Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Food
Fettuccini and clams
This recipe is not that tough. How do so many restaurants manage ruin it?
Easy: canned clams. If you don’t have access to fresh clams, keep your distance from this recipe.
Results of the Great 2006 Scone-Off
Our contestants: Beth and Kate. Click links to get the recipes.
Procedure: With meticulous care, I mixed my dried cranberries and cherries in one bowl so that each recipe would have identical fruit. I set everything up so that I could combine my wet and dry ingredients with something approximating simultaneity, in order to bake them all together. Unfortunately, I forgot to add the butter in Beth’s recipe.
It’s a SCONE OFF!
First Beth posted her scone recipe . . .
Then Kate posted hers . . .
Then Lyvvie dared me to bake ’em both and let ’em battle it out in my mouth, upping the ante with the statement,
please tell me if you use real butter…I’m in the mood for some food porn.
And how could I deny anyone with eyes like hers?
So: this Saturday, it’s a Scone Off. My son and my wife will judge. I’ll blog on the results, and I will try to make it as pornographic as possible. Which means I’ll have to plan for leftover butter.
Don’t forget the Barbarous Craft contest, folks. I know you all have stories to share.
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As for Brownie appearing on Colbert: what. an. idiot. Could he have looked any worse?
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Lyn Cash has posted a great joke . . . and oh boy do I ever dig that photo.
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Lilith has links to Brokeback spoofs . . . including Brokeback of the Dead. Bub, I don’t know how to quit you!
D.
Bits and pieces
Not sure why, but I’m feeling sapped this evening. The muse wants me to read, not write, and I’d be a fool to ignore her.
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We watched movies this weekend. We watch so few movies that we would lose money on Net Flix, that’s how video-starved we are around here. Here’s the rundown:
David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence: four thumbs up. This one is worth a blog entry of its own, particularly as the subject matter dovetails well with our discussion of the violence in V for Vendetta.
Kronk’s New Groove, Disney’s sequel to The Emperor’s New Groove. Jake watched this by himself. Afterwards, he came upstairs and announced that it sucks balls, whereupon I corrected him, saying that the proper phrase was, “it sucks monkey balls,” preferably using a colorful adjective to modify ‘monkey.’ This sparked an argument as to whether ‘monkey’ was strictly necessary. I countered with the intrinsic funniness of words containing ‘k’ sounds (as I learned in my Comedy Writing Secrets book), so Karen said, “Okay, then, ‘it sucks toucan balls.'” This led to a discussion of whether toucans have balls, and whether the birds in my novel have external genitalia. (No. The males’ penises evert during intercourse, snake-fashion.) Jake stuck to his guns and insisted that the movie only sucked balls. End of argument.
No word as to why it sucked balls.
Good Night, and Good Luck: again, this one is worth a post of its own. In brief: while this film choked me up several times, it is deeply flawed. I’ll get into that some other time. We forced Jake to watch most of it, even though “It’s in black and white!” Karen countered with, “Didn’t you know that in the past, everything was in black and white?” and I added, “Yes, color is a relatively recent invention of the human mind,” thereby proving that you don’t need marijuana to talk like a stoner.
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Maureen recently recommended Chez Piggy’s Caramel Pecan Tart. I made it yesterday, and I must say, Maureen, you know your pecans. Also, welcome to WordPress. How does it feel to say no to the dark side?
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One last note on the pecan tart recipe. As written, the recipe neglects to tell you to add the sugar to the flour when you make the crust. It’s an obvious error, but if you’re the kind of person who follows recipes to the letter, you’ll be left with an icky, tasteless crust.
I added about a half teaspoon of salt to the crust, by the way, and another half teaspoon of salt to the nut mixture. It didn’t seem right to omit the salt. Since I have never tried this one without the salt, I can’t say whether I helped it or hurt it.
Time to work on the morning post!
D.
The Friday morning spew
Comments to my Pad Thai post jogged a few memories.
Alton Brown mangling the recipe reminded me of a horror Karen and I witnessed during my Stanford days. (more…)
Welcome to my Pad
Want a good laugh? Read Alton Brown’s Pad Thai recipe. I’m not sure what upsets me more: the fact that seven of the ingredients are unnecessary (and four of these are hard to find), or the fact that if you followed the recipe to a tee, you would have, I don’t know, Pad Alton maybe, but not Pad Thai. Salted cabbage . . . tofu marinated with five spice powder . . . it’s enough to make a grown man cry.
I’ve been thinking about writing this post ever since my bit on branding. In that post, I forgot to mention one of my favorite brand name products, Annie Chun’s Classic Pad Thai. In this little box, you’ll find one packet of rice noodles and one packet of sauce. You’ll need to supply the cooking oil, tofu, meat-of-choice, eggs, bean sprouts, green onions, lime wedges, peanuts, and cilantro. Why bother buying it, then? Because Annie gets the sauce just right — not only the flavor, but also the volume.
I’m a Tom Kha kinda Gai
It’s Pavlovian. When I feel crappy, you get recipes.
Call it fatigue; call it failure of imagination. Today, I intended to write a Smart Bitches Day post on the shapeshifting emotion of love and the slit-lamp light most romances hold to love. Based on my extensive reading of the genre, you understand. I have all kinds of neat insights to share.
Instead, I’m sharing soup.
Branding
Munching on Pepperidge Farm cookies this evening whilst drinking an ultra dry martini made from Hendrick’s gin*, it occurred to me it would be fun to write a post on branding. Specifically, which brands do we as a family deeply care about?
Put another candle on the birthday cake
Karen had a birthday last week, but who has time to make cake during the work week?
It seems appropriate for people our age to sing things that none of you thirty-and-under-somethings would understand. Who recognizes this number?
Put another candle on my birthday cake
We’re gonna bake, a birthday cake
Put another candle on my birthday cake
I’m another year old today!
That’s from Sheriff John, and you can hear him sing it, too. Unfortunately, Karen didn’t grow up in L.A., so she doesn’t know what the f*ck I’m talking about. Or singing about. But she understands chocolate cake, all right.
The inscription is not Not Dead Yeti, which makes no sense at all, but Not Dead Yet!, which any Python fan should recognize. The recipe is from this month’s Cook’s Illustrated (March/April ’06), and while labor intensive, produces damned fine results. I cut the recipe in half since, as it is, we’re going to have leftovers.
Note to people with kids: the frosting calls for 100% semisweet chocolate. Knowing my son, I used half semisweet chocolate and half sweet German chocolate, and he still considered the result too bitter.
By the way, in case any of you have forgotten, this is what I want on my next birthday cake:
(not work safe)