I’ve been running XP in the classic (old) UI so I wasn’t sure how well I’d get along with the latest Windows UI but it all seems to have a nice logical flow so far. I’m fairly impressed with the whole experience. Now if only Windows had the equivalent of Spaces on MacOSX.

On the cake front I tried to make Cranberry Obsession Snow Cake. It’s a cake I wanted to try making last year but the blood clot got in my way, and then cranberries weren’t in the store. So finally I’ve done it and it isn’t as ugly as most of my cakes are. I think it’s ugly on the inside, or certainly not as pretty as the picture. How is it? I don’t know yet. It felt like a serious effort to make so it will have to really blow me away to make me want to make it again. It’s almost time to take it out of the fridge so the co-workers can try it out though.

Now it’s time to eat!

My first thought was to check the oven. It goes down as low as 80 degrees F (great for letting dough rise). The oven doesn’t have every 5 degree interval on it, instead having every common temperature. Unfortunately getting yogurt cultures to do their thing didn’t make the cut. The oven jumps from 80 to 100 to 125.

The next idea was to use the induction cooktop. The cooktop can go way below normal settings you would get on a gas cooktop unless it is the really old kind that has the always-on pilot light.

In all of these cases you need the milk and cultures in the container with a lid on. I used a remote bbq thermometer in the pot to measure the temperature. First up was a quart of water in the tall sauce pan on the lowest setting. The remote thermometer showed it climbing well over 115 in no time.

Next I decided to try half a gallon in a large sauce pan. The climbing temperatures were slower but they also passed 115 without too much time passed.

I then decided I needed more surface area to dissipate heat so the big skillet was up next. Luckily I could just dump this water from one vessel to the next for each test. On this one the temperature dropped the most before the heat was once again applied so maybe it would work. Unfortunately this one had the fastest climbing temperature. Yes there was more area to eliminate heat, but there was also a lot more area to absorb heat!

I thought I was out of luck when I remembered the cast-iron wok. It has a small area base and a wide open top, perfect! I put two sheets of foil on top for my lid and after heating in a slow climb the temperature held steady at 114 degrees F. Figuring there must be a way to make it work I reconfigured the foil into a a very crude cone with an opening in the top. After some more tweaking I got it to stay steady at 107 degrees F for 45 minutes!

So, can I make yogurt? Probably. I think that it would have an iron flavor to it by the time the batch was done though. Also there’s a significant setup time needed for that foil cone to see if it is just right. It’s probably better off to get a yogurt maker.

Other things to try:

• We have a portable induction cooktop that might be able to go lower, but probably not.
• Using a mason jar in a water bath. An uncovered pot might be able to keep the temperature low enough.

Being that this was my first time making the krispee treats I got the recipe from the rice krispee website. I melted the butter and dumped in the marshmallows to do their thing and after a few minutes they weren’t doing much. So I started stiring with a spatula and scraping the bottom because some of the marshmallows had caramelized. After a few more minutes I got it into a soupy pink mix that looked like something more akin to a horror movie special effect. I removed it from the heat and dumped in the 6 cups of rice puffs and quickly discovered that I should have used a bigger pot. The first few stirs dumped cereal on the counter but I was careful with the rest and managed to mix it up and get everything coated. Nothing mentioned how stiff it was going to get and  getting it into the pan was a challenge, but I did it.

So then it went to work. Nicole didn’t want it around the house and I am not a fan of marshmallow so I wasn’t going to eat it. At work it sat for the first half of the day. The glance it got from people told them it was a dish of beans or something like that and they weren’t going to touch it. It wasn’t until someone cut out the first square that people realized it for what it was. Maybe I should have gone for green. Anyway, once people realized that they were a yummy treat they enjoyed them.

m&m’s Premiums – These come in five varities: Mint, Chocolate Almond, Triple Chocolate, Raspberry Chocolate, and Mocha. Mint, chocolate almond, and mocha are fairly standard. Raspberry chocolate is white chocolate, raspberry flavor, and an almond. Triple chocolate is a dark chocolate core, white chocolate middle layer, and a milk chocolate outer layer. The flavors on all of these is good and the look of the shell is speckled and almost metallic in the shine. The packaging is nice with a re-sealable bag inside. It all falls apart when you pop one in your mouth and bite down; there’s no crunch. The attractive shell you see is more like a paste that will jam between your teeth when you first bite down. I’m sure the confused expression on someone’s face when they first bite one of these and just have it squish between their teeth is great. I should try that out on some co-workers tomorrow.

We tried buffalo burgers recently and I was surprised at the difference between it and beef. The texture in handling it feels sort of clean and loose but it all holds together well. In cooking it seemed to want to brown faster than beef and in spite of it having less fat there is still plenty and it’s wasn’t dry. Flavor wise it didn’t have a gamey flavor but it was different. Smell wise it wasn’t too strong to me but I think GRover was about ready to climb down my throat to get some.

Chicken rub

Another day as I was trying to figure out how I wanted to make some chicken, I ended up with the following spice rub:

• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1tsp corriander
• 1/4 tsp cayenne

I flattened out the chicken, applied the rub to both sides and cooked for a few minutes on each side. Mmmm! Next time maybe a little lighter on the cayenne though.

Haagen Dazs chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

I had never had this version and decided it was time to try it. The vanilla ice cream part of it is I think the strongest vanilla I’ve ever had and I’d be happy with just that. The cookie dough part tasted to me more like real cookie dough than the Ben & Jerry’s variety. This is now my new favorite version of this flavor.

Sunday we went to Castroville for the artichoke festival. The number of restored and modified cars on display was much larger this year. The We had some fried artichokes and I had an artichoke and carne asada taco (very good). There was a sign for artichoke cupcakes but unfortunately they were sold out. Oh well, that’s what we get for going two hours before closing. The vegetable sculptures weren’t as impressive or numerous this year except for the snake in a tree that was the first one you ssee when entering the hall. Having done almost all we went to do, it was time to buy a couple cases of artichokes and go. The nice thing about going late on Sunday is that they don’t want to haul all those artichokes away so by the time we were there a case of 18 jumbo artichokes was going for $16.

On the way back to the car I rested the artichokes down on top of a fire hydrant while we watched some dancers inside the festival area. Then I picked up the cases and turned to continue with a jolt of pain as I slammed my shin into the fire hydrant valve. About a block later I stopped and checked my shin and found it was already swollen quite a bit. Nicole got the car and came back for me and the future food. When I got home I rested it andiced it on and off for about 45 minutes which greatly reduced the swelling and today the pain and swelling is very minor, yay!

We can’t just use natural cocoa and expect the same result because dutch-processed cocoa is pH neutral. We could try a work-around by adding baking powder to natural cocoa but that probably won’t come out the same. When did it become so hard to get dutch-processed cocoa? We purchased some without difficulty a few years ago for the first death by chocolate trials. My theory is that since natural cocoa retains the anti-oxidants in chocolate while dutch-processed cocoa destroys them, people are demanding their healthier cocoa and not considering the desserts! I could order it on-line, but it’s not something I thought I would have to order on-line or be able to get on short notice in this area.

When we walked in they handed us each $10 in Woodstock dollars and reminded us to be patient since everything is still new. We used the W-bucks to buy our pizza and drinks. The fountain drinks weren’t working yet so we got juice boxes.

It was very busy and even with a new crew our pizza came out in a timely manner and it was good!  The seating is good, the outdoor seats have heat lamps, inside there are I think 4 high-def screens, 3 or 4 arcade games, and music that is a little too loud when you’re trying to order.

For the anti-fitness, I finally found my cinnamon roll recipe and have put it on-line so I won’t lose it again.  So now those of you who like them won’t have to wait for me to get around to making more.

I made a  dessert appetizer composed of graham cracker, semi-sweet chocolate, and boysenberry butter. It ended up being a lot less sweet than I thought it would be which was a good thing since I was worried about it being too sweet. To make it I started melting chocolate chips while I got to work on the graham cracker pieces. I cut the graham crackers into quarters since ther perforations weren’t deep enough to break evenly by hand. I put the chocolate on one end of the graham cracker sticks in an attempt at a very shallow bowl and to leave an easy way to hold it without getting chocolate fingers. The best application I came up with was to use an espresso spoon to blob the right amount on and then do a swirl with the bowl in the center to spread most of the chocolate to the outside. The boysenberry butter was about 6 or 7 tablespoons of salted butter softened with boysenberry syrup added until it tasted “right”. I think that was about two tablespoons. The butter was then applied with another espresso spoon.

The final if the show I thought was great! I liked the live reveal in Chicago (where season 4 is filming right now). I liked the sous chefs they were provided and how they were delivered. It seemed to give a better look at the preparation and cooking than previous finals in Top Chef. I liked the head-to-head matchup of the food. I liked having many guest judges for the meal, and I liked the outcome! Going into it I thought Casey had an edge with her flavors as long as she didn’t panic, and Dale would be a contender if he stayed away from dough (altitude) and spicy (smoking has killed his hot receptors). I figured Hung would be excellent and finally able to bring his flavors which is exactly what happened.

So how is it? It’s very dense which makes it easy to slice and very filling. The texture is smooth, but the flavor of the cake itself is somewhat bland without the glaze. The glaze tastes a lot like a maple bar frosting. When eaten all together it’s a good combination, but probably not one I’ll be randomly wishing I had when I want cake.

I cooled the “cake” some and could see that the fluidity was not getting any better so I decided to turn it out to see just how bad it was. After rinsing the molten sugar goo (nicely insulated in the middle) off my finger before it could burn I could see there was probably about 1/3 uncooked. The cooked part was fairly tasty though and it might work well in ramikens or added to something else; Nicole suggested crumbs on ice cream.

Now the only question is: Will I try again before Top Chef tonight?

Is there an iron bottomed wok that is flat on the outside but curved on the inside?

Voted most deadly of the chocolate dishes last night was Black bottom chocolate pie prepared by Shelley. Second was the chocolate mousse brought by Ian.

My arms feel their arm workout from mixing the extremely thick cookie dough. That’s the thickest cookie dough I’ve every worked with.

I ran into a hitch making the Chantico death cake, it turns out Starbucks hasn’t sold Chantico in over a year. Nicole told me that she thought they made it with half-and-half so we got some of that and then I looked it up and found a few recipes for similar chocolate drinks. They used whole milk or evaporated wilk with heavy cream. I decided to go for the half-and half since it’s what I had on short notice and it came out a little thicker than would be drinkable, but not quite as thick as pudding. I decided to go for it anyway. I don’t think it really enhanced the cake portion but the “Chantico” frosting was really potent. I can imagine that with the real thing it would have been impressive but unfortunately this can’t really be duplicated anymore.

I was also able to repair almost all the damage to the irrigation system so most of the plants should be getting water again. There is still more work beyond the repairs, mainly in setting up drip rings for the trees and drip lines for the bamboo so they start getting enough water. After that I can evaluate whether I need to split the system for different watering needs.

I also chose the two “deadly” chocolate recipes I’m going to make for Mortal Chocolate. The Chantico Death Cake and Carol’s Chocolate Death Cookies.

Date: Sunday, April 1, the day before Passover starts
Time: 6:30PM

Making something is not a requirement for attending, but if you feel inclined, I would like for people to make a recipe found here and bring it for all to judge its deadliness. Previous winners have the round they won next to them and items italicized are not deadly enough. If you see a recipe you would like to make, please let me know so I can put your name next to it to help avoid duplicates.

This time I’d like all recipes there by 7PM to start the tasting. Last time late entries didn’t get tasted as much since people were chocolated out.

Bowl 1
• 4 bay leaves
• 6 cloves
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp asafoetida

Bowl 2
• 1 tsp corriander
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp ginger powder
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp cashew butter
• 5 tbsp + 2 tsp water

Bowl 3
• 2 tbsp packed of fresh chopped cilantro
• 3/8 tsp cayenne

Other ingredients
• 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken cubed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp tumeric

Steps
1. Heat oil in a large pan on medium and fry contents of bowl 1 for 1 minute
2. Add chicken and tumeric and stir fry for 5 minutes
3. Add a spoonful from bowl 2 and stir until the liquid is absorbed (about 2 minutes). Repeat about 5 times until bowl 2 is empty.
4. Add the contents of bowl 3 and stir fry for another 2 to 3 minutes.

Later this week I’ll make my own chicken broth to have around for occasions like this.

This past week I had my own cheffy feeling. I needed to do something with the chicken I was going to put with the Vietnamese garlic & ginger fried rice. I started smelling the spices, which is something that I couldn’t really do before allergy treatments, and picked corriander. That wasn’t enough so I kept going and decided on garam masala. I seasoned the chicken pieces with both spices and cooked them in a pan with some piccante olive oil which gave it a spicy after-taste. Yum!

Lay’s Sensations Sweet Chili & Sour Cream – I think it only was on the market for two months but it instantly jumped to the top of my potato chip list. Kettle cooked with great flavor!

Frito-Lay says that the whole Sensations line of chips wasn’t selling well on a national level but they passed my comments on so I get to home for a resurgence some day.

Hershey’s Kisses Dulce de Leche – White chocolate kisses with dulce de leche in them. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Hershey says that they were a limited edition item but that they are coming back but they don’t know when yet.

Black Cherry Vanilla Coke – I never liked the Cherry Coke and the Vanilla Coke was only good ice cold (not real vanilla). Black Cherry Vanilla Coke has real vanilla and tastes good from ice cold to room temperature.

Coke says that they still make it but that it’s up to the local bottler to produce for our region. They also suggested that I check other stores and gave me the number of the bottler to call, but I haven’t called them yet.

We arrived Wednesday night and had tri-tip and potato kugel. After 4 helpings of kugel and two of the tri-tip, salad, and bread I was very full. Or yeah, we had molten chocolate cake for dessert.

Thursday I went with my dad to get the lobsters. The smallest one was 3.5 pounds that Nicole and my mom split. Tami’s was 4.5 pounds, mine was 5.5, and my dad’s was 5.7. They were big enough that we had to use channel locks at times as a cracker. I was sooo full. But then the chocolate mousse had to come out for dessert. Good thing we ate early because I needed digestion time before we went to sleep.

Friday is for the full turkey dinner. I had some eggs for breakfast and some cinnamon-bites from Cinnabon as an afternoon snack. Then for dinner was the turkey wing, cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread, more potato kugel (2 servings), and two helpings of mashed potatoes.

Saturday we returned and this morning I weighed in at 200.2! I attribute it to the water I was constantly drinking. Yay!

The other recent visit was at 515 Kitchen and Cocktails at 515 Cedar in downtown Santa Cruz. It was a comfortable gathering space with the only drawback being that people entering don’t know where to go. I think a Space Mountain like light tunnel leading them up the stairs would be great. I ate a lamb, feta, and something else pizza like thing. I thought it was great but bordering on too much feta at times.

The rice was good and gives you some idea what it will taste like when I don’t make mistakes next time. The chicken and green beans didn’t have an appealing smell to me while cooking but tasted good. I know it’s not just because I was starving because Nicole got home and enjoyed it too.

Since I’ve started a more sensible eating plan I’ve been losing some weight I should lose. This morning I was finally below 210. My plan? I eat when I’m hungry, not when I’m just ‘not full’. I don’t eat until I’m full, just comfortable. If I’m unsure I wait a little and eat more if I need to. So really, it’s just me paying attention to my body and not stuffing food into it.

Now I just have to work on the weeds tomorrow and do the cleaning I was supposed to do this week before Nicole gets home.

How White and Nerdy Are You?

I only have a few pictures of the desserts because I got too busy.

brought the Dr. Delicious cake and it was by far the best looking chocolate there. Suitable for service in a restaurant easily. It was delicious but it wasn’t very deadly

Joel and brought chocolate mousse made with 72% cocoa. Rich and addictive, but also not too deadly. Unfortunately, Nicole threw the rest away when she had all she wanted instead of saving it for me.

brought mummified life-after-death truffles, mummified in white chocolate. He reported that it was a big hassle to do the mummification and looking at it, I would agree. The results were really good though and several people chose these as deadliest.

made Igor bars from The Dork Tower. They weren’t deadly at all but they were good and creative and much loved by some.

Dan made cereal bars which were like Cocoa Pebbles crispy treats with a layer of fudge on top. Dan himself considered these the 4th deadliest.

Shelley made the Hershey Syrup cake with glossy fosting and this got a number of votes for being the deadliest and was declared the ideal chocolate cake by some.

I made three recipes. I was just going to make two but since I didn’t know who was coming or bringing anything I feared lack of variety. Unfortunately the ones I made didn’t make it to the tasting table until 30-60 minutes after everyone was already tasting so people were already at chocolate saturation and they were only tried by one or two.

I made a brownie brandy trifle with the help of Julie. I couldn’t find instant mousse so Julie made chocolate fudge pudding for it. It was well liked but it wasn’t deadly. Looking at the other trifle recipes after this one, I don’t believe any will every be deadly.

I made a simple chocolate pie. It was very good even though I didn’t quite mix it up correctly. For Nicole it surpassed the Hershey cake as her favorite which means it didn’t really go overboard. It went really fast at work.

Finally I made a recipe that claimed to be deadlier than death by chocolate and tasting the results I personally have to put this one first one the list of deadliest so far even though I overcooked the base a little so it didn’t stick together or the top. The look of shock people get when they pop it into their mouth often followed by an exclamation show its potency. Oh yeah, I messed up the top too since I was ina hurry and used unsweetened chocolate instead of semi-sweet. But I realized my mistake and added some sugar to the right level before it was too late.

Because of the staggered introduction I have to list three recipes that will come back for the final rounds…
Hershey Syrup cake with glossy fosting
mummified life-after-death truffles
deadlier than death by chocolate

Stay tuned for Mortal Chocolate II in a few months.

MORTAL CHOCOLATE!

MORTAL CHOCOLATE!

Thanks mo!

So I got some more fujis because they were better looking and I had to give them another chance. Then I spotted some golden delicious that were actually golden. Usually they are a pale yellow or a light green and are pretty disappointing. Never have I seen such an attractive golden color on them. I got some and they are indeed good! Will they be this way again? Probably not for another 20 years or so.

Next time there aren’t good apples I’ll try the blueberries.

I think the fancy electronic thermometer got left at the BBQ so we have to go check lost and found or buy a new one or both.

Spray candy is liquid candy in a spray pump. The beauty is that you feel like you just had candy and it’s such a small ammount that it’s effectively zero calories.

Anyway, I tried them in the parking structure and they held together well enough and thought it would be good for the dogs. We went home and took the dogs out side and blew some bubbles. They were a little nervous at first but after some encouragement they started to go after them. After they got a taste of them they wanted more and then it was just fun watching them leap all over the place trying to get the yummy bubbles! The only problem was the wind making things difficult. Also the bubbles don’t last nearly as long as regular bubbles, but long enough for playing with dogs!

Souble Chocolate. This is milk chocolate with a thin layer of dark chocolate
on the bottom. This ends up merging to make a pretty good flavor
of chocolate. Check this one out.

Anyway, when it did arrive it was great! It’s a fried chicken but without breading and there’s some other flavor in the oil too. Anyway, if you’re at Star of Siam in Soquel then youshould check it out.

So I found this recipe for a brisket. However I skipped the next day park and I used the cooking time and temperature from another book so 300 for 3 hours.

Nicole made potatoes with italian spices.

I made charoset with my mom’s recipe.

And for dessert, I made matzah brickle. That same recipe is all over the net so it makes it easy to find should you use it.

Oh yeah, I didn’t know what I was doing but I ground up some horseraddish and added some lemon juice. It turns out I’m supposed to add vinegar and probably more than I did of the lemon juice. My dad suggests about 1 cup per pound.

Julie & Fish came over to join in the meal and they brought strawberries and cream. Good meal!