stories to let you know I'm alive

Black Pepper Chocolate Coffee Cake

2012-01-22T15:08:00.002-07:00

Is largely this recipe and most of the modifications are via MJ

Ingredients
Batter
1 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt (none if using salted butter)
1/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon espresso powder
Filling
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the sour cream and vanilla. Mix in dry ingredients. Spread 1/2 of batter in the prepared pan.

Mix together filling ingredients. Sprinkle cake batter with 1/2 the filling. Spread second half of batter over the filling, and top with remaining filling. This is harder than it sounds since the batter is just as thick as you'd expect once you realize that no actual liquids are involved.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

My pepper is super finely ground, which makes these measurements too much. It's still yummy though. I think I will successfully manage to feed most of it to coworkers.

Overdue Recipe: Rugelach

2011-12-26T13:17:00.002-07:00

There's a little indie coffee shop in downtown Denver that has gorgeous looking pastries. I almost never buy one, but one day I bought a rugelach. Theirs was giant, dry, and sad - but with just enough pastry/filling flavor to hint that rugelach should be something much yummier.

And once I started looking for recipes, I realized this was something that my dad's mom would make as a Christmas cookie, and I was even more excited to make my own recipe. Her recipe, and many traditional ones, feature a sweet walnut filling, but I'm not that into walnuts and it sounded like more work, so I just use jam. Raspberry jam and orange marmalade are my standard choices.

Here's what I put together by looking at several recipes and keeping the less fiddly bits.

1 c butter
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 c flour
(I added a splash of water to mine this year because the texture looked off. It seemed to work.)

cream together everything but the flour, then added the flour and mix thoroughly. Add a tiny bit of cold water if it's not coming together.
Divide it into four parts, shape them as discs, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours.

Once they're chilled, roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick, cut wedges (pizza cutter!) add a dollop of jam to the wide end and roll them up. The jam ALWAYS leaks out, so I've been putting down foil and greasing that. I need to try parchment paper sometime.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Let sit on the pan for a few minutes and then remove while they're still warm and before the jam leakage glues them to the foil forever.

You can do it one disc at a time, saving the rest in the fridge for... awhile. I think I had one dry out and get funky on me once, but it was there for probably a month.

Actions tell the truth

2011-12-18T17:42:00.002-07:00

and I keep making this recipe. I have a LOT of chocolate cake recipes. Many. And the last 3 times I've made chocolate cake, I've made this. It's in the perfect sweet intersection of easy to make and tastes really good.

This is almost precisely King Arthur Flour's Favorite Fudge Birthday Cake. But I am here to tell you that it is perfectly happy to be made in many less fussy shapes than a 4 layer cake.

Halved to make about 12 cupcakes

1 c sugar
1 c flour
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 1/8 oz (3/8c) cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp espresso powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/4c + 2 Tblsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
5 oz water

you can just dump it all in a mixer and beat until smooth.

at 350 degrees, it takes about 16 minutes to make cupcakes, about 25 to make a short bundt (though I think I'll use the full size recipe next time I'm making a bundt)

It's not quite decadent enough to hold its own without frosting, but it's wonderfully moist, keeps well (I may have eaten the first batch of 24 cupcakes by myself) and is quite presentably fancy with frosting.

prepare for cookie time

2011-12-08T19:56:00.001-07:00

Gingerbread Cookies

1/2 c shortening
1/2 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 c (6 oz) molasses
1 Tblsp vinegar
2 1/2 c flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 Tblsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves

Preheat oven to 375
roll out to about 1/2" thick, apply cookie cutters, bake on a greased cookie sheet for 5-6 minutes

Decorate with royal icing (you probably need less than half that recipe. I've only used egg whites because I always have eggs.) and all the sprinkles you can get to stick to it.

Heather, I think that might be your recipe? Though I knocked it in half and I'm hoping it won't suffer from the extra half of an egg. :)

It's done

2011-07-23T14:02:00.003-06:00

I handed in my dissertation 2 days ago. There's still some chance that the graduate school will call me and yell at me about margin sizes and watermarks all running the same direction. But my committee has signed off, and I'm done.

I don't really believe it yet, but I'm hoping that telling you will make me believe it a little more.

I do still need to think about it - I'm giving a talk at a conference soon over part of it, and my slides need more pruning. But I don't hate it as much as I could at this point.

(Those are the books that have accumulated next to my desk and needed to stay there until it was done. The binder is full of papers that I referenced.)

It's summer

2011-07-17T16:28:00.001-06:00

I'll be back soon.

Experimental Baking - Miniature King Cakes

2011-03-12T08:57:00.002-07:00

Tuesday was Mardi Gras. My sole observance of this occasion is to eat king cake. Here in the north, that means that first I have to make king cake. This is the recipe I've been using for a few years. Two years ago: made one giant king cake. Which promptly had to be cut up because there was nowhere to store it. Last year: made two smaller king cakes - they barely fit in cake domes, but worked ok. Continuing the trend, I though I'd make single serving ones this year.

Above are the 4 types of construction I attempted. 3. was surprisingly hard to do, 4. was surprisingly easy. 4. came out looking the best - if I'd known how easy it was, I would have made more of that type. 2. was the best cream cheese delivery mechanism, 1. was the worst. I didn't manage to use all the sweetened cream cheese in the baking, so N was consuming the muffin tin shaped ones by heating them, cutting them in half, and adding lots more cream cheese.

I used royal icing instead of the glaze from the recipe - I wanted something that would harden instead of melting 24 hours later. It was a good choice. I dyed the icing purple since I only had green sprinkles. Next time I'll go for a darker purple.

The only real problem was that I killed the yeast with the melted butter. I really need to gain the patience to let the butter COOL. I made yeast soup in a ramekin with a Tblsp of yeast and enough water to make it all liquid, folded it into a divot in the dough and got the mixer going again - but lost two hours before I realized the yeast weren't working. It ended up working ok, so it's good to know that dead yeast bread can be recovered. (This time I really didn't want to go buy another lemon or use 5 more eggs!)

Cheese Biscuit Mashup

2011-03-05T19:11:00.002-07:00

Mashup of Allrecipe's Cheese Drop Biscuits and Nick Malgieri's Pecorino and Pepper Biscuits (found in The Modern Baker)

Yield ~ 12

2 3/4 c flour
1 Tblsp baking powder
1 tsp garlic salt
dash of garlic powder (optional)
1 stick cold butter, cut into 12 pieces
3/4 c milk
3/4 c (70g) shredded cheddar cheese

preheat oven to 400 degrees

Put flour, baking powder, garlic salt and garlic powder in food processor, pulse a few times to mix.

Add cold butter pieces, pulse several times to avoid large lumps.

Add milk and cheese, pulse a few times to combine but not form a ball. May need to add a bit of water to get it to come together.

Grease a baking sheet, drop roughly formed biscuits about 1" apart.

Bake 12-15 minutes, until tops start to brown.

Experimental Baking - Cupcake Technicalities

2011-02-27T08:23:00.004-07:00

Valentine's Day weekend, I made King Arthur Flour's Bake Sale Fudge Cupcakes. I wanted a recipe that was big enough that I could bring a bunch to work without begrudging them. (Not the greatest plan - my super healthy eating coworkers were almost useless at eating these.)
The recipe is easy, yummy, and very chocolately though. (It smells even better than it tastes though, which is a bit odd. And the chocolate chips inside were a little extra nice if you heat them up, but didn't add as much to the flavor as I felt like they should. )

But today we're here to talk about two things the recipe mentioned that were new to me:

"For more even doming, use cupcake papers." starts one of the tips in the sidebar.
"Remove the cupcakes from the oven, and tilt them in the cups so their bottoms don't steam." is one of the directions.

1. I've recently discovered the joy of spray oil with flour in it, and I had pretty much stopped using cupcake papers altogether. I always manage to dribble batter everywhere anyway, so they weren't saving me from washing the muffin tins, and it's nice to have the completely edible self-contained cake - no crumb-producing paper removing step.

2. I'd never heard this before! What separates a steamed bottom from an unsteamed bottom?

So the image shows my experiment: in my 12 spot tin, I sprayed half and did papers for half. In my two 6 spots, I tilted the cupcakes for half and left half to cool nestled in the tin.

The results:

The tops of the papered ones were prettier. They were smoother and maybe a bit more domed. For a recipe like this, where you don't have to frost them, it would look nicer to use the papers. The naked ones have kind of a crust edge where the sides rise faster or something. For my purposes though, it's so much easier to just eat the naked ones and you don't have that sad moment where you're LOSING CAKE as you peel off the paper. Papered ones went to work and we ate all the naked ones. Team Naked Cupcake.
I couldn't tell any difference between the ones that I tilted and the ones that I didn't. *shrugs* I don't have the most discerning palate, and these are pretty sturdy cupcakes, so I can't say there's absolutely nothing to it.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-02T12:57:00.001-07:00

Home made pot pies:

A few views of the first real snow of the season:

A very regal dog has agreed to pose for us:

Things I've been meaning to post about:

2010-12-23T12:53:00.005-07:00

Ordering glasses online:
I did it. I looked at a bunch of different sites, and I ended up buying mine at Zenni Optical. They were about $35 inc shipping, high index lenses, and anti-glare coating. My goals were: cheap, and try someplace that does tinting so that N could order cheap prescription sunglasses once he gets his prescription updated. Eye Buy Direct had the nicest site, but charged more for the high index lenses, and don't do tinting in all frames, just sunglasses in a few high price frames. Googles4u got pricey fast in my prescription.
At first I thought I would buy some cute frames and maybe like them enough to wear them more than just when my contacts are out at night. But it turns out that I am not daring (these look nearly identical to my last pair, except for the way they fit my head far better) and I hate wearing glasses. But since the eye doctor demands that I take out my contacts every night now, it was good to get a spare pair.

Thanksgiving:

Mostly I want to fill you in on the culinary success stories.

I made homemade cranberry dressing, with orange juice and orange zest. It was YUMMY.

and N came up with the thoroughly brilliant idea of molding it in the skull cake pan! Despite it taking up a ridiculous amount of fridge space, it was still fun to scoop out some jawbone to garnish the turkey with.

I made acceptable dinner rolls for the first time ever: Parker House Rolls from Baking Illustrated. They are ridiculously buttery, which is fine for a special occasion. I'm not sure I'm shaping them right, but I end up with little folded buns that make great tiny sandwiches with leftover turkey and some dijon. mmmm. But still on the lookout for a good "everyday" dinner roll recipe.

I also tried a new variant on Hypocrite Pie, Sour Cream Apple Pie from the Modern Baker. Malgieri's version has a much better custard - it really holds together while still being chockful of apples. Unfortunately, his crumb topping is kind of bland and there's way too much of it. Next time, I'll try halving the topping.

That about catches us up. The dogs say Merry Christmas!

Fall is for changes. And Skull cakes.

2010-11-07T11:10:00.003-07:00

Skull cake! I am now plotting excuses to make skull cakes for every occasion. Hogwatch, Easter Crime, Pirate birthday parties (I'll be pro-pirate for skull cakes!) I just love my skull cake pan. This is yellow cake with the simple glaze I used for coffee cake. It's two pieces, one that is sort of neck + back of head and one that's the face. So it sits up and looks at you. We glued them together with strawberry jam that didn't set all the way for extra gore.

The linden tree in the front yard changed color in the last few days. All over the neighborhood, the leaves are coming down so fast you can hear them, so today was the day to get all the fall color photos.
(unknown decorative bush. it's twin on the other side of the deck appears to be dead - didn't change color.)
(the remaining apricot tree. It was about twice this big, but half of it fell over and died. We still got enough apricots for jam this year.)

News! I have a new job. It is awesome. I'm a Data Consultant at SimpleGeo. Right now that means that I'm building ways to clean up our geo data sources, which uses programming and statistics and text mining and other things that I wanted an excuse to learn more about. I cleaned out a ton of links that I had favorited in Twitter because they looked interesting - all of them are relevant to my new job. Still part-time while I wrap up this thesis (swear I'm making progress) but planning for it to become full-time after that.
N also has a new job. He's still a controller, but now he has a much better commute, and works for a larger company - a wholesale plant nursery.

Obligatory photo of adorable dog:
Vlad manages to look mopey despite having the comfy chair and all the toys. Takes some doing.

random update

2010-09-20T17:15:00.003-06:00

Well, the big "news": I'm not going to graduate this semester. Presumably, I'll graduate next semester, but really who knows? It's research. I'm definitely making progress, and I'm happy with how it's coming together and my level of understanding. And I'll graduate when it's done.

It took me six years to get my undergraduate degree. It is astonishing to me now that I thought I could get a PhD. in less. :)

I do wish I hadn't expended all that time and energy on job hunting. But oh well. There are worse mistakes to make.

Our living room is back together. It's fantastic and gorgeous. See floor and rug and bookshelves and couch back in place.
This wall used to be grimy white wood paneling, and the old shelves against it were falling-apart particle board. We do need to figure out where to buy more of the little plastic swivels that hold the glass into these.
Dogs are still cute.

Perfect Pantry Coffee Cake

2010-09-19T09:05:00.003-06:00

Goal: coffee cake with a decadent amount of streusel, made only of things I always have on hand.

Recipe:

Streusel (from Bon Appétit's Streusel Coffee Cake )
1/4 c (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c rolled oats
2 tsp cinnamon

Cake (from Challenge Dairy's Streusel Topped Apple Bread )
1/2 c (1 stick) butter, softened
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c buttermilk
2 c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
(if using unsalted butter, 1/2 tsp salt)

Glaze (inspired by Alton Brown's Doughnut Glaze )
1/2 c powdered sugar
1 Tbsp dry milk
1/4 tsp vanilla
just enough water to make pourable

Stir together the streusel ingredients and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9x9 pan with aluminum foil and spray with baking spray.

Cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time. Stir in the buttermilk and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and stir until just smooth.

Spread batter into prepared pan, top with streusel. Bake for 40 minutes. (Or until the center stops jiggling.)

While the cake is cooling, whisk together the glaze, adding water gradually until you have something that is just barely a liquid. Once the cake is nearly cool, pour liberally over the entire cake, it should soak in.

It's good to have our whole house again.

2010-08-22T21:26:00.002-06:00

The living room floor is finished, and enough baseboards are in that we put everything back in the room that belongs there. It's great to be able to use it normally again, as well as see ALL our books and dvds. And I hooked up my Super Nintendo.

We survived having both the annual judo picnic and the annual math bbq on the same day. Brought Snickerdoodle Blondies and buttermilk pie respectively. Sadly, the blondies were experimental and I don't think they make the cut. Too dry. They're great dunked in coffee or tea, but standing alone too dry for me.

A very agile squirrel left this on our (upper floor) windowsill. I wish I could have seen him maneuvering to get up there with it. The apples are almost ripe, so I guess summer must be almost over..

Home Improvements

2010-08-14T15:55:00.003-06:00

Engineered red oak. Cheaper than any of the laminate we liked, maybe a little lighter in color than we were thinking, but looks great in place. We did all the easy parts. Now there's the edge where we have to cut boards lengthwise and the hallway. SO MUCH NICER THAN CARPET.

Vlad likes it. Vlad is also safely off all of his meds - got the bloodwork back this week and he's looking very healthy. Even starting to lose some weight by ineffectively chasing rabbits around the yard. (We have a ton of rabbits this year!)

Gustav also likes the floor.

Yes, this blog is almost entirely an excuse for me to post pictures of my dogs.

We also replaced 5 windows with modern double glazed ones. Including the ones in the bathrooms. I'm so excited about having insulation between me and the outdoors when I shower.

I went to a big statistics conference and gave a talk. I have some ideas for how to have a better time next time I go to a big conference. Luckily it's one where hundreds and hundreds of people give talks, so there were about 5 people in my audience who weren't also speaking that session. It was still pretty scary.

Today I fought in a non-novice division of a judo tournament. Well, 3 non-novice divisions, and the novice division. 8 total fights, won 3. But two where in one division, so I took first in that one. Great fun, no injuries, way less freaked out about fighting black belts in the future.

Jam time

2010-07-30T12:42:00.003-06:00

Apricots! The freeze didn't get them this year, and it looks like it's time to pick them and make super awesome jam. In the dead of winter, it's like a little jar of sunshine.
Last week, N made strawberry jam. Not from our strawberries. We haven't actually managed to harvest any yet. We've had a few fruit last until they are starting to look ripe, and then bang - birds, squirrels, rabbits, Vlad, something eats them. :(
I'm starting to get regular tomato crops from my little plants. There were 4 or 5 other ripe ones before these. But I ate them.
The current big house project: replacing the floor in the living room and downstairs hallway. We hated the awful stained carpet. The funky vintage linoleum underneath was too damaged to embrace. What will we replace it with? It looks like since we're below grade, the best thing to do is laminate and put in a floating floor. Laminate won't have any moisture problems, and it's comparatively cheap. But we're super picky about the texture not feeling too weird and plasticky - if we must have fake wood, we want convincing fake wood. Hopefully we'll find some we like soon. Everything has been moved out of the living room except the books - and all the rest of the floor has come up. The books will be a major undertaking.

Vlad has been weened off all his pills - check up in a few weeks to see if he's doing ok without them.

I'm officially in the advanced class at judo, though I sometimes get talked into helping teach the beginners. The advanced class is SO HARD. I'm covered in funky bruises and I have a lot of days with ibuprofen every 4 hours. First tournament where I fight in the senior division (get beat up by black belts) is in two weeks.

leek flowers are a delicate pink

2010-07-09T16:33:00.001-06:00

A very random collection of things

2010-06-25T10:54:00.003-06:00

This is what leeks look like when they're about to bloom. This is what happens if you never harvest your leeks. I would be so ok with this bed being taken over by leeks and garlic. We don't eat that many leeks now that my free subscription to Bon Appetit ran out, but it would be kind of neat to just have plenty on hand, right there in the dirt.
Both tomato plants are doing great, starting to get little green tomatoes. I have a cherry tomato plant and a grape tomato plant, and the shape difference is even apparent with little baby tomatoes. The basil next to them is doing well enough that I'm already looking forward to more homemade pizzas. mmmm. basil and tomato and roasted garlic. (the little tomatoes I grow just get eaten whole - I buy bigger ones to put on pizzas.)

We've discovered baking potatoes and roasting garlic at the same time. Easy dinner of baked potatoes that may or may not be covered in garlic, and then left over roasted garlic for sandwiches or pizza later in the week.

Judo tournament last weekend: Fought novice division - one person in my weight class, and I had way more experience, so I got first place for the first time. Also my lungs and stomach were far more cooperative so I had much more fun all day. I was so incredibly hyper and talkative afterward that I had to keep wandering around finding new people to talk to because I could tell I was annoying people.

The week before, we went to a WWII style hangar dance. It was fun, but probably not something we need to do again. A good adventure though, and something we'd been talking about doing way back when N did more reenacting. Pics are on facebook.

I went and saw someone's thesis defense. It was good to find out what they are like in our department, and some of our committee members overlap. It's basically just a 1 hour talk, and then time for 30 minutes of questions. It was not a grilling, there were very few questions during the talk and an hour is just not that long considering I've already given 30 minute talks over just part of it. I'm really glad it occurred to me to go - it was just a sudden brainwave.

Project Complete: Oven Trim

2010-06-19T08:46:00.002-06:00

Before we moved in: there were two separate wall appliance holes. Presumably one for an ancient microwave or something. N (with some help) cut the divider out and made it one big hole for our double oven.
Our double oven fit - but wasn't the exact dimensions of the hole - see the hole across the top and the ragged edges on the sides.
Eventually, we developed a plan. It's not the perfect plan, but it's better than a hole! We spent some time in the trim/molding section at Home Depot, mostly considering things like the dimensions of what we were trying to cover up. The side pieces are something called "shoe" molding, and the top is just crown molding. We originally thought we'd just do the top to the edges of the hole, but the edges were not super clean, and we decided this looks better. We stained them to the approximate color of our cabinets, and boom! No hole. I love it.

time to be outside

2010-06-04T11:30:00.002-06:00

Project Complete: Deck Trexification. Last year we had a few stairs break on the deck. Rather than replacing them with wood, N replaced them with Trex, some kind of recycled plastic product stuff that doesn't rot and doesn't splinter. This summer, he finished replacing all the stairs and all the flat railings of the deck. Every thing else would be a more major rework to replace, and more importantly, doesn't need it yet.
This year's tomato plants. I got one of the kind that did so well last year, and a new different variety. Both are flowering already, so I have high hopes.
The strawberry that lived! See all the fruit on this guy? Hopefully the birds won't. We did nothing at all to help it live through the winter (I meant to look up whether I should cover it, but didn't get around to it... ) and it came back strong. It's got something like 10 little fruit ripening now.
Irises in the side yard. More plants that just survive with no attention - those are my favorite.

We've entered the part of the year where afternoons in the shade are fantastic. There are few things I like more than reading on the deck, listening to the breeze in the trees all around me.

New job! sorta

2010-05-21T11:44:00.004-06:00

Only I manage to find a new part-time position when I start looking to have a real job on graduation. I'm glad they like me enough to make a spot for me! I moved from Marketing Science to Global Sales Technical Support this week. I'll be doing less crazy mathematical models, but I think I'm a lot more likely to see actual decisions being made based on data, which makes me happy. I am having to think about statistical significance carefully though, which is good for my brain. Our gimmick is business cases - explaining how well programs and projects worked, backed up by real numbers - with language and framing so that people who make decisions can use it. I think it's going to be a great skill to have for whatever business I end up in. So new job, new department, but same company, same hours and work situation.

We did buy a new toaster so that our appliances match. I think the matching can opener is one of the first things I ever bought for my sweetie - establishing early on how important the kitchen is to us both.
Vlad is confused by the camera. But cute! He had a checkup this week after being weened off his super expensive drugs - and he's doing GREAT! He's kind of tubby now, but not enough for us to worry, just enough to joke about. (The vet checked him over and said "He has butt cheeks!")

Dinner Detectives, Kitchen upgrade - we're all about food!

2010-05-14T11:00:00.004-06:00

Saturday, some wonderful friends took us to a comedic mystery dinner theater show. It starts with everyone checking in, milling around and asking questions, then a seated dinner with periodic bursts of actor activity. They hand clues around to each table (about 90 people or so all together) and at the end, give you an answer sheet asking who did it and for as many details as you can give about how you know it was them. You did NOT need to actually talk to all the other people to get the clues to figure it out. Reading all those mystery novels seemed to pay off though - we won!
Wednesday, our refurbed KitchenAid stand mixer arrived. All those fancy cakes that have been a pain to make are now easy. The world's best brownies will be even better. (I'll finally beat the eggs for long enough) Pictured with the peanut butter blondies that it helped make. (Stand mixer not needed for this recipe, but I had to use it!) I sprinkled chocolate chips on them instead of messing with frosting. That same day, our new cooktop came in!

old and busted
new hotness

All the burners are usable! they self ignite! it's all shiny! *swoon* We may have to go out and buy a new toaster this weekend just so that all our appliances are cute. Yes, we're totally like that.

Taking suggestions for recipes that need 3 burners - cause now we can! woohoo!

Everything is blooming - even the weeds

2010-05-07T14:27:00.002-06:00

grape hyacinths under the crabapple
The crabapple. We missed its most brilliant shade of pink, but its still pretty impressive.
The neighbor's apple tree. It will produce little green apples that Vlad will eat.

We had the tiniest sprinkle of snow this morning, but now it's totally gorgeous out. I'm trying to make a habit of doing at least one quick round of yard work every nice day - more because I want to get out in the nice day than because of the yardwork, though of course there is plenty to do!

I haven't quite conquered the no-knead bread. It just doesn't rise enough to suit me. Summer temps will prove whether it does better if it's warmer, which should give me an idea if it's worth it to do longer rises when it's cool. But it IS super super easy - it was great to have a batch sitting in the fridge when the dogs stole the last loaf of bread - new bread in just a few more hours, with almost no effort.

Working Version of No-Knead Bread (adapted from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day)
3 c lukewarm water
1 1/2 Tblsp yeast
3/4 c dry milk
1 c whole wheat flour
5 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 Tblsp coarse salt OR 2 tsp table salt

Makes 4 lbs. Can make a half recipe. Stir it all together in a bowl you can cover. Stir til all the flour gets integrated. Let it rise, covered, for 2 or 3 hours, then either shape for baking or refrigerate (covered). The book says it can stay in the fridge up to 14 days - I think it goes gross after about 7.

Use 1 1/2 lbs to make a loaf. Let rise 40 minutes if still warm, about an hour and 40 minutes if just out of the fridge. Bake for 35 minutes at 400 degrees.

It makes pretty good pitas - preheat the oven to 500, grab a handful and roll it out to about 1/8" thick - I think I need to err on the side of thicker, the thinner ones were tougher. Bake for 5 to 7 minutes, put them straight from the oven into a big ziploc to get them to soften up.

Off to use up the last of the most recent batch. I've got a weird little bit left that I think I'll roll out and fill with chocolate chips to bake. Also it's time to feed the sourdough starter, so pizza for dinner. And I better not forget to spend some time outside!

Judo Tournament #6. Only Not.

2010-04-16T13:49:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow my club hosts its 42 annual judo tournament. Last year, I was sure that I never wanted to compete, and was patting myself on the back at having dodged it. This year, the only question was how many divisions would I compete in. Until I sprained my stupid ankle. Bah. /end pityfest

When we host, we offer a lunch for the judges, and we have a party after the tournament. It's a potluck, and it being me, I'm baking. The world's best brownies just came out of the oven, and I'm planning to throw together an applesauce cake as well. Tonight I'll help move mats to the tournament location, and tomorrow I'll help with the lunch and party setup. I am looking forward to seeing all the people I miss from judo.

The ankle is well enough for pretty much everything EXCEPT judo. And the physical therapist is hinting that I might be able to start back as soon as 2 weeks from now. The bills have started rolling in, and despite what some people told me, it appears that xrays do not cost thousands of dollars. whew.

We lost a good friend to cancer five years ago today. Fuck cancer. Joe, we miss you. Wish I'd had time to get to know you better.

Just an update

2010-04-09T11:35:00.003-06:00

The apricot started blooming right after I took last week's photos. Hopefully it won't freeze too bad this year and we'll get some apricots for apricot jam! I even saw a bee among the flowers.

We seem to have made a tradition of hosting an Easter brunch. It's a lot of fun, and a good excuse to make hollandaise sauce and drink mimosas. We've done it enough times that I feel safe looking forward to it every year. I love traditions! (and eggs benedict!)

This was my second week of physical therapy. (With the physical therapist's ok) I also started yoga and ellipticaling. I'm definitely not up to full speed, and no one wants to discuss how long til I'm back at judo, but at least I'm able to do something again.

No Knead bread recipes are coming along. Dry milk helps the flavor immensely, but I think I need to start lowering the salt. Their method for making raisin bread is a clear winner though. (Roll out some bread dough. Hit it with an egg wash, some cinnamon sugar and some raisins. Roll up, stick in loaf pan, allow to rise, bake as usual. Awesome.)

We're finally making progress on the downstairs bathroom. If the paint/texture of the new half of the ceiling had matched, we'd be done, but nooooo, it never works that way. So we're half a ceiling worth of paint and texture away from cleaning it up and putting it back together. SO CLOSE.

And now that it's spring, there's a ton of yard work to be done - good thing I can walk! I've started cleaning up the winter debris from the front yard, one wheelbarrow full at a time.

It's Spring!

2010-04-02T11:40:00.002-06:00

I can tell, all the snow melted. (Not that we won't get more, just that there's not still a big patch of it next to the shed.)

In order: mint, strawberry(!) and oregano are alive. More amazingly, there's some live grass in our backyard. Not enough to be photogenic though.

No new recipes. Not being able to stand much kind of puts a damper on baking. I have been experimenting with Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day - I'm not happy with it as plain bread yet, but it was good for making Bierocks last weekend. My big caveat with that book - all the recipes expect you to use coarse/kosher salt, but the book only says that right at the beginning, not in all those recipes. Even using coarse it's a pretty salty dough, but with table salt it was almost inedible. I'm not a fan of the recipe writeups in the book at all, but some of them are quite good if you can puzzle them out. And the method is super super easy, so I think it's worth tinkering with to get something I'm happy with out of the recipe.

I'm out of the orthopedic boot and starting on physical therapy. I'm going to try going to yoga next week. I'm still wearing a soft brace for most of my walking, but if I'm careful I can walk without it.

I leave you with an obligatory dog photo:

It finally happened

2010-03-06T10:04:00.002-07:00

I finally injured myself at judo.

This is my lovely boot. So far it allows me to stand if I'm careful and don't put too much weight on my right foot. But soon it will let me walk! Which is awesome, because I am some seriously terrible at crutches.

We were doing speed/form exercises - all forward throws have a part where you crouch down in front of the other person and spring up. We were using that motion to propel us into a short sprint, return, and fling ourselves back into the crouch. On my last one, my foot missed the turn, I tried to walk to the tops of my toes, and my ankle went sideways.

I called N and we had a nice little trip to urgent care (where the doctor told me she was considering taking judo back up, but that I was really hurting judo's case in this argument) got some x-rays, decided my ankle wasn't broken (but that she thought she saw something a little weird in my x-rays), got my lovely boot and went home. Painwise I'm doing great - she gave me a script for Vicodin if I need it, but so far I'm doing great on ibuprofen. I'm not even doing the thing where you keep close track of when you're allowed to have your next dose.

Next day, I call our normal doctor, who starts out all "if it seems to be doing fine, you don't need to come in" then hears the "maybe something weird in the x-rays" and changes tunes to "please go see the nice podiatrist lady." So I do. More x-rays, including ones of my other foot for comparison. My bones have all their little corners, but the shin bones on my injured leg are a smidge further apart than the ones on my left - so she's worried that the ligament holding them together also ruptured. She thinks I'm going to be at least 4 weeks in the boot, then physical therapy (no timeline) before back to normal. And by normal she means wear a supportive brace whenever I'm active for at least a year. Worst case is that I do need minor surgery either for the shinbones ligament or if the outer sprain ones refuse to heal nicely. But won't be able to tell til after physical therapy.

I'm terrified of what all this will cost. Also what my stress levels and metabolism are gonna do without regular exercise. Not much I can do about any of it right now.

BUT - Vlad is MUCH better, and it looks like we don't have to take him to the vet for about two months - as opposed to every two weeks. So I guess my ankle is getting all the money we're saving on vet bills :(

My Current Sourdough Recipe

2010-02-18T14:56:00.002-07:00

This is based strongly on the Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread from King Arthur Flour, but I wanted to include some whole wheat and I needed to enlarge the recipe to make loaves big enough for sandwiches.

morning: Take starter out of fridge
noonish: Use 8.5 oz of the starter to make pizza crust, feed starter
afternoon: start this bread

In a large bowl with a lid, mix:
8.5 oz starter
2 c whole wheat flour
2 c all purpose flour
2 c water

Put lid on. Let sit out for about 4 hours.
Stick in fridge overnight.

morning: take it out of the fridge, let sit about 2 hours so it's not so incredibly cold.
Add
2 3/4 tsp salt
1 Tblsp sugar
all purpose flour as needed - (I'm trying to get a measurement on this instead of just throwing in handfuls til I can knead it. I added 1 1/2 c last week, and that was too much. Which seems really weird looking at the original recipe..)

Knead about 6 minutes.

Let rise about 5 hours.

Shape into 2 loaves.

Let rise 2-3 more hours.

Slash tops deeply.

Bake at 425 degrees (I actually preheat for this one because it relies so much on oven spring) for 30 minutes.

Red Dawn Watching Party

2010-02-08T17:21:00.004-07:00

I totally made red velvet cupcakes and piped hammer and sickle designs (after dying the cream cheese frosting yellow) on them.

For those who don't know: Red Dawn is a movie about a bunch of high schoolers in Colorado who form a group of partisans when the Soviets invade. Also, N is pretty active in a survivalist group here. There were members of that group that had not yet seen Red Dawn.

So we fixed that. If nothing else, we had to do it before they release the remake! (I hadn't seen it either. But then, I don't claim that I am prepared to go live in the mountains for a few months if I had to. I just bake the cupcakes.)

Then we watched Zombieland. Everyone was happy and it was a very late night.

Sourdough Pizza Crust

2010-01-30T10:21:00.002-07:00

adapted from King Arthur Flour's recipe

8.5 oz unfed starter
1/2 c hot tap water
2 c flour
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp yeast

Knead 5 minutes
Rise til doubled, 2-4 hours
Divide dough in half, shape roughly into 6 inch discs
Let rest at least 15 minutes
Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Shape to final pizza size, poke interior with fork to prevent bubbling
Bake crust 5 minutes
Add sauce and toppings
Bake an additional 10 minutes (if you may need to rotate the pizzas if they are on different racks halfway through this.)

It is really, really good. It still gets pretty thin, and it is nice and crispy and holds up to the sauce well. The crust is chewy. It doesn't brown prettily like you'd expect - sourdough is weird about browning.

The real joy is that it uses unfed starter - that's the stuff you can't use in most recipes because it's not very active. Instead of throwing it out when I feed the starter from the fridge I can make this - I expect that will happen a lot. May also try making the dough and freezing it - either for future pizzas or for a big batch of breadsticks.

brothers

2010-01-22T10:05:00.002-07:00

Sourdough bakeoff! KAF recipe using Stinky. Stinky bread is on the left, Arthur is on the right.
They both had huge ovenspring.
But Stinky's bread only rose right in the center. Flavor is fine, maybe even a bit better because Stinky eats only whole wheat flour. But for bread rising purposes, Arthur is the better starter. I haven't quite brought myself to throw out Stinky yet. Theoretically, I could grow a new wild starter anytime I have a week to spare. But Stinky is my first! Still since I can barely use enough starter to keep one going, I'd just be throwing out a lot of it to keep two alive.

(The invalid and his brother, Mister Shoveybutt.)
Vlad is off steroids! Hopefully that will go well and we can stay off of them. Now he should: be less thirsty, be less hungry, and grow his fur back better. The first two will hopefully mean he will start letting us sleep through the whole night. I can't wait.

I just happened to catch this bird enjoying our hanging planter while I was taking the other pictures.

Other news:
N has his darling car back.
I learned how to start the patent process at work, which involved commuting for a workday and talking to people.
New recipe: Frenchified Beef Stew - great with fresh sourdough, awesome the next day. We used stew meat instead of short ribs, parsley instead of chevril, and discovered our shared love for pearl onions.

Sourdough bakeoff!

2010-01-15T14:24:00.002-07:00

The starter from King Arthur Flour arrived, and I made my first batch of bread from it. (To henceforth be known as Arthur.) I made the accompanying recipe, which makes annoyingly small loaves. (I think they mean for them to be freeform, but we like making sandwiches out of everything, so use loaf pans.) It never rose all that much, but I gave in and stuck it in the oven 2 hours past the suggested rise time. HUGE oven spring that made it almost a respectable size loaf. Fantastic texture: seems almost professional. Stinky's bread comes out like english muffins, but Arthur's was much more like bakery bread. Much, much softer.

Experiments to still be done:

Try the KAF recipe with Stinky
Modify the KAF recipe to include whole wheat flour
Modify the KAF recipe to produce larger loaves.

Other things:

The insurance company is going to fix N's car (they scared us and threatened to total it: would have been a huge pain in the neck mostly because we have never dealt with such a thing before.) He's got a rental Accord in the meantime, which is ginormous compared to our cars.

Today is my 9th anniversary with IBM. All as a co-op. I wish I knew who to ask to find out if that's a record!

I got a new computer for the first time in almost 5 years, a Mac Mini. As soon as I get the proper video adapter for my antique monitor (hey, at least it's LCD) I will get to be properly excited.

2010-01-08T14:16:00.003-07:00

Last weekend we finally went to a thrift store near a nice part of town (it's not IN a nice part of town, but it is right next to a bunch of antique shops) Our theory paid off - the store itself was small and dingy, but the selection had a lot of great quality stuff. We'll have to go back sometime before I need an interview suit.
Sadly, someone rearended our parked car almost as soon as we got there. We saw it happen (from half a block away) and got the guy's insurance info. The insurance company will take care of it next week - the poor little miata needs a new rear light assembly and maybe some love to get the trunk lid to sit just right again. :(

I tried letting sourdough rise until I would normally put it in the oven. Then I re-kneaded one of the loaves and let it have a second rise. It took FOREVER, and came out super sour. I'm not sure I can coax a well-rounded loaf out of Stinky, so I gave in and ordered a starter from King Arthur Flour.

Judo started back again this week. It was great fun but I hope that next week it does not make me quite so sore.

Today I went to school and signed up for thesis hours for the semester. 7 this semester leaves 3 more before I graduate. Wow.

Vlad continues to improve, and is taking another step down on his steroid intake.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T09:41:00.002-07:00

2009 had a lot of downs. But even with all the craziness, except for Vlad, we're all in a better place than when we started it. Glad to move on to the next chapter. 2010 will have its share of big plans, but I hope tempered with more stability!

Also, I know everyone else has already said this, but: 2010! TWENTY-TEN. That's the freaking future.

happy holidays

2009-12-22T16:39:00.002-07:00

I am amused that blogger posts things in the opposite order that you load them. Silly blogger.

We're big on Christmas. As many of you know because you get cards from us every year. I love stockings. I love having lights hung on something. (For xmas purposes, we just declare that the red abstract sculpture is an abstract rendering of a tree so I that I can just go on and call it a tree.) I love that we have ornaments from N's childhood. I love wrapping presents. I love cookies. (Made a full batch of rugelach for the first time (usually I freeze half the dough) and it went FAST.) We get a ham. We make fancy macaroni and cheese to go with it. There will be at least one present to play with Christmas day. Every year I watch Miracle on 34th Street. I reread Hogfather. (gonna have to get on that! but it takes about 4 hours to read when it's for the umpteenth time) We usually watch Die Hard, but I can probably live if we skip it this year. We're expecting more snow starting tonight, so it will probably even be a white Christmas.

Other than baking cookies, I don't feel like I've been up to much lately. Or at least that's interesting to share. (Interested in the state of Vlad's bowels? Much improved. Even that is TMI.) I declare that the pictures make up for my lack of words. Happy Holidays to all of you! I hope you all have traditions you enjoy as much as we do ours.

procrastinatin'

2009-12-07T16:44:00.003-07:00

should be working on my proceedings paper. Guess I will be soon.

Vlad is hanging in there - nothing new wrong with him, and he is active and happy. Starting to adjust his meds to get him on fewer of them.

Gustav had a growth removed - it's benign. Stitches come out of his butt Friday.

I had a mole removed - it's benign. No stitches for me at least. :)

I argued with the school about some things. We now agree that I have had enough immunizations to register for classes in the spring. (In that special way, where I had to sign a waiver for my mumps shot... ) and that I really only need 10 more thesis hours and to defend my dissertation. Not 3 more classes and 9 more hours.. (I have no idea how they got that from my records.. )

Last judo tournament of the year was Saturday - I got to fight a nice brown belt. Lost the two fights, but had good ones. I think the next really local one is in April, and is the giant one that my club hosts.

I have more baking plans than time. Need to write this paper to free up some time!

How I make pie crust

2009-11-24T17:42:00.002-07:00

(This is how it should look when you're done mixing - this is 2 crusts worth.)
Proportions from "The Basic Pie Crust" in Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s The Complete Book of Pastry, Sweet and Savory

6 Tblsp of fat, frozen. Lard is perfect. Butter is too soft, but half
butter, half crisco works pretty well. I freeze discs wrapped in wax
paper because it's easy to break the discs up.

Put 1 c flour in the food processor. Add a spoonful of sugar if you
want. Break up the fat onto it. Pulse until no fat particles bigger
than a pea are left. Add a little bit of ice water (Tblsp at a time if
you want to measure) give it a couple of pulses, check to see if it's
starting to clump together. Repeat the add water/pulse step until it
does. You are trying to create flour covered fat lumps that have just
enough water to gather together.

Dump the dough out onto some cling wrap, shove it into a lump. Wrap it
up and stick it in the fridge for at least 4 hours, not much more than
a day.

When you roll it out, be crazy generous with the flour. Cover the
surface, cover the rolling pin, cover both sides of your dough lump.
Once I have it rolled out, I usually fold it into 4ths to transfer to
the pie pan.

We love this dog

2009-11-21T16:42:00.003-07:00

Vlad has been very sick. Two Thursdays ago, he was diagnosed with Auto Immune Hemolytic Anemia which on its own is often fatal. His white blood cells are trying to kill his red blood cells, and they had gotten dangerously low. His tongue was completely white by the time we got him into the vet. Not knowing to look for paleness, all we knew was that he was lethargic and had stopped eating. (Most dogs don't stop eating. I'm glad he did - Vlad lethargic is about as active as Gustav, so it didn't seem like we needed to worry that much other than the lack of eating.) Within a few days after his diagnosis, he also had pancreatis (pancreatitis? something bad.) and his blood proteins were way off. It turns out that when you have low protein in your blood, fluids seeps out of the blood vessels and collects in the belly. Vlad gained 5 lbs in fluid. (Normal weight: 30 lbs) There was so much fluid it was pushing on his lungs. After two transfusions (one of plasma, one of a plasma substitute) we are now treating his kidneys with a special diet and yet another pill.

The low protein and the pancreas problems are not usual complications of the auto immune induced anemia. He's just special.

So now we're giving him steroids and a human immune supression drug. We did a round of antibiotics. And he's got drugs for his kidneys. And antacids to try to keep the steroids from giving him ulcers. He's down to 31 lbs.

He still may succumb to the anemia pretty quickly, but for now, it looks like it's under control.

If your dog becomes lethargic and you think his tongue/gums are pale - get to the vet!

My Suggestion for your First Loaf of Bread

2009-11-07T08:12:00.003-07:00

Slight adaptation of King Arthur Flour's Our Favorite Sandwich Bread
2 tsp yeast
1 c water
1/3 c dry milk
2 Tblsp sugar
1 c whole wheat flour
2 Tblsp butter, soft
1 1/4 tsp salt
All purpose flour for remainder

Notes:
The ingredients are listed in the order that I suggest adding them. It shouldn't matter much, but it's kind of nice to to dissolve the yeast in liquid first.
I use Rapid Rise yeast. Rose uses it for everything, so it must be fine. BUT it's fine to use any kind - you just may have longer rise times.
I use dry milk because a) I always have it on hand and b) the more finicky recipes I see say you must scald milk before you use it, but that dry milk is ok to just dump in.
It doesn't have to be white sugar. Brown sugar might add some warmth to the flavor. Honey is nice but kind of a pain to measure in small quantities. Molasses will give it a noticeable kick.
The whole wheat flour is optional - you can just use all purpose for the whole thing and get a nice white loaf.
I'd probably just do two rises at sea level - this was tested at high altitude.

Directions:
Stir main ingredients together.
Add 1 c all purpose flour and stir.
Add about 1/2 c flour at a time, stirring, until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and starts to come together as a single mass.

Cover your hands in flour (adding more as needed) and knead 6-8 minutes. (Punch it, fold it, throw it on the counter, search for youtube instructional videos - however you want to knead it.) As far as I can tell, you pretty much CAN'T overknead by hand, so go at least the 6 minutes and all the way up to 10 if that makes you happy.
For a single loaf recipe like this, I often mix in a large bowl, knead in the bowl so I don't get flour everywhere, and rise it in the same place.

Oil a bowl lightly, form the dough into a ball by tucking the ends under, place it in the bowl and cover. Kitchen towel or cling wrap will do if your bowl doesn't have a lid.

Allow to rise until doubled in size - about an hour, but varies GREATLY by warmth of room, altitude, etc. The first rise is usually the longest.

Punch it down, give it a few folds to distribute the bubbles. Reform, recover the bowl, and allow to rise to double its size again.

Oil (or better - that spray oil with flour incorporated) a loaf pan. Flatten your dough into a rectangle, and roll it into about the length of the pan. Tuck the ends over if you need to. Place in the pan with the seam down.
Spray oil top of dough, cover with cling wrap. Allow to rise til crest is about an inch over the top of the pan.

You may slash the top of the loaf before putting it in the oven. I did a single slash down the center.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Allow to cool completely before slicing.

Potato Bread

2009-10-30T13:20:00.002-06:00

Heavily adapted from "Sister Jennie's Potato Bread" in Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s The Complete Book of Breads

For the sponge:

1 1/2 c water
1/2 c potato flakes
1 c whole wheat
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1/4 c brown sugar
2 eggs
1 c all-purpose flour

Should make a thick batter, allow to rise until doubled in bulk: about an hour.

Stir in

1 softened stick of butter
enough all-purpose flour to make kneadable

Knead 8 minutes, allow to rise until doubled in bulk: about an hour.

Shape into two loaves, allow to rise until about an inch above the edge of the loaf pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then cover with foil. Bake for 25-30 more minutes.

It is very prone to burning, so don't forget the foil.

collection of updates

2009-10-26T17:41:00.002-06:00

The leak was the overflow drain from the tub. So incredibly glad we found it before we patched the ceiling. We (really, my lovely husband) replaced the gasket and applied some caulk and soon we'll test it. THEN we'll buy a green board and fix the ceiling.

I DO really love judo tournaments. It's the exhilarating combination of "I never would have guessed I can do this" with "I am getting better and better at this." Sadly, N is bored to tears by them. (I can't blame him - we were stuck in a high school gym for 4.5 hours for me to get 3 fights. None of them lasted the whole time, so that's less than 9 minutes on the mat? less than 15? (Not sure how long our rounds were.)) I like having him there, but not enough to ruin his whole day again.

I have now given a talk at a real conference, like with grownups, not just students. It was terrifying, but I think it went well, and if it didn't I'll never know because the attendees at the Army Conference on Applied Statistics are the nicest bunch of people I could hope to meet in such a short time frame. Lots of interesting talks, lots of interesting conversations. (Example - have now chatted with someone who actually worked at Rand. EEEEE.)

My potato bread recipe has emerged out the side of my tinkering and tastes great. I'll have to type it up soon. (It's chicken scratch on the back of my flu shot info sheet right now. )

Also worth noting...

2009-10-18T09:01:00.002-06:00

In both the spirit of documenting home improvement, and "we love you, but.. now's not a good time to visit."

We're down a bathroom. The ceiling of the spare bathroom had water damage. So we got to take it apart (not all of it thank god) and look for the leak. The scary (but sorta good) part is we see no leak. I'm hopeful that this is somehow from replacing the upstairs toilet last summer, and we just never noticed. (It wasn't too obvious, just that droopiness in the paint. Not even any discoloration.)

But at the moment, there's a 2' x (length of the room) strip of ceiling missing, and the rest of the room is dropclothed and covered with ceiling bits. We need to buy a green board, and go through the whole patching, taping, mudding and painting rigamaroll. Once we've convinced ourselves thoroughly that this is not an ongoing leak so we won't have to do it all over again in a few months.

As usual, we're in no huge hurry to get it fixed. My hard deadline is next fall in time to try to talk some of you into coming up for Beerfest. :)

Ah, the things you learn as a homeowner.

Plague House

2009-10-16T09:16:00.004-06:00

I just slept almost 12 hours. N is still sleeping. I don't think it's a flu since a) we got flu shots Sunday and b) I seem to be on the mend already and never had much of a fever, and most of my misery was snot related. It was a real triumph to sleep through the night without medical support.

I do seem to get sick right after judo tournaments though. (Yeah, there was one last Saturday. I met new people... and got beat up by them. I got one lucky round, earning me 3rd place.)

Anecdote: Vlad is the finickiest dog ever.
Gustav has special "limited ingredient diet" food. Vlad ate it for months, and then suddenly refused to, choosing instead to steal what human food he could, dig in the compost, and eat used tissues. So we moved Vlad back to the food they were both on before, which Gustav is definitely allergic to. All was well for months, despite having to protect Vlad's bowl at all times from his voracious brother.
We got a new flavor of special diet food, duck and potato, and tried it on both dogs. Gustav is fine with it. Vlad... started crying and backing away from his food bowl as if it were the scariest thing ever. In retaliation for trying to feed him duck, he now hates his old food as well. Just totally ignores it. After two days of not seeing him eat anything, we gave him one of the emergency cans of wet food. That's apparently ok.
Any thoughts on how to find kibble Vlad will eat? Or what to do with 30+ lbs of expensive dog food that he's now bored with?

(UPDATE: We won. He's decided kibble isn't THAT bad and has grudgingly gone back to eating. )

I'm spending most of next week at a conference. I'll be presenting, which of course scares the beejeebus out of me. But I'm late in the week, first in my session. Combination of time to prepare and getting it over with. It's a small conference, but there are two tracks, so I am weirdly comforted that if I am too boring everyone can go listen to someone else.

It's officially fall

2009-10-04T19:33:00.004-06:00

first pumpkin burps of the season.

For N's work retreat, we spent last weekend at a dude ranch. In the mountains. Yeah. Driving in them scares me less when there isn't snow on the ground (though it was a close call, luckily it stopped snowing and warmed up for the weekend.) But I am not a fan of "Beware of Falling Rocks" signs. Especially the one that looked like it got hit by one. Unsurprisingly, I'm not really a dude ranch kind of person. But the people were nice and it was hard to be stressed about all my lowlander stuff. N rode a horse for the first time and enjoyed it, and unsurprisingly also enjoys shooting skeet.

This weekend some friends had a joint birthday party and I made cake: Sour Cream Chocolate Layer Cake from Baking Illustrated (store chocolate frosting that doesn't go bad when warm), and Pumpkin Gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for the chocolate haters. Good party, met some new people and got to see some people I don't see often enough.

I finally feel like I'm starting to get a handle on research, which is good, because I need to present some results in the next couple of weeks. EEP. I'm pretty sure it's going to be ok.

A list

2009-09-21T15:58:00.002-06:00

This week's winning recipe: Baked Ziti

Honorable mention: Blondies from Baking Illustrated - Altitude adjustment 1. They're not quite right yet, but it was a step in the right direction - the edge pieces aren't insanely gooey.

Daytime high temperature: 85

Daytime low temperature: 40

Number of layers worn today: 3

Most annoying thing about working from home on a cold day: If I hold one dog in my lap, the other gets jealous and demands playtime.

2009-09-11T11:52:00.003-06:00

Last weekend we had some friends come into town, and we had fun showing off some Colorado-isms, as well as our house and cooking abilities. (N proved that yes, yes, he can grill steak pretty darn well. mmm. And at his brilliant request, I made a well received buttermilk pie.)

The dogs and I got our fall haircuts. They look like labrador puppies and I'm looking a lot more corporate and grown-up than I asked for... which is probably for the best.

I'm getting jazzed about my new work project - I love getting to do some research for work. I'm still pretending to be a java coder, but it's taking less of my time.

I need to mail in my form for the next judo tournament. Got Sensei's signature approving my entry in my division. Speaking of judo, I totally broke my left baby toe last week, so both little toes are miserable. Flip-flops for awhile, just when it's starting to get cold. :|

It's looking like a pretty quiet month, but October has two judo tournaments and a conference, so I'm trying to savor the quiet.

This week I ..

2009-09-03T22:12:00.003-06:00

fought in my first judo tournament - lots of things went wrong, but I had a great time
talked to my 2nd line for the first time ever, to let him know that one day, I will need a real job - went pretty well?
gave my thesis proposal - went really well, no one said I needed to do more stuff, and now; now, I have an approved plan for getting from here to thesis-done.

I'm going to have a holiday weekend now. Perfect timing.

how did these get moved to mondays?

2009-08-24T17:15:00.003-06:00

My thesis proposal is scheduled for the Thursday of next week. I'm a little scared, which means I'll be spending lots more time talking myself hoarse rehearsing it between now and then.

I've got bunches of cherry tomatoes! Every day or two I get to pick 2-6 tomatoes, wash them off, put them in a little bowl and snack on one everytime I walk through the kitchen. They all taste great, but the skins on the littlest ones are kind of tough. There's a ton of peas sitting on their vines too - N has to decide to pick them since they are his.

Gustav had his followup dermatologist visit. We all agree he is much improved, but suspect that not only does he have a food allergy, but there's probably also a pollen or dustmite allergy still bothering him. It's still a lot better, so for now we'll stick with treating the symptoms instead of putting him on lifetime meds.

I even had to go to the doctor - I had an infected cyst. Now I have an itchy, healing hole in my back which is a big improvement. They kept asking me "you've never had one of these before?" in that way that means that the odds favor that I'll get another one day. Joy.

We survived both the judo picnic and the math dept bbq. I am endlessly amused that we were not the only ones who went to both - the wife of one of the professors is very into judo. Black belt, stands up front with the instructors when she visits my club, whole deal. N made friends with the entire math dept by running the grill.

I'm not ready for summer to really be over, but it's not waiting for me. :( I even wrapped up my summer work project - I really did write a instant messaging bot. Of course, I have a bunch of next release todo's on my list...

while my code is running

2009-08-17T17:15:00.003-06:00

Classes start today. You know, for those other people. But it's also a sign that it's time for me to get really serious about research. I've been asking people (mostly people with PhDs.. ) for advice on how to make this happen. The one tidbit that really rang for me so far was "do something everyday." (I will try to give myself one guilt free weekend day.) I also had the kind of "duh" realization that since I work from home on autonomous projects... I should already have the right kind of scheduling and prioritizing skills that say, get a java bot written when I don't know java.

So I'm trying to quit work early every day and do at least 2 hours of thesis work every evening. I've already gotten carried away with this annoying bug in my code which is making it easy to keep working. I bought myself the same kind of notebook I use for my work todos, and I'm making the same kind of todo list. I'm not sure if I want to write my hours worked, or nothing at all by each day. (For work, this is my proto-timecard piece of the notebook.) I'm experimenting with one line of what I got done that day.

If this doesn't work out, my next best guess is to work two long days and two short days and do thesis work on the short days. Every day sounds like a good habit if I can manage it. I'm always happier to have a plan.

done with classes

2009-08-02T20:54:00.002-06:00

So... I'm starting to really believe this. I'm done with classes now. I'll still sit in on things, but no more homework.

My presentation went really well. One of the simple examples was simple enough to have the class play, and I gave them brownies "as the game payoff" (but, yes, really I just gave everyone brownies. I have never seen such a welcome as when I walked in with food. I think this has a lot to do with class being from 10:30 to 1:00.) The paper went ok, and it's handed in, ....

which means I should have an economics degree now? Today I realized that no one had sent me any information about graduation or tried to rent me a gown, so maybe the paperwork didn't actually go through. At worst, it's all done but the paperwork, but either way, I (will) have an M.A. in Economics. Stubbornness pays off once again.

I got everything on my to-do list done at work. It's a weird feeling. I do have some other things that need to be converted from "try this vague thing" to an actual task, but it's still a strange and wonderful sense of accomplishment. And perfect timing because I'm only working a two-day week, because

Wednesday I'm flying out to stay with my friend in Florida. I'm really excited to see her house, meet her cats, go to the beach, and generally be on something resembling vacation.

But I'm still a good PhD student, because I've already packed a book I need to dig through for my thesis proposal.

Bonus: I have a ripe-ish tomato. Tomorrow, I'll pick it.

last week of the last class

2009-07-26T15:22:00.003-06:00

EVER! I can't quite believe it. It is starting to sink in that I really need to do a presentation Tuesday, and that I have a paper to write for Friday. eep. Hopefully it will go fast in that magic way where at least I have done all the reading for it, and my brain has been mulling it all over for a few weeks. (My topic is information cascades. My problem is that I don't really have a conclusion, just "This is what they are. Here are some things we could try to model with them." No conclusive feel on whether these are helpful models or anything..)

So I'm spending the weekend trying to get funky unix programs to draw game trees installed, and baking blondies so that I can bribe the class to pay attention to my presentation. :)

I have lots and lots of things to do for my research (and in the immediate term, say early Sept., my thesis proposal) but I really can't do them until I'm done with this class and my brain unwinds a little bit.

One of my tomato plants is going totally nuts: 20+ fruit already, and more flowers going. The other has _1_ lonely fruit, but a few more flowers, so we'll see. Does days to maturity mean from the time they become fruit? 65 days is forever! It looks like some squirrels dug up all but one of the onions. Left them lying around complete with little teethmarks. The strawberry plants are getting bigger, but no sign that they are interested in bearing fruit.

SIAM Annual Meeting

2009-07-11T10:33:00.002-06:00

I spent most of the last 5 days wandering around the convention center and watching math talks that were way over my head. (Somehow I also managed to go to judo once, work one afternoon, make it to my class and do most of my homework. I am BEAT.)

There was a career fair Monday night, which combined with meeting lots and lots of about-to-graduate PhDs, gave me way too much food for thought about what I want to be when I grow up. I didn't meet anyone else who was working (not counting the one guy from our school - I didn't meet anyone NEW to me who was working.) Things I had never thought about before: there are non-academic jobs that still have to do grant proposals. There's a whole network of national labs that work on anything they can get the funding for - but that involves a LOT of chasing the funding. I am even more amazed at how many government and government contracting jobs there are out there. (and how they are ALL in the D.C. area.) I met _4_ people from real industry, and 2 of them work for IBM.

I can feel my brain slowly sorting out the talks and making connections to things people I know are working on. So my brain still hurts, but I don't feel as dumb as I was for most of the week. :)

Things that are going to be really really big over the next 5 years:

parallel computing
multiscale dynamical systems (example: modeling both how the bacteria act within a person and the social networks that have them moving between people)
techniques for insanely big datasets
measuring uncertainty (there's a fancier word for it that I'm not remembering right now)

It was very much not a statistics conference. I met one person who actually identified as a statistician. It was funny to me how much talk there was about how they wanted greater interconnection within the math community, but how stats does not seem to be part of that community. (Computer Science is though.)

Now my poor brain has to do game theory homework (the last talk I saw seemed to be about proving that the next homework I have due will be harder than the last one. Seriously. ) and try to start on a game theory paper.

sourdough sleep

2009-07-11T10:30:00.005-06:00

The starter went into the fridge last Sunday, right after a feeding, and I pulled it back out Friday evening. I let it come to room temperature, then planned to feed it as normal. But the top layer was kind of a funky color (grey-blue tinge) and the smell was a little off, so I scraped off the top layer, moved half to a clean jar and fed it. This morning it looked/smelled fine, and I started a batch of sourdough. I'm sure I'll report back on true rise time.

UPDATE: on a warm summer day - takes 7 hours to rise

Sourdough Status

2009-07-04T08:23:00.002-06:00

(sorry, I gotta put this somewhere or I'll just forget it all.)

Weirdness: I think my starter doesn't like all purpose flour. Within two feedings of switching to all-p it starts smelling bad and separating and looking gross. Stick to whole wheat and it smells like tangy bread. Tried twice, once with new flour that I was sure was unbleached. Science says stick with whole wheat.

I think that was what I was smelling with the first round of sandwich bread from it. This week I made another batch - all whole wheat starter, added 1/2 c dry milk. I can taste a slight tang to tell me it came from sourdough and not tame yeast, but it's slight enough that pb&j's don't taste weird on it.

I'm going to make one more batch Sunday, and then try to put the starter to sleep in the fridge.

Happy Independence Day!

2009-07-04T08:06:00.002-06:00

For a change, we actually have plans for the Fourth: some friends are coming over and braving the city's festivities at a park we can walk to (chili cookoff!) and then there's some other friends are throwing a party this evening. (It's kind of strange being old enough to have people you know from work that have moved on YEARS ago.)

My birthday was Tuesday. It was good - but because I am really good at spreading it out. Tuesdays I have 2.5 hours of Game Theory, an hour roundtrip spent on the bus, 4 hours of work, and judo. So:

Saturday I tried to modify Ruth Reichl's fantastic cheesecake recipe (from Garlic and Sapphires if the book weren't so funny, I'd be telling people to go get it at the library just for the recipes) into an espresso cheesecake reminiscent of Cafe Brazil. Plain layer, coffee flavored layer, mocha flavored layer. Good, but then the recipe calls for a sweet sour cream layer - too tart to play nice with the coffee flavors even though it was perfect with the lemon zest original. Next time: chocolate ganache layer! Also I'm totally going to start making cheesecake crust out of shortbread cookies.

Sunday we made Scallops St Jacques (yes, because the description sounded good in the first Spenser novel. yes, I'm a dork) and baked potatoes. Amazingly, baking the potatoes was the more finicky part. They take forever! and it's a pain to guess when they're done. The sauce was totally awesome and a great baked potato topper. Cooked scallops are still too fishy for me - they were ok, but not great. I picked them out and fed them to my obliging husband. The mushrooms really make the dish.

Tuesday I got promoted to a judo orange belt. Let's not talk about how incredibly insanely bad the test was - that seems to be the one part my club does really badly. At least I don't have to deal with it often.

Next week is an all-week math conference - conveniently located downtown. I also need to get cracking on my Game Theory paper (I think I have an idea for it.. ) and do something for my research. I should do another homework problem before people come over...

"I only want the food bowl if you're eating out of it."

2009-06-26T10:41:00.002-06:00

My dog is a butthead.

We have pea plants!
and leeks. and about 2 carrots. the raspberry is probably dead.

The sourdough was really good! I think it overrose (and in only 8 hours, not the 12-15 listed in the recipe) but it still made awesome sandwiches.

Since we went through that so fast, I then modified his whole wheat recipe to make more normal sandwich bread using the starter to rise. (Mods: used veg oil instead of olive, only 1.5 cups whole wheat, the rest all purpose. ) It rose fine and has great texture, but something about the taste seems off to me. I switched the starter back to whole wheat flour (it was on all purpose for the 5 days between making sourdough and making regular bread) and I think I'll add some dry milk to the next batch. (and maybe up the whole wheat to 2 cups total.)

Good research meeting with my advisor. The only problem is that we have such good meetings and I have so much to do afterwards that I feel like I won't be ready to meet again for months!

baking, hiking, being bad at algebra

2009-06-20T09:26:00.004-06:00

Just out of the oven! Sourdough from my very own, week-old starter. It definitely rose, so the starter can't be too bad... we'll know more when we actually taste it. The starter smells a LOT better than it did earlier in the week.

After 4 years in Colorado, we finally saw one of the not-too-far tourist attractions: Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.Of course, this was only accomplished because friends from much much further away were going and let us tag along. It was fantastic to see you guys - and I find all hikes a lot more interesting with good company.

and the algebra.. well. I just have to force myself to take it slow. and use a calculator when adding and subtracting two digit numbers. It's pitiful, but if I just hurry through my game theory homework, it takes me many many tries to solve very simple algebra problems correctly.

I bet you're sick of hearing about school

2009-06-12T13:35:00.003-06:00

So for now, let's just note that Game Theory started and it hurts my head.

Today I theoretically started a sourdough starter. I'm following these instructions. Wish me luck and I'll keep you updated.

I'm also planning on trying Khachapuri, also known as cheese pie. We will use whatever random cheese we have on hand, because we're cheap and like things to be easy.

We finished planting the garden: garlic, leeks, carrots, leeks, different carrots, peas, soybeans. I'll post a picture when more of it has sprouted.

Last weekend, I went to a judo tournament and watched and took photos. I did feel kind of left out for not competing, but I'm glad I saw one before I tried to. I'm still taken aback by all the yelling and instructions from the sideline. And now I have a valid reason to get a new camera: I ran out of battery before I ran out of picture space, and it really didn't pick up good enough quality on the shots I did get. (Though it's hard to get a good shot of two people in white pjs rolling around.)

What new things did you try this week?

sick

2009-06-05T11:45:00.002-06:00

I have some kind of summer head cold. Since Monday I've been snotty with occasional sore throat extra. I thought I was almost better Wednesday, but the snot returned with a vengeance. Bah.

So I've been muddling through with a head that doesn't quite work for a week. Not bad enough to take a sick day, so I'm still doing my share of pretending to be a java developer (you know what sucks? convincing java to accept a self-signed ssl certificate) and critiquing slide decks.

Summer school starts next week. I owe my econ collaborators some work soon. I set up research meetings with my advisor. I wish I was raring to go, but I think I at least have most of my ducks in a row.

and since I stopped waiting for them

2009-05-23T10:11:00.003-06:00

A's in everything but Functional, A- in Functional.

I would have been happy with B's in Bayesian and Monetary Policy (because they are HARD)
and I didn't think to hope I would get higher than a B in Functional (it is EVEN HARDER and way out of my field of expertise)

Filled out my Intent to Graduate with my M.A. in Economics in August.

Coming out of the Fog

2009-05-22T09:21:00.003-06:00

I've been kind of holding off until they post grades, so that the semester will really feel completely over. But they are taking their sweet time about it, and I'm going to try not to let it make me crazy.

I am very probably done with coursework for math, and am taking one course this summer to finish off Economics. (Game Theory - I'm really looking forward to it. It fits in perfectly with the economics courses I took last semester.)

I never know how crazy the school year has made me until it's over. My brain is finally starting to let go of the constant refrain of "You're behind, we should be working on X." that has been dogging me for the last few months. Actually looking at the list of courses I took last semester, I see that it was a completely nuts courseload. I took 3 classes that were extreme stretches of my ability and took a lot of work and a lot of brainpower. And well.. I had comps.

Work is awesome. I've got a big "learn new things, bulk up IT side of resume" project that I expe ct will take most of the summer. This week I did a reasonable impression of a Java coder, taking apart a tutorial with enough understanding to throw out the bulk of the extra crap they were trying to show off and actually have a Sametime bot that talked to a webpage at the end. (Note: actually following their instructions did not result in having something that worked in the end.) I'm very proud of this because I have no formal background in Java, and haven't even tried to use it in almost 2 years.

We have almost no plans for the long weekend. Should be a wonderfully lazy time. :)

Closer..

2009-05-08T08:40:00.002-06:00

Bayes is done. (Which is a whole long story in and of itself. For me at least, it was an incredibly hard topic to try to teach myself. I think I learned enough to ask good questions, but certainly not enough to be able to use a Bayesian technique for an analysis.)

I got some ideas and some guidance on where the econ paper should go.

We planted the berries last weekend. They're not dead yet. The garlic, onions, mint and oregano are alive. (The mint and oregano came back from last year. They seem to be well entrenched. )

Work is a little crazy right now, but I think it's mostly that my brain badly needs a break.

Quiet Week

2009-05-02T09:35:00.003-06:00

It's pretty quiet here. I'm groping for something to talk about.

School - One Functional Analysis quiz handed in (including something resembling a proof to the representation theorem for the dual of l^p spaces), lots learned about central bank independence and how hard it is to measure. No more Monday/Wednesday night classes, which should help my overall sanity greatly.

Garden - We had one totally gorgeous day: Wednesday. Yesterday it was in the 40s in the afternoon, and it's looking to be a grey weekend. So we still have 3 berry bushes on our kitchen counter. The raspberry is blooming.

Dogs - Gustav had his second trip to the doggie dermatologist yesterday. We're pretty sure he has allergies. We're starting an 8 week food trial hoping that will do it. Doggie meds for allergies are either steroids (lots of bad side effects and not ok with his arthritis meds) or the miracle pill that costs $5/day - every other day forever. Best part: approved restricted/allergy diet dog treat? Potato chips. There's a bag of Ruffles in the dog treat corner now.

Yay, ASA Spring Meeting! Boo, ASA Spring Meeting!

2009-04-24T16:26:00.002-06:00

Every year, my local statistics group holds an all day meeting/mini-conf. Lots of local people give talks, especially students. This is my 3rd year going, and it's getting to that great point where I know a lot of the people.

Today, I gave a talk. (I hate public speaking. But I survived business school with flying colors, which means I am pretty good at it. Today... not so much.) I gave the talk Wednesday at school to help fill out the stats seminar schedule and to practice it and make sure it was the right length and everything. Lesson learned: talk given to 4 people who are not afraid to interrupt - 30 minutes. Talk given in smallish auditorium where no one says anything? 15 minutes. Elementary talk issue and I so know better, but I didn't want to think of more content so I tried to pretend it was ok. Oh well. I was right before lunch, and I don't think anyone begrudged being able to go to lunch early. I did get some good responses from other people in industry, no one suddenly found a huge flaw in my project, and an undergraduate told me he wants my job when he grows up.

Today, I was SUPPOSED to present a poster. They didn't tell me that no one else wanted to present a poster, so they canceled the poster session. I was really looking forward to having something in the "Posters Presented" section of my C.V., but oh well. The bad thing is that I spent ~ 4 frantic hours attempting to print the damn thing out yesterday (plus another 2 finishing it up). FYI - Adobe Reader refuses to tile a large pdf and print it on many sheets. You need Acrobat. The people at Kinko's have Acrobat (or something) and will do it for you, but they will not listen and print it on big sheets so they can charge you more. They would love to print it all at once, but that will cost at least $50, so....

I have a 8 sheets of 11" x 17" taped together that I'm going to take to school and post somewhere, because goshdarnit, I made a poster!

Three weeks left in the semester. Two function analysis homeworks (take home quizes, whatever you want to call them), one paper for monetary policy (How much of the Financial Crisis can be explained by the Credit Channel?), and one example to work up for Bayesian. Research may get to wait a bit, since it got a lot of the last two weeks in order to make the poster happen. STUPID POSTER.

The best part of doing everything at once

2009-04-21T09:14:00.002-06:00

is when it all overlaps. It makes me so happy to read monetary policy papers - written by my teacher - using the same selection bias fix we're using at work. I love how math sits in the middle of all these fields.

School is right on top of me

2009-04-17T09:00:00.003-06:00

which I think is pretty normal for this point in the semester: 4 weeks left including finals.

Since I'm only taking one "real" class, this is almost all self-inflicted, which will hopefully give me an edge next year when its all research. The worst of the deadlines are because of ASA Spring meeting next Friday - where I'm hopefully giving a talk and presenting a poster. Except the project the talk is based on is not done, and I haven't actually turned all my source material and simulations into a poster yet. (The poster is on the first tangible piece of my thesis research and I'm really happy that it's so together in my head. But it will be FANTASTIC to have it be a real thing even if it is taped together sheets of regular paper.)

Part of my Monetary Policy independent study is sitting in on the related classes of Macro - at 7:00-8:15 MW nights. Which with Judo kills every last one of my weeknights. I skipped Judo Tuesday, opting to fight with Bayesian (why does MCMC simulation converge to the correct posterior distribution?) and bang out the R code for my poster simulations. The class is good - I'm following everything despite having taken Macro 4.5 years ago - but I hope it doesn't last for the rest of the semester.

Functional Analysis homework due Thursday - and he hasn't covered even half of the sections the homework is out of. Wish me luck on an extension to that due date.

It's snowing. I'm not sure whether I want to find out if there is an econ talk today. If I don't know, I don't have to go. (Is it my fault they can't seem to send out announcements? and then they wonder why no students show up.)

This is about as exciting as it is likely to get for the next few weeks - the home stretch of mathematics coursework. (I'm taking one more class this summer towards my economics masters - then it's all thesis hours!)

New home on the web

2009-04-10T11:41:00.000-06:00

Blogging is a great way to keep in touch with the friends I don't see often enough. So no apologies for the minutiae, or the many weeks when nothing seems to happen.