i planted my brussels sprouts seeds today! woo! in the next couple weeks i’ll start my tomatoes, which will hopefully do something this year.
it’s friday, and i really got nothin’ for ya. tomorrow i will have something – baked alaska progress.
that said, i’m out.
hmmm…2000? 2001? my friend lisa bought a sword online and we were posing with it. look at all my hair! hurry hair, grow faster.
i’ve been eyeing a baked alaska for some time now, wondering if i could pull it off. well, after i mentioned it to my dad for his bday, and him saying he was just thinking about that, i started in on one tonight.
first, a history lesson. the baked alaska was invented by charles ranhofer of delmonico’s restaurant in 1876 to honor the new american territory (alaska – derr). it’s also known as a norwegian omelette, both names coming from the low temps in the two spots.*
first off i made brownies. if you haven’t made homemade brownies, you should. they’re easy, and you’ll never go back. i had to use parchment paper since i wanted the whole shebang to come out of the pan. hate corners and parchment. i used this recipe from joy of cooking (JoC never disappoints). easy peasy.
i threw the brownies in the freezer for a quick cool down since my ice cream had been sitting out for about a half hour and i didn’t want it to become soup cream.
first things first: cut the brownie out for the bowl. some people use cake. some people use pound cake. from my meanderings on the web, i’ve heard that a dense cake is the best for the bottom.
i had measured the bowl and it was 8″ across. unfortunately (or fortunately as we’ll see), the parchment brought in the brownies so much that instead of 9×13, it was more like 7×12. see, i hate parchment.
time to goop the ice cream into the bowl. i’d read to use some plastic wrap for easy bowl removal as well as baking spray. i decided to give the spray a try. if anything. i’ll just run some hot water over the bowl if it doesn’t pop out.
strawberry then vanilla. as a non-strawberry ice cream liker, i want the vanilla next to the brownie! ok, for the fortunately part, turns out the bowl was a little bigger than the amount of ice cream i had, so i was able to tuck the brownie into the top of the bowl perfectly. my first plan was to just let it sit on top of the rim, but fortune was on my side.
wrapped that baby up with plastic wrap then tinfoil, and now it’s sitting in the freezer getting nice and frozen for the meringue that i’ll put on it on saturday. this was about 20X easier so far than i thought it would be.
*wiki! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baked_alaska
usually my meals consist of me looking in the fridge, seeing what’s easiest to make, and doing that every night. i don’t mind cooking, and in fact enjoy it, but most nights i’m too hungry to care and just want to shove something in my mouth.
tonight i wasn’t that hungry, so i fried up some chicken thighs with homemade bread crumbs on them, threw some asparagus with feta cheese on it in the oven, made some rice pasta, and nate made some of those red lobster biscuit mixes (have you tried those? if not, RUN to the grocery store). i then made a sauce for the pasta from white wine, cream, milk, butter, garlic, red pepper flakes, and parsley. mmm mmm, it was yummy, even though i could have leaned a little less on the white wine in the sauce.
TOMORROW begins the baked alaska adventure – eeeee!
ok, so probably not arthritic, but something funky is going on with my hands and feet. i’m not sure if it’s gout or what at this point. my right-hand ring finger is so swollen that i was barely able to my ring off whereas a couple months ago it was getting to the point where it was almost too big for the finger. it also gets really stiff, and i can barely bring in the fingers to make a fist.
not sure what’s going on, but i think i have a doc appointment upcoming, so i’ll ask when that rolls around. it would be pretty sad that i would be getting arthritis already. 🙁
saturday night i went to a healer at the catholic church in town with liz, my dad, and his sister (religious aunt), as well as uncle and two cousins. (my mom had a cold and decided to stay home.) one cousin is pretty sick, so they were willing to make the drive from austin.
now i have seen and heard some weird stuff from people – speaking words (strangers telling others specifics), my dad’s wake-up call, and melissa’s calling. i’ve never experienced anything myself apart from a timely $20 i attribute to my uncle squire. i’m a cynic, but i know universal energy floats around from time to time. i’m also agnostic.
when people started lining up to have the healer lay his hands on them, i was surprised that almost everyone in the church was willing to go up. personally, i was freaked out about going up just because i was afraid something would happen. people were falling down after getting hands laid on them, including my non-sick cousin who was there. now, just for show, or not, i’m not sure.
my dad, a true cynic of this kind of thing, after i asked him if he was going up, said “why not?” and off we went.
i was so nervous about falling down that i almost fell down myself. but while the dude was laying his hands on me i almost started crying. spirit? self-awareness? who knows.
but here’s the rub: for show or not, something happens if you do feel something. whether it’s the spirit coming to show you her ways or god saying, “hey there!” or universal energy or self-awareness, it’s something. for me personally, i think it’s a combination of the energy in the room along with a self-awareness or self-realization.
when you think about it, everyone projects themselves onto who or what each thinks god is. there is no duplication of god anywhere on this planet. there are probably a looooot of close renditions, but each person’s own experience shapes each person’s perception of god – a reflection of self, really; your perfect self.
so, one person’s holy spirit is another person’s gaia is another person’s buddha is another person’s personal moral tendencies.
and if calling it touched by god is what it takes for a person to have a personal self-realization or calling? energy transforming through death as a way to get loved ones’ attention? the brain registering actual physical voices as a way to get you to figure out what you want to do with your life? physically healing as a result of positive self awareness or relaxation?
does it matter what we think it is versus what it actually is or what we call it as long as the end result is what needs to be?
i have been on a shoe mission for about a month. i have a pair of red strappy heels that i can wear to fancy places, like wine and roses and weddings, but that’s the extent of my red accessories. meaning, if i wanted to add any other sort of color into a fancy outfit, i really have nothing.
i wear black dresses, so that’s not a big deal, but if i want to add a necklace or earrings with color in it, my current options generally fall into the pink color spectrum. and in the words of liz wallace when asked if i could wear my pink necklace with my red shoes, ” uhhh…no.”
alas. so began a mission to find a fancy pink shoe. unfortunately, we have gone from awesome-color fancy shoes to the year of nude/gold. (and silver – but silver is always a thing.)
i went to dsw in roch. i went to dsw in the MOA. i went to famous footwear. i went to penney’s. i went to torrid. i went to payless. i went to maurices. i went to deb (which apparently always has what i’m looking for – it’s my last resort store). i even went to macy’s, which had pink shoes but with a $600 pricetag. yes, that’s 6-0-0. (i’m not willing to even pay 6-0.)
obvs i’m not finding much in person. finally tonight, i went to ask the internets, aka amazon, to see what they have for me.
BEHOLD:
EXACTLY what i was looking for.
Katherine’s Bridal Boutique
– bridesmaid shoes. should’ve guessed. it’s a 4″ heel, but my red shoes have a 4″ heel so i’m not too concerned. plus they run a 1/2″ too small, which means i could get my ideal size 10-1/2 shoe. so much time wasted trying on shoes when i could have just gone to amazon in the first place.
(wait, who am i kidding? i LOVE trying on shoes!!!!)
a thing for april to do for my blog. like take a picture of every meal. or work through a cookbook. if my dad ever finds his martha cookie book, i’ll give that a go, but what do you want to see here? anything in particular? haiku a day? cookie a day? picture of my foot every day? progressive photos of my grey hairs? cat a day?
let me know! i’m needing some ideas to tide me over til garden season.
haiku for you
veronica mars
early saturday showing
who: pizz or logan?
in 2011 i had an epic garden. unfortunately my seed starting abilities were not so epic. i tried my hand at two varieties of tomatoes as well as rosemary. the tomatoes germinated but didn’t get their real leaves in, and the rosemary did nothing.
i bought a little greenhouse starter thing today to have an other go at starting seed. today i checked on my rosemary plants since they’d been sitting there for a week. they’re already germinating! the package says it takes 2-3 weeks to germinate, and it’s only been a week.
i see this as good news.
the rest of my seeds came in today, so i’ve got to start my tomatoes in a couple weeks as well as the brussels sprouts. everything else can be started in ground, but if i have some room, i might try to start some other seeds (herbs mostly). i’m really hoping i can get my tomatoes to actually do something this year! if all goes to plan, this should be another epic garden year.
come on, spring!
ten years ago. 2004. i had just moved out from a bad living situation and was renting a one-bedroom from a nice lady landlord. branden had a livejournal account, and even though i’d been bugging him to refer me so i could get an account, he declined. “yeah, i don’t want to give it to you if you’re not going to use it.”
10 years later, who’s still blogging? huh branden?
fortunately livejournal opened up for general consumption, and i grabbed an account and started typing 10 years ago today.
10 years ago:
my blog has gone through a couple transformations in the past 10 years. i went from a livejournal-hosted blog to a personal website-hosted blog in 2008. i lost a year and a half’s worth of entries in the great blog migration of 2012. my livejournal (house of kate) is still alive, but i’ve deleted everything from it and put it here. and believe it or not, i actually opened up a blogspot blog a year or two before my livejournal, but who knows what the web address is or the date i started it (it was pretty short-lived), so even though i’ve “technically” been blogging for more than 10 years, this is the easily recorded anniversary.
i have two consistent readers i know of for sure: my sisters. thanks to them for at least showing me some traffic. i know there are more of you, but my sisters for sure have read my blog over the past 10 years.
and to celebrate my blogiversary, instead of getting myself a cake, i will give my readers a list of my top ten blogs.
