SpiderFarmer's Web

Honey Cornish Game Hens

2009-07-20T23:48:46Z

I made Paula Deen's recipe for Cornish game hens tonight, and it was amazingly good. I made brown rice cooked with a tablespoon or two of orange zest to go with it, which when finished with the sauce was so good, so good you see.

Good stuff. Going in my recipe file of "+1, will eat again!".

Overthinking a plate of beans, part two

2009-07-18T20:54:14Z

I'm kinda sad, it's not my absolute best work, I rushed some of it, so the spacing of the stars is a little off and I think I may be a little wobbly on the side decos, but as a concept...it's pretty damn funny.

Overthinking a plate of beans

2009-07-18T18:27:31Z

So, today is the MetaFilter 10th anniversary party, for the Dallas Mefites. (There's parties going on every continent, which is so cool.) Anyway...I decided to make a cake for the party. One of the prevalent memes on Mefi is "You people will overthink a plate of beans".

So...I'm making a cake that is a plate of beans. Hee. At least that's the goal. So far, the cakes have come out of the oven, the frostings have all been made in mefi colors, now I just need to make the marzipan beans, ice the cake, add the decorative touches, and it should be really cool. Assuming it all works. I'm pushing really close to the deadline, and the cakes haven't cooled...and I'm worried that the beans might not work, but I don't want to do them in fondant, because nobody wants to eat a big ol blog of fondant, even when it's really good marshmallow fondant.

So, still crossing my fingers and hoping I can get the cake, a shower, and makeup all done in time to get to the restaurant on time.

I'll try and post pics when it's done.

Tuna Does Vegas

2009-07-16T04:54:21Z

I just got back from seeing Tuna Does Vegas. If you've never seen Tuna Texas in any of it's incarnations, you're missing a hilariously good time. Joe Sears and Jaston Williams portray an astounding cast of characters, rotating in and out in set changes that are so fast it's hard to track them.

They hail from Austin, but Dallas natives claim them as their own...as Dallasites tend to do with things we like. Every time one of the favorite characters made an appearance, the audience clapped and cheered, but the guys seem to know the audience is going to do that, and the dialogue was spaced to allow for it.

The writing, fast paced dialogue, and costumes have only gotten better in the decades that Joe and Jaston have been defining the small town of Tuna, and this show was no exception. I thought was going to piddle, I laughed so hard when they came out dressed as showgirls. Show girls pretending to be female impersonators. Complete with snowman breasts and a giant turkey butt on one, and spinning flower boobs on the other. Hysterical.

All of our old favorites were there, but a few new characters got added: Anna Conda - harridan performer/hustler from the days of the first Brat Pack, a tough thug named Shot who got his nickname because Frank Sinatra shot him in the bottom when he was a baby, Charlene's 4 new babies, and of course Elvis number 42, and Elvis number 11. (You can't do Vegas without Elvis.)

Aunt Pearl strikes it rich and discovers adult movies, Vera Carp has her thumbs threatened by loan sharks, and the Baptists find joy in rubber sheets and bathing suits. All in all, it was a really fun way to spend the evening.

If you get a chance to see them on tour, you should go. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll go out and buy a squirt gun for your favorite Baptist.

Tracking summer reading

2009-07-12T17:51:50Z

I've been playing around with Goodreads.com to keep track of what I'm reading, and to get ideas from my friend's reading lists. Here's the widget that sort of tracks my reviews as books get moved to the "read it" pile.

If you've got a goodreads account, and want to share your reading list, please ping me so I can add you to my friends list!

Essential Summer Hair Repair

2009-07-10T20:15:03Z

When one keeps an Igor, one will find that one spends an inordinate amount of time outside under the burning rays of the DayStar, and often submerged in water saturated with either salt or chlorine. None of these are terribly good for one’s hair.

However, repairing the damage is pretty simple. Here’s the formula for the goo I’ve got sitting on my hair currently.

Cherry Cheesecake...yum

2009-07-09T18:34:46Z

The store had bing cherries on sale, and we brought a couple pounds home, only to find that they needed to be used asap.

So...what better use for cherries than cheesecake! Everyone loves a good cheesecake. Heck, folks love a bad cheesecake, but a good one is even better.

When making cheesecake, I use a 7" x 4" inch spring-form pan, because I prefer fluffy tall cheesecake, rather than dense, short cheesecake. But this recipe can be used in a 9" x 2" pie pan just as easily.

Preheat oven to 350

Crust:

1 1/2 cups graham crackers

6 tablespoons melted butter

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)

Melt butter, stir together with dry ingredients and extract, press into bottom of spring form, or over entire pie shell or cake form if you prefer lots of crust. (I use about half this amount, because I don't like a lot of crust, just enough to keep the filling from leaking out of the spring-form pan.)

Filling:

2 eggs

1 lb cream cheese (not the whipped kind), softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

lemon zest to taste

Cream eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla together. Add cream cheese and beat until smooth. Set your mixer to medium, and whip the ingredients for 3 minutes.

Baking:

For the tall spring-form pan, bake for about 40 minutes or until filling is set and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. For a 9" pie pan, check at 20 minutes, and then every 5 minutes until set.

In a springform pan, while the cake is still warm, run a cool, clean knife around the inside perimeter of the pan, so that when the cake cools and contracts, it doesn't crack.

Cool to room temp, then refrigerate.

At serving, top with cherry sauce - recipe below: (This is the same method you use to make pie filling, although you need to double or triple the recipe to fill a whole pie shell.)

Cherry Sauce:

Pit and stem 4 cups of cherries.

In a deep saucepan, combine

3/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch or arrowroot

dash of salt

1/3 cup water

Stir in cherries. Cook and stir until thick and bubbly.

Cook and stir for 1-2 minutes more, then remove from heat, cover and let cool without stirring.

The Quittah from Wassilla or "Find The Conspiracy"

2009-07-05T20:31:28Z

So Sarah Palin resigned from her first term as Governor. Nobody knows why she would do something this insane...but, ya know, it is Sarah we're talking about here. You betcha.

Regarding the initial Palin speech, Sean Cockerham, of the Anchorage Daily News, wrote a concise article that put a lot of the rambling nonsense into context, in that what had previously seemed like Jabberwocky levels of street-rat crazy, now just seemed like normal Sarah Palin street-rat crazy.

So, the fun part begins! Get your tin foil hats on kids, it's time to "Find The Conspiracy".

Has anyone noticed all the press that John Coale is getting out of all of this...and how almost none of it mentions that he's a muckity muck in Scientology?

Ok, so...here's my new theory:

Scientology uses their incredibly well honed psyops to convince her that she's under attack from opponents she can't possibly defeat on her own. But..CoS can help her, they tell her. All she needs to do is spend a few weeks in a resort...say in Clearwater, Florida...and they'll get her feeling back up to par, and then, they'll help her get ready to run for the presidential election.

They turn her into the same unstoppable android force that is Tom Cruise. She gets polished up, trained on how to think before speaking, and using the cash and people of the CoS, she rockets to the top of the Republican charts. She'll explain away the CoS as being "not at all opposed to our true faith beliefs in blah, blah, blah" and she'll be believed by the ones who want to believe, and accepted by those who would do anything to get the "nigger out of the white house".

I'm telling you, if the economy doesn't get better, if more Americans go homeless and hungry, if old people start dying because they can't get medicines, if the cost of foods rise and the buying power of wages continue to go in opposite directions...if people are hungry, and hot, and angry, and poor...Scientology Sarah Palin would wipe the floor with any candidate facing her.

So...that's my Tin Foil Hat Theory. Your TFHT...show me it!

Viral video or new life form...you decide

2009-06-30T19:10:08Z

So...there's this video making the rounds. I have no idea if it's a viral video, a la Blair Witch, or if there's some giant sewer testicles about to conquer the earth. Either way...Eeeeewh!

yummy soft pretzels

2009-06-29T19:41:33Z

We followed a recipe from Alton Brown that we adapted a tiny bit, mostly because I didn't have pretzel salt on hand. But the recipe was easy enough that Igor got to do a whole lot of the actual recipe. He didn't get to do the boiling part, and he didn't get to put the trays in or out of the 450 degree oven, but other than that, he was able to do most of the recipe. He's turning into quite the little 6 year-old sous chef.

Been a busy few days

2009-06-28T02:21:40Z

So, because celebrity deaths seem to come in threes...we lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Micheal Jackson in a matter of days this week. As tragic to their families as the loss is, I wasn't really moved by the deaths of Ed or Farrah, but I was surprisingly saddened by the death of Michael Jackson.

Maybe it's because I'm old enough to remember the Jackson 5. Maybe it's because I remember when Elizabeth Taylor crowned him as the King of Pop. Maybe it's because as a little, little girl when I saw the preteen MJ giving an interview, I turned to my mom and said "He's not very happy, is he, Mommy?", and my mom said "Genius can be a lonely part to play.", and I never forgot that. I didn't forget it when he started getting plastic surgery so his dad would quit calling him "Big Nose". I didn't forget it when I heard about the horrific childhood imposed by parents that used their children as a gravy train. I didn't forget it when I saw him try to capture those magical moments of childhood that most of the rest of us had naturally. His was a tragic, almost Shakespearean life of absolute peaks and utter valleys in the landscape of absolute genius.

I weep for Michael because he gave so much, and the very least he deserves is a few moments of quiet grief.

Also, Jordan Chandler, the kid who started the whole "MJ touched me in my dirty places" lawsuit, the one that was settled for millions? Yeah...reportedly, he lied, and now admits that he lied just to get the cash.

In happier news, I got my braces off! Yay! As soon as my teeth stop hurting, I'm going to eat some almonds and some corn on the cob...yes, yes I am.

Also, for those of you who may have met her at one of our parties, my friend Brigette gave birth Friday morning to her son Grant. He was born a couple of weeks early, but still weighed in at over 8 pounds, has all his toes and fingers, and is quite possibly the most adorable boy I didn't have to carry to term. ;) She'll be in hospital for a couple more days, if anyone wants contact info for her, just drop me a note.

Hope reality is groovy for all of y'all.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas

2009-06-22T06:38:04Z

Amazing, just amazing:

How to make Bath Bombs

2009-06-19T16:12:59Z

As I've noted before, Instructables has changed their business model, reducing access to content to non-paid visitors. Since all of my work was published under a Creative Commons non-commercial license, I've removed it from Instructables and am republishing on SoapyHollow.com and SpiderFarmer.com, so the content stays free. Feel free to post these links everywhere, so the new location propagates.

How to make Bath Bombs - Soapy Hollow
How to make Bath Bombs - SpiderFarmer

I've put a permanent page, available at the top of the left navigation and the top of the page, that will list all the "How To" projects that I'm moving from instructables back to here.

So far, the following How To projects are available:

Bath and body projects:

How to make bath bombs

How to make a Quick and Gentle Body Scrub

How to make Natural Fabric Softener

How to make bath melts

How to make soap molds

How to make a small batch of traditional soap

Food projects

How to make baguettes by hand

How to make banana bread

How to make White Chocolate Pistachio Pomegranate Truffles

Squirmy Wormy Pie

Monks on Segways, with fire on the top of their heads, playing "Lightning" by Philip Glass

2009-06-18T05:36:44Z

Instructables goes behind a pay wall

2009-06-16T03:26:22Z

In a move reminiscent of CDDB, and Salon.com, Eric Wilhelm announced last month that Instructables was moving to a closed pay-only community model. The model has since been implemented, and the timer is ticking for legacy accounts. After 90 days from implementation rollover, people who do not pay for an Instructables "Pro" account will no longer be able to:

1) View entire instructables at once
2) Print out instructables in PDF
3) Have a "favorites" list of instructables. 4)View "secondary" images in instructable steps

This means that if an instructable has more than one image in a given step, you will only be able to see the first image, and thumbnails of the other images. If the author left important detail in the images, that information is lost.

Furthermore, printing an instructable is now virtually impossible. You can, if you like, print out each step separately including all the headers, sidebars, ads, footers, comments, and other fluff, but that results in a hard to read page (try it - the layout is not conducive to printing) and a sheaf of paper for a 5 step instructable.

This poses problems for authors who now have to either rework their instructables so viewers from Google (which accounts for a substantial portion of their viewership) and others can actually use it. Otherwise some important details may be lost in secondary images for a significant number of instructables viewers.

Moving to a Closed For-Pay Model

Many, many companies do this, and some actually succeed. CDDB did this to their users, but they lost their community in the process. They still exist doing similar functions, but their original role was filled by open providers. Salon.com tried it, but quickly changed their mind after losing more than 50% of their web traffic. Even though they moved to an interstitial ad model instead of a "walled garden" model, they have NEVER, even 6 years later, NEVER recovered their peak audience numbers.

Geocaching.org did this without losing their community, but they only put new features behind the pay wall, they did not hobble the primary user experience. The community was burned by this, but they made enough concessions to avoid losing the critical mass they needed to operate. Unlike CDDB, Geocaching, like Instructables, only exists because of the community contributions.

I'm afraid that Instructables, by removing basic features that are necessary to follow an instructable, is ultimately going to decline and take a lot of really great content with them.

As it stands now, if I don't go pay for a pro membership, I will not even be able to see the content that I CREATED once the "first one's free" time allotment expires. So, I think I'm probably going to go remove everything I've created, and then republish here, spiderfarmer.com, and soapyhollow.com. My 'structables have driven over 300,000 page views in the last 6 months, and for them to decide all of a sudden that I won't be able to even see my own work without paying them for the privilege is an absurdity.

Terrine de Foies de Volaille

2009-06-13T19:24:37Z

Prep Time: 25 min,
Inactive Prep Time: 6 hr 0 min,
Cook Time: 15 min,
Level: Intermediate,
Serves 6

Ingredients

1 pound fresh chicken livers, cleaned

1 cup milk (aprox)

4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 cup chopped yellow onions

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons green peppercorns, drained

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon tarragon

1/8 teaspoon cardamom

1/8 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 ounces cream cheese

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup Cognac or brandy

Chopped parsley leaves, for garnish

French bread, pain de mie, toast points, or crackers, accompaniment

French cornichons, optional accompaniment

Directions

In a bowl, soak the livers in the milk for 2 hours. Drain well.

In a large saute pan or skillet, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring, until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the chicken livers, 1 tablespoon of the peppercorns, the bay leaves, thyme, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring, until the livers are browned on the outside and still slightly pink on the inside, about 5 minutes. Add the Cognac and cook until most of the liquid is evaporated and the livers are cooked through but still tender.

Remove from the heat and let cool slightly. Discard the bay leaves.

In a food processor, puree the liver mixture. Add the cream cheese in pieces, tarragon, cardamom, cinnamon and allspice, and pulse to blend. Fold in the remaining 1 tablespoon peppercorns and adjust the seasoning, to taste.

Pack the pate into 6 individual ramekins or small molds, about 4 ounces each. Cover with cling film (press the film down firmly on top of the terrine), and refrigerate until firm, at least 6 hours.

To serve, place the ramekins on individual plates. Garnish the tops with parsley and surround with toast points. Serve with cornichons on the side.

BeeDay Cake and the Great Cake Massacre

2009-06-09T15:06:57Z

Well, I didn't get a picture of the absolutely finished cake, because of cake vandals but here's pictures of the BeeDay cake as it neared completion:

1. cake_ bee_ party 012-tweaked, 2. cake_ bee_ party 006, 3. cake_ bee_ party 010, 4. cake_ bee_ party 012

The recipe was a butter chai spice cake with vanilla cream cheese/butter cream icing. It tasted amazing. The flying bees are fondant, the side bees are pressed and painted sugar. The flowers are vanilla royal icing, which dries very hard and so can be transported and put on at the last minute. The butterfly that you can see is a technique called "flow-in sugar". The butterflies and flowers that you *can't* see were fondant butterflies that Boy made because he loves his Aunt Debbie. They were final touches and plate decorations. As well, there was a ginourmous fondant rose that was in the center. Seriously huge, it took almost a week to dry, with cotton balls propping up all the petals so that it wasn't droopy. I'd brushed it with with some edible gold mica. It looked really cool, I wish I'd gotten a picture. There were also about double the number of flowers on the cake by the time I was done.

About the cake massacre and cake vandals, it's best to just remember that some people don't appreciate anything, and those people will destroy other people's presents because they think they're being funny. See, if I had unraveled one of their sweaters or whatever and strung the yarn around the house "as decorations", they wouldn't have thought it was funny...but apparently disassembling my cake, scattering the flowers everywhere around the house, and cutting into it while the birthday girl was still outside in the pool is bloody hysterical. Because what is funnier than destroying a birthday present that someone spent two weeks making? As well, they impaled the bees, crumbling them, they threw away all of the fondant things that Boy made, someone threw away the rose that took me over an hour to make, it was a disaster. And they'll never understand why I'm upset.

Funny spam

2009-06-02T18:15:36Z

So, I do periodically scan the titles of stuff in my spam box, to make sure that things don't accidentally land there, as I have pretty strict filters. Usually, it's just a quick scan, then delete, but today one caught my eye. It tweaked my brain enough to made me laugh out loud.

It said: WEREBOOBS OF LONDON!

And my brain instantly filled in: Have monsterous tatas? Do your areolas cause panic in large cities? Do mountain climbers attempt to mount you? Does the full moon cause your nipples to become fuzzy?

Who knows what they were actually selling. I figured it was better for me to let my imagination run with what it *could* be, than to find out what it actually *is*.

Still: Wereboobs of London...totally great band name.

Bunneh!

2009-06-02T18:05:58Z

We have a bunny building a nest in one of our tree-surround beds. So adorable!

Test run - Amaretto Chai Cake with hazelnut buttercream icing

2009-06-01T02:54:07Z

So, I wanted to do a test run of the cake I'm making for EmpressDeb's bday party. I'm doing a DebBEE cake, and I wanted to test both the flavor and texture of the cake, but also wanted to practice doing the grass and basketweave icing techniques. I figured if I made cupcakes, I'd have an easier time giving them away. Which was true, I was able to give most of them away today, thank goodness, else my hips would just keep expanding. :) They were so, so good.

1. cupcakes 007,
2. cupcakes 006,
3. cupcakes 005,
4. cupcakes 003,
5. cupcakes 002,
6. cupcakes 001

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Mmmm...bread

2009-05-28T22:01:18Z

So, I've been working on teaching myself how to bake different artisan breads without using any machines or complicated tools (other than the oven, naturally) ...but today for a picnic, I just wanted some plain French baguettes. Which are so yummy.

I figured as long as I was making them, I'd do an instructable on them.

So, in case anyone else is carb starved and must have easy to make bread, I give you:

How to make traditional baguettes by hand.

Here's a slideshow of how to do it from my flickr stream. :)

How I was saved from iSmug - or why Apple has pissed me off

2009-05-22T21:27:34Z

The ongoing saga where I have to replace my aging laptop... Chapter 3 - My brush with hipsters

So...I almost drank the Apple Koolaid, and bought one of the new top end iMacs...with the Radeon 4850. But lo, I was saved from going to the smug side. (Or in Apple Terminology: iSmug.)

I called the apple store that is "local" for a given value of local, and asked if they had it in stock. The girl said yes. I even made her verify that it was in stock, because it's a special order system. She put me on hold, then came back and said "yes". So I drove an hour and a half in rush hour traffic to get to the store, had to park almost a half a mile away...in random rain sprinkles....had to go into one of the malls (NorthPark) populated by the plastic people that make me twitchy, finally got to the store, and they said "Oh, yeah...that's a special order...you'll have to order that from apple.com." Then the little tween trendoid with more hair gel than sense suggested that perhaps I hadn't talked to anyone at the store, because "nobody *here* could make that mistake", implying ergo, that *I* was the one who made the mistake.

WTF?! Oh lord, was I pissed. Too pissed to deal rationally with anyone in Hipster Station. Genius bar my happy ass. So...I drove home...in rush hour traffic, and the rain, and with school zones every 30 damn yards...which made me even more cranky. And I called the store, and worked my way up the management chain to a "regional director".

Who offered the following solution: They would order the 4850 card, take apart one of the macs in stock, put it in, and give me a 10% discount...but it would take 2 weeks, and my computer would show as refurbished, and therefor not eligible for warranty. I said "So...do you see how that's not really a solution?" She said that she'd be happy to give me a discount on one of the older iMacs and I said "Again...not really a solution, is it?" I felt like I was in the Dead Parrot sketch.

So, for making me drive 3 hours in the rain, in rush hour, on a Friday, in Dallas, to go to the Hipster Station in the heart of Trophy Wife Central for no reason, Apple is now on The List. Oh yes. That List. Nobody wants on The List. Mind you, they're not as high on The List as Dell...but they are on The List none the less.

Yea and verily have they made me a cranky Deva.

The increasingly odd story of John William Yettaw

2009-05-15T07:02:15Z

So...he told the press he was a Vietnam vet. But, he also said he was 53. The last American troops left Saigon in 1973. That means, if he were there for the very end of the war, the evacuation of the diplomats, he could only have been 17 at the time. So...either he lied about his age to join the military and had the forged documents to go along with the story, or he's lying about his age now, or he was never in Vietnam.

For the record, there are a lot of reports listing Yettaw's name as being spelled "Yeattaw", so I've added that tag as well. He also seems to have a mostly unused travel-blog under the name John7children, with just a few pictures of the Great Wall. Someone with that same name on ebay recently purchased a couple of cell phones without contracts, a camera phone that looks to be the same model that shot the pictures of himself wearing the flippers he used to get to Mrs. Kyi's house, and a breathing trainer.

Oh...but wait...the story just keeps getting weirder:

Apparently, John and his first wife divorced, and he got custody of their 6 kids. He remarried, to a woman named Betty, but reportedly, Betty wouldn't let the first wife's kids live in her house, so those four remaining kids, ranging in age from 17 to 10) lived in a trailer in the woods. (One son was killed in an accident, one daughter is in college.)John apparently just left the kids there alone when he went to Asia.

Very odd, indeed. (As a snarky aside, what sort of evil stepmother refuses to let the first wife's kids live in her house? And what sort of man marries a woman who makes his kids live in a trailer in the woods? I mean, wtf?)

Either he's stupid beyond belief, or he's a Spook that owes the junta a favor

2009-05-14T18:29:37Z

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese (Myanmar) activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was arrested after her home was invaded by Vietnam War veteran and Mormon evangelist. John William Yettaw swam to her compound May 3 and was arrested two days later on his way back. Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 20 years under house arrest, and she was supposed to finally be freed May 27. She will go on trial for the illegal visitor on Monday; if convicted, she could face up to five years in prison.

ducklings, mockingbirds and flowers

2009-05-14T02:22:28Z