Update on Appreciation

Correction... the janitor over appreciates me. Now if only I can get his comments from the people I want to be saying them!

Underappreciated

Feeling a massive dose of being underappreciated.

Just Scones

Back to baking a little. This time out of the can. Scone mix from the Tuck Box in Carmel-by-the-Sea. No one that is a local ever says the whole name - not that I know, at least.

I haven't eaten afternoon tea in 3 years, I think. The last time was with Elinor and Sarah at the Mary Rose Tea Cottage. It's out of business now :(.

The Tuck Box is one of the few places that has my favorite type of jam - ollalieberry jam. If I had to choose, I'd say Linn's Fruit Bin makes better jam though. Both are good. It's like an A vs. A+ jam.

Don't Follow Cricket

What does this mean?!

"As they say in cricket, it is all happening."

Fat Free Cranberry Orange Muffins

I got up early and made these out of the box. They were much better hot. No idea how I came to buy them fat free. Though my diagnosis seems to be steering away from no wheat (for the moment), my heart isn't back into baking yet. I did broil some pork chops today, which made use of the oven. Not quite the same as baking though.

Blahg

Argh!

Computer Rage LOL

Do laptops fit in toilets? Mine wouldn't.

This BBC article also describes a case where:

While a large office was being constructed, a steel beam fell on a laptop that contained the plans for the building.

Cheetos Live!

In my worry over what else I'll have to sacrifice if I am indeed allergic to gluten, I've been paying a lot of attention to food labels. I couldn't find any evidence that Cheetos contain wheat nor was gluten listed. If you've been reading my blog, you know how I feel about Cheetos.

Leave some Cheetos for me, Marvin!

Those Green Eyes...

Green Eyes, originally uploaded by baglady.

always remind me of the Coldplay song "Green Eyes".

I think it must have been written about Gwyneth Paltrow, who seems to have green eyes and is married to the lead singer of Coldplay.

I've always wanted to know who the song "Yellow". It's the sort of song you wish someone would write for you. I would never want to bleed someone dry (!), but it would be moving to have it said to you.

Worst Song(s) of All Time!

The BBC has an article about the worst song of all time. The Beatles' Ob-la-di Ob-la-da topped the list, but I don't agree. Yes, Meatloaf's 1993 "I'll Do Anything for Love" surely deserves to make the Top 5. I agree with one of the comments, that Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time" needed a nod too. "Ebony and Ivory" may not be a worst song of all time, but the cheesiest video of all time. Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson fight over a woman and ride in the back of an ox cart... or is that another song I'm confusing it with?

"Barbie Girl" definitely deserves a spot on the worst song of all time list. They got sued for trademark infringement, if I remember correctly. Wonder how that worked out for them?

"We Built This City" definitely bad.

If you like terrible music, check out Miserable Melodies.

Thank God for Junk Food

Hot damn! Captain Crunch with Crunchberries does not contain wheat! Neither does Frosted Flakes. If you look at the box closely, it's called Frosted Flakes of Corn. Not sure if either have gluten though.

F*&^ Gravy

I have never been so mad at canned gravy as when I saw "wheat flour" as an ingredient in my store bought gravy. Screw you, gravy!

Extreme Irony

My doctor thinks I might be allergic to gluten. This seems like a cruel irony for someone with a baking blog!!!! If you think of baking as use of the oven and not just sweets with flour, I suppose there are other options like flourless chocolate cake, squash. I suppose there is gluten free wheat, but I'm not convinced it would produce results similar to real flour. Plus, the products are really expensive. I really hope my doctor is wrong!

Stickers for Absentees

Absentee voters should get stickers included in their ballots!

Happy Halloween Bah Humbug

I am allowing myself 5 mins of complete negativity and wallowing and then I will go back to forgetting about anything bothering me.

I am not going trick-or-treating, giving out candy or wearing a costume. I am not going to carve any of my pumpkins.

My house looks dirty despite lots of cleaning.

I feel lonely. I hate Sunday mornings.

I have nothing interesting to say.

Stupidest Use of ISight Camera Ever

Too lazy to go to the ladies room... used GCam and my iSight to put in eyedrops at my desk. GCam is this cool freeware that makes your web cam act like a camcorder.

My eyedrops are so thick I can hardly see and I feel like Mr. Magoo.

If I start taking pictures into PhotoShop to see what's in my eye... then I will be officially too geeky.

Fish Sperm Crepes

I bought an interesting cookbook at a recent library cookbook sale, Unmentionable Cuisine. I like to read while I'm eating, but this is *not* a book you can do that with. Every time I think I've found the most disgusting recipe, I find one worse. This is the current gross out of all time: Fish Sperm Crepes from France (Pannequets aux laitances):

Spread unsweetened crepes with a mixture of chopped fish sperm (OMG!) and mushrooms (ya, I've seen this trick with escargot before) bound with a fish-based bechamel sauce. Roll them, place in a buttered dish, spinkle with grated Parmesan and melted butter, and heat in a 350 degree oven until the top is brown.

Just for fun, I tried opening the book at random to see if there were any off pages - not so gross. Nope. Pages 232-233 start with the basic prep for intestines with their Chicken Organs in Blood Sauce, roll through a few testicle recipes and finish with some more blood recipes.

I have had the misfortune of eating a fried turkey testicle, but that is a story for another post.

Avila Beach, California

Avila Beach, California, originally uploaded by baglady.

This is the view from the north side of Avila. The fisherman's pier is in the distance. Avila Beach is the beach just north of Pismo Beach in central California

Lonely Tree

Lonely Tree, originally uploaded by baglady.

From our trip to Central California this summer.

This is the hill behind Avila Beach. Something about the tree against the sky that day looked really lonely.

Man of Mystery

Man of Mystery, originally uploaded by baglady.

The owner of the coffee and cigarettes from the last post. He's not in the witness protection program; he's just shy. And cute :).

Coffee & Cigarettes

Coffee & Cigarettes, originally uploaded by baglady.

On my balcony. Actually taken at sunset, but I was going for a sunrise look.

Inspiring

This is my favorite picture from the BBC's This Week in Pictures:

Blind Korean men pass riot police after a demonstration in Seoul.

Street Cred

Again I am feeling like the last person in my age group to know this slang term. The Urban Dictionary seems divided on if it's a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, it sounds like what my parents or grandparents would have called an Horatio Alger (story). But on the other hand, it sounds like a short version of "street credibility" wouldn't mean you'd made it, just that you were tough and had some credentials like illegitimate children, maybe even jail time. Hmmm....

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made chocolate chip cookies the other night. They came out great. Apparently the compulsive baking wasn't enough, so I went through all of the photos I'd taken in the past year. If I found a double print, I sorted it to send to various relatives. The only problem is I made something like 20 piles. It's going to take a long time to write that many letters!

Baking Frisbies

Well I guess I forgot to mention the cake I tried to bake for Victor's birthday. It was supposed to be just an easy yellow cake, but the cake mix was old. The batter tasted bad, so I should have started over then. I was tired though and I had hope. I've never seen anything quite like it. They were shrunken in the pan and were very hard. I swear if I'd thrown one out the window, I could have made it to my neighbor's house. I didn't try. We went out for dessert instead. We had Japanese Tapanyaki (sp?) and their dessert option is fried bananas (tempura style) with ice cream.

Tired Out

Now I have time to waste on blogging and I have no mental energy left.

The well is dry!

I'd Rather Be Blogging

Just sneaking over to my blog for a few moments. I'm reviewing resumes. I hate going through recruitments. I would hate to be looking for a job. I will be so glad to have this settled.

Back soon to talk about my last two weeks of baking and OCD activities. I know everyone can't wait :P.

Charles I's Miracle

The pope beatified 5 people this weekend. Not sure if they will all make it to sainthood. This one was particularly funny to me:

The "last Austro-Hungarian emperor... Charles I sat on the throne of the now defunct empire between 1916 and 1918."

"According to the Vatican, he cured a Brazilian nun of varicose veins."

Suicide and Country Music

Winner of an Ig Noble this year: The Effect of Country Music on Suicide.

Pathetic?

Does blogging late on a Saturday night make me pathetic?

Maybe I have insomnia?

Maybe I napped too much today?

If I wasn't so dragged out, I'd have spent time writing a haiku about that. Okay, I'll try...

...thinking...

Quiet night others sleep
Lonely Baglady blogging
Tylenol P.M.

Okay, now that came out wrong, because I've only had a Tylenol P.M. twice, but I probably sound like someone addicted to soft-core sleeping pills :P.

Going to make an attempt to go to bed now!

Green Spider

Green Spider, originally uploaded by baglady.

This spider was balanced on a cable in my grandparent's garden. It was actually more transparent than green and about 1.5" long. Despite being afraid of spiders ;), I managed to stand under it long enough for a picture.

Lunar Surface?

Lunar Surface?, originally uploaded by baglady.

No, it's the chocolate lava cake that I baked tonight. I did something really crazy. I put in the cake right after realizing I needed it first for dinner. Cooking fish in the oven at the same time as baked goods is a BAD idea, as the milder thing can take on the stronger's odor. I covered the salmon tightly and the cake was covered tightly in it's water bath. Miraculously both turned out great.

Pearl Jam Poetry

So what if they're a macho bunch of guys. Some of the lyrics are quite poetic:

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a sun
In somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, why can't it be mine

Chocolate Lava Cake

This is what we call the flourless "Chocolate Orbit Cake" in Room for Dessert. The first time I baked it, I neglected to cover it and it looked like a flattened volcano on top. It's actually really easy to make and only has four ingredients: bittersweet chocolate, butter, eggs and sugar. You need to have parchment paper. The nice thing is that it keeps for at least a week in the fridge, tasting as good as the first day.

Visiting Iceland

I've been semi-obsessed with visiting Iceland and Greenland lately. It looks really beautiful and calm. Everyone I've mentioned this to is baffled.

I was interested in Antarctica, but it sounds kind of dangerous.

More Detail

More Detail, originally uploaded by baglady.

You can see the water in this picture better. These flowers were a rare treat this late in the season, when most of the flowers are gone and it's looking more like Fall.

Purple Flowers

Purple Flowers, originally uploaded by baglady.

If you look closely, you can see small water droplets on the leaves.

Apples

apples.JPG, originally uploaded by baglady.

Apples from my grandmother's apple tree.

Web Between Rose Buds

Web, originally uploaded by baglady92093.

I'm sure I could say something about great symbolism, but that wasn't why I took the photo. Nor is it any cheesy illusion to the world wide web, ug. There is something so amazing about spiders and spiderwebs. See for yourself.

More Blossoms

blossoms.JPG, originally uploaded by baglady92093.

I took this on a recent trip to see my grandparents. They have the most amazing garden or rather series of different gardens.

Blossoms

japanese_friendship_garden.JPG, originally uploaded by baglady92093.

This photo was taken on a really quiet and great day I spent at Balboa Park. The tree looked nice from a distance, but completely different up close.

Macro

When I'm not baking, I really like taking photos. I really enjoy using my macro lens. It's cool when you can show something in a photo that looks completely different than when you see it in real life. I'm not being very eloquent, so I'll post some pictures that prove my point.

Poppyseeds & Possums

I settled on the Cook's Illustrated recipe for Lemon Poppyseed Muffins. As with everything else I've made in the cookbook, it was an awesome recipe. I made a fatal mistake and I'm pretty sure the poppyseeds were rancid :O. No one has gotten sick and the muffins tasted good, so I guess all's well that ends well. The batter was yummy enough to eat without baking it. Using mini-bundt cake pans is harder than it looks. I don't know how you get the muffins to sit flat without slicing off the bottom.

After the last batch came out of the oven, I found a possum in a tree near my front door. I tried to scare it away, but it was quite content to stay put - despite me yelling menacing things like "shoe!" (or is that "shew!" or "shoo") and swatting the tree with a broom. Now I know what that sound out my window has been and whose been leaving all those half-eaten berries on my doorstep. I don't like possums. They look like big rats.

Weirdest Sinatra Lyric

From "I Won't Dance":

Heaven help us
I'm not made of asbestos

Well, me neither!

More Quotes for Buzzy

This past week when I think of my grandpa, I think of the Alun Lewis poem "Goodbye":

And all the countless things I shall remember
Lay mummy-cloths of silence round my head

David Gray Lyrics

I just discovered David Gray. I love these lyrics:

This Year's Love

Easy Way to Cry (I'm not depressed from one night stands though ;), so except that part :P.

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

I need to find the mother of all recipes for lemon poppyseed muffins. I'm trying to decide between:

Mark Bittman's variation of pound cake
Cook's Illustrated's variation of their master muffin recipe
or just Lemon Duncan Hines cake mix with poppyseeds added.

I have these cool mini-bundt pans that I can't wait to use.

Lasagna

Back to baking after a short hiatus. Was working on other compulsive projects. I made lasagna from scratch, but used a no boil noodle recipe. It was really stressful. I had all of these good ingredients and worried it would all be surrounded with hard, gross noodles.

Sonic Chill was on the radio and I heard some songs I hadn't heard since they first came out - They Might Be Giants and Cocteau Twins. I'd link, but they only keep playlists online for a week:

10pm Hour

Last Broadcast - Doves
Pepper Tree - Cocteau Twins
Opened Once - Jeff Buckley
Sascha - Jolie Holland
All That I Have - Grant Lee Buffalo
Orbit of Me - Delerium
Obscurity Knocks - Trash Can Sinatras
In My Room - Everything But The Girl
Biological - Air
Inhaler - Hooverphonic
Track 3 - Sigur Ros

11pm Hour

Distractions - Zero 7
Try Whistling This - Neil Finn
Honestly OK - Dido
Anniversary - The Cure
Lit Up - Lush
Sail to the Moon - Radiohead
Venus as a Boy - Bjork
Smokey - Red House Painters
We Are Mice - Azure Ray
Fearless - American Music Club


This is a really boring post. I feel better having admitted that.

Roasted Tomatoes

I made this great recipe from Real Simple. I'd never roasted tomatoes before. I was really worried about a dish that wanted me to roast tomatoes at 450 degrees for 40 mins. The whole dish was roasted tomatoes with shrimp and feta. It was really good.

Crys says...

"Don't buy trouble, when you can get it for free."

Note to self: Repeat 10x until urge to create drama ceases.

Missing Buzzy

This morning, as with lots of moments this past month, I'm missing Buzzy. I think often of a quote from Natalya Reshetovskaya's obituary (first wife of Novel laureate Alexander SoIzhenbitsyn, author of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"):
"It's possible that it may seem strange... to someone, but, alas, I love him right up to this moment. And the thought never leaves me -- will I really never see him again?"
and also of Pablo Neruda's lines:
love is so short, forgetting is so long

I'm sure this is going to feel better as time goes on. I just hope he is at peace and smiling down on us all from somewhere in the beyond.

Cheetos

You know that William Carlos Williams poem about the wheelbarrow? Here's my version:

so much depends
upon

that last bag of
Cheetos

dangerously cheesy

lunch at my desk.

Brownies

They were okay. Just out of the box.

Crickets & Recovering Chairs

My dining room chairs have a really ugly southwest plaid on them and I can't stand it anymore. After a trip to UFO, fabric store nirvana, I have everything I need to do a wannabe HGTV type makeover. It looks a lot easier on TV. It took me an hour to do one chair. I have five more to do! Argh.

So I'm ruminating on the exciting topic of chair recovering (yawn) and I kept hearing this chirp. I'd heard it last night too, but didn't think much of it. Now I know the source. I just looked up to find a large cricket on my wall. I of course did the unsteriotypical thing :P - I screamed and jumped out of my chair. Cricket fans will be proud that I captured it in some tupperware and threw it outside. I don't mind crickets, I just don't like them in the house.

Speaking of bugs and chairs, I am redoing my chairs in a dragonfly pattern.

Milk Chocolate Mousse

with fresh blackberries on top. Really yummy.

Did I mention I'm not as fat as you might think considering all of the bad things I eat.

This blog software works a lot better in IE on a PC than Safari on a Mac.

Baking

I compulsively bake. There is no doubt about it. I love to cook, but I especially love to bake. I've decided to document my baking follies.

So making up for this week's missed post...

8/17/04 I made 20 cupcakes. Vanilla cake with milk chocolate frosting. They turned out great. I love foil cupcake liners. I wonder if it's true that you can use them on a baking sheet. Has anyone else had success not using muffin tins?

More Cool Lyrics

Okay, I couldn't resist adding this from John Mayer:

"Would you want me when I'm someone else?/Wait it out while I am someone else ". and "I'll in time come around./I always do for you". - from Not Myself

Last Post Tonight

I need to stop avoiding what I am supposed to be working on.

Michael Moore

My first commenter implied that writer's block could be helped by talking about Michael Moore and G.W. I will say this. I am not going to pay to see Fahrenheit 911. At the most I might NetFlix it. My boyfriend suggested we pay for another movie and then sneak into F.911. We would not be showing support for the film, but would get to see it. I am curious about it. I really enjoyed Bowling for Columbine. However, I viewed it knowing it was not a documentary in the PBS sense, but a documentary from the world according to Michael Moore. It worried me how many uninformed people would take everything he had to say at face value, or worse as fact. I can respect almost anyone's opinion, as long as they 1. thought for themself and 2. are informed. There's nothing worse - right or left - than a bigot or someone who just wants to spout party line.

Okay, so there it is... something about an inflamatory topic. Comment away.

I love John Mayer

...because his lyrics capture stuff I've felt but never known how to say. Par example:

"I can't find where the moment went wrong at all" and "I survive on the air you are finished with". - from Come Back to Bed

"I still you'd fought me til your dying day/Don't let me get away". and "there's no substance in 'for a time'" - from Split Screen Sadness

"She's like a maze where all of the walls continually change/And I've done all I can to stand on the steps with my heart in my hand/Now I'm starting to see maybe it's got nothing to do with me." - from Daughters

"I'd rather be a mystery than she desert me". - from My Stupid Mouth

I think a blog can include other people's words. It's really just a place for me to put things so I can get them out of my inner monologue. We'll see if it works or not.

It's also helping me avoid finishing my article. Ug, I hate the APA format. Why did I have to learn MLA first!?

Uh oh, my blogging is starting to bore me. I can't imagine this is interesting to anyone else. I should remember to hide this or just delete the posts when I'm done.

Pressure

Creating a blog seems narcisistic somehow. I think I have writer's block already.