Slackers

Someone blog, other than me!

Reason WhateverNumber that I'm Happy to Be Here

Today my boss was in friend 1's office talking to her, when friend 2 danced crazily into friend 1's office without peeking in first. It's okay. I think my boss already thinks all of us young people are crazy.

back from the basement lab

hullo chickeedees and chickeedude!

I'm in week 2 of my job with my very old man, and I managed to find my friend a job here as well!

I've been M.I.A. b/c I sit on a computer all day at work and when I come home I just want to sit and read and be lazy.

I'm loving this weather, and I got to see Crouton today!

In other news, we have a ton of bugs. I'm not really sure what's worse:
(1) the 2 baby house centipedes and 2 large house centipedes that were recently killed. This leads me to believe that there can only be many many many more house centipedes living in our house.
(2) the 3 big ants crawling around my kitchen sink.
(3) the tons of baby ants crawling around the kitchen floor that we didn't even notice were living there until we swept. They blended in with the dirt too well.

In my opinion, 3 is the worst because I've probably been cohabitating with them the longest. At least 1 and 2 I've made an honest effort to rid from my house.

Anyway, I've got some other stuff I want to finish up so I'll check in later :)

I ate radioactive eggs today. They looked pretty unexciting, it was just a bunch of egg whites that they microwaved in a bowl, it was jut a blob of egg whites. They weren't even green or anything.

Apparently you can also request radioactive beef stew.

Positive thing for the day

Sushi followed by ice cream sodas in an old fashioned pink ice cream parlor with friends.

Second to last ever Lost episode tonight. Oh em gee.

latent

definition: potential that is not readily apparent

Ummm, now would be a good time for my latent traits to reveal themselves.

My goal:

To be happy. What makes me happy? I'm not really sure, other than singing and eating and stress-baking/cooking.

3 things that would instantly make my life happier right now:

(1) for the GRE to be over and to not have failed it

(2) for bugs to leave my apartment forever.

(3) to be with people I don't want to strangle all the time

My hope:

That the radioactive eggs I eat on Wednesday will be in egg salad form and not just 'eat this hard boiled egg' form. I guess scrambled would be ok but I would prefer egg salad.

Positive thought of the day:

I can't come up with one. Today sucked.

I need to be zen.

I came super close to stepping on a lizard. Effing Cincinnati. Why are there lizards in my path!

At least they're not in my apartment. That would be the most stressful situation.

Working Daze

So the first week has been interesting. Basically I'm a personal assistant. I've been doing random things, mostly computer related.

I gotta give props to my prof. I found a scan of his driver's license yesterday, and it turns out, he was born in 1924. WHOA. I hope I'm that active when I'm that old.

Since starting here I've learned how to use a fax machine! We are so high tech :)

I'm liking it so far. If nothing else, I get to do different things everyday.

On another note, I made veggie chili mac 2 nights ago. The recipe said it feeds 4-6. We only added an extra can of beans to the pot, and we somehow made enough to feed an army. I've been eating it forever. I'm having lunch with a friend today and I brought some. I'm hoping she'll trade lunches with me so I can eat something new.

At least, tonight we are supposed to have a pizza battle. Sir Tubby and I are going for Greek ish pizza with eggplant. I don't know what our competition is making. Now I just have to find that pizza dough recipe.

And oh ya, get back to work. :)

Less than a month until my GRE?!

Tomorrow at work we are throwing my secretary a baby shower brunch. The whole thing is kind of an inchoate (not fully formed; disorganized) event on my end, because I am in charge of food and I have no idea how I'm going to get it all there or what I'm going to serve it on.

I am bringing

3 boxes of mini croissants

3 boxes of mini donuts

2 fruit trays

3 boxes of incarnadine (blood-red in color) strawberries

2 boxes of blackberries

1 box of raspberries

a triple layer cake filled with bavarian cream and strawberries and topped with whipped cream

a bread bowl filled with spinach artichoke parm dip, and crusty italian bread to go with it

chocolate ganache and strawberry jam for the croissants

a fruit and yogurt parfait topped with granola

grapefruit juice (which I will then mix with lime sparkling water and a little OJ)

OJ

Lime sparkling water (whatever is left over can be for drinking)

Iced tea (which I burned my finger in while boiling the tea, and then I promptly yelled imprecations (curses) to the sky)

Other people are bringing breakfast meat and quiche and all that good stuff.

Why don't I speak English?

I hope the hermetic (tightly sealed) top of the pitcher of iced tea doesn't come loose in my car.

I just signed a lease for an apartment here next year. I feel trapped by Lansing. :(

I Do Not Own A Whisk: My First Attempt At Bavarian Cream

I kind of tweaked/merged a few different recipes I read. We'll see if that screws up my bavarian cream.

I used

1/3 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1/2+ TB gelatin (1 envelope)
3 large egg yolks
1 cup of milk (I used 2% but I imagine whole would be better)
Vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream

Mix together sugar, salt, gelatin, egg yolks.

Bring 1 cup of milk to a boil in a sauce pan so that it's frothy, then turn off the heat. Add a few tablespoons of milk to the egg mixture and mix, then slowly pour in the rest of the milk while stirring continuously.

Transfer mixture back into the pot and stir over heat until it thickens and is slightly bubbly.

Remove pot from heat and put in an ice bath. Whip up your cream.

Once your custard mixture is cool, fold in the whipped cream.

Now it has to be refrigerated for 5 hours to a day. We'll see if it actually firms up.

No, I do not own a whisk. It is on my list of kitchen equipment I am not allowed to own until I am married.

Edit: It firmed up after only 1.5 hours. I wonder if that's a bad thing, but firm fillings I think are good so that it doesn't ooze out when the cake is cut. It tastes like creme brulee without the caramelized topping. Unsure if that's what bavarian cream is supposed to taste like, but yum!

Next: I have two vanilla buttermilk cake layers baking in the oven right now. I've read from multiple sources that cakes are actually better, more moist and flavorful, if you freeze them for a short period of time, which works for me because I won't really have time to bake during the week and the shower isn't until Friday, and I'll have to bake the cake layers a few days ahead of time for the actual wedding next summer as well. So I will triple plastic wrap these layers and see how that turns out for when I fill and assemble the cake on Thursday.

I like how I'm practicing for a wedding cake that I don't have to make until July 2011. Can I possibly procrastinate on studying any more than this? I'm leaving in five minutes to go study at a coffee shop with my friend though, far far away from my kitchen and my computer.

Me so nerdy

I'm still getting used to wearing glasses. I hate wearing them so I only wear them when I'm driving

Things I am cooking this week

Baked pears with blue cheese and walnuts (I've been wondering what I should do with the leftover blue cheese from our pizza making...picture!)

Spinach and Parmesan quiche, for my secretary's work baby shower brunch. Except I'm wondering if people at the office eat vegetables. Srsly.

Triple layer vanilla buttermilk cake filled with bavarian cream and strawberries, and covered in whipped cream, also for the baby shower brunch, but as doubling as wedding cake trial #1.

I made aloo gobi today. It took me forever to chop all the different ingredients (cilantro, onions, potatoes, cauliflower, garlic, ginger, etc.) and add all the billions of spices. I think HummusBoyfriend needs to find himself an Indian girlfriend who is a more efficient cook.

Okay bye.

Back to food...

I don't cook nearly as much as I did in college, which is a shame because I am brimming with ideas of crazy things to make, but there aren't that many people to feed.

Anyway, my big project for the next year or so will be the three-tier wedding cake that I am making for my friends Jenny and Dave. Thankfully, I have an entire year to practice. I'm pretty excited (am I ready to be a grandma or what?) and researching recipes and reading about how to assemble wedding cakes during my GRE study breaks. Right now we're thinking 3 round tiers with 3 cake layers in each tier. The bottom tier will probably be some kind of vanilla buttermilk or vanilla sponge cake with bavarian cream/custard filling, and the top will be something similar. The middle layer will be chocolate with chocolate ganache and brown sugar meringue buttercream. And then white buttercream over the entire thing.

So step one of my year of experimenting...what is bavarian cream? I don't really know, other than the cheap stuff that comes in donuts that probably isn't real bavarian cream. According to google, real bavarian cream has gelatin in it, so you can mold it if you want to.

(source)

The downside is bavarian cream isn't really something that can be left unrefrigerated for extended periods of time, so this would be a challenge to the assemble-wedding-cake-hours-before-the-reception. I would either have to assemble and stash it in a big fridge somewhere (but that is one really tall cake...and does cake taste good when it's cold? depends on the type of cake, I guess) . Or maybe if the room is pretty air conditioned it can survive for a few hours. ......yeah. Who knew wedding cakes were so complicated?

So this weekend's project I think will be making bavarian cream. Stay tuned!

Positive thought of the day: I'm happy I have my own office to hide in. Because sometimes people can be scary.

Unpositive thought of the day: Between hitting the snooze button and getting up, I had a scary dream where someone broke into my apartment and left scary symbols scrawled all over everything (the comical part is, in my dream I had a pan of brownies out and they scrawled weird symbols all over that too). I was really freaked out and tried to call someone, but both my computer and phone were infected with scary viruses and I couldn't do anything and I was about to be late for work (though in reality if this kind of creepy takeover was happening, being late for work probably wouldn't be on my top list of priorities). So I woke up stressed out, and was stressed out for the rest of the day. It was really strange, I can't recall ever having a dream that did that to me before.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Keep Moving Forward

Except for me it's more like keep moving backward. I'm moving back to Ann Arbor today. I'm excited for my last summer here before I move out to Seattle.

Hoping I will see you guys a lot this summer :)

Today my supervisor and a co worker were having a discussion in the hall outside my office door. Then I guess they thought they might be distracting me, so my supervisor closed my office door, accidentally locking me in. For some reason, I thought that story was worth sharing.

With an open heart and empty stomach...

I'm watching Iron Chef. I've only ever seen a few episodes, but the two I saw where people were allowed to choose their opponent, both chose Morimoto. Does everyone choose him?? What's wrong with the others?

Also, I'm thankful H made it home through the rain :)

Edit: I have no idea why I watch this show. I'm totally full up on pizza and cake and my mouth is watering for everything in Kitchen Stadium right now.

Whenever I'm away from Ann Arbor, I miss...

the Indian take out counter in the Indian store. They've expanded to a full menu, and you can actually have them make it spicy now. Their saag is so good. I don't even like saag normally. And despite the giant Indian population in Cincy, I have yet to find a place that has naan anywhere as good as the naan here. Indian takeout counter, why can't you move to Cincinnati with me? I promise to love and cherish you aways.