Candy Ladder (Reblog)

Candy day! Noticed a candy ranking up at The World's Fair. How do you rank our traditional American candies? I'm limiting my list to chocolate and chocolate-like confections here.

1. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
   
2. Butterfinger
3. Three Musketeers
4. Kit-Kat
   
5. Peanut M&Ms
   
6. Regular M&Ms
7. Nestle Crunch
   
8. Junior Mints
   
9. Milky Way
10. Snickers
11. Twix
    
12. Hershey Bars
13. Hershey's Kisses
14. 100 Grand Bar
    
15. Mounds
16. Almond Joy
    
17. Whoppers
18. Milk Duds
    

Lunch Portrait (Chow)

It is fun to class-up lunch sometimes with a little simple presentation. This helps gives me the illusion that I can do elegant meals just like NDM. This is the last of my falafel in a pita with some tahini, along with roasted vegetables on a sleazy store-bought bun.

OK, OK, so to me putting things on a rectangular plate is classing them up. I'm not Mr. Fancy.

Gashlycrumb Star Trek (Recommendation)

Shaenon K. Garrity has drawn a brief adaptation of the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" in the style of Edward Gorey.

Quick Food Bites (Chow)

Still haven't gotten around to further Kitchenarium updates, but we've been eating well nonetheless. Last night we quickly whipped up a red sauce and some eggplant parmesan and poured it over gemelli. Guests from earlier in the weekend (for which NDM made pot pies, mmm, not pictured) left us a nice curiously sweet beer bread which was a good accompaniment.
The earlier week consisted mostly of soups and sandwiches. In addition to the minestrone and falafel I blogged earlier, we had egg salad and roasted vegetable sandwiches.
Then, there was the occasional treat.

Sleeping Couch

Slumber unites everyone in our household. This is a fairly normal evening arrangement on the Sleepytime Couch. You can't really tell from this angle, but NDM and Scylla are also bundled in there. A different approach below still can't find the buried kitty...
Scylla is spending more time on the chair in front of the fireplace than the couch anyway, now that the wife thinks she'll freeze to death in the sixty degree weather without the fireplace on. Below, her ass faces the fireplace while she buries her chilly nose in a sweatshirt hanging over the chair back.
Molpe actually likes to take advantage of everybody sleeping to get some athletic patting in, so I rarely catch her on film at the same time as everyone else.

Pumpkin Carving

This year I carved the sleaziest pumpkin it has ever been my pleasure to carve -- but I really like it.

I got the pumpkin three weeks ago because it was so cheap, so this morning when I finally realized I should get shaking and cut it, its bottom had begun to soften and rot. I decided I needed a carving that only minimally relied upon the pumpkin's shaky structural stability.

I cut the pumpkin completely in half at the mouth, with a third of it on the bottom. The bottom was the weakest part, and since I basically turned it into a small dish it was pretty easy to remove the insides and rotten portions. If I'd just taken a plug out of the top and tried scooping everything out I think that the weight of the upper pumpkin coupled with all of my powerful masculine scraping would have reduced the bottom to pie filling.

For attractive presentation, I rotated the pieces so the teeth don't properly line up. This gives it a nice toothy maw.

I'm so happy with the results, and it was so easy to prepare compared to my normal carving methods, that I may always make pumpkins like this in the future.

My Mom's Kitchen (Chow)

My mother's been busy improving on our recipes. Presumably it is my dad's fault that the pictures of her food are better than my pictures of our food. Above she's done some mild seafood enchiladas, while below she taunts us with some scalloped potatoes and an apple-gingerbread casserole that I've never had before but sure looks good.
This kind of casserole is, I think, based on traditional Scottish recipes. The Joy of Cooking has one accessible recipe -- we may have to try it for ourselves.

Frog Flowers

I'm not a big fan of annuals -- I prefer paying for a plant once and having it around for a long time. Unless our bizarre weather kills it. Or a friendly dog digs it up or eats it. In any case, my relentless oppression prevents NDM from playing with many annuals. This year we have just one, on the back porch in a frog planter my parents gave us.

I must admit I'm warming to them a bit. These things are lasting forever, and it is nice to have some lingering color in the back yard. Plus the planter is apparently too sophisticated for Mag to consume its contents.

Fireplace Girls

It is that time of year when the weather drops below ninety and NDM's fireplace goes on. Scylla is loving NDM's temporary study station, since it places a comfy chair right in front of the fireplace. I couldn't resist taking a picture of her sacked out on the back of the chair.
NDM's clearly pretty serious about Hippoboscidae.

Falafel Lunch (Chow)

I've been lax about putting new recipes up on the Kitchenarium lately, but I'm still cooking. I tried my hand at some kind of falafel this weekend, and made a pseudo-minestrone to go along with it.
The falafel was incredibly easy to make, and was really yummy stuffed into a pita with some tahini, yogurt, and shredded lettuce. I just threw a can of garbanzos, some cloves of garlic, 2t of cumin, a few handfuls of crumbled bread, red pepper flakes, and a bunch of fresh parsley into the Cuisinart and then dusted the balled and flattened result with a little flour before baking at 450 degrees for 20 minutes, turning at the halfway point.
And veggie soups are also really easy to make, especially when you aren't particularly faithful to recipes. I was aiming for a minestrone made with a orzo, but after dumping half of a head of shredded cabbage in my stock pot I quickly ran out of room. The potato, carrots, and celery had gone in first to stew and soften in some olive oil and wine, and I prioritized garbanzos over tomatoes. I would have found some way to jam zucchini in, but the store's zukes were in such poor condition I didn't get any. It came out nicely, although it didn't really come out minestrone.

The House Incompetency Built

Ah, the wonderful job my builders did...

Today, almost three years after purchasing this house, I get cc'd a letter from my village to Mr. Danny Stojanovic, the seller. Apparently there is a bunch of unfinished site development stuff that has never been done. It kind of makes me wonder how my house passed inspection?

The village has never approved the Plat of Survey with As-Built Grading information. "Before we can recommend approval and release the cash bonds, please review and address our comments:

1. Show the location of the sump pump discharge. This sump pump discharge should be connected to the Village's Storm Sewer System along Traube Avenue.
2. Provide the width of the concrete driveway at the public sidewalk.
3. Provide dimensions of the brick patio in the rear yard.
4. PRovide dimensions of the private walk in the front yard.
5. The required Drainage Certification on the As-Built is missing. Please review the attached Engineering Directive No. 7 for more information."

Why am I not surprised.

Scary Godmother (Reblog)

I just happened to stumble upon the existence of this animation of the Scary Godmother comic (which I recommend to any juvenile readers of comics out there). Anybody who I made read Jill Thompson's stuff and actually liked them may want to check this out. Sadly, it does not appear to be available through Netflix.

Molpe 2007 Kill #11 (Pets)

Probably the last grisly trophy of the year, since the dog door isn't going to have many more balmy days. Molpe brought this shrew inside this morning, and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it before any other household denizens. Hagar had it for a late lunch.

'Dolon's Nightmare (Pets)

Mag continues to grow and grow and grow. 'Dolon has tried various food-deprivation techniques, but whatever he does, she always gains weight one day to the next. He's starting to get worried. These are some excerpts from his recent nightmares, as he yelps voicelessly for help while a ginormous Mag throttles his frail, starved neck...

Peekaboo Bear

I'd kinda like one of these to be looking in my office window. If I had a real office, of course. (This image is somehow related to this year's AIGA Design Conference, but I'm not sure if it is a picture at the conference or, more likely, of some design being discussed at the conference.

Tivo Comes Through (Reblog)

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! According to TiVoBlog, until November 8, people who purchased a lifetime subscription before 2003-10-01 (like yours truly) can transfer it to a new TiVo HD. This synchronizes nicely with the new boob tube. Unfortunately, device and transfer together look to come in at around $500. The offer is only good for a month.

Of course this news comes on the heels of my evil cable provider, Comcast, beginning to release Tivo software in its own devices on the east coast. So of course they're trying to get me to get the Tivo device before I can just add $5 to my monthly bill for the Comcast device...

Maggiepoop (Pets)

Sadly, we're moving into that time of year where I won't be able to give the dogs unfettered access to the yard during the day. And sadly, when given full access to the entire first floor last evening, Mag demonstrated that she is still not housebroken. Fun times ahead...

Criminal Indulgences

Well, egged on by my father during his last visit, we (by which I mean I) finally pulled the trigger and replaced our CRT with something flat and sexy. What came out of the box is the largest 1080p LCD which will fit in the 43" throw of our old wall unit thingy.
In its cage, it looks like this. Not very impressive in a snapshot, but the picture is a big difference over our last TV, especially from its DVD input (not shown). We need to find some sort of furniture or something to fill the new void beneath the television, and route some of the cords to make them less visible.

One day, we may have something better than a 480p signal to feed this thing!

Shrooms

Something has pooped, died, or pooped and died in our front yard, giving rise to a thicket of substantial 'shrooms. NDM gets really excited about mushrooms so I had to take a picture. No, she won't let me eat one, even though they are clearly edible.

Bunraku

Last night CRB & JAL took us to see Osaka's National Bunraku Theatre at Northwestern. Although I would have enjoyed it a touch more if I hadn't gotten up so early with the dogs and hadn't had quite so much sake to drink at dinner, it was still astoundingly great. Besides the two excerpted dramas they performed, there was also a didactic interlude where the narrator, samisen player, and puppeteer talked about and demonstrated their respective crafts. Wikipedia spares me from parroting back what I learned about bunraku :-)

Did anybody down in CU catch the Krannert performance this past weekend?

Friendly Fish Food (Recommendation)

I gave away my last fish wallet card a while ago, so I went looking for a replacement. The Blue Ocean Institute has up-to-date information about environmentally sound seafood, and provide a little wallet PDF to print out and carry with you. Luckily, most of the good stuff is in the green. The only thing to stop you from enjoying some nice calamari is that squid are so darn cute!

Blog Melange

Mag is concerned that this blog is more interested in food and cooking than in pets. Here, you can see her contemplating some mushroom stroganoff, wondering if it may be part of some larger culinary conspiracy.
Sometimes when Mag needs some private time to think about weighty issues she visits her reflecting pond.
At other times, she finds frank and open dialog with her colleagues is more productive.
Eventually, she decided that she and 'Dolon should sniff around the competition a bit more.
The jury is still out. Too many pictures of food? Too few pictures of pets? Additionally, there have recently been allegations about fluff posts cobbled together around unrelated images, prostituting both pets and cooking to feed the blog's own need for attention. Mag's research into these serious issues continues.

Neo-French Bread (Chow)

I tried a new French-y bread recipe for dinner tonight, to go with some sweet potato and cabbage soup. The bread is not nearly as simple as a normal French loaf, containing vinegar, sour cream, and ginger in addition to the expected ingredients.

It turned out fantastic, although perhaps not quite as crusty as I would have liked -- made on a baking sheet instead of on our stone. I'll pop the recipe up at some point.

Dirt

Here are some photos of the final stages of the raised bed. A nice man came and took away a check for a lot of money, but filled our tarps with 2 yards of mulch and 2 yards of composted soil for the bed.
The bed wanted to eat about one and a quarter yards of dirt.
And eat it did, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. Eventually I ditched the four-wheeled plastic monstrosity pictured here (NDM started using it to lug mulch around) and switched to a real wheelbarrow, and boy was I glad I did!
Finally, the bed had eaten all it could. Since then we've had a couple days of good rain to settle things in, soI probably have a few more wheelbarrows to top it off for winter. Then, no more yard work for the year! Yay!
Of course, if I find I need to top it off with even more dirt, Mag's trenching service has me covered.

Some Late Flowers

NDM put in some flowers in our front yard that bloom pretty late into the year. She presumably knows what these plants are.
I like them because they are pink and purple and last for evvver. She's also put in some colossal yellow flower spikes that also probably have a name.

Unidentified Spider

I noticed this really pretty yellow, white, and black spider in the bushes by our front door when my parents visited this weekend. It was neat enough that I broke out the real camera and the real macro lens, which I normally don't mess with. After I butchered some shots I made my dad lie on his back and take some good ones. Above is the spider's hood; the shot below is its undercarriage.
It appears to be the female of some species of Argiope orb web spider.