Success: Chai Coffee Cake

Saturday, October 31, 2009

I was feeling sorta down today; the skies were gray and rainy, I had run out of eggs/milk/bread 4 days ago, etc. So I picked up the ingredients for Chai Coffee Cake on Tartelette's Blog. There is no better pick-me-up than sour cream cake batter, melted butter, and butter-sugar mixtures. Seriously.
The chai crumbles kinda look like hamburger meat, no?
...and then I made a ginormous mess in my miniscule kitchen.
This photo contains (literally) all of my counterspace, unless you include my dinette table and glass desk.

Autumn

Thursday, October 29, 2009

From my walk to the bus stop.

Delicious Flavor Combinations

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

This ginger-chocolate bar was so good it disappeared almost instantaneously.

The chocolate-ginger combination reminds me of some unique flavors I've been combining at Oh Yeah! Ice Cream here in Pittsburgh. They have tons of wild mix-ins, and here's some flavor combinations I've tried:

• Ground ginger in peach ice cream
• Baclava and lemon peel in sweet cream ice cream
• Chai spice in chocolate ice cream
• ...

I'm beginning to run out of good-funky combinations already. Any good ideas?

Found in TJMaxx: Blue Denmark Plateware

Monday, October 26, 2009

I added these Johnson Bros "Blue Denmark" plates to my small and growing collection of mismatched blue&white plates last year. I found them in TJMaxx/Marshall's in autumn 2008, but I bought two more yesterday. They're apparently back in stores.

Royal Denmark Half-Lace Plate vs. Johnson Bros Blue Denmark
I believe they're knock-offs of Royal Copenhagen plates (see comparison, above). Some other related blue/white Danish plateware:

Jealous

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Tie Dye Workshop with Shabd Simon-Alexander
Classes at Lena Corwin's studio in NYC make me consider giving up my cushy career as a grad student and moving to New York to live in a cardboard box...and take artsy-craftsy classes.
Sewing with Jenny Gordy
[Edit 10/28/09: The pattern for the Wiksten tulip skirt above can be found in Stitch 2008.]

Success: Pasta with Sausage and Mozzarella

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I've made this recipe enough times, there's now a BYOV Mozzarella & Sausage Pasta Recipe available, the way I like to make it!

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Pasta with Sausage and Mozzarella (and fresh tomatoes!) from the second time I made this dish.
A modified version of TheKitchn's Bocconcino and Sausage Pasta that rainmelon and I whipped together: 4 tomato-basil chicken sausages, olive oil, 1 medium-onion, 14.5oz can whole peeled tomato, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 1 large green pepper, 1/8tbsp ground chili, 1/8tbsp cinnamon, 1/2c mozzarella, 1/4c basil, and spaghetti.

Squirrel Hill Fail

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Spotted in Squirrel Hill a month or so ago...

Success: Basil Lemonade

Friday, October 16, 2009

This stuff is great. Great. rainmelon and I made half the basil-lemon simple syrup, then added lemon juice and ice water for this basil lemonade. It smells delicious, and any leftover syrup can be used to make other drinks.

Controller-Free Guitar Hero?

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Guitar Hero Without a Guitar
Some interesting computer-interface stuffs from Johnny Lee's blog. Soon you'll be playing video games with your fingers alone. Who needs carpal-tunnel inducing controllers?

Success: Homemade Butter

Sunday, October 11, 2009

rainmelon and I had so much leftover heavy cream from the peach ginger hand pies that we whipped it into butter. A whole lot of instructions are not necessary, but TheKitchn has a 'recipe'. We just added some salt to the heavy cream and whipped it up with a hand mixer for 5 minutes or so. Just keep whipping it until the buttermilk separates from the butter. Then, rinse the excess buttermilk off of the butter and it's good to use.

Success: Peach Ginger Hand Pies

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Successfully made these individual fit-in-your-hand peach ginger pies from TheKitchn, with rainmelon. They could use MORE GINGER. Double? Triple? More.

Instead of coating the closed pie-pockets with heavy cream, it might be alright to use butter instead (we had a lot of leftover heavy cream, with which we made butter).

Success: Shepherd's Pie

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

'Threw together some frozen soup vegetables and 1 lb. of hamburger meat for this shepherd's pie from TheKitchn along with rainmelon. Next time I would use less potatoes and more meat (the recipe recommends 1.5 lbs). It freezes well and is pretty simple.

Photosketch Automatically Makes Composite Images

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Via Gizmodo. Photosketch automatically finds photos on the internet that much a hand drawn sketch (with labels) to create a "realistic" looking composite image. No Photoshop skills necessary. This is pretty awesome.

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.