sarea: (cheesecake!)
I finished Catching Fire. Spoilers... )

Last night's fried chicken dinner at Spring Hill was very good. Fried chicken is one of my favorite foods. There was SO MUCH chicken. The sides were rather skimpy, but there was a pile of chicken, even more than it appeared initially. Since the kids only had 1 piece each and there's only so much my mom, K., and I can eat, we had lots of leftover chicken. Since reheating fried chicken never works out well, I'll probably use my share of the leftovers to make some other chicken dish. The batter on the chicken was tasty and super crispy, my favorite. Sides were: mashed potatoes with gravy, macaroni & cheese (made with Beecher's, one of my favorite cheddars), jalapeno cornbread with honey butter, crispy oven-baked broccoli, and lightly seasoned spears of cucumber. We thought WE were hardcore because we got the dinner with basically just 3 adults eating (D. ordered a Caesar salad and basically ate that plus some sides), and behind us was a table of 6 adults who got the same thing (the dinner is supposed to serve 4). But then the table next to us put us to shame... 3 adults and a little girl, and not only did they get the fried chicken dinner they also ordered a side of Spring Hill's Monday spaghetti entree (which is not small) as well as two huge meatballs. I have photos, but they're on my SD card at home. D'oh.

Not sure if anyone remembers this, but back in November I was rear ended. Over the next 3 months I went to physical and massage therapy, then I had to wait and wait and wait for them to gather all the expenses and what not to make me an offer of settlement. At long last, after some back and forth, I think the whole thing is going to be settled, which is one less thing for me to worry about, so yay.

K.'s birthday is coming up and it's a big one, so I am thinking of being a good cousin and making her a vegan chocolate cake since she's off dairy right now. I can't imagine a vegan cake actually being any good, but if you know of a recipe for a good one, let me know please.

Annyong!

Dec. 1st, 2008 04:12 pm
sarea: (amanda corndog)
It's been two weeks since I made any kind of 'real' post, so here we go!

First, I've been making a lot of food. I haven't even posted it all yet. My food blog has the skinny. One thing I did want to share here, though, which is that this cake:



... was tossed in the garbage. :( It was my Daring Bakers challenge for November, and too incredibly sweet for, well, anyone. It's a shame too, because it came out well otherwise. The browned butter in the frosting really made for an amazing flavor. I knew when I first read the recipe that it had way too much sugar in it and I probably wouldn't like it (and this from someone who definitely has a sweet tooth!). I hesitated to lessen the amount of sugar, however, because that affects the liquid content and other factors of the cake, and I'm not yet comfortable enough with making cakes that I thought I could change amounts and still have it come out well. I suppose I might as well have, since it's going uneaten either way.

I had a very quiet Thanksgiving. It's just not the same when you live hundreds of miles from family and close friends. My cousin and I went to have hot pot, which was nice and comforting in its own way.

It's a little over two weeks until my winter vacation starts, thank God. I'm going to be in LA for 3 weeks. I'm so burned out, I can't wait to get out of here. All I need to do is get Talis to the vet after the 6th for a health certificate, and I'm set for everything else. I think. Speaking of Talis ... a few weeks ago I had a scare because I felt a little bump on his back by his tail. I took him to the vet and she said that she wasn't concerned because a) he's eating and behaving normally; b) the bump was really small; and c) it's common for dogs to start growing warts and skin imperfections as they get older. However, I needed to keep an eye on it. I think it's grown bigger. :( Not by much, but still, bigger is not good. Here's hoping it's just some kind of cyst or something.

I just got The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, but I wasn't allowed to read it until a few days ago (for reasons I will disclose later -- mysterious, ain't I?), so last night I settled into bed with it and it made me so happy, even though my stomach was growling after reading a few recipes. I just love the way it's written. It makes me want to take a trip to San Francisco just to eat there. I hope I get to, at least once in my life!

Also I wanted to thank [livejournal.com profile] jade_okelani for her birthday gift. See, Jade believes in the "birthday month," in which the month of your birthday is your whole birthday month. I said that no, one's birthday should only really be celebrated for the actual day of birth, not the whole month. However, she's converted me. Her gift was a month's worth of little notes and/or homemade jewelry, which I opened one per day, and they always brought a smile to my face. At the end of the 30 days (why couldn't I have been born in a month with 31 days? Oh well, at least I'm not a poor February baby), the 'real' present was revealed, which was this awesome scrapbooked picture frame, which not only has many pictures of us on various escapades, but also has little mementos of things that we collected while on those escapades. It is awesome. Yesterday was the last day of my "birth month" so now it's over and I'm sad. Still, I got to enjoy my entire "birthday month" so thank you Jade!

I've started to watch True Blood at the behest of a friend. All I have to say is, people who like the show but diss Twilight are total hypocrites. (If that's you, sorry, but it's true.) They are practically the same thing other than the locations and the ages of the protagonists. I don't hate either, but am not enamored of either. TB's been fairly entertaining so far, but far below the bar HBO has set for their many excellent TV shows. And the vampire lore so far doesn't hold a candle to the Buffy/Angel verses.
sarea: (borscht)
Well, I finally finished the borscht. And while I was making it, I realized that it is definitely [livejournal.com profile] jade_okelani's kryptonite. She would hate it. :)))) First of all, it has beets, which I don't think she's a big fan of. But that's the least of it. There's also the onion. But she's used to having to deal with that. Not sure if she's a big fan of cabbage, which there's 2 cups of. But then comes the red wine vinegar. And last, but not least, the 3/4 cup of fresh DILL. Dun dun duuuuuun!! In fact, it was way too much dill, even for me. If I ever make it again I'm putting 1/4 cup, if even that, since I'd still probably have to buy it in a bunch and it's just not worth it.

Here's the pic. )

I also made Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake! Well, half of one. Since it's just for me and I'm going to have to eat it all, even that's probably too much. As you can see from the pic I still have a lot to work on with regard to my cake making skills (aesthetically in particular), but flavor wise it's fabulous. Even though it looks like a plain vanilla cake it's actually lemon, with lime-flavored buttercream and tayberry jam (because those are the things I had on hand, but if I ever made this for other people I'd follow the recipe exactly).

Here's the pic. )

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