Office Party
1 shot tequila
1 lime wedge
Granulated sugar
Freshly ground coffee
Dip one side of the lime wedge into the coffee and the other side into the sugar. Shoot the tequila and chomp down on the lime. Better than it sounds. (Lydia/Zack- let me know if I’m missing anything from this.)
I roasted some broccoli last night. It was vaguely disappointing. I used some of it in an omelet, along with some cheese. I have been attempting omelets lately. I suck at them. Quite a lot. (I just had to change that because I couldn’t decide if it was “hard core,” “hardcore,” or “hard-core.” LAME.) I can’t make a decent fold, and I end up using too much filling when I try. Also, I tend not to cook them long enough, so they can get a bit runny. I’m too afraid of overcooking. I was going to bake some potatoes, but it turns out all mine are a bit old. They’ve sprouted. I should not buy bags of potatoes. I should buy one or two at a time.
God, I haven’t even talked about last weekend yet. So behind! (So sleepy.) Well, the recipe below is from when I attempted to make frosting and ended up with sauce, because it never firmed up correctly. I was going to wait until it was slightly firm, then whip it into a frosting-like thing. Unfortunately, that never happened. We tried putting some onto a couple cupcakes, but it ran off the sides and looked unappealing. Tasted good, though. So it was chocolate sauce, not chocolate frosting.
The mojito-like drinks were good. People seemed to like them. Wow, does Lydia mix some strong drinks. If she offers you a Long Island, you might want to stick to… I don’t know, grain alcohol or something. I think it’ll be safer that way.
I think I left my limes behind. We never had any Office Parties. Lydia/Zack/whoever actually thought up that drink, would it be okay if I posted the recipe here?
I finally met Cynthia! As well as Matt and Meli! We did have fun at our little Cupcakes & Cocktails party. There was much Karaoke Revolution, in which I showed off my mad skills at thinking I knew a song, but only actually knowing the chorus and sucking at the rest of the song (ie. Broken Wings). I did okay at Billie Jean, Under Pressure (with Lydia), and some song I hate. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed your early birthday celebration, Cynthia. It was lovely meeting you, and I look forward to seeing you down in L.A. in July!
D&D tonight.
Pardon me while I have a little fangirl moment.
Veronica Mars, you totally win at TV.
Thank you.
Chocolate Fros… no, Sauce
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp butter
12 oz. bag semisweet chocolate chips
Combine the cream, butter, and sugar in a large microwave-safe bowl, and stir to combine. Microwave until boiling, about 3 minutes (watch it, don’t trust your microwave). Stir in the chocolate chips, and keep stirring until the chips are completely integrated. Cover, let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate.
Yellow Cupcakes
Cook’s Illustrated
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp table salt (1 tsp kosher)
8 Tbsp unsalted butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup sour cream
1 large egg (room temperature)
2 large egg yolks (room temperature)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin/cupcake tin with paper or foil liners.
Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Add butter, sour cream, egg and egg yolks, and vanilla; beat at medium speed until smooth and satiny, about 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula and mix by hand until smooth and no flour pockets remain.
Divide batter evenly among cups of prepared tin using 2-ounce ice cream scoop or heaping tablespoon. Bake until cupcake tops are pale gold and toothpick or skewer inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 24 minutes. Use skewer or paring knife to lift cupcakes from tin and transfer to wire rack; cool cupcakes to room temperature, about 45 minutes.
Made cupcakes for tomorrow’s party over at Lydia and Zack’s. I made twelve chocolate and twelve… yellow. The yellow ones did not turn out as large as the chocolate ones. I am thinking it’s because the chocolate ones have both baking powder and soda, while the yellow ones just have baking powder.
I also made the basil-lime syrup, using mint instead of basil. I figure we could make vaguely mojito-like drinks with it.
I still need to make frosting. Eh, tomorrow morning. Do I want to start some bread? No… not really. Lazy, lazy Sarah.
Here’s hoping it’s all good.
Costume update!
Lydia took some very goofy pictures of me in my not-yet-finished costume. I sent one out to Jon, Ryan, Rob, and Jer, who all agreed that a) we were freaks, and b) that it will be awesome. Rob even photoshopped me into a Warhol-ish kind of thing.
During lunch today, I sprayed bowls with aerosol adhesive and stuck batting to them. Later today or tomorrow, I will be cutting the batting and respraying them bowls to get the batting to conform more the the curves of the bowl. I still need to secure the red flannel to the head accents (shouldn’t take too long) and cover the head tube with black flannel (this scares me).
I made another loaf of bread last night. It took me five hours. It should take between five and six hours, start to finish. It’s awesome how much better I am at slashing loaves now. It looks fairly attractive. Very different from my tumor-bread. I’m thinking about bringing the new loaf over to Jon and Ryan’s tomorrow. Jon hasn’t tried my bread yet. Ryan thought it was pretty good. The recipe up is with Alton’s ingredients (well, mine has more salt), and my own instructions.
D&D tonight.
Evening Bread
Starter
5 oz. AP flour (recommended: King Arthur)
2 tsp honey
1/4 tsp instant yeast
10 oz. water (use bottled or filtered if your tap water sucks)
11 oz. AP flour
3/4 tsp instant yeast
1 Tbsp kosher salt
Oil
Water
Combine all the starter ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer and whisk thoroughly to combine. Let it sit on the counter for 2 hours.
Add the next three ingredients. Using the dough hook, knead on low for 2 minutes. Turn the machine off and let it sit for 10 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl. Fill a roasting pan about halfway with hot tap water and place on the bottom of your oven. Turn the mixer to medium (or 4 on a Kitchenaid) and knead for 10 minutes. Place the dough in the large bowl. Put the bowl in the oven, and let it rise for 90 minutes to 2 hours.
Flip a cookie sheet upside-down and put a decent-sized square of parchment on it.
Empty the dough onto a work surface. It will be sticky. Press it out into a rectangular shape, and fold the two sides into the center. Flip the dough, repress, refold. Do this a couple times. Take the dough and fold it in on itself, making a spherelike shape. Continue stretching the outer membrane by continuing to fold it in on itself. Once you have achieved a shape that pleases you (or you’re tired of the dough sticking to your hands), put the dough sphere on the parchment. Cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel and put the cookie sheet and dough back in the oven for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, take the cookie sheet and dough out, put a pizza stone on the center rack, and heat the oven to 400.
Once the oven has finished preheating, sprinkle the top of the dough with some water. Slash an X on it with a sharp knife or razor blade. Open the oven, and slide the parchment off the cookie sheet onto the pizza stone. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or when an internal temperature of 205 is reached. Cool on a rack.
Woo, weekend. The quicker bread turned out all right, not great. I may try it again. More kneading and more rising time are needed. But that’ll bring it to over six hours. Gr.
I sewed batting onto Kuro’s head accents on Thursday, and Lydia and I covered them with red fabric on Sunday.
I’m tired. I’ll finish this tomorrow.
Dear lord, it’s been hard to motivate myself to write this.
I’ve got bread in the oven. I really don’t think this is the kind of recipe that you shorten the times on. I had a hell of a time dealing with the ubersticky dough. I guess the long, slow development of the starter in the fridge is really necessary. I like this bread, I just wish it didn’t take so long. Oh, well. Weekend-only bread it is.
Spent the weekend at Lydia’s… again… well, I’m glad her couch is comfy. We went to see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Saturday. I strategically covered up the “Faculty/Staff” title on my Stanford ID and got the student discount. We enjoyed it. I think it’s worth seeing. There will be purists who complain about things being dropped and things being added. To this I say, well, Douglas Adams changed a great many things in each variation of the Guide. Characters and plotlines were dropped (who remembers Lintilla from the radio series?), new non-sequitur-y bits and plotlines were added. It seems to me that if it had been an exact translation from page to screen, it wouldn’t have been in the same spirit as the other Guide iterations. And about Trillian. Adams didn’t really write good female characters. There was Trillian, Lintilla, Fenchurch, and Random (whose character note was “angry existential teenager”). Out of these, the only one with really even the slightest bit of personality was Fenchurch. Lydia and I were talking after the movie, and we decided that what the writers had tried to do was combine the good aspects of Fenchurch with Trillian. And it didn’t really work, but they tried. (I really didn’t understand the inclusion of Zaphod’s vice-president, but I guess they needed him to have some sort of ending outside of the whole Trillian thing.)
Oh, and we both really want Marvin figurines. He’s desperately adorable.
Watched the fourth episode of Tsubasa Chronicle on Sunday. This show is making me sad. They’ve got pretty good source material, and they’re mucking it all up with pointless filler. It’s the fourth episode! It shouldn’t be filler! I really want to like the series, but they’re making it difficult.
Also watched a couple episodes of Bleach. I actually had been prepared not to like it- it’s been overhyped to me. But actually, I enjoyed it and would not object to reading/watching more of it.
I brought Lydia and Zack a loaf of my bread plus a loaf of challah that I got at a bagel place while waiting for my hair appointment. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a new Yakitate! episode out. I was annoyed. This time, I was prepared!
Before the movie on Friday (yeah, I know, I’m skipping around a lot), Lydia and I ate at a place called Zao in Emeryville. Disappointing. I had coconut soup as an appetizer, and it was quite good, but my main dish (Ginger-Garlic-Chili Chicken & Prawns) was bland and unexciting. They didn’t overcook the shrimp, though, so I guess that’s a plus for them. Lydia stayed basic and got chicken pho. I felt bad for her when I tasted a bit- the broth was just awful. Not recommended.
And speaking of not recommended, I have to mention where we ate lunch the next day. Joe’s Crab Shack is a seafood restaurant that Lydia quite liked when she went to their location in L.A. We went to their Fisherman’s Wharf location in San Francisco. I hate to be critical of a friend’s favored eatery, but it was not worth it. Terribly overpriced for mediocre food. I was astonished at the prices on the menu, and ended up going for a crabcake sandwich. It was good, but not $10.99 good. Maybe $7.99. It would have helped if they hadn’t chosen the squishiest bun available. It practically disintigrated in my hands. (And sidenote: my brother makes better crabcakes.) Zack got a large platter of shrimp and a starter of clam chowder. The chowder was $6.49. Ridiculous. We could have gotten better (and bigger) for less at one of the many Boudin stalls that line the piers down there. The place just screamed “tourist trap” to me, and I would prefer not to go back there again.
I think that’s all.
Okay, I was going to go to Trader Joe’s and get more information about my grocery picks, but I left my notebook at work and am too lazy to recopy my very short list. It’s such a beautiful day, I feel like sitting on my couch and watching the TV. And making bread.
Well, an hour and a half later, I did go to Trader Joe’s. (I needed to go to Walgreen’s, and it was right next door.) I didn’t buy anything, just stood in front of things copying prices onto the back of a piece of mail. I have a lot of numbers. And I think it’d be pretty boring if I put them next to every item. So I’m not going to. Maybe a couple, but definitely not all.
We’ll see if this bread works. I’m trying Alton’s Basic Bread in a very shortened time period. I mixed the starter after work, let it sit on the counter for two hours, mixed it, let it rise for one hour, shaped it, let it bench proof for an hour, and bake for an hour. We’ll see how it works out. It’s 10:30 now, it should be done by midnight.