You come at the king, you best not miss.
Apr. 11th, 2012 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
I FIXED MY WATER HEATER! Yay. I found the breaker panel (it was in the garage) and it wasn't super well labeled so it took me two attempts, but I found the right ones for the water heater. The switch wasn't actually in the "off" position, so I was a little afraid that that wasn't the answer, but as soon as I flipped it back and forth, I saw the little light on the heater's control panel go on. There was a small moment of panic when, checking it again after 15 minutes to make sure it was still on, it was instead giving one blink, meaning that there was a start-up failure. So I flipped the breaker back and forth again but had to run off to dinner with slitherhither so couldn't wait around to see if it had really taken the second time. When I got home, it was blinking. I finally had to pull out the owner's manual and figure out that I actually needed to reset it (consisting of changing from one mode to another). And after that it was all good! I woke this morning and was able to take a hot shower, yay!
So dinner last night was at Lark and had a blast with B. Good convo, good food, it's nice to be an adult. I'd been to Lark once before and it was good, but last night was better than my first experience.
First Course
B: Warm asparagus with watercress, goat cheese and truffle vinaigrette
Me: Burrata, artichoke hearts, arugula, vinaigrette
Both of these were excellent, such good flavors. I haven't liked burrata that much the first couple of times I had it, but it was really good last night. I might've liked B.'s a little more.
Second Course
Both: Pan fried trout with bacon, spinach and hazlenut brown butter sauce
Zero regret that we both got the same entree, it was so good. Perfectly crispy and served still piping hot. Love that. Also came with some fingerling potatoes.
Third Course
B: Rhubarb crisp with buttermilk ice cream
Me: Pineapple tarte tatin with rum caramel and vanilla bean ice cream
I actually wanted the crisp but went with our server's suggestion of the tarte tatin. I'm glad I did because I ended up liking it a lot. It was a little too sweet by the end, but the bitterness of the decaf coffee helped cut that a bit.
Lunatix Loop, the Matt Leacock game I bought from that guy in the UK, arrived the other day. Yay! Sadly I didn't do a lot of research on it beforehand, and it turns out that it's a 4-player game. >< BUT the cool thing is that our little group will have one more player come June... because that is whenjade_okelani is visiting! Eeeeeeee! She's purchased her tickets and everything. I'm trying to plan out our itinerary -- because I'm like that -- and there's just NOT ENOUGH TIME to do everything. She's only going to be here 7 days, and there are a number of things we've planned that are immovable (such as seeing American Idiot, which is going to be here during that time! Actually that helped us narrow the dates), and so very many things we'd like to do. So that's exciting.
Nearly forgot. I wanted to share my favorite buttermilk biscuits recipe with you guys. I know, I know, everyone has their own favorite recipe for buttermilk biscuits, but I swear this is the best!
Cook's Illustrated's "Mile-High Biscuits"
I think the name is a bit of a misnomer, actually. The biscuits aren't really that tall; they're just normal biscuit size. However, they are easy, fluffy, and fun to make! Recipe is here -- it's an older post so the photographs are different from what I'm sharing here, as I just made them again and took new photos.
First, you grease a cake pan or cast-iron pan. Then you mix up the batter -- and yes, these are more like batter than dough. Rather than taking the time to roll and cut, you drop 1/4-cupfuls of batter into a pile of flour. Cover the batter with flour and shape into a round shape -- it will be super soft because you really just have flour-covered goo. Drop this into your pan. Repeat with the batter, lining the outside of the pan first then the center. You should end up with ~12 biscuits, unless you use too much batter for the first ones, as I did. >.> In the end you'll have something that looks like this:
Brush with butter, then bake for ~20 minutes. When that's done, you'll have:
Let it rest in the pan for a bit, then turn it out onto a wire rack. From this angle you can see the buttery, crusty separation between the biscuits so you can easily pull them apart from one another.
Another angle:
Then you pull them apart and eat them when they're still hot/warm. They're good for mopping up gravy or spreading with butter and dipping in maple syrup on the side.
And finally -- Game of Thrones renewed for season 3! Not that there was really any doubt. As expected they're going to split ASoS into two seasons.grrm has already said which episode he's going to write in S3. And he still thinks he can finish the book series before the the TV show catches up with the current published text? HA. The producers also confirm that, as I theorized, they're planning to deal with AFFC and ADWD as "one" text, since they deal with parallel events.
slitherhither so couldn't wait around to see if it had really taken the second time. When I got home, it was blinking. I finally had to pull out the owner's manual and figure out that I actually needed to reset it (consisting of changing from one mode to another). And after that it was all good! I woke this morning and was able to take a hot shower, yay!So dinner last night was at Lark and had a blast with B. Good convo, good food, it's nice to be an adult. I'd been to Lark once before and it was good, but last night was better than my first experience.
First Course
B: Warm asparagus with watercress, goat cheese and truffle vinaigrette
Me: Burrata, artichoke hearts, arugula, vinaigrette
Both of these were excellent, such good flavors. I haven't liked burrata that much the first couple of times I had it, but it was really good last night. I might've liked B.'s a little more.
Second Course
Both: Pan fried trout with bacon, spinach and hazlenut brown butter sauce
Zero regret that we both got the same entree, it was so good. Perfectly crispy and served still piping hot. Love that. Also came with some fingerling potatoes.
Third Course
B: Rhubarb crisp with buttermilk ice cream
Me: Pineapple tarte tatin with rum caramel and vanilla bean ice cream
I actually wanted the crisp but went with our server's suggestion of the tarte tatin. I'm glad I did because I ended up liking it a lot. It was a little too sweet by the end, but the bitterness of the decaf coffee helped cut that a bit.
Lunatix Loop, the Matt Leacock game I bought from that guy in the UK, arrived the other day. Yay! Sadly I didn't do a lot of research on it beforehand, and it turns out that it's a 4-player game. >< BUT the cool thing is that our little group will have one more player come June... because that is when
jade_okelani is visiting! Eeeeeeee! She's purchased her tickets and everything. I'm trying to plan out our itinerary -- because I'm like that -- and there's just NOT ENOUGH TIME to do everything. She's only going to be here 7 days, and there are a number of things we've planned that are immovable (such as seeing American Idiot, which is going to be here during that time! Actually that helped us narrow the dates), and so very many things we'd like to do. So that's exciting.Nearly forgot. I wanted to share my favorite buttermilk biscuits recipe with you guys. I know, I know, everyone has their own favorite recipe for buttermilk biscuits, but I swear this is the best!
Cook's Illustrated's "Mile-High Biscuits"
I think the name is a bit of a misnomer, actually. The biscuits aren't really that tall; they're just normal biscuit size. However, they are easy, fluffy, and fun to make! Recipe is here -- it's an older post so the photographs are different from what I'm sharing here, as I just made them again and took new photos.
First, you grease a cake pan or cast-iron pan. Then you mix up the batter -- and yes, these are more like batter than dough. Rather than taking the time to roll and cut, you drop 1/4-cupfuls of batter into a pile of flour. Cover the batter with flour and shape into a round shape -- it will be super soft because you really just have flour-covered goo. Drop this into your pan. Repeat with the batter, lining the outside of the pan first then the center. You should end up with ~12 biscuits, unless you use too much batter for the first ones, as I did. >.> In the end you'll have something that looks like this:
Brush with butter, then bake for ~20 minutes. When that's done, you'll have:
Let it rest in the pan for a bit, then turn it out onto a wire rack. From this angle you can see the buttery, crusty separation between the biscuits so you can easily pull them apart from one another.
Another angle:
Then you pull them apart and eat them when they're still hot/warm. They're good for mopping up gravy or spreading with butter and dipping in maple syrup on the side.
And finally -- Game of Thrones renewed for season 3! Not that there was really any doubt. As expected they're going to split ASoS into two seasons.
grrm has already said which episode he's going to write in S3. And he still thinks he can finish the book series before the the TV show catches up with the current published text? HA. The producers also confirm that, as I theorized, they're planning to deal with AFFC and ADWD as "one" text, since they deal with parallel events.
