Friday.
Julie is on her way. I sit quietly on the sofa and drink my coffee and wait for her call. waiting and waiting. Then she calls and I speed off to the airport to pick her up.
I’ve not seen Julie in a couple years and I am excited to see her. Our first stop is Cupcake, but our route is hampered by the lack of bridge between here and there. Put me in minneapolis and tell me where to go and I can follow the grid of streets and get you there. Tell me to go to a place in St Paul and remove the bridge and the wacky angle of the streets caused by the bend in the river gets me every time. For those familiar with the area, I went from the airport to near downtown, turned around, got on 35E, got off at downtown, drove to 94 and took that to 280 and managed to find it there on University Ave. Of course I am sure there was a less zig-zaggy way to do this, but I imagine it was not at fun.
Julie and I ate and laughed and talked about…i don’t remember, maybe it was penises. Cupcakes were consumed and more cupcakes purchased for later. The superawesome cupcake of the day was the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcake with it’s cinnamon/coffee goodness.
We packed up the cupcakes and headed out. We were delayed by the biggest yellow lab on the planet. I’m pretty sure Trogon the Galaxy Humper has a smaller head than that dog! But he was the sweetest thing ever and I am incapable of ignoring really sweet dogs that obviously want my love. The owner was one of those lucky women that got to bring her dog to work every day. Super envy!
Cash money was pulsing in my purse and the only cure for that is to spend it on yarn! We went to Borealis Yarns for a yarn hunting safari. We met up with Dawn and her son, the amazingly cute Nick. Little boys with curly hair are such flirts and they know it works!
The front of Borealis is good, but I am always drawn to the back room. And entire room populated with sock yarns and fingering weight yarns. Sigh? SIGH! I shoved my head into the last crate of Smooshy and managed to find enough Cool Fire to use for a lovely sweater.
Julie was drooling over some peruvian wool and got a couple hanks of a coppery color and a few hanks of something red that I think was a Cherry Tree Hill supersock but I can’t remember and she will have to tell me.
On the way home I got to impress Julie with the American healthcare system. In Canada everyone may be entitled to healthcare, but in America we have drive thru pharmacies! Where’s your poutine now??
Coming up: Mehnchiladas and David becomes a hero to many.
Category Archives: Delicious
Whatever happened to
Whatever happened to Midnight Oil? Are they the Chumbawumba of the 80’s?
- David and I did valentines early, dinner at the Red Stag. All I have to say is you can keep your powdered tiger’s penis and oysters and what have you. Duck confit on toast points with hand made mustard is what I’m talking about.
- One day I am going to punch the news in the face. Or I’m going to punch every one in the face. Can we please stop being dicks? Let’s stop shooting people or kicking them off their ancestral lands or whatever it is that people are doing that is dicklike behavior.
- Relatedly…in response to the whole warrantless wiretapping bullshit…America is safer when we follow the RULES. We have a system in place, it’s not perfect but it is a good system, a solid system of checks and balances that allows each branch of government to keep track of the others. Getting a warrant is a way of saying ‘i’ve done my job in a thorough and honest manner’ and then you can have someone else say ‘you are right, this is thorough and honest’ or ‘though your intentions may be correct, your evidence is lacking’. Warrants are not hard to come by and if you are tapping phone lines then it’s not like you have the immediacy of someone standing with a gun somewhere, and if that were the case, a warrant would not be necessary. Call me an idealist, I know that I am, but if you are honest and doing your job well, then there should be no reason to avoid asking for a warrant. If you say you want to keep America safe then that means that you keep all of it safe, not just the bits you like. I’m not a doomsayer, I am not one who sees or believes in conspiracies, but I will say this, when the government starts acting as a separate, independent entity and stops acting as an extension of the people then the government has lost its focus and the people have forgotten their responsibility.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. - okay, I have to start the pork enchilada process in the crock pot (trust me) and shower and whatnot before Julie’s plane lands!
- oh, yeah, the dogs are good and healthy. David is sweet and awesome. It’s 12butt cold outside and I have 2 (TWO!) of those poky, hurtey taste bud things on my tongue. Where do these come from? It’s like 2 taste buds decided to get all pissed off and explode! Assholes.
helado con tres salsas
As I mentioned before, I was tasked with bringing dessert to my sister’s superbowl party. I brought ice cream and 3 original, Mexican-ish themed sauces.
Sauce 1:
Citrus-mixed berry
24 oz frozen mixed berries – thawed (could have gotten away with way way less, say 12 oz)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 orange, zested, peeled, segmented
in small pan mix sugar, water, orange zest. Bring to rolling boil (does not stop boiling when stirred), boil for 4 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes. Smash orange segments over pan with hands and drop in. Bring to a rolling boil, boil for 2 minutes. Let cool.
Pulse mixed berries in food processor, add orange syrup. pulse some more. enjoy.
Sauce 2:
Spicy Mexican Chocolate
2 disks Ibarra chocolate (abuelita will do, but it is much sweeter), chopped
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp chipotle powder (more or less depending on the strength of what you have and what you prefer)
Mix spices and chopped chocolate together. Set aside.
In small pan over low heat, slowly heat the cream while stirring frequently. Heat cream until small bubbles/foam forms around edge of cream. Pour hot cream over chocolate and whisk briskly (but not messily). EAT.
Sauce 3:
Coffee-banana caramel
2 tbl light corn syrup
1 cup less 2 tbl sugar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 shots espresso or 1/2 cup very strong coffee
1 ripe banana
Please, PLEASE be careful making this recipe. If you have not made caramel or done any candy making or sugar work, use caution. Sugar boils very hot, it is also very sticky. It’s like lava you can’t get off your skin. I’ve had a number of jam related burns, but nothing compares to a sugar burn.
in a medium sauce pan combine corn syrup, sugar and water, bring to boil stirring frequently. Once sugar is dissolve do not stir anymore. Carefully swirl the pan over the heat as the sugar boils, this will help keep the temp even in the mixture, brush the inside of the pan with water occasionally to wash down the sugar crystals. Do not stick the wet pastry brush in the boiling sugar. Your sugar will start to turn amber at about 8-10 minutes, as you swirl watch carefully. Once it hits a good deep amber (don’t let it burn!) turn off the heat and add the cream. Do this carefully, your sugar is very hot and will bubble furiously at the addition of cream. When the mixture calms add your coffee. Whisk until all caramel bits dissolve (the addition of cooler cream to considerably hotter sugar will cause some of the boiling sugar to immediately freeze up and harden, these bits will dissolve as you whisk).
Once everything is smoother and cooler, say 20 minutes later, pop the banana into the food processor or blender, add caramel and blend until smooth. Do not add the caramel until it is cooled, it is very dangerous to attack hot caramel with angry blender blades!
Pour all of this goodness into a bowl. Sneak out the back door. Eat every bit of it until you pass out.
ha ha ha I’m gonna say annals!
From the predictable annals of “I’m getting all old and shit” come the regular, super bowl morning after post…
“I ate too much and now I don’t feel good. I used to drink too much and not feel good, but I’m getting all old and shit”.
Super bowl party at April’s means not just munchy snacks but really dense munchy snacks that YOU JUST KEEP EATING!!! There was alcohol, but I’m getting all old and shit and I take the crazy pills and it’s just not conducive to drinking anymore. So I had one weak margarita, a diet orange soda and lots of water. My college-self would not recognize this old lady. Actually, my college-self is probably too damned drunk to focus her eyes at the moment.
I was tasked to bring dessert, something appropriate to the Mexican theme (April….brats with curry ketchup, not so mexican! But delicious and so I say “OLÉ!”). I decided on ice cream sundaes with a trio of homemade sauces. The first was a mixed berry and citrus sauce that was lovely but nothing to write home about. The next a spicy Mexican chocolate sauce with a chipotle afterburn and my masterpiece, a coffee-banana caramel sauce that made me shit twice and die. Seriously, I’m dead right now from that sauce. Hell, I’m just dead thinking about the amount of heavy whipping cream that went into the sauces.
Recipes will be posted later, you will enjoy them.
where is your ass
your ass is right here.
Sometimes when I am driving I need to turn the radio up very loud or I start thinking about my fellow commuters. point. Today I was behind a large red pick up truck. The driver was a mid-20’s Caucasian male of medium build. The fun started when he pulled in front of me, that’s when I noticed his hat.
His hat was a black baseball cap turned backwards. The ‘logo’ was a large gold sparkly dollar sign ($) with large gold sparkly wreaths on either side. There was sparkly gold piping wherever there were seams. I contemplated for a long time what kind of person would purchase this hat. What are the specific circumstances in this dude’s life that led him to pick up this hat and think “this hat mirrors my value system. This hat reflects the parts of my personality that I want the public to focus on.”?
I imagine he did not think that exact phrase, but perhaps summed it up in a succinct, “Awesome!”
Speaking of awesome, we bought 160 pounds of dog food this weekend. I imagine you are wondering where one buys 160 pounds of dog food! The same place you can get your fishing licenses and giant overalls! I also bought a pig femur, pig ears and pig ankles! The dogs get a lot of pig!
You might think that 160 pounds of dog food would be the highlight of a girl’s weekend, but you’d be wrong. First off, David being mr awesomely awesomepants drove way out of the way in a snowstorm so I could get a gingerbread latte. I’m not proud, I love the Starbuck’s gingerbread latte! Then, after purchasing all that dog food (and jeans and yarn drawers and socks) we went to Nala Pak for dinner.
Now, I love me some Nala Pak (formerly Udupi), I love to go there and eat until I perforate something internal. The food is so good you could weep. The only issue I have with them, and this is such a strange issue, is their soup. Their tomato soup is described “Tomato broth which is slightly spiced to
attain exotic flavors.”. What they mean to say is “Straight up Campbell’s tomato soup with a lot of black pepper and some really cheap croûtons.” It’s so amazingly peculiar. All the other food is so amazing and they start you off with something that should be served with a grilled cheese sandwich.
Aaah, but who am I to complain? They make their mango lassis with fresh mango, the tamarind chutney is thick, sweet, sour, and spicy, and their batura make me woogly with delight.
Now I must go work on more crochet projects. Woo christmas!