Oh, my god. Yesterday’s Order of the Stick (fabulous D&D-related webcomic that I follow) is awesome.

Ha HA! The ANTM spoiler I read was wrong! Furonda stayed! Man, I was so surprised when they sent Nnenna home. It’s not like Nnenna really needs this competition, anyway. Now that she’s gotten some exposure through the show, I’m sure she’ll get signed quickly. Ee, I’m so happy Furonda didn’t get cut.

(Yes, I dork out over America’s Next Top Model. What?)

So, tonight at D&D was very exciting. My character almost died.Zed ‘s character (our wizard) almost died. We ran away from that battle! However, although we didn’t earn any experience at all, we did get a bunch of money. I hope Kaya lives long enough to collect her mithril chain shirt. (Well, actually, R☆’s first character, Hitch, put in the order, but then he got all dead and stuff.)

I’ve been trying not to use my car this week. I think I’ll be able to make it to Saturday, but then I’m going over to Barbara May’s to hang out with her, Sara, and Kiddo, and I’m toting my unfinished Katamari costume pieces. Hopefully I’ll get Honey finished in a positive direction.

I got contacted by the guy setting up the Katamari Bay to Breakers. Man, I bet that’d be crazy, and possibly very fun. But even if I switched out my red shoes for comfortable black walking shoes (they’d at least go with the overall color scheme), I just don’t think I could last with that head weighing me down (not to mention that with the face plate up, the heads look less good, and I’d have to have it up to see where I was going). Posing for pictures and walking around conventions is much easier. Imagine that!

Bravo, Kashi!

I came home from work today to find a bag on my apartment door from the good cereal-makers at Kashi. “Ooh, free sample!” I thought.

I picked up the bag. It was much heavier than I expected. I got inside and opened it up. Not only was there a generous sample of GoLean Crunch, there was an eight ounce shelf-stable container of Silk Soymilk. That’s awesome.

WHAT THE HELL UNTAGGED SPOILER DON’T TELL ME WHO GOES HOME NEXT I HATE YOU.

Holy crap, dude. Don’t DO that. I’m so damn pissed, you have no idea. Ugh!

No one died last night. We came across a ton of treasure. I’d elaborate more, but I’m too mad at the insensitive poster over on the Television Without Pity ANTM forums.

This is a very interesting idea, although I can’t imagine walking 7.5 miles in my costume. Especially with the whole lack of vision thing.

Sara and I are so talented that we can get negative work done on a costume. Honey is less finished today than she was before the weekend. Stupid Joanne Fabric and their discontinuing of dark magenta flannel.

I drove up to the city yesterday for the Cherry Blossom Festival. The weather was abysmal on the way up, but once I got there, it cleared up (mostly) and was fairly pleasant. I even got a bit of a sunburn on my nose.

I am not sure when I’m going to be cooking. I think tonight I might go out with the Mountain View-ers, tomorrow night is our very late seder, Wednesday’s D&D… maybe Thursday. I should defrost my last chicken.

Wow. We have lost two party members in two weeks. Last week our halfling cleric, Tibbet, was killed by an ogre. This week, our bard/warmage Hitch was killed by a howler, a kind of spiked demon dog. We also left Hitch’s body behind as we ran the hell away. Bad comrades! Kaya’s character has been moving from “foolhardy” to “paranoid” and now to “COWARD.”

(I sort of think our party name should be The Quick and the Dead. Of course, that probably wouldn’t inspire confidence in anyone who was looking for an adventuring party.)

I made this multigrain bread on Sunday. It’s really quite tasty. I used a mixture of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (because strangely enough, I had pepitas in my freezer). I need to mix together some honey butter. I think that’d taste fabulous on this.

Multigrain Bread

(Cook’s Illustrated)

6 1/4 oz. 7-grain hot cereal mix, 1 1/4 cups (Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills brand)
20 oz. boiling water (2 1/2 cups)
15 oz. AP flour (3 cups), plus extra if needed
7 1/2 oz. whole wheat flour (1 1/2 cups)
4 Tbsp honey
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 Tbsp table salt
3/4 cup pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds (unsalted)
1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats or quick oats
Water or nonstick cooking spray

Place cereal mix in bowl of standing mixer and pour boiling water over it; let stand, stirring occasionally, until mixture cools to 100 degrees and resembles thick porridge, about 1 hour. Whisk flours in medium bowl.

Once grain mixture has cooled, add honey, melted butter, and yeast and stir to combine. Attach bowl to standing mixer fitted with dough hook. With mixer running on low speed, add flours, 1/2 cup at a time, and knead until dough forms ball, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes; cover bowl with plastic and let dough rest 20 minutes. Add salt and knead on medium-low speed until dough clears sides of bowl, 3 to 4 minutes (if it does not clear sides, add 2 to 3 tablespoons additional all-purpose flour and continue mixing); continue to knead dough for 5 more minutes. Add seeds and knead for another 15 seconds. Transfer dough to floured work surface and knead by hand until seeds are dispersed evenly and dough forms smooth, taut ball. Place dough into greased container with 4-quart capacity; cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise until doubled, 45 to 60 minutes.

Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. Spray two 9 by 5-inch loaf pans with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and pat into 12 by 9-inch rectangle; cut dough in half crosswise with knife or bench scraper.

With short side facing you, starting at farthest end, roll dough piece into log. Keep roll taut by tucking it under itself as you go. Pinch seam gently with thumb and forefinger. Spray loaves lightly with water or nonstick cooking spray. Roll each dough log in oats to coat evenly. Place loaf seam-side down in greased loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until almost doubled in size, 30 to 40 minutes. (Dough should barely spring back when poked with knuckle.)

Bake until internal temperature registers 200 degrees on instant-read thermometer, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove loaves from pans and cool on wire rack before slicing, about 3 hours.

The Katamari Damacy website has just started a new contest. A cosplay contest, in fact. Of course, since I believe the world revolves around ME, I think that the reason they chose a cosplay contest (over another fanart one) is to correct the GRAVE INJUSTICE they showed to me and Lydia last year.

(Jo, if you’re reading this, I’m just joking. [Well, mostly. I do still want to win.])

So, if you make the recipe below, please read the whole thing first. Turn the oven on, start the brine, roast the garlic (covered), drain the chicken, finish roasting the garlic (uncovered), turn up the oven, cook the chicken. Don’t turn the oven on, brine the chicken, and then a half hour later say, “Oh, I was supposed to be roasting the garlic that whole time?”

The ‘rents and I went to Jardiniere last night for my birthday dinner. We had a lovely meal. For starters, Mom had some scallops that were beautifully cooked, I had duck confit which was just falling apart under its crispy skin, and Dad had lamb and bean soup. He didn’t volunteer any “OMG it’s so good!”-type comments, so I’m guessing he was not overwhelmed by it. For our main courses, Mom and Dad both got shortribs, which they said were good, except for the fact that the mashed potatoes kind of dissolved into the sauce. I had… let me copy it from their site… Loin of Cervena Venison with Black Trumpet Mushrooms, Glazed Baby Spring Vegetables, Smoked Bacon and Creamed Nettles, Sauce Au Poivre. It was tasty! That was my first time eating nettles, and now I’m keen on trying them again. (If I can find them, that is. Eddie made a nettle risotto a month or two ago that looked good.) My only complaints were that there were two cipolline onions that weren’t fully cooked (which was sad because the ones that were fully cooked were so ridiculously wonderful), and that if anyone else had been eating it, they would have found it too salty. I think that could be said for pretty much everything we got, actually. A little too heavy on the salt. And we love salt in our family.

None of the desserts really interested me (although if I had gone for one, it would have been the date and pine nut tart). I really wanted to end the meal with a glass of vin santo, but I was so full. I was afraid I was going to lose my dinner on the way home. Thankfully, I didn’t. I felt bad, though. Dad was interested in getting their grappa sampler (to which I say, ewww), but I was just too far gone.

Overall:
Service? Impeccable. Atmosphere? Lovely. Food? A bit salty, but in general, quite good. Prices? High, but probably worth it. Would I go again? If you’re paying.