HSU IT Department

Go to about the 10:05 mark and LOOK, LOOK, LOOK AT THIS WOT THEY ARE DOING!!!



It's pasta with cheese... MADE IN THE CHEESE.

Could there be anything more utterly scrumptious???

Pardon me while I go watch this again. And again. And again....

Edit: There's another excellent cheesy bit at about 4:01, too. Sooooo hungry now!!

Just read a fascinating article from the NY Times that explores the opposite end of the food spectrum from an apple fresh off the tree or baby peas fresh off the vine: the foods that are best, or at least interestingly robust, with a bit (in some cases A LOT) of aging. There's even a Japanese mold that appears as a character in a mange series -- who knew???

...noorook, a mold that is known more widely in the West by its Japanese name, koji, as the base for a creamy porridge of fermented grains, stained pink by beets. (The mold appears as a character in the Japanese manga series “Moyasimon,” under its scientific name, Aspergillus oryzae.)...The century-old restaurant Otafuku, in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, specializes in a long-simmered stew called oden, with a base of dashi broth first made in 1945....the sell-by date on goods [is] “kind of a con game,” he said. “We need it because we can’t trust our nose — we’ve lost that language.”

Read the rest ==>

The news has really been getting me down lately, all the hyperbole and knee-jerk reactions and frantic pace and depressingly stupid words and actions by that weird guy who's been hanging out in the Oval Office recently. When I get down, one of the things that makes me feel better is cooking, so Friday night I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (mmmm) which made both me and Mr Psmith very happy.

This morning I got ambitious and decided to try a recipe Mr Psmith found last week: Sweet Potato-Green Onion Pancakes with Poached Eggs, Holiday Ham and Pepper Jam. It sounds rather involved just from the ingredients in the title, but actually wasn't that much work. The most tedious part was grating the sweet potato (those little suckers are dense, man). I didn't bother with poaching the eggs, just rinsed and wiped out the pan I used for the pancakes and fried them over easy, while the pancakes were finishing up in the oven.

The end result was DEFINITELY worth it -- an elegant and satisfying combination of flavors and textures. And pretty to boot!

Christmas Day, so once again we made my great-grandmother's egg nog to take to my sister-in-law's. With 4 pints of half-and-half, bourbon rum AND brandy, this is high-calorie and high-test, but oh so very good. I am now having a mug and getting caught up on hoggywartyxmas and sshg_giftfest -- happy happy joy joy!

Here's hoping that all of you had whatever sort of day you wanted, doing whatever you wanted to do, with the companionship you wanted most. Hugs and happy holidays!

How many of these terrors of the table do you remember?

The banana ones are particularly nightmare-inducing. But the little igloo meatloaf is kind of cute.

When I was a kid, my mom went through a serious health-food kick. The rule at every meal was "No matter what you think, you have to try at lesat one bite." Then, if you didn't like the brewer's yeast surprise or the kale cookies, you didn't have to eat them.

This rule stood until one morning when my brother barfed his one bite of wheat-germ-scrambled-eggs all over the breakfast table.

What's your scariest childhood food memory?

All that and more, here in this very entry!

A friend of mine has opened an Etsy store to sell her awesome fabric tote bags. My favorite is the Star Wars one. If you need a tote bag, make this your first stop.

Signups are ongoing over at sshg_giftfest -- there's still space for both authors and artists/crafters so hop on over! I'm thrilled that we have lots of people returning from last year as well as some new faces. Also signups are open at hoggywartyxmas, so start thinking xmassy thoughts!

This past weekend Mr Psmith and I went to the State Fair where we saw, among other things: llamas, sheep, goats (why are their testicles so enormous? why???), adorable baby piglets and monstrous full-grown pigs, and many many flavors of dairy cow including an adorable Jersey calf being raffled off. I wanted to enter but sanity in the form of Mr Psmith prevailed. As always, the food on offer ranged from standard to startling, the latter including a "Gators and Taters" food booth, kangaroo spiedies, and Shark-on-a-Stick. Sadly, we did not get to see the draft horses -- Percherons, Belgians, Friesians, etc. -- which was our main reason for going, as the barn was closed for some reason, drat the luck. But we did get to see the arts and crafts building (quilts! cross-stitch! handmade lace! paintings on sawblades! tiny model rooms!) and the sand sculpture, which is always amazing. One side showed a train going into a tunnel watched by some woodland creatures, including a very alarmed-looking beaver.

My life continues to be far too busy, and sometime between now and the end of September, we have to pack up our entire house. Eek.

So, Thanksgiving was awesome this year. We hosted it, as we have for the past six or seven years, so the house was full of food, family, yummy smells, conversation, etc. Ten people, with three of them age nine or younger and one older one hard of hearing, made for a rather high volume, but a good time was had by all. And I'm getting better and better at doing things ahead of time -- this year I was actually able to sit down and watch some of the Macy's parade, go me!

We had a bit of drama over the turkey, though. Mr Psmith had suggested we get a heritage turkey this year, having read wonderful things about them, so we ordered one in early November. It was supposed to arrive Tuesday via Fed Ex. Late Tuesday morning we get a call from the turkey people saying that our turkey had flown the coop: Fed Ex couldn't find it. So they were sending out another one that would arrive on Wednesday, but that it might be a little bigger since they were out of the size we ordered.

So all day Wednesday while I'm cooking, I'm alternating between Nightmare A, in which the replacement turkey never arrives and I have to venture out and scrounge a stunt turkey, and Nightmare B, in which the replacement arrives and is a 30-lb monstrosity that won't fit in my oven and will take six hours to cook.

Happily, Fed Ex rang our doorbell at 2:47 pm with a 17.6-lb bird, so tragedy was averted. Interestingly, it was a noticeably different shape, lacking the enormous breasts of the standard Broad-Breasted White (what most stores carry) and with much larger thighs. The more equal white-to-dark-meat ratio means it cooks slightly faster and more evenly. And WOW did it turn out amazing! They recommend a very simple preparation since heritage turkeys are very juicy and flavorful, so I rubbed butter and herbs under the skin which I've never tried before (this video was very helpful). The meat-eaters in the group voted it highly tasty, and I got FOUR CUPS of juice out of it for gravy. Normally I get one, if I'm lucky.

Mr Psmith's youngest brother brought his girlfriend E. who is a vegetarian, so there were two of us at the table this year. Since I'm a vegetarian, everything in the meal except for the turkey itself and Mr Psmith's Grandma N's giblet stuffing is meat-free, and E. kept saying how nice it was to have so much she could eat :) Also, she shares my aversion to an empty wine glass which makes her a girl after my own heart. She's been around for a year now and we have hopes that she may be a keeper!

Here is a partial transcript of my five-year-old nephew's conversation:

11:33am: "Can we have pie now?"
11:52am: "Where's the pie?"
12:10pm: "Is it time for pie yet?"
12:30pm: "Pie?"
12:36pm (as I'm taking the turkey out of the oven): "Wow, that's a really big chicken!!"

He also got hold of a pack of post-its and amused himself writing notes and sticking them on his chest: PINCH ME, POKE ME, KICK ME. My favorite was HUG ME.

There were some tough moments, since it was the first big holiday for us without Mr Psmith's brother, and sister-in-law A cried a bit, but it was good to all be together.

On another traditional note: I'll be doing my Christmas bookshelf-weeding and giveaway again this year. I'm compiling the list now and will post it probably this weekend. I do enjoy doing this -- it's such fun to send books to good homes :)

"The next day he had almost forgotten about Gandalf. He did not remember things very well, unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet: like this: Gandalf Tea Wednesday. Yesterday he had been too flustered to do anything of the kind..."

Check out Food in Tolkien's The Hobbit, on http://recipewise.co.uk. It provides historical context (the Shire as Victorian England?) plus recipes for seedcake, etc. so that "we can faithfully recreate that same Tea Party that Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves so enjoyed."

As my mom says, "Well, you're another year older, but at least you're still on the right side of the grass!"

Thanks to everyone who has sent birthday greetings, birthday wishes, and birthday prezzies, most especially rivertempest who sent me a mug with some gorgeous Severus art and the most incredible selection of teas I have ever seen, based on Supernatural, complete with special thingy for steeping!



Bobby Singer's blend has actual gunpowder in it. I'm a little worried about that one :O

And my dear Mr Psmith, who took me out to a NOMZ dinner and bought me the most lovely roses ever which currently have pride of place on the piano:

In Philadelphia on a business trip. Went to Talula's Garden for dinner.

In the words of George Takei: "Oh, my."

Among other things they are famous for their cheese plates*, so I had the World Traveler:

Cana de Cabra (Goat, Spain)
Handmade Sheep’s Milk Feta (Sheep, Greece)
Clyde Weaver Vintage Quebec Cheddar (Cow, Canada)
Vintage Gouda (Cow, Holland)
Chimay (Cow, Belgium)
Délice de Bourgogne (Cow, France)
Scharfe Maxx (Cow, Switzerland)
Neal’s Yard Daily Aged Stilton (Cow, England)**

::dies of cheesy ecstasy::

Then there was potato-broccoli soup and baked bluefish with gnocchi. Plus it's one of those places where every so often they bring you little surprise presents from the kitchen -- amuse bouches I believe they're called -- so I'm slurping my soup, trying to stifle my moans of culinary ecstasy in case I disturb the people at the other table, and suddenly at my elbow appears a plate with two little tiny warm doughnut/cream-puff things with pumpkin-cinnamon butter. NOMZ!!!

I am as full as a tick...

* but I have to say, the word "cheesemonger" totally makes me larf
** No, there was no Venezuelan beaver cheese. I checked.