Month: October 2015

Escape: Zombie City

[image: box art for Escape: Zombie City]
[image: box art for Escape: Zombie City]

Happy Halloween! Tonight I went over to my friends’ house to help them hand out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters. Where I live doesn’t get many kids these days, but their neighborhood still does. I didn’t dress up (unless you count “woman with enough nerve to wear bright-ass lipstick” a costume) because obviously Halloween is amateur hour and as a cosplayer, I reserve that stress and work for convention times. I kid, of course. I tried on a couple old costumes this afternoon but I couldn’t muster up the excitement to wear any of them. Ugh, wigs. Ugh, shapewear. Ugh, costume makeup. Not today, Satan. Not today.

Anyway, at our little get-together, my pal Jason brought a game he had helped fund on Kickstarter called Escape: Zombie City. Seemed pretty appropriate for Halloween! Each game session was 15 minutes long. There was spooky background music that timed the game and helped set the mood. We played four games before we won (on the easiest mode, it must be said). It’s very fast-paced, and since there weren’t turns (everyone plays at the same time), you didn’t get bored waiting for someone else to make a move.

The plot of the game is that you’re survivors of a zombie apocalypse, and you need to explore a randomly and continuously user-generated city to find items, return them to your safehouse, stock up your escape van, and leave the city. All while avoiding the undead, of course. We started playing on the coffee table, but then when we kept adding map tiles that went off the edges and dropping our dice, we moved to the floor. I’m pretty sure my back is going to punish me for that tomorrow.

It was really fun! (Once we figured out what we were doing!) It’s fun and fast, and everyone eventually was yelling at each other for assistance. I liked that it was a cooperative game, not pitting us against one another. I look forward to playing this one again!

Deviled Eggs with Tuna

[image: deviled eggs with tuna alongside olives and marinated peppers/mushrooms]
[image: deviled eggs with tuna alongside olives, pickled peppers, and marinated mushrooms]

Where this cookbook gets annoying is when it assumes sizes are standard throughout the world. This recipe just calls for “1 tin of tuna.” So… three ounces? Six? Eight? Kind of a giant range there. We used Tonnino tuna, which came in a 6.7-oz. jar, but we didn’t use all of it. I’m going to recommend a 5-oz. can, but taste the mixture and adjust to your liking. (A different recipe called for “2 packets of cooked octopus.” Thank you, that is super helpful.) In the book, this recipe was served on top of toasts, which required slicing off the bottoms of each egg half. That seemed unnecessarily fussy (and probably the egg would just slide right off the toast onto your lap anyway) so we just made them as deviled eggs.

6 eggs
2 pickled red cherry peppers (we got ours at the supermarket olive bar, the extras are in the middle of the plate in the photo)
1 small chili pepper, minced (we used a SUPER CHILI from my garden, but any 2–3 inch red chili would work)
2–3 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 5-oz. can of tuna in olive oil
1 Tbsp mixed fresh tarragon and parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
Extra fresh chopped parsley for garnish

Hard boil the eggs using your preferred method. Peel them and cut in half lengthwise. Mince one of the cherry peppers and cut the other into 12 strips (mince the rest if there’s any left over). Empty the egg yolks into a bowl. Add the mayonnaise, tuna, herbs, and both varieties of minced peppers. Mix together and taste for seasoning.

Scoop yolk mixture back into eggs, rounding the tops nicely. Garnish with the reserved strips of cherry pepper and a sprinkle of parsley.

Marinated Anchovies

[image: toasts with marinated anchovies]
[image: toasts with marinated anchovies]

Mom and I made a bunch of tapas today. It was exhausting. But now I have a bunch of recipes for here! We used The Best 100 Tapas by Esperanza Luca De Tena as our guide, but we didn’t really follow any of the recipes precisely. So here is our interpretation.

10–15 white anchovies (we used Wild Planet), which I believe had 12 in the tin)
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp table salt
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 Tbsp chopped tarragon
1/2 cup olive oil
1 bay leaf
Baguette
freshly ground black pepper

Remove the spines from the anchovies using the tip of a knife. Try to keep them as intact as you can, but it’s okay if they fall apart a bit (see the photo at the top of this post). Place in a bowl.

Combine vinegar, salt, sugar, parsley, and tarragon. Whisk in the olive oil and add the bay leaf. Pour mixture over anchovies. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 24.

Cut 1/2″ slices of the baguette. Lightly toast bread (mostly just to get it warm). Remove bay leaf from mixture. Spoon some liquid over the bread, then lay anchovy pieces on top. Drizzle some more liquid and grind pepper on top.

Potholders

[image: two homemade potholders]
[image: two homemade potholders]

Today’s craft project was potholders! I made one of these a few years back, just to see if it worked, and not only did it work, it lasted way longer than I expected! However, last night it got rather singed and the bias tape on it started cracking, so I decided to make a couple more today. Behold their majesty, before they inevitably get stained.

These are smaller than a lot of commercially-made potholders. I find those unwieldy to use. Also, they’re not quite as heat-safe. I’ve seen tutorials that recommend a special kind of insulated batting, but I’m just using leftovers here. I use a layer of thick quilt batting and whatever cotton fabric and bias tape are hanging around. (Basically everything is cosplay scraps. Batting is from Katamari, the turquoise bias tape was from Tsubasa, and the fabric… actually I think that was just old sheets that I kept around to do mock-ups.)

I cut out 5.5-inch squares of the batting and two pieces a big bigger of the cotton. I sewed around the edges to make what looked like a tiny pillow at this point. Then I sewed some lines in the center, like quilting, except I’ve never actually done that so I don’t know if that’s really what I was doing (but I tried to make one of the designs kind of interesting?). If there was any batting sticking out, I trimmed it off, then trimmed the cotton edges down to about 3/8-inch.

Then I put the bias tape on. You’ll notice in the photo I attempted to do one of them with nice mitered corners and stitch in the ditch or whatever, and then in the second one I just cut pieces and topstitched down. Both methods done imperfectly—they’re functional, not necessarily beautiful.) Squash them down a bit with an iron, and they’re done!

Just to reiterate: these are not super-heat resistant, so don’t use them with, like, cast iron. But they’ll work well enough for taking cookie sheets out of the oven, or taking from the microwave a piping hot bowl with soup in it that is hopefully also piping hot (but is often deceptively tepid).

New Old Trousers

[image: old flared trouser leg (left) and new straight trouser leg (right)]
[image: old flared trouser leg (left) and new straight trouser leg (right)]

I bought these black trousers for a costume back in 2006. They fit me well enough and looked appropriate for our Ouran High School Host Club cosplay group. I adopted them into my regular wardrobe after that. What’s been bothering me the last few years has been that the flare is not really my style (also, they’re a skosh short on me, as you can see in the comparison up top). I decided to do something about it.

Basically what I did was take out large triangles on each side of the leg. You can see the lines I made on the sides in the left photo. I’ve read some tutorials (which I didn’t really follow) about people trying to do this and the legs “rotating” or something, and I don’t think I quite managed to avoid that. In the right image, you can see the outside seams sort of migrating around to the front. But it could just be due to the fact that there’s a whole bunch of extra material still inside the legs, since I hadn’t cut & pinked the seams yet.

[image: the triangles of fabric I removed]
[image: the triangles of fabric I removed]

Now that I’ve got those out, I just need to hem the pants! Thankfully I had a lot of hem to work with—about three inches. Annoyingly, I haven’t quite been able to press out the original crease. It’ll probably always be there. But honestly, who is looking at your cuffs? I’m not going to be in judgement in front of Tom + Lorenzo any time soon.

Sweet Potato Soup

[image: sweet potato soup with maple sour cream garnish]
[image: sweet potato soup with maple sour cream garnish]

I saw this recipe in the latest Cook’s Illustrated, and it looked so bizarre I had to try it. You put the peels in the soup?! So weird! My personal additions were limited to some chipotle powder, because I feel like you can’t have sweet potatoes without some of that smoky spice. Cook’s Illustrated currently has a video detailing this recipe on their website, but I don’t know how long it will be available for non-subscribers. I tried to make an artful drizzle, but it’s kind of… Pollock-y, at best.

4 Tbsp butter
1 shallot, thinly sliced
4 sprigs fresh thyme
4 1/2 cups water
2 lbs. sweet potatoes (garnet yams), peeled, halved and sliced 1/4″ thick, plus 1/4 of their peels reserved
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp ground chipotle powder
extra salt and pepper to taste
minced chives (optional garnish)

Melt butter in a pot. Add shallot and thyme and cook over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, until the shallot has softened but not browned. Add water and bring to a boil over high heat (I boiled the water ahead to cut down on the time it would take everything to get hot). Once boiling, turn off the heat and remove the pot to a cool burner. Add the sweet potatoes and peels and let sit uncovered for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice so everything gets a chance to be below the water level.

Add sugar, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and chipotle powder. Bring back to a simmer over high heat, then reduce heat to medium low and cover. Cook until potatoes are very soft, 10–15 minutes.

Discard thyme sprigs. Puree the soup with a stick blender (or in batches in a normal blender) until smooth. Return the soup to a simmer and adjust thickness with water if necessary. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with optional minced chives and a drizzle of…

Maple Sour Cream

1/3 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp real maple syrup

mix together. voila.

SUPER CHILI PEPPERS

[image: somewhere in the range of 40–50 red chile peppers]
[image: somewhere in the range of 40–50 red chili peppers]

My SUPER CHILI PEPPER plant has been putting out way more peppers than I can use, so I’ve just been chucking them in the freezer. I currently have 40–50 of them, and I think there are probably 25 more on the bush. I’d say we’re nearing the end of Round 2 harvesting, and wouldn’t you know it, the dang plant has started putting out flowers AGAIN. California’s got to cool off at some point, right?

I’ve been thinking that maybe I’d make some really killer-diller hot pepper jelly with them (to be served with the world’s largest block of cream cheese). I’ve had people suggest vinegar hot sauce as well. SUPER CHILI PEPPERS (it just feels right to spell it in all caps) clock in at 50,000 Scoville units, according to this chart, on the same level as Cayenne or Tabasco peppers.

I’ve been really happy with this plant! I might try to transplant it from its basket to the ground for next year. Apparently both peppers and eggplants are perennials, so I could try and keep the basket around, but I have a feeling the root systems are already fighting for space, given the size of the plants vs. the size of the basket. The SUPER CHILI PEPPER plant is pretty, with lots of little white flowers. Of course the eggplants are pretty too, with their lovely purple flowers. I’m going to have to make a decision soon about what to do with them, I think.

Someday it will turn cold. Someday it will rain.

Someday.

Scallion Pancakes

[image: scallion pancake with dipping sauce]
[image: scallion pancake with dipping sauce]

For a more in-depth look at how exactly to roll the pancakes, take a look at Serious Eats, which is where I got this recipe. I halved it (because my little desktop green onions could only yield so much!) and changed a few little things. Next time, I think I’ll add one of my chile peppers to the scallions inside the pancake for some extra kick.

1 cup AP flour (plus extra for rolling)
1/2 cup boiling water
sesame oil
1 cup green onions, thinly sliced
vegetable oil
kosher salt

Put flour in food processor. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in the boiling water until the dough just comes together (it will probably end up being not the entire amount). Remove from workbowl and knead a few times on a floured surface. Shape into a ball and place in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit on the counter for a half hour (or overnight in the fridge).

Divide dough into two balls. Take one half and with a rolling pin, roll out on a floured surface into an 8-inch round. With a pastry brush (or just lightly with your hand), lightly coat with sesame oil. Roll up into a cylinder, then twist the roll into a spiral, tucking the end underneath. Reroll into an 8-inch round.

Coat with another layer of sesame oil, then sprinkle 1/2 cup of green onions on top evenly. Roll up again (carefully) and twist into a spiral, and roll down into an 7-inch round (carefully, dusting more flour around if things start sticking). Sprinkle both sides with kosher salt and lightly press in.

Repeat for other half of dough.

Heat vegetable oil (Serious Eats recommends 1/4 cup, I just used enough to coat my pan) in a non-stick 8-inch skillet over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, slip in one pancake. Cook for 2-3 minutes per side, shaking pan so that it heats evenly. Be careful when flipping so that you don’t get oil everywhere. Remove from pan, let drain on paper towels, and cut into wedges. Repeat for second pancake. Serve with…

Dipping Sauce
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp sriracha
1 tsp sugar
1-2 tsp minced green onion (basically whatever you have leftover from filling the pancakes)

Mix together.

So my first pancake turned out uneven and sort of burned in spots because I didn’t keep the pan moving enough and wasn’t cognizant of the oil temperature.

[image: slightly burnt scallion pancake]
[image: unevenly burnt scallion pancake]

So look more like the top picture and less like this one. (Of course, the ones on Serious Eats look way better, but I do what I can.)

Dutch National Opera & Ballet

[image: "Emeralds" ballet costume from Balanchine's Jewels]
[image: “Emeralds” ballet costume from Balanchine’s Jewels]

I took a tour of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet while I was in Amsterdam. They offer free lunchtime concerts on Tuesdays (and if you’re going to be in Amsterdam on the 27th [MARK], I highly recommend it—there’s a freaking theramin and harp duo performing, how lovely and peculiar that will be!).

After the concert, they offer a tour of the building. It was somewhere between 5 and 10 euros for a really comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at everything that goes into putting on their productions. Our two group was three people large. Just me and two Australians. It was great! We saw them setting up the stage for the premiere of Il Trovatore, saw the opera’s current set for Der Rosenkavalier (which was ending soon) (and since they share the stage with the ballet, the various sets get shifted around constantly and therefore have to be pretty mobile), peeped on a ballet rehearsal, and got to visit their costume departments.

They had this green beauty featured among some other costumes. It was so gorgeous! It’s from Balanchine’s Jewels ballet, the “Emeralds” movement. You can see it in action here: