kdiddy.org

Failure One: Mousse

I made a cake for my co-worker’s birthday. Specifically, this Chocolate Overdose Cake. I’m not really exaggerating that the cake has made me something of a legend at the office. (And, perhaps, alienated my co-worker for stealing the spotlight on her birthday. Sorry. Am jackass. But with tasty cake.)

Also, Abby (I think) reports that people will never take you seriously if you’re the person who brings in baked goods to the office. To which I say, “Fine. Don’t take me seriously. Enjoy your grocery store cake. Nyah.”

Setting out, I realized that I didn’t have any round cake pans so I convinced the husband to let me cross the threshold of Sur la Table. Oh. My. God. I actually forgot one thing and had to go back the next day. Getting into the car, I said, “I really should be commended for the restraint that I showed in there.” A whole wall of small appliances. Every kind of spatula you could imagine (Spatula City). A stack of shelves with cake pans that I could barely see the top of. It was heaven. And also why I have thus far avoided any restaurant supply stores. I would absolutely break down and chain myself to one of those big KitchenAid mixers. Pictures that I’ve seen from others’ trips to such places nearly had me in tears.

Anyway, to make the mousse layer, the recipe tells you to make the whipped cream in a chilled mixer bowl, melt the chocolate, and put the chocolate in a separate stainless steel bowl. Then, take 1/4 cup of the whipped cream and whisk it into the chocolate to temper it, then fold the rest of the whipped cream in. In an effort to avoid cluttering my tiny kitchen with more bowls, I just left the whipped cream in the mixer bowl, tempered the chocolate, and then put it into the whipped cream. I quickly found out why the new bowl was necessary.

That is not cookies and cream ice cream, but whipped cream with tiny bits of melted chocolate that were shocked into solid pellets upon their meeting the cold whipped cream. It tasted okay, but the consistency was too weird. I left the bowl of failed mousse with the husband and baby so that they could pick at it, and tried again.

MUCH better.

I don’t have any pictures of the finished cake because the “decorating,” if you can call it that, looked worthy of Cake Wrecks. And I made the ill-advised decision to write “Happy Birthday [Name of Co-Worker]!” with one of those Cake Mate “easy to write!” tubes. Here’s the honest to dog truth: any product that claims to be for home chefs and easy-to-use is full of crap. Take some extra time and learn how to use the real thing. Because “Happy Birthday [Name of Co-Worker]!” ended up looking like, “Hbbbj Bbbbby Vcccccc!” with random lines and dots scattered throughout.

Those snafus aside, it was AMAZING. So delicious. Make it. Or have someone make it for you to prove their love.

Failure Two: Our child evokes one of the characters in Idiocracy

I mentioned recently that the baby is very grumpy about school right now. We haven’t gotten to the bottom of that, but in the meantime we’re still working with him on our own to make sure that he’s learning stuff.

Last night, while sitting in horrendous traffic, the baby asked us what the capital of Pittsburgh was.

“Cities don’t have capitals, buddy. Countries and states do,” we explained.

“Oh,” he said.

“So, what’s the capital of Pennsylvania?”

“Harrisburg.”

“Right. And what’s the capital of the United States?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“Right! And what’s the capital of San Francisco?” we asked, checking to see if he was paying attention.

“Um…Philly?”

“What? No. Philadelphia is a city in Pennsylvania. San Francisco is also a city in California. And cities don’t have capitals, remember?”

“Noooo! PHILLY is in San Francisco!”

“Buddy, no, “Philly” is short for Philadelphia, and it’s in Pennsylvania.”

“Man, I HATE Biology.”

Oh, dear. So, when we finally got home and after the baby had finished his homework, the husband went over some biology geography with him. It hadn’t really been a focus of ours, but we had hoped that he was picking up some useful knowledge from this interactive map game that the husband’s grandmother gave him a while back. Of course, upon closer inspection, perhaps we shouldn’t have handed over some of our teaching responsibilities to this thing.

It has a bit of a Kerouac ring to it, yes? Packing up the jalopy and driving across the America. Wait til we be lovers in Frisco.

Failure Three: The pesky need for air

I seem to have caught some of the Man Cold that the husband and baby were fighting a few days ago. And it really hadn’t crimped my lifestyle until last night when I went to do the 30 Day Shred. I was kind of excited because it was my first attempt at Level 2. I was getting bored with Level 1 and had been eager to move on, but achey knees prevented me from doing so sooner.

Here’s the thing about strenuous exercise while congested: Don’t. Do. It. Seriously. Very bad idea. I nearly died during one of the cardio portions because I had to exercise while mouth-breathing, which caused severe mouth dryness, which caused a malfunction when I tried to swallow and catch my breath without the benefit of a functioning airway.

While Jillian screeched, “I WANT YOU TO FEEL LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” I wheezed and coughed and tried desperately to rehydrate my mouth.

When I finally finished, the husband said, “Do you feel like you’re going to die?” I replied, “I nearly suffocated and saw birdies.” Then I sneezed on him.

I’m trying to power through this writer’s block, especially since the husband resurrected our home computer and we purchased a new router, so my technology hermitage has ended. Fucking finally. And because I am so SO tired of the FML nature of my more recent posts, I want to share with you some tidbits about the fruit of my loins abdominal incision.

He’s getting really tall and so cute…like, in the way that I just know is already making girls giggle. Relatedly, he has a girlfriend. Or had. Apparently she was a little flighty. Whatever.

One day, a few weeks ago, he wore a bow tie to school. And joined the chess club. In the same day. Despite such nerdery, he’s pretty cranky about school and doesn’t want to do homework at all ever. I’m not disturbed by this (homework does indeed suck), but would really like to not have to have the, “JUST DO IT ALREADY, GAWD!” conversation again. I am pleased to say that these conversations have become less heated since I finished school. They no longer contain tirades of, “Write your spelling words three times??!?! Do you know what I would give to have to do that right now? Have you ever attempted to redesign the instructional text of an authoritative book on coherent topical progression? Or had to schedule user testing? HUH? HAVE YOU?” Although, at least that would usually stun him into a puzzled silence. Now he remains cognizant enough to talk back to me and I hate that.

We took him with us to see The Imaginarium of Dr. ParnAssus the other night. He’s developed a taste for Monty Python stuff and when we told him that the director of Imaginarium also directed Time Bandits and was Patsy, the King’s coconut-clacker in The Holy Grail, he was all about it. He liked it. We all did. Depending on your opinion of 8-year-olds, that might make total sense or be totally bizarre.

The movie ended up having some really interesting statements about…not so much celebrity, specifically, but devoting your life to bullshit and whatnot and death. They were especially interesting in light of the fact that Heath Ledger died in the middle of making the movie. Johnny Depp and Jude Law stepped in to act as alternate versions of Ledger’s character in the Imaginarium and seeing them say insightful things about fame and ambition and death knowing that they were kind of talking about the late Ledger was pretty wild.

Speaking of movies, our friend burned Paranormal Activity and Moon for us. The only problem was that the movies were .avis. We watched them on my laptop but my laptop’s speakers aren’t very loud and our furnace makes a huge racket. Whenever it would kick on, we couldn’t hear a thing of the movie. The husband acted as the crack A/V guy and tried several things to remedy the situation. At one point, we had the laptop hooked up to his clock radio, the short power cord necessitating it to be five feet away from us and ultimately useless. We finally wrestled the computer speakers off of the desk and hooked those up, and of course that power cord was too short so we had to get the big, green extension cord off of the porch. It was a total sight. I think it could have only been klassier if we had just extended the power cord with the string of Christmas lights that are half burnt-out and only display green and orange, which appeals to my Irish heritage but looks like a St. Patrick’s Day decoration gone awry.

But, whatever, he MacGuyvered that shit to within an inch of its life and fortunately the movies both turned out to be pretty good. (If they’d sucked, we’d have been pissed.) Moon was especially good, especially after I got over the rapid comparisons that I was making to 2001, Alien, Solaris, Multiplicity (um, yeah), and Los cronocrimenes. It eventually stood on its own two feet and was rather beautiful.

When I was 16, I used to smoke cigarettes out of my bedroom window in the middle of the night.

My relatively brief stint (6 years) as a smoker started at my 16th birthday party and didn’t pick up as a true habit until I lived on my own when I was 17. In the meantime, I had one pack of cigarettes that I kept hidden and sometimes, after my parents were asleep, I would crack open the window and smoke.

There was a spot underneath my windowsill that sounded kind of hollow when you tapped on it and when I was little, I imagined that it was a secret passageway. I had heard of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and in my naivete didn’t understand that “underground” was a socio-cultural adjective, not a location, and that the railroad was mostly a figurative noun.

I imagined that I could squeeze through what would have been an impossibly narrow passage between the exterior and interior walls of my house and climb down into a portion of the trail that African-Americans followed out of slavery.

I recognize that this is completely bonkers and back when I was 16 and practicing the perfectly cool exhale, I would tap on the hollow spot through the floral wallpaper and shake my head at my 6-year-old self. Then I would go back to thinking about how badly I wanted a boyfriend, about ballet, and about who I was going to be.

During the winter, this was an especially risky activity. The cold air would pour into my room, not only putting me at risk for frostbite, but could cause a shift in the house’s temperature that my parents might notice. I would open the window only as wide as my face and work very hard to keep the smoke going out. Mostly, it just made my nose and cheeks numb.

I spent this past weekend alone, as the husband and the baby went to Blue Knob to ski, and I had the urge to go outside Saturday night. I had had a drink and was lonely and my living room was starting to depress me. I tugged on my big, winter coat and stepped out onto the front porch. It was pretty quiet outside, which was unusual. There were no signs of the revelers celebrating the end of another week on the main street below us.

Feeling the cool air on my face made me remember the illicit beginnings of my nicotine addiction and the embarrassment that I felt at how silly I was as a little girl.

I thought for a long time about an argument that the husband and I had had before they left. It was an ugly argument, one in which some of the more hurtful things that we’ve ever said to each other sailed through the air and hung there, following our thoughts around. Is that how we really feel? Is this who I’m going to be? How big are my mistakes?

My face started to sting as the low temperature became uncomfortable. 15 years stood between me and those moments by my bedroom window. And yet somehow the air felt the same.

My mind is many places today. It flits back and forth from work to the ickiness that I’m feeling (sour stomach and slight headache, most likely due to wine from last night) to Haiti and especially the family members of a friend of ours. He hasn’t heard from them yet. There’s also some stuff brewing at home. Nothing bad, just stressful, and hopefully I’ll be able to talk more about that later.

When I was in the throes of grad school, I would often “stress bake.” Things would get out of control and overwhelming, so I would bake so that I could control something, accomplish something. Even if it didn’t have anything to do with anything pressing in my life.

A few times a semester, I would show up to work and announce, “I MADE CUPCAKES!” as my face melted off. My co-workers enjoyed the fruits of my stress…or maybe they were just afraid to say otherwise.

So, in the interest of focusing myself, I want to tell you about a few food successes that I’ve had recently.

Remember when I told you about all of the stuff that I made around the holidays and how the batch of cranberry brownies that I made didn’t come out quite right? Well, I let the brownies sit out for a few days until they were nice and stale so that I could turn them into bread pudding.

Dude.

If there’s a Heaven and when I die the bouncer isn’t quite sure about letting me in, I will bring up this bread pudding.

I searched around for a basic bread pudding recipe and just swapped out bread for brownies and added some stale dinner rolls that were languishing in the fridge. But it got me thinking that something like stale brioche or challah would be really yummy in this, too.

After I made it, I actually found a recipe for brownie bread pudding and it was pretty much the same one that I used, so if you’re interested in trying it yourself, follow this.

The crew at MamaPop is doing a group weight loss/fitness thing and since I needed to eat a little healthier than I did over the holidays, I made some stuff that I can take to work for lunch everyday. One of the things that I made was a Hearty Winter Veggie Pilaf that I got out of the Rachael Ray magazine that consists of quinoa, brussel sprouts, dried cranberries, mushrooms, and parsley. It’s yummy and hearty, though I think it would do really well with a little rice vinegar.

I know that this is kind of a vapid post, but our continued lack of computer and internet at home has killed any regular posting habits that I may have had. And I don’t care too much about hits and whatnot, but when I glance at my sitemeter…yikes.

I just groaned imagining all of the times that that headline has been used for promoting or reviewing The Chief. But I’m unimaginative and I recognize this.

I bought the husband tickets to see the aforementioned one-man play about Art Rooney for Christmas. Because I am awesome, about two days after I purchased them, he spotted a billboard for the play and mused, “I’d kinda like to go see that.”

Our interest in the play went beyond the fact that it was about Rooney. The guy who was performing in the title role was Tom Atkins, a Pittsburgh native who has starred in a couple cult-ish horror movies, in particular Halloween III, Escape from New York, and The Fog, which are favorites in our house.

As we were heading to the theater last night, I realized that, despite the Steelers’ season ending in a whimper, there would probably be plenty of people wearing their jerseys. Well…not only were people wearing jerseys, but they were selling Terrible Towels in the lobby. (Sadly, no one twirled one during the performance.)

We sat in our seats and waited for the lights to go down and the theater piped in every popular song that was about or referenced or was even remotely related Pittsburgh, including Mister Rogers’ “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which made me tear up because I’m a sap.

Atkins is a fantastic actor, capturing minute mannerisms and rambling on with stories about Rooney’s upbringing in the North Side.

The play itself wasn’t the most staggering work of genius. And it seemed safe to assume that many audience members were drawn to the theater simply for the fact that the play was about Rooney. And the play was obviously written with a very specific audience in mind, designed and timed to hit certain pressure points. There was nothing universal about it. For a second, I thought that maybe this should bother me, but, as the husband so eloquently put it, “It’s Pittsburgh shit for people from Pittsburgh. Who gives a fuck about anyone else?”

At one point, Rooney shows the film of the Immaculate Reception. I whispered to the husband, “That’s kind of cheating.” For Steelers fans and for most native Pittsburghers, that catch is legendary, part of the lore handed down from generation to generation. It’s almost not fair to show it during a play, as it’s guaranteed to stir emotions in the audience. But watching it was just as thrilling as any other time and hearing “Rooney” describe how he fatefully missed the whole thing and how it sounded like a tornado had hit when the elevator doors opened and he realized that the tide of the game had turned was simply magical.

Near the end, Rooney’s emotions swell and he describes what the Steelers have meant to their fans. I’ve rambled about it myself many times. He described circumstances that were just as relevant today as they were 30 years ago. People out of work, clear skies but dark outlooks. But the Steelers, there, reminding us with every hard-earned victory and every crushing defeat, that Winning. Is. Possible.

Tears stung my eyes as I sat there, in the dark, next to my husband. We’ve been through a lot and we’ve made some mistakes and we’ve landed ungracefully. But it’s possible we can win. Still.

We exited the theater and scurried to the parking garage in the bitter cold, soggy snowflakes covering us. We needed to eat and tossed several options around before settling on Fiori’s, the pizza place near our house that feeds us at least five meals a month.

We sat and ate our cuts and our wings and talked about the play, laughing at some of the anecdotes that we remembered. Soon enough, we had to head back out into the cold to pick up our son.

I grabbed the husband’s hand as I teetered across the slippery cobblestone street that had been around since smoke from steel mills darkened the sky and the Steelers were still a punchline in the world of professional football.

Earlier in the day, I had been sad after hearing about a fantastic career opportunity in California. But I can’t go to California. I must stay here, where the job prospects are much dimmer, because this is my home.

Forget New York. If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.

Dinner and a show, Pittsburgh-style, with football and pizza. When we pulled up to our, big, old, drafty house, I felt like Pittsburgh royalty.

It’s slightly pathetic how excited I am to be back at work. However, I have good reasons: a functional computer (well, sorta, my work computer is OLD), functional internet, one more quiet week to hunker down and get stuff done, and for the first time in years, I can work without having to stop and go to class.

Plus, the baby is back at school today and as fun as our winter break was, he was exhibiting signs of extreme cabin fever. After a day or so of non-stop (literally NON. STOP.) talking, we realized he needed to expend some energy. He went skiing with the father-in-law and played in the snow. We also went roller skating the other night and I am happy to report that our relatively frequent skating sessions have restored my long-dormant skills. Like, I can actually move both feet now instead of dragging along my paralytic left foot and making up for its dead weight by pumping my arms. This skating method is neither effective nor graceful and I do not recommend it.

When we were inside, I showed the baby this montage of Harrison Ford forcefully saying, “my WIFE,” or “my FAMILY” in at least 40 movies and he is now obsessed with it.

I hear him muttering, “my WIFE” every now and then and it’s a little disarming. It is now my favorite pop culture tic of his, with his impersonation of Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight crying, “RACHEL! RACHEL!” a very close second.

Also, and I’m going to abruptly end this post after this because…I don’t know, the engagement photos channel of Awkward Family Photos is absolutely mesmerizing. The pictures of people who look they were caught mid-dry-hump are the best. The husband and I never did engagement photos because a) we didn’t care and b) we’re REALLY not the type. In our wedding pictures, the ones that are posed you can tell that we’re stifling laughter and any other pictures that we have taken together end up looking like this:

Our home computer died and our wireless router crapped out weeks ago. Did I already tell you this? I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m tapping this post out on my phone, which is miraculous, technologically, I guess, but mostly a pain in the butt…er, thumbs. This morning, I trudged the baby through the snow to the library so that I could at least pay the bills and write my posts for MamaPop and We Covet. So my real live Internet time was perforated by, “Mum, I’ve looked through all of the cool books. Can we please go now?” and a sickening squirt every time the guy at the next computer spit his tobacco juice into his coffee cup. (I really could not believe the librarian was cool with that. I know I wasn’t. But then my Master’s is in Professional Writing, not Library Science and Tolerating Repugnant Habits.)

I will tell you more about Christmas and show you some pictures the next time I have some extra minutes online. For now I have to get back to cuddling on the couch with baby, the husband, and his ManCold and waiting for what seems like an acceptable amount of time before eating some of the brownie bread pudding that I made (oh my god SO GOOD). Stay warm!

There was this skit on Chappelle’s Show that detailed some historic gang war that eventually brought about the advent of crack cocaine, with one gangster, played by Mos Def, advising his minions to get some cocaine and some “buh-king soda.” I can’t find it anywhere but now any time I say “baking” it comes out “buh-king.”

Anyway, even though it is, as Amy correctly noted, incredibly pretentious to utter the phrase, “my holiday baking,” I’m going to tell you a little bit about My Holiday Baking. And I don’t really have any pictures because my various internet and computer situations are just stupid.

My friend Mary and I have several times made plans to do a joint baking blowout at her house since she now has that counter space stuff that I hear so much about, but we haven’t made it happen yet. So, this past weekend, I went to town.

Final stats:

– Two batches of Cinnamon Rolls – delicious as always. I made two batches because the husband always whines when I give most of them away. However, I fail to see how three people eating 50 cinnamon rolls is at all a good idea.
– One batch of Bittersweet Cranberry Brownies – I think i took these out of the oven too soon. Not sure how I feel about them. Will probably eat all of them anyway.
– One batch (two dozen-ish) of Eggnog Cookies – I don’t know where I got this recipe, but these are yummy cookies
– One batch of Mexican Chocolate Cookies
– One batch of Snickerdoodles
– One batch of Chocolate Crackle Cookies
– One batch of Eggnog Cheesecake Bars
– One batch of Pomegranate Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I also made the dough for Chai Shortbread Cookies, but haven’t baked them yet. Don’t know if that will happen.

My dining room table is covered with baked goods. I can’t say that I mind.

In less glamorous baking news, the baby’s school is having a Navidad Fiesta today and asked the parents to donate some food stuffs. They sent home a list of foods and recipes to use. I signed up to make banana bread and taco dip, figuring that many potluck type events are dessert-heavy and could use some balance.

I could have used my own recipes, but I can be a very by-the-book person so I used the ones the school sent home. The banana bread recipe was pretty basic. So was the taco dip, but it was one of those recipes that contains instructions like, “open…dump…spread,” which sounds kind of disturbing when you put it that way. This particular taco dip consisted of two packages of cream cheese spread in the bottom of a baking dish, topped with two cans of beanless Hormel chili and two packages of shredded cheddar cheese, then baked for 15 minutes.

As much as I’m a wannabe foodie, I also have a gigantic soft spot for the less sophisticated foods and I’m a big fan of canned goods. However, even this was a bit much. I mean, I really like canned cranberry sauce and while those ridges look downright charming on a tube of jellied cranberries, they look really disturbing on extracted chili.

Also also wik: I watched Julie & Julia last night. Loved the Julia part. Not so much the Julie part.

It’s been 10 days since I posted here! That ain’t right.

I’ve mostly just been busy at work and then busy getting ready for Christmas. I was getting ready to do some work just now, since our office luncheon ate up most of the day, but then I looked and saw that it was almost 4:30 and decided blogging would be a better way to spend the last half hour of work.

Plus, the husband tells me that our desktop has up and died and our wireless router died weeks ago so our only internet access at home is through our phones. It’s like we’re living in the mid 90s or the 80s or something prehistoric.

It’s particularly tragic because I want to spend my winter break staring at BeTaMaXMas. Really, I’ve had this weird craving to spend a day in my 8-year-old life. I guess it’s because the baby is at the age where Christmas (and Halloween and whatnot) really is just one of the greatest ideas ever. And he still hardcore believes in Santa so that’s pretty fun (and useful for bribes/threats). I want a taste of that, I guess. I want be in my living room, watching crap like this:

I remember that commercial so vividly. It’s kind of pathetic. Consumerism’s bitch: I am it. My mom and I always thought that the tree in that commercial was so beautiful. When we would decorate our tree, we would always get excited about turning off the lights and seeing it in all of its glory for the first time.

Just for a day, I kind of want to be in the moment of being a kid, and ogle our tree, and hope that I got the Barbie crap that I wanted. Before my parents’ marriage really went to shit, before I realized that inexplicable sadness was just something that I would have contend with the rest of my life, before I questioned my strength.

The other night we put up our tree and what will probably be the extent of our decorations. I don’t like to go overboard with decorations because, while they look rad, you have to take them down. In late December or early January. When you’re bloated and sluggish from eating 24/7 for two weeks. I anticipate my laziness, dig?

Anyway, after we got everything set up, I turned on one of those silly fireplace screensavers that they have on OnDemand now. We got some eggnog, turned on some Bing Crosby Christmas music, and turned off all the lights so that we could admire our tree. It was gorgeous and smelled amazing.

I glanced over at the husband and the baby and suddenly realized, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

With the Master’s degree pretty much over and done with (or, as I told my friend Jennie the other day, “It was time to put that bitch to rest,”), I am all set to dive into holiday stuff.

I have this emotional quirk that doesn’t allow me to enjoy things if I have some stressful thing looming over my head. So, even though I started listening to Christmas music weeks ago and busted out the It’s a Wonderful Life and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation DVDs embarrassingly early, I was really holding back my excitement for this time of year until Tuesday’s presentation was firmly in the past.

As I’ve mentioned, this year I’m really into Christmas because it means lots of time to hang out with my family and the end of a year that’s been kind of shitty. And I’m sorry to brag, but my family is rad as hell. So, this weekend, I’m hoping to finish some cleaning and decorating projects and perhaps get our tree.

Our celebration of Christmas is very secular. The husband is an atheist. I’m comfortably unsure, though definitely very happy without an organized religion. And the baby…well, the one thing that we feel strongly about is that he’s too young to really ponder the enormity of things like faith and existence, so assigning him our choice of religion (or lack thereof) is inappropriate. And so we’re kind of just waiting for him to ask us questions.

Anyway, all of this is to say that our version of Christmas marches alongside the traditional version and looks much the same, but we center it around different things. And, really, I think inventing new traditions, borrowing from what came before you and shaping it into something new and good is pretty rad.

In our sporadic discussions of religion, we’ve told the baby that we (or at least I) would be happy to explore options if he were ever interested. Last night, he asked us about the possibility of celebrating Hanukkah.

I was all for it, noting that we might need to get a few things and figure out generally what one does during the Festival of Lights. “I’ll look it up on Wikipedia,” I promised, knowing that I needed to fill in the holes of what I knew…dreidel…oil…latkes…8 days.

I knew that Hanukkah was coming up but I was kind of surprised to find that the whole thing starts tonight, leaving me literally no time to obtain a menorah and whatnot.

So, there’s us. Lapsed Catholics, failed Jews. Story of my life.

I think we might still improvise the whole thing, just to get a feel for it. Then next year we’ll firm it up a bit.

*A common exchange amongst speakers of Pittsburghese. Translates to: “Did you eat yet?” “No. Did you?” Has been adapted to become the name of a local eatery.