized that my inbox situation is dysfunctional. I am an e-hoarder.

Doughnuts & Donuts Commercials

2008-02-29T10:59:00.005-06:00

Last weekend, we made a family event out of making homemade doughnuts. I made the dough; the kids and I rolled and cut them; the husband fried them; then the kids and I glazed and/or sugared them. It was fun and tasty.

I have not purchased a doughnut for years. I think they are “OK” but I am not a huge fan and worry about them being filled with unhealthy fat and sugar. I just looked up the nutrition info for a Dunkin' Donuts cake doughnut and was surprised to see it did not list any trans fat in the nutrition facts.
(Although it did list Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil and Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil in the ingredients.)

Some Dunkin' Donuts commercials have caught my eye (ear) recently. My husband really likes “Doing Things Is What I Like To Do”.

I have just started seeing this fairly recently, but this commercial was apparently part of a 2006 ad campaign featuring the band, They Might Be Giants. I really like TMBG, but that commercial annoys me because of the line, “I'm slightly more productive now than previous because I'm slightly more efficient than I previously was". It just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t know if it is grammatically incorrect, and realize that music does not have to be grammatically correct, but that line just bugs me.

I really like this commercial.

I identify with that frustration. When I go to a bar, and want a big drink, I order a “tall”. When I go to Starbucks and want a big drink, I have several times ordered a “tall” and gotten the smallest drink they serve. At Starbucks “tall” means small. What I need to order is a Venti Latte. OK. So this commercial is kind of funny too. Another They Might Be Giants.

Good Wine, Depressing Pens, and Ethics

2008-02-25T20:26:00.002-06:00

Last week, Owner 1 came to eat with some friends. He brought with him a large bottle of Opus One. The bottle size is either called a Methusalem or Imperial; I think one refers to wine, and one to champagne, but maybe they are interchangeable terms, I don’t know. It held the equivalent of eight standard bottles of wine and I think I will call it a Methusalem, because I think that is accurate and I like that word better.

I like O1 (Owner 1; I do like the wine, Opus One too, though). Waiting on him can be a gamble. Sometimes, he has a temper and is very particular. Sometimes he can be very fun to serve and has left me the most generous tips I have ever received. Sometimes he has left without tipping me at all. So, it is really hard to know what to expect.

On this night, the party of six had a few cocktails before dinner and started to work on the Methusalem with dinner. There was wine flowing aplenty. O1 generously offered Bread Boy and me each a glass, and we graciously accepted. After several hours of wining and dining, the Methusalem was emptied. One of the guests offered pay the dinner tab if O1 left the tip. Another vomited red wine all over the bathroom floor. Everyone (well, except for Bread Boy and me) was very intoxicated.

I have worked for O1 (in other establishments) for almost eight years. As unpredictable as he is, I know his “unhappy intoxicated glare”. When I saw this dazed look on his face, I whispered to Bread Boy that I was not feeling hopeful about the tip situation. Bread Boy said he thinks O1 heard me because when I was in the kitchen, he threw money on the bar and left. My husband thinks maybe he thought the (expensive) glass of wine should have been considered a tip. I don’t think he heard me, and I think he was just being generous and wanted us to try his wine. Yes, that is probably it.

The next night, there were two reservations at the same time. One was a pharmaceutical rep and his clients. The other was a medical equipment supply rep and his clients. I took the pharm party and Bread Boy took the equipment party. My table turned out to be a Pfizer rep, talking about Alzheimer’s, which was kind of depressing for me. I decided, though, it was better than having to listen to the conversation at Bread Boy’s table, a group of colorectal surgeons discussing exactly what features they look for in instruments to perforate and clamp the bowel (WHILE EATING DINNER).

There were seven people at my table. The Restaurant allows us to add an automatic gratuity to parties of six or more. I prefer not to do this. It seems pretentious to assume that I deserve a certain tip based solely on the number of people at the table. So I did not add the gratuity. The gentleman pulled out his calculator to figure the tip, which was lower than what the autograt would have been. This was fine; it was my choice to take that chance and I understand that many companies only allow their employees to tip a certain amount. He seemed to think he was tipping me very generously though. He asked if I got to keep the full tip amount and told me I had “a good gig going”. He also left an Aricept (Alzheimer’s medicine) pen with the check. I tried to return it to him, but he told me it was a gift, for my good service.

I am not sure what to do in the future about the auto gratuity situation. I am not very comfortable doing it. But maybe for company-sponsored dinners it would be accepted and advantageous to me? I also worry about inconsistencies; if I don’t do it, but another server does in the future, the customer may not appreciate it and think “well, they didn’t add a gratuity last time”. I really want to do what is best for the customer, the restaurant, and myself, not just financially, but supporting my sense of integrity.

Feel compelled to post even though it is boring syndrome

2008-02-19T10:36:00.005-06:00

Valentine’s Day was anti-climactic. I am talking about my evening at work. I remembered that the owners had some fondue set-ups from a previous establishment, so I suggested a chocolate fondue dessert. Being pretty busy and not even making any treats for my own family, I decided that was enough of a contribution to the dessert effort, (coming up with the idea), and decided not to make something myself. Bread boy made champagne poached pears, which looked pretty and smelled wonderful. Another server made a heart shaped napoleon. Our cook, M, decided to make a cake, even though he had never made one before, because “apparently there is some sort of dessert competition going on that no one told me about”. He broke it getting it out of the pan, but some of it was salvageable. With the two store-bought cheesecakes we had in stock, we had an actual dessert menu.

I wasn’t feeling well when I went in to work, with pain in my back and ribs and difficulty breathing. By the end of the evening, I was sent home and I went to the doctor the next day. He diagnosed me with a condition called costochondritis and said it was probably caused by a virus (but not contagious). I looked it up online and learned it can also be called Tietze Syndorme, or Slipped Rib Syndrome, or according to one site, " ‘fall asleep in the back seat of a crowded car syndrome.’ A person falls asleep in a crowded car with the door handle jutting into a rib. The rib slips out of place and the problem begins”, which I thought was oddly specific.

It was very painful for a few days, but now seems to be completely gone so I am relieved. My grandma has a bad cold and a constant cough. When she gets a cold, it usually turns into a month long illness. I am sitting here cringing each time she coughs. Any healing thoughts sent this way are welcome and appreciated.

Super Server and Bread Boy and the Dessert Dilemma

2008-02-07T11:37:00.000-06:00

One night, at work, I had a customer complain about his meal. He prefaced the complaint with “You and your bread boy did a really good job, but…” (My coworker, R, had brought bread out to the table for me while I was making drinks.) I got a kick out of the term “bread boy” and have been using it as a nickname. To me, it sounds like a superhero sidekick. I told him we could be the dynamic duo of Super Server and Bread Boy.

When I started this blog, I pictured a lot of it being about my work life and the exhilarating world of food and behind the scenes restaurant drama. I know I haven’t been a frequent poster in general, but I really have had NOTHING to write about regarding The Restaurant because nothing happens there. Quite literally, some days I go in, set up the bar, clean the dining room and watch the door ‘til closing without a single customer. (I really should get a laptop and I could get some blogging done.)

Since I last posted, we have gone through several more chefs and a couple managers. The menu has been changed to very simple steaks, seafood, and pasta, and now The Restaurant doesn’t want to hire a new “chef”, just “good cooks”. So we have been through several good cooks. I think we have two cooks right now. We have had about twenty come and go.

One of the areas that is suffering most from our rotating cooks, or overworked cooks, is our dessert selection. I have never been happy with our dessert selection. I am learning that while “cooks” can cook steaks and seafood, even if they are not trained chefs, apparently no one can make a dessert unless he is a “pastry chef”. Almost everyone we have had in that kitchen, when asked to make desserts, has replied, “I’m not a pastry chef”. It is really embarrassing when someone asks to see the dessert tray, to have to say we have only one type of (store-bought) cheesecake. I think this will be especially disastrous on Valentine’s Day. So I have been trying to think of romantic desserts. The other night, Bread Boy called me and told me he was working on making a Chambord mousse, so he was thinking the same thing about V-day desserts. Last night, a bartender/ manager was printing off dessert recipes and said next Wednesday night he could make some desserts.

It is a week before Valentine’s Day, and we actually do have a lot of reservations for that night, and we have two servers and a bartender taking the initiative to plan and create a dessert menu. I will post what we come up with, but be forewarned, we are not pastry chefs.

I want a cold frosty treat

2008-01-23T11:40:00.000-06:00

I love raw milk. By raw, I mean, straight from the cow, not pasteurized, not homogenized. I used to go every other week to a farm and regularly get milk for my family. The farm is far away though, and with gas prices being so high, I decided I really could not afford it. I pay $6 a gallon for the milk. I think this is actually quite reasonable. (When I buy milk in the store, I usually pay $6+ a gallon for the organic milk.)

My birthday was Monday and I decided as a birthday treat I would treat myself to milk. As a birthday present, KPOW even drove me and paid for the gas. This really was such a great treat. (Her car even has heated seats.) I had a nice visit, and a pleasant ride, and I GOT MILK! I got 6 gallons and 1 ½ are already gone.

The milk is from a Jersey cow and has a thick layer of heavy cream on top. I know it is the middle of winter freezing, but I have to take advantage of this thick luscious cream (and the farm fresh eggs I got there) to make ice cream. Here is my super simple (and healthy) vanilla ice cream recipe:

Vanilla:
3 egg yolks
1 T Vanilla
½ c Maple Syrup
1 c Whole Milk
2 C very thick cream (If not thick eliminate the milk and use 3 cups of cream)

Wisk the eggs, vanilla, and maple syrup together. In a large measuring cup mix the milk and cream until smooth. Add the cream mixture to the wisked ingredients and wisk again until well blended. Pour into your ice-cream maker and you are ready to go!

Chocolate Variation:
Add ¼ - ½ c of premium cocoa powder, and increase the maple Syrup to 2/3 cu if needed. Wisk in with the eggs Vanilla and maple syrup until smooth. Proceed with recipe!

Makes 1 – 1.5 qt of ice-cream.

"The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear." -Elf

2007-12-24T07:52:00.000-06:00

As the days have gotten shorter, the darkness longer, I have been feeling increasingly stressed this holiday season. There is the usual stress of dealing with the commercialism and materialism of Christmas, planning and executing a huge gathering in a small house, and not being able to give as much as I’d like because I’m really broke. (Yes, this does seem to be a USUAL circumstance.) This year, there is the added stress of a Grandma’s illness, the dog’s illness, a broken car, and a broken relationship with my friend, T (recovering heroin addict, now on a month-long fix of methadone, benzos and alcohol). I have not been feeling very festive.

This week of solstice, I have had a few glimpses of light that have brought me cheer. It would make me really happy to share these little things, which have brightened my days.

One day I happened upon a local blog I had not visited. (OK, I was looking for a funny cat video.) There was an amazing painting that immediately captured my attention. http://lollygaggin.blogspot.com/ (Dec. 19 entry, I don't know how to link to it specifically). The power of art can be mysterious and wonderful. When I saw this painting, I felt a sense of joy. I have revisited the blog several times to view the painting.

Last night, I was traveling east on 474 getting ready to cross the river, when I saw four deer between the road and the trees. As soon as I said, “oh, look at those deer”. There were two more. And two more and two more, all the way to the bridge. What made the view more spectacular, was that the deer seemed to be in a spotlight from the bright and gorgeous full moon. I was mesmerized by the moon all the way home. It was glowing big and bright and kept being framed or obscured by moving clouds. Sometimes as the clouds would pass in front of it, they would be eerily transparent. I could see the different density?, thickness?, in different parts of the clouds. It was like looking at cloud X-rays.

The most surprising (to me) burst of joy, I experienced during my son’s band concert. The band was playing a holiday medley of songs and the program had the lyrics to carols. The audience was supposed to sing along with the band on the conductor’s cue. I am not Christian; I don’t feel any strong sense of Christmas tradition; My singing voice is about as atrocious as Jennifer’s; but as I was singing “Oh come let us adore him, oh come let us adore him, oh come let us adore hi ii im, Christ the Lord”, I felt a swelling a Christmas cheer. I sang loud and joyfully and really did feel a sense of peace and goodwill in my heart.

I have been trying to recapture that feeling all week, driving around, singing Christmas carols to myself, but apparently it is more effective when you are part of a crowd in the really cool new Five Points Community Center in Washington with an awesome High School Band playing back up music. But hopefully my spirits will improve soon. I can make it through (and hopefully enjoy) the next two days. Then I will look forward to New Year’s Eve (Little E’s birthday). And the days are lengthening and the light is returning. (In my head I have an ominous preacher voice saying “And in my spirit, so shall it be.”)

Living with Doobie (I wish that title was not misleading)

2007-12-03T13:22:00.000-06:00

When I started caring for my grandma, I also started caring for my grandma’s dog, Doobie. (He was once my brother’s dog. My brother named him.) Doobie is a 14-year-old lhasa apso. I love animals in general, but I am not really fond of being around this dog. He smells bad and barks a lot and wants in and out all day long and recently, has been peeing on the carpet in Big E’s room every night.

The first time or two he had an accident on the carpet, I mentioned it to Grandma and she had some exaggerated emotional outbursts in which she would essentially cry because he would need to be put to sleep. I was really confused by this response and after a few hours had my own exaggerated emotional response, (the only time I ever remember swearing to my grandma), “I can’t believe you think I would value a fucking carpet more than an animal’s life”. She cried. I cried. We agreed to take him to the vet. This was over the summer. The vet talked about other things like his cough and skin condition and wanted her to spend a lot of money on X rays so he could prescribe a diuretic for the cough, which could make the peeing worse. At that time we decided against the X rays and ended up focusing on getting some medicine for his itchy skin. After that, I have not mentioned the peeing on the carpet again and figured when she and the dog move out of the room, we will just get new carpet.

Doobie was due for a distemper shot, so we took him to the vet on Friday. Doobie has cataracts, and according to the vet, can barely see. He has a “bad tooth”. He still has skin problems and a heart murmur and a cough that is due to a heart problem. I mentioned the accidents to her, and she said Doobie is so old, that he might have a form of dementia like human Alzheimer’s and not remember to go out to pee. This really stuck an emotional chord with me. She then talked us into getting the X rays and also testing his kidney function.

Grandma and I went to the waiting room, I and just felt so weighted down. I already feel overwhelmed caring for my ailing grandmother; I do not know how good I will be caring for her dog as well. I started seeping some tears, feeling sorry for myself and scared about what the future holds and how much stress I can handle.

After awhile, the vet called us back to look at the X rays and discuss the results. As she told us about Doobie’s congestive heart failure and early stage kidney failure, I just started crying. She kept telling me how sorry she was, but how Doobie can still have a decent quality of life for a while. In fact, with medication, he will probably be more comfortable than he has been for many months. I smiled and thanked her.

While we were waiting to get checked out a couple of the technicians came up and hugged me and the vet stepped out to tell me again how sorry she was. I didn’t tell them that I wasn’t crying for Doobie. I was really just crying for myself.

When we got in the car, Grandma started to cry a little too and said, “Well, Dinky sure has lived a long happy life, hasn’t he?”

Times, they are a changin'

2007-11-27T11:26:00.000-06:00

This morning, I was taking 14 year old Big E to school and having him summarize the scene of Romeo and Juliet he had to read for his English assignment. As he was finishing talking, we heard the “Dear Aspen” segment come on the radio station, http://www.1057thexrocks.com/. The question was something about a guy wanting to play with his girlfriend's “pooper” and wanting to know if he should ask permission or just give it a go. Aspen’s advice was to NOT ask permission, “just give it a little tickle”, and if she doesn’t seem to protest, it is OK to proceed. I felt compelled to disagree. I mean, I guess this might be OK advice for two adults who have been together awhile and have made it clear they are comfortable experimenting and know they will be open and honest about their likes and dislikes. But in general, I think it is best to get clear permission before touching any private areas of someone else’s body. I think this is especially good advice if you are directing it to the radio listening public, which may include teens or preteens. (That may be the target demographic for this station.)

So, not knowing if he had even listened to the segment, when it was over, I said, “I disagree.”

Big E- “About what?”

Me- “About her response to that question.”

Big E- Silence

Me- “Did you hear the question?”

Big E- “No”

Me – (willing to drop it, but worried that he DID hear the question but was too shy to say so) “Well, the guy was wanting to know if he should ask a woman’s permission before touching her anus.”

Big E- weird laugh

Me- “You definitely should ask permission.”

Big E- weird laugh

Me- (pulling up to the school)- “So, have a great day, honey!”