October 20, 2008
Just checking in
I am still employed. This job thing takes up a lot of time.
Still riding the rails and playing with the iPhone camera:
I flew out to Dayton to visit family in September:
Made it through airport security and everything.
It was a relaxing visit. I watched people play with a Wii. My hand-eye coordination is just as bad with the Wii as it is in the real world, so I was the wrist-strap referee. "Put on the wrist strap. You don't want to buy Grandma a new hi-def." "Mom. Put on the wrist strap, you don't want to buy your sister a new hi-def." "Mom. Put on the wrist strap." "Mom."
The three-year-old was actually better about the wrist strap than my mother.
Still playing with the camera:
We've had some lovely sunsets which, with the artificial lights of the ball park, are giving kind of a Thomas Kinkade effect. Now if only I were better at noise reduction. And adjusting levels for printing. And sales. I would totally have another income stream.
Still being missed by the cats:
But the gray one got to indulge in a few of his favorite things this weekend.
Monte Alban loves it when the weather grows cold and I start wearing fleece all over. Fleece pants, fleece bathrobe, etc. A fleecy lap is a lap you can really dig into.
Monte Alban loves to sit in my lap while I eat Chunky Monkey ice cream. He alternately attempts to stick his face in the bowl and, when that fails, to re-direct the spoon. He purrs the whole time.
Monte Alban loves to have his back pet while he eats. He's even woken me up in the middle of the night and led me downstairs (me thinking that he's out of food and if I don't feed him, he won't let me sleep) for some back-petting while munching and purring. I don't mind petting him while he eats, when it's sometime between dawn and bedtime, but I think three a.m. is a bit much. It's not like he's a baby and can't feed himself.
Still cooking instead of writing:
I've started listening to the podcasts of The Splendid Table on my weekly train rides home to Richmond. It's rather masochistic to listen to a foodie show while you're stuck on a train and the only food source is the Café Car, but it's a good distraction and gives me ideas. Even as I type, I'm testing a tip from the show: try adding orange blossom water in tiny amounts (like a quarter teaspoon or less) to baked goods and see how it heightens the flavor.
I added a quarter teaspoon to a half batch of butterscotch bars (the recipe can be found here, at the bottom of the page), which have just come out of the oven and are too hot to touch.
The verdict thus far: Orange blossom water smells lovely, but the particulates make my eyes burn. That mild citrus allergy can be so annoying. I may try rosewater instead. It may not have quite the same effect, but it's not an allergen.
Another tip, allergy free (at least for me), was to let tollhouse cookie dough rest in the fridge before you bake it. The baker on the show says he rests his up to 36 hours, but I let mine rest 24 hours. The reasoning is that, as the milling of flour has changed since the recipe was developed, the cookies baked today don't have the same chewy texture that tollhouse cookies did back in the 1930s. Resting the dough lets the flour absorb the moisture of the eggs and will yield a chewier cookie. This really did work. Also, because I use dark brown sugar, which has more molasses, instead of light brown sugar, I found that the flour absorbed the molasses as well, which gave the cookies a darker color and maybe a bit more molasses flavor (but I'd have to do a side-by-side comparison to be certain about that).
I just went over and sniffed the butterscotch bars. Ah, heavenly. Perhaps it will be worth the allergic reaction.
Time passes. I just went over and ate a butterscotch bar. Extra heavenly! I might use less orange blossom water next time. Or not. I'm going to have to take these in to work and leave them out in the pantry. Or not.