kitchenmage

Epilogue: black bean brownies with some MINOR adjustments

...if you have not read the first part of black bean brownies with some MINOR adjustments, please go do so first...I'll wait...

When last we saw Lisa, she and the 6 year-old C had tried the brownies and she said, "C likes them, and I know R & S will eat them."

I asked her to post another update after everyone had a chance to try them out at dinner. Final results after the jump...

"black bean brownies with some MINOR adjustments"

My favorite mailing list has been having a hot and heavy discussion about the Amazing Black Bean brownie recipe that Heidi posted a couple of weeks ago. The thread culminated in one woman, the ever-brave Lisa Whipple, deciding that she was just going to make them and see how they turned out. The brownies are in the oven now just finished and her opinion is at the bottom of this post, but I had to share her email missive with you.

A different sort of naked chef

Scott Bateman teams up with members of "The State" to bring you a slightly different sort of Naked Chef. NSFW or for those offended by the um, er, Special Box on SNL.

What the Hell's Kitchen?

When one examines the pantheon of cooking video games, from BurgerTime to Cooking Mama and the almost inevitable sequel Cooking Mama: Cook Off, to Happy Cooking...well, one discovers it's a very small pantheon indeed.

The next thing one discovers is that there is much fun to made. (disclosure: I have not played any of these games...mostly because I have a real kitchen if I want to play with food. Also, no dragons to slay or tame so what kind of game is it?) Anyway, on to the digression: Happy Cooking, which is described thusly:

Lisa, a little girl, is having a hard time trying to cook dinner before her father comes back home. Hopefully, an unexpected angel from the Moon will make her meet a famous chef who will help her.

There are so many things wrong with this. Like: Do they have angels on the moon? Really?

But let's start at the beginning with Lisa, the little girl whose adventure we share. There's a picture of Lisa on the box and I kind of like her look. Attractive, but not overly so (if you know what I mean), kind of spunky looking, she's cradling that mixing bowl like she knows what to do with it (although the grip on the whisk is iffy),

Have you looked at that box cover yet? No? And you are waiting for what? Geez! Go look already, I'll wait.

wcb: let's do the timewarp wrapup

Go. Read. This.

That is all.

do you support public radio?

If you are one of those folks who donate to public radio, please consider doing so tomorrow to  KMUN in Astoria, Oregon between 10-12 (west coast) tomorrow. someoneElse will be on All Kinds of Folk and it's pledge drive time so I am angling for quick donations and thus more music, less begging.

There are rumors of me having to speak too. One can only hope the rumors are not true because, while I like music, I know nothing about it. "I gave it a ten because it's got a good beat and you can knead bread to it!" is my fallback position. Again, I think more money=less talk - in which case, I may be writing checks myself!

The KMUN audio stream is available online, either via their preferred method, which involves installing software that lets your machine host bits of the stream (meaning your upstream bandwidth and some hard drive space) or my preferred method of snagging the stream here and plugging it into something like Windows Media Player.

If you decide to contribute, please tell the nice person on the phone that you are a friend of kitchenMage. I'd love to feel a presence from the food-people out there. Sort of like a big invisible hug while I am in radioland, which is so not my usual hangout.

KMUN
Donation info page
Donate here
503.325.0010
1.800.528.0010

totally OT (but funny)

One of the other places I write is a place called Gather.com where my column, the kitchenMage's Apprentice is published twice a month. Gather is carving itself a niche somewhere between social networking and blogging with a smidge of "rewards" style revenue sharing* thrown in. (you get points for stuff and points eventually equate to gift cards or cash)

It's an interesting mix of folks and the topics cover a lot of territory. I have been doing a bit of non-food writing there lately (I was silly enough to write an "Ask the feminist" open question piece. Oh my!) and it has been a lot of fun.

A couple of days ago, I wrote this rant about plastic surgery that has gone too far called "How Do you tell a friend..." and it's currently featured on the home page! (Okay, so I excite easily, but it's the first thing like this I've written for publication in a while and I'm happy.)

Should you decide that Gather looks like an interesting place and want to join, I'd be mighty grateful if you would click on this little link so I get a referral...hmmm, whatever it is we get for one of those. Join me at Gather.

I now return you to your regular food blogging, already in progress.

revisiting Gastroblogia

In honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, albeit a bit belatedly, I extend this bit of linky love to Miz D. of Belly-Timber who reminded me of this marvelously funny bit of writing: Mighty Cheese Warriors: An Historical Perspective

For anyone who was around during the Pete Wells cheese sandwich absurdity, here's a chance to revisit one of the sweetest pieces of writing to come out of that affair. Newcomers might want to read Kalyn's backgrounder (the link in this paragraph) before going on to Mighty Cheese Warriors.

I'd also like to welcome Miz D. back, she's been MIA for a bit while relocating and resettling and I've missed her and Chopper Dave's antics. She's one of my favorite pixel-stained technopeasant wretches.

This is why I use parchment!

Tomorrow is my day to post a pizza crust recipe over at A Year in Bread so this afternoon found me sorting through photos of pizza. While it is not what I was looking for, I had to share this one shot. The story goes something like this:

One night we were making pizza and I discovered we were out of parchment paper, which I generally use when baking breads. The stone was already hot, the pizza crust was poufy, and we were hungry. What to do, what to do?

After debating a run to the store, we decided to put the pizza directly on the stone.  Parchment is nice and all, but cornmeal is usually enough to stop a pizza from sticking to the stone. Actually, the plan was to throw caution to the wind and gently place the bare crust on the stone, quickly top it and get it back in the oven. (This actually isn't as absurd as it sounds, I've done it a number of times, with a different dough. Remember that "different dough" part for later.)

Everything that was to go on the pizza was sliced, diced and arrayed on the counter. We reviewed the plan of attack: crust on stone, toppings on crust, back in oven. Check.

someoneElse extracted the 500 degree pizza stone from the oven and perched it on the range so we could work. I looked at the crust, made from this great new recipe I was playing with, and decided that I couldn't afford to put it down on a peel or anything like that, I had to move it by hand. I picked up the crust, dashed all three steps across the room and flipped the crust onto the stone.

what is in those Whoppers anyway?

Have you seen the current Burger King TV spot? In it, a bunch of men parade around town waving their burgers around and singing about their, ahem, meat to the tune of Helen Reddy's feminist anthem "I am Woman" - because nothing says marketing like the usurpation of that which you are campaigning against.

Maybe it is supposed to be a sort of post-ironic homage to claiming your own space in a world that doesn't let your class of people catch a break. You know, those poor eaters of cheap factory meat that have to drive their Hummer 150 yards to get to the next drive-through window. Poor babies.

In any case, I went looking for the lyrics so I was sure I was quoting them correctly.  I am really glad I did too, because I'd missed the money quote. Really. Here you go:

Oh, yes, I’m a guy!
I’ll admit I’ve been fed quiche!
Wave tofu bye-bye!
Now it’s for Whopper beef I reach
I will eat this meat
Till my innie turns into an outie!

Reread the last two lines, because, really, not much subtext there. Like I said, what is in those Whoppers anyway? I'm waiting for the new packaging: maybe a blue diamond...?

holiday frivolity

My breadbaking buddy, Farmgirl, has a new side job. Who knew? (gobble, gobble? gobble, gobble!)

pizza face!

Quick report from the first day of Thump Thump Giggle Giggle 06. Make your own pizza night was a hit, with a well organized assembly line (if I do say so myself) with each pizza crust on its own sheet of parchment and all the toppings lined up behind them.  Except for the rum. I have no clue where that came from...well, I know where it came from, just not why it was out with the pizza makings, nor why I didn't get a drink!

This is a great way to make individual pizzas for parties, especially for kids. The parchment gives you something by which to manipulate the floppy while raw, and then extremely hot when cooked, pizza; plus you can write the name of the person who made the pizza on the paper. These were labeled with the names that everyone is using on the network: Kat, Monstrrr, Dracomiss, BabyDuck, and Dead, I mean Dad.

The pizza making rapidly moved into an art exhibition, with most people making faces of one sort or another. Dracomiss swears hers is a pig. Dead, I mean Dad made an abstract piece and mine was a self-referential wedges of wedges sort of thing. (I made mine last and when I picked up the scissors to cut the pepperoni, there was an audible gasp from everyone else; as if there had been rules or something!)

We've been munching our way through a plate of densely chocolate brownies studded with craisins and drizzled with a lattice of very dark and white chocolates while screams of dismay and four letter words drift in from the next room, where the carnage continues apace. I hear Dead, I mean Dad asking for directions back to the fray from some back part of a dungeon in which he's lost...as if they'll help. Do you suppose that he'd listen if I told him I can tell it's a trap from here? grin

Tomorrow is a big breakfast of some sort, which I just may sleep through, since it's the meal someoneElse is responsible for. Lunch is light: prawns and roasted red pepper sauce, baguettes, olives, marinated artichoke hearts, maybe some chunks of cheese and some fruit. Dinner is chicken that's marinating in this lemon, rosemary, dijon concoction; pasta with citrus ginger cream sauce that I had the other night and want to try to recreate (wish me luck); salad with warm goat cheese, pear slices, and spiced pecans; and a variation on Bananas Foster for dessert.

Last I checked, the kitchen was only mildly thrashed and the cookies a bit more; we were probably down by a couple of dozen cookies, maybe more since Dracomiss brought a few dozen which are also disappearing.

And now I must go pour myself a glass of amaretto. I think I've earned it.

GingerbreadScapes

I always like watching people stretch their comfort zone in the kitchen, so I had to share this. Picture one of those "make candy/pastry/gingerbread house" competitions except that, instead of 2-3 person teams with a few hours, you let the teams take as long as they needed and use as many people as they wanted. Then, just to keep it interesting, and since it's Gingerbread houses and such, ask architectural firms to do the design and building.

Ah, the possibilities!

Well, the Toronto Star did just that and they are auctioning off the results. If you happen to live in Toronto, maybe you'll get a chance to see them. For the rest of us, Gingerbread Cities has galleries of the creations.

It's been absolutely forever since I made a gingerbread house. At this point, I'd have to build something a bit less Victorianish and a lot more designer.

It's not on toast, but...

It must be proof of...well something! The Flying Spaghetti Monster in a parsnip. Right here May you be touched by her noodly appendage. (Yes, I know the official doctrine says "his" but I think that's it's just the traditional sexist refusal to acknowledge that women are as much a part of the deity as men.)

(serious posting to resume in a computer minute)

Cupcakes at Burning Man

No, this is not a post about munchies at Burning Man, although that would be an interesting topic to explore. This is about these cupcakes. Cupcakes that can really move you.

Rachael Ray alert! RR does Celebrity Jeopardy

They get three people at a time, right? I would pay good money to see Martin Short, Mario Cantone, and Rachael Ray go at a round of Celebrity Jeopardy.

I must create a drinking game...   evilChuckle Hey, Armchair Cook, wanna help?

OMG, this totally made my day!

This makes me glad I drink tea

If the cast from the 1972 road show of Up With People moved to Pleasantville, died and refused to let George harvest their souls, they might have made this Folger's ad. Well, maybe if they were really, really warm and toasty on the Prozac.

just in time for bbq season

Let's call this Friday night fun after a day on which I took 300 photos of kittens to get a decent one for weekend cat blogging and got about four that aren't simply the blur of six week old kittens. But that's not why we're here. We're here because it's summer and you need this anatomically correct (and not work friendly) bbq tool. I'm only surprised McAuliflower didn't find it first.

Happy Independence Day to the US

Marshmallow, meet the first amendment. First amendment, meet a marshmallow (homemade  raspberry marshmallows with a layer of bittersweet chocolate in the middle, to be precise).

That thing in the background, btw, is my old military insignia, from when I swore to protect and defend the Constitution (of which the 1st amendment is perhaps my favorite part) from all enemies foreign and domestic.  Nobody said a thing about protecting flags from flames and graham crackers.

Don't blame me, she started it!

When bad things happen to good eGulleters

Almost done with the endless project and my new (only seemingly endless) project is mucking out the impact of a month-long project on my kitchen/pantry. Meaning I'm actually going to bake those cookies, start some bread and bagels, maybe do something with the pile of granny smith apples I brought home the other day.

In the meantime, here's one more not-exactly-a-post. Go here. It will make you feel better about every marginal dish you've ever made. There's something for everyone:

• fishies (last picture in the post)
• bunnies
• girlies
• alien wormies

Bonus: it works as a calorie intake reduction device. Enjoy.

Just what every drinker needs.

I am sure you've seen thing that make you wonder, if this is the answer, what in the world was the question. Perhaps this is the answer to balancing drink and plate at cocktail parties while occasionally having a free hand. Perhaps it doesn't look quite so ridiculous after a few shots. One can hope.

What if it tastes really bad and you're on TV?

If I ran a television channel that was all about food, I think that when someone wanted to cook a specific dish on one of my shows, I'd expect them to test it first. You know, work out the kinks off camera, make sure it doesn't have technical problems with the studio environment, that kind of thing. I'd also hire editors, who went over the tape and made sure that nothing unseemly made it to the air. Wouldn't you?

Well, someone should call Giada's people, especially if you're a video editor looking for work. Because, this should never make it to your TV. Really.