Oh, wow. If you didn’t catch Semi-Homemade this morning, watch one of the reruns during the week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of Sandra Lee’s shows that made me more angry. She humiliated food. It was just amazing. Worst. Episode. EVER.

I made chocolate chip cookies again yesterday. They didn’t turn out well. I blame Jon. After tasting The Thin on Tuesday, he said, “I think if you make these again, you might try reducing the sugar. They’re a little sweet.” I should know better than to listen to my brother about baking issues. The recipe called for one cup of white sugar and half a cup of brown. I reduced these by a quarter (3/4 cup of white and 3/8 of brown). Wow, did that change things. Instead of getting fairly flat, thin and crispy cookies, I got puffy, bready cookies that were not as good. So, I’m going back to the original recipe because changing it sucked. I gave the cookies to Jon. They’re not quite as bad frozen.

I found frozen porcini and chantarelle mushrooms at Trader Joe’s. They were eight dollars a pound, which seemed pretty reasonable to me, so I bought them for Jon. (I was also worried that they might be gone by the next time I went shopping.) I told him he had to tell me when he was making something with them so I could come over.

Last night, I went to see Shaun of the Dead with Rob, Jeremy, and Ryan. Oh, was that fun! We laughed a lot. I think people in the audience must have missed the “Ash” joke, because it sounded like only Ryan and I cracked up at it. And everyone should laugh at an Evil Dead reference. Only communists don’t laugh at an Evil Dead joke.

I made the lemon-ricotta cake again today. I stopped the mixer at medium peaks and beat them by hand the rest of the way. That worked much better. No overbeating! So, yes, it rose higher. Ryan’s going to make the raspberry coulis tomorrow.

We (Jon, Ryan, and I) had chicken for dinner. I tried a little something different. Instead of spreading an herb butter under the skin, I adapted a recipe from Food and Wine that used bacon as the fat. It was good, but butter’s better. I need to post that recipe- it’s the one from a month or two ago that I never finished retyping. I started feeling queasy after dinner, and I was worried that I had screwed up the chicken, but Jon and Ryan were fine. It turned out that I was getting motion sickness from watching Jon play Vice City. So lame!

I think that’s all.