My brother’s birthday is tomorrow. My brother loves beer (as do I). Uh… duh? Of course I should get him some nice beer glasses, but I really despise going to the store, buying a boxed up thing and wrapping it. No love, right? Well, my mom received a Cricut Expression for Christmas and I saw a tutorial online for using it to cut stencils for etching glass. A little bit of artistry with the paint brush and a bottle of glass etching cream, and viola, we have this:
Overall, I’m very happy with how it turned out. There definitely is room for improvement, but that can be said about a lot of things in life. So, for now they’re packed away inconspicuously in their original box. We’ll see how he likes ‘em. I’m betting he’ll like ‘em even more once they’re filled with some microbrew!
Bagels always seemed like one of those things that just occurred naturally. Something you picked off of a tree or harvested from a shrub. My foray into bread making lead me to learn otherwise. In fact, making bagels is quite easy, though more involved than many of the breads I’ve made.
The Fresh Loaf has a post detailing the bagel recipe from The Breadbaker’s Apprentice (a book that I’d love to have randomly appear on my door step – hint hint) which I followed to the letter because I just so happened to have malt powder just chilling around (home brewing).
I’ve decided that bagels will be a weekly thing. Jannett pushed me to make the proof and shape the bagels last night so they’d be ready after a good 12-hour cold ferment. We woke up early and started boiling the bagels. This time I didn’t stretch them so wide, and I like how they turned out better, though that was purely an aesthetic thing.
Toppings this time included Asiago cheese, poppy seeds and kosher salt. After they were boiled, I generously applied the toppings and then popped them in a 500 degree oven for about 12 minutes. The crust is crunchy and the insides nice and moist and chewy. Just the way I like it. And with some egg, sausage and cheese? Well, McDonalds, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!
My girlfriend’s parents bought me a nice Hamilton Beach programmable slow cooker, and despite doing a chilli and green bean casserole, nothing had been the main course yet. I changed that this past Sunday.
Following a recipe adapted from this Epicurious Brisket recipe.
Overall, I was happy with the meal, though subconsciously I was expecting smoked brisket which, while never having enjoyed I longed for. This brisket was more roast-like in taste and texture, but was absolutely sumptuous. With the sauce that the meat cooked in, the flavors popped even more.
With only about a half hour of prep time, and 8 hours in the slow cooker, this will be something I’ll do again. The “set it and forget it” nature of slow cooking is nice, especially when working all day.
Well, my inner nerd is tingling slightly less than it was before. I logged into TI.com today to check my order status, even though I’m well aware of the fact that the watch wasn’t going to ship until sometime mid February 2010. I was secretly hoping to see something along the lines of “hey, we got things done earlier, check your mail tomorrow!” but realistically expected to see “mid February.” Unfortunately I was greeted with a sentence saying that there were more delays and to check the TI Chronos Wiki.
Now, they are anticipating mid-March 2010. I’m really hoping that it gets done sooner than that, but I’m almost anticipating it being delayed further given the demand I saw for these. We’ll see.
Yesterday was pizza day since I wasn’t feeling very adventurous (it showed since the pizza was a very basic pepperoni and tomato sauce with cheese variety). Because Jannett is visiting with family, my brother worked until very late, I opted to make one pizza, but decided not to half the dough recipe so I had a little extra left and made a quick loaf.
Unfortunately, I don’t have photos of the loaf which turned out looking professional. Rather, I have photos of the remaining crumbs. Why you may ask? Well, because my happy mistake was leaving the loaf in the oven for about three times longer than I usually do. The consequence? A very thick, very tasty crust and delicious crumb. I attribute this to the extended cook at lower temps (about 1.5 hours at 325 degrees instead of 20 minutes at 500+ degrees) and the tablespoon of kosher salt I used instead of the pinch of table salt.
Either way, at this very moment I am wishing that more mistake bread was waiting for me on the counter. Next time I’ll let the bread cook for only about an hour and I’ll definitely make more.
Confession time. Up until this Christmas, all of my pizzas have been shamelessly built and scooped out of the oven using the remains of Little Ceaser’s pizza boxes. It wasn’t glamorous, nor was it really safe since the boxes aren’t very strong and some of my pizzas were, shall we say, fully loaded. On top of that, after a couple of uses, they needed to be thrown away. Oh, and it meant that someone had to buy mediocre pizza regularly.
No more. On top of the awesome knives my parents gave me for Christmas, I also received this amazing wooden pizza peel. Nothing fancy, it just works. After a couple of oiling treatments it was ready for service. And now, I can safely and repeatedly slide pizzas into and out of the oven without having to succumb to purchasing and consuming lack luster pizza.
