Eeeee! They’re sending me paperwork and my first day of work is next Wednesday! Eeeee!

I should find out about the job on Thursday. (Still holding myself back on the excitement and celebration.)

I made a braciole last weekend and finished it up tonight. Yum. I made it once before, back in September. This time I wasn’t so sure about the salt content of the stuffing. I thought it tasted a little bland. However, it tasted great with the saltiness of the tomato sauce. I didn’t really take time to make a tomato sauce. It was the reduced liquid from a couple cans of the Muir Glen Fire-Roasted Tomatoes, an extra can of tomato sauce, some white wine, olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh oregano, and hot pepper flakes. Maybe a little bit of vinegar, balsamic or red wine, I can’t remember. Anyway, it was quite tangy and salty, and really complemented the stuffing and flank steak. I still suck at getting the flank steak pounded thin enough.

Jon’s been making sourdough bread. It’s totally frikkin’ amazing. It’s incredible that he could make it. That’s not what I mean. It’s incredible that a human with a normal kitchen could make that. He says it costs him about thirty cents a loaf. It’s the kind of bread you’d pay four bucks for in the market. And it’s GOOD. I love this bread. I’m really looking forward to the day he gives me starter and teaches me how to make it.

Sweet Milk Scones with Dried Cherries
Cook’s Illustrated The Best Recipe

2 cups AP flour
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 cup dried cherries or other small dried fruit
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup whole milk

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450. Allow the oven to come up to heat before making dough.

Place flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the cherries and butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal with a few slightly larger butter lumps.

Add the milk and puolse until dough just starts to gather into a rough ball. Do not overprocess or scones will be tough. Turn dough onto a well-floured work surface.

Quickly press dough to a thickness of 1/2 inch. Use a lightly greased and floured 3-inch biscuit cutter (or whatever, I used a wine glass with a diameter or 3 inches) to stamp dough with one decisive punch, cutting close together to generate as few scraps as possible. Reassemble scraps and cut more scones. Place dough rounds 1 1/2 inches apart on a baking sheet lines with parchment. Sprinkle the tops with a little bit of sugar. Bake until scones are lightly browned, 10 to 12 minutes. Serve immediately.

Whoops. I had dinner over at Jon and Ryan’s tonight. I made the Apple-Rutabaga Soup and Jon made tacos. They really didn’t go together, but whatever. Anyway, I got home just now and was unpacking the rest of my groceries when I… took out a bag of apples. Yeah, I forgot to put them in. Damn it. Sometimes I’m really dumb. The soup was still tasty.

I had a weird dream last night. About Sandra Lee. I was sitting at a computer in a library, and I found all these horrible modeling pictures of her- there was one where her hair was all crimped and fro’d out and she was wearing some bizarre plaid thing. Anyway, I was chortling and copying down the web addresses so I could post them somewhere (probably here) and also writing myself some notes on a piece of scrap paper. Anyway, Sandra herself was about twenty feet to my right, heard my giggles, recognized me, came over, and picked up the piece of paper. I immediately tried to talk my way out of it and snatched the piece of paper back from her. She was glaring at me and decided we were going to a restaurant that made dishes a la Semi-Homemade. (Ew.) She goes back to her terminal and gets her stuff, including a small hatchet which she puts in her handbag. We then exit to a garage. She has a Mercedes sedan, metallic tan, with either a sun or moonroof. There’s a Tivo sticker on it. Her license plate and side mirrors have AOL decals on them. She starts the car before unlocking the doors so I can get in (I hate it when people do that). And then my alarm went off. So at least I didn’t have to go to this Semi-Homemade restaurant OR get chopped up into bitty pieces by Sandra’s hatchet.

Keckler updated The Grub Report with a new article about work, Sandra Lee, and a restaurant in San Francisco called Suppenküche which sounds REALLY good. Anyone up for a trip to the city for German food?

I think I got the job at Stanford. Eeeeeee! (No, Sarah! No celebration until there’s paperwork in front of you!)

I don’t mean to harp on about this… actually, I think I do. Anyway, I’m watching this morning’s new Sandra Lee. She’s making what she calls a “crepe omelet.” First off, not crepes. She’s using flour tortillas (who knew you could substitute one for the other?). Secondly, not an omelet. It’s a scramble. Basically, what she’s making is a breakfast burrito. That’s fine. Scrambled eggs and ham in a tortilla? I can get on board for that. However, she decides, of course, to go the extra gross step and makes a sauce for the dish out of store-bought guacamole that she’s pushed through a fine-mesh sieve (just to make absolutely sure it looks like something babies spew) and to which she added heavy cream. Ew, ew, EW. Always have to go that extra disgusting step, don’t you, Sandy? Leave well enough alone. And call things by their right names.

Oh, I shouldn’t blog while watching the show. “Quick water”? What the hell is that?

Argh, the comments are being wonky again. You know how they get, it’s like one post in twenty that starts acting up, either not being able to be read in Mozilla or IE. Anyway, here are the comments for the March third post. I don’t know why it’s saying that I have negative thirteen comments. Or perhaps that’s absolute value negative thirteen.

mm
It is such a mess when fat is spattering all over the kitchen. Even with a spatter guard you can count on a mess. One product that works pretty well on the grease is Fantastic(k?) spray.
My response
When I was stirring the not-cracklings, I had to lift off the spatter guard, and I got grease all over myself (I love aprons). Also, I burned myself twice. In the same place.

Mary Beth
Thanks for taking on FN and the Semi-Homemade travesty! My reviews of several recipes (which I did make, and didn’t just slam the host) were also scrubbed some time ago. I included better alternatives from other FN shows, which may just be why they were scrubbed…
My response
Oh, it really annoyed me when all her reviews jumped from two to five-stars. People need to be informed that her recipes are bad, bad, BAD. Your thought about how your reviews were deleted because you advocated alternatives is an optimistic idea, but I don’t have that kind of faith in the Food Network. (And thanks for the shout-out on the TWoP forums!)

Lydia
ooh, which job? good luck with that 🙂 and how’s the scarf coming along?
My response
It’s a receptionist position at Stanford. And the building it’s in is right next door to where Ryan and Jer work. That’d be keen. I will need to look up how to start a new ball o’ yarn later today. The scarf’s at about three feet.

Had an interview yesterday. Woo! I would really like to get this job.

Food Network is scrubbing clean the one-star reviews of Sandra Lee’s recipes. Two of my reviews were deleted. Now, I can partly understand this. A lot of the reviews were mere bashing of Sandra and her recipes. These reviewers had never made the recipes and were just commenting on how horrible it looked. Conversely, many of the five-star reviews were over-the-top flattery of Sandra and bashing of the one-star reviewers. These people had also not made the recipes. Lots of name-calling from both sides. Food Network has deleted the one-stars and kept the five-stars, presumably to get the Semi-Homemade average up. Her show had the lowest average rating of the Food Network shows, generally around two or three stars for a given recipe.

I had written three reviews of recipes I made- the Raspberry Cooler, Mozzerella Nuggets, and Oriental Pork Wrappers. The Raspberry Cooler and Mozzerella Nuggets were both one-star reviews. The Oriental Pork Wrappers I gave a two. The two-star review has remained, the other two are gone (or rather were, since I rewrote them this afternoon). It’s incredibly annoying to me that they are only scrubbing half of the off-topic reviews as well as reviews from people who made the recipes and didn’t like them. It’s unfair to the writers (of the real reviews, not the flaming) and to the people who are going to be misled into making this crap.

Tried something from Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way today, just as an experiment. I bought three chickens from Costco, and after I was done separating them into carcasses and edible bits, I cut up the skin and fat and rendered them in a hot pan to get cracklings. Jacques had done this, and it looked really good. What a mess. Do not try that unless you have a spatter guard. Also, drain the fat when you’re done into a heatproof container. Don’t be a moron and put it into heat-sensitive plastic. That stuff melts FAST. And then you have hot fat everywhere. As for the cracklings themselves? Bland, bland, bland. And crunchy. Maybe I should have salted them before putting them in. Probably I should have. They ended up a little burnt as I left them in the pan while running around cleaning up the fat mess. Good times.

Yum, lemon curd. I think if I were to make this again, I would cook the lemon zest with the curd and then strain it out afterwards. It’s a little distracting to the smooth texture. I was so happy that it didn’t curdle. Really quite proud of that.

I did make scones a while ago, and they were excellent, but I just haven’t gotten around to copying down the recipe yet.

Now, you all know my feelings of rage towards Trader Joe’s for discontinuing the Muir Glen Fire-Roasted Tomatoes. After the movie tonight, we went to TJs. Not my normal TJs, but the one near them, which was much brighter, larger, and well set-up than the one near me. Anyway, what do I see on their shelves? Muir Glen Fire-Roasted Tomatoes! Huzzah! But not so fast, self. Instead of the 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes, these are 14.5-ounce cans of chopped. For the same price as the 28-ounce can. Actually, for ten cents more, as the 28-ounce can was listed as $1.29 but always rang up as $1.19. I expressed my displeasure loudly. And then bought two cans of the Fire-Roasted Tomatoes with Green Chiles, because although I was extremely annoyed, I was interested in trying these out for salsa.

I also bought the rest of the ingredients I will need to make scones. I’ll make them in the next couple of days.

Ryan and I went to the movies today. We saw Cursed, which is the new movie starring pretty much everyone who’s ever been on the WB network. Seriously, there were actors from Smallville, Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, and probably some other shows. No one from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although the high school in the movie was also used in the show- it’s kind of like an actor. Portia de Rossi from Arrested Development was in it, as was Judy Greer (who guest-stars on AD as Kitty), and I thought for a few minutes that the geeky younger brother was Michael Cera (he plays George Michael Bluth). I think they should have cast him instead.

It was actually a lot of fun. Not a great movie, certainly. And even with CG, werewolfery on film hasn’t advanced a lot since… well, at least Buffy and Angel, which is really my only exposure to werewolves. And Underworld, I guess. Ryan will say since An American Werewolf in London, but I haven’t seen that. If you go see Cursed in the right frame of mind, it’s fun. Then again, Ryan and I had a great time seeing the incredible suckfest that was Alone in the Dark. At least we were entertained by badness. It’s better than being bored stiff- I’m looking at you, Resident Evil.

Ryan’s reviews for They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara! Read them!
Cursed
Alone in the Dark