Submitting to FailBlog: Fail

So... I posted on this a while ago... and now, it has hit the big time (?) and is on the fail blog (which I love).

Check it out!!!

http://failblog.org/2008/12/29/apartment-name-fail/

Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and all that!

Well, I don't know about you, but I am packed full of toffee, and fudge, and Christmas cookies (and glögg, lots of glögg- its a hot spiced wine, and if you come from a Scandinavian family like mine, there is a pot ready on everyone's stove!) and can barely move. In fact, I think I will be doing something like this for the rest of the weekend:

Fancy meeting you here!

So, I use google analytics to be nosey and keep track of how many people click on my blog (answer: 4 ;-), it also tells you what pages are viewed and where people came from (if they clicked in from other blogs, etc). But, the thing that never fails to be entertaining is the search terms people use that result in finding me, because seriously, they are nothing you would ever expect. Here are a sampling from the last month or so that will be like a nice little year end retrospective

#1- the most popular is, no surprise, some variation on 'yellowfish'. Unfortunately, I do not appear to be the yellowfish they want. I know this because the terms are things like "how to cook yellow fish", "biggest recorded yellowfish", "i am a little yellow fish" and "yellowfish campaign" (campaign for what??). Typically these people seem to be looking for actual information about some kind of actual yellow fish. I don't have the heart to tell them that 1. I know very little about fish, 2. there is essentially no fish related content here, and 3. this blog was named for an actual fish I had for a long time, creatively named "yellow fish" because he is yellow, who met his demise right before I started this (he had lived a super long time and I was very bummed).

#2 The next big category this month was the NYT peppermint candy recipe, which people seemed to be specifically looking for. Why they don't look on the actual NYT page, I don't know, but at least the recipe is here! I feel less guilt ridden about this one.

#3 The most hilarious, by far, is also the most consistent. There appear to be a LOT of people trying to learn about the Children of the Corn. The crazy thing is, I posted on that more than a year ago. And yet, people still find it- most of the time they are searching for some variation of "children of the corn blonde".... what could they be wanting to know??

And, some remaining miscellaneous favorites are... "famous monobrows"/ "pictures of monobrows"/ "photos of monobrows, which could only be from this post on monobrow.com (photo from monobrow.com)

"flickr no pants day", which could only be from this post on No Pants Day

"fruit of the loom underwear ads butterflies" which I can only assume resulted from someone as confused as I was about this ad campaign...

"crapi apartments"- which must be someone in my neighborhood

and for some final holiday spirit... "ice carving of snowman" which must have found my little lab-ice snowman captured on my cell phone...

Phase III: Vodka!

As... the final phase of my vanilla extravaganza, I give you Vodka (man, now that I think about it I could have done a whole 12 days of vanilla thing for Christmas. Ah well, c'est la vie).

Now, I looked this up as well, and there are all kinds of ideas out there on things to do with vodka (I mean really, everything, hot peppers, fruit, you name it). I read something about how you could make cinnamon vodka, and decided to make cinnamon vanilla (because if you think I'm obsessed with vanilla, wait until you see how much cinnamon I go through on a daily basis). The word was that it tastes really delicious with ginger ale. So, having cinnamon sticks and (obviously) vanilla beans, I went for it:

I'll say this. This was most definitively NOT delicious. I think it was the cinnamon, or maybe I don't like spicy alcohol. Whatever, there was no way I was going to drink it or give it to anyone, so luckily I only used a bit of vodka and half a vanilla bean. Anyhow, live and learn. So, I decided to move onto something I KNOW I like... raspberries!

Let me introduce you to raspberry vanilla vodka: the test batch.


In case you're wondering how it worked out, let me introduce you to raspberry vanilla vodka: the giant batch.


I'm just going to say it. This stuff is ridiculously good. I mean, seriously, seriously good. Yay for martinis!!

The Great Vanilla Project: Phase II

Ok, so I realize many posts have been vanilla-centric lately, but frankly what with work and holidays and traveling and monitoring the activities of little Miss Charlotte and attempting to be better about making new stuff for my shop, I don't have a lot of free time left and what little there is appears to be largely occupied with thinking of ways to use the mass quantities of leftover vanilla beans I have from the extract project.

Having googled this extensively, I arrived at two obvious things. Vanilla sugar for baking, and infused vodka. Because seriously, what could I want other than delicious cookies and delicious drinks. So.... here you go...

1. Vanilla sugar: this is about as easy as it gets. You take a vanilla bean, split it, and put it in a container with sugar. Let it sit there. Apparently, if you replace the sugar the bean can last for a really long time, and the sugar is great for drinks, baking, tea, and so on. As you can see, I buried the beans half way then shook it around to mix it:

In case you noticed, I needed somewhere to put all this stuff. Fortunately, the internet provided. It turns out, there is really seriously somewhere that sells everything. Like, for instance, my new friends at Specialty Bottles.

So now, I have jars of sugar to go with my extract!


Next post.... VODKA!

Forsaken by Commercialized Christmas

Out of all of the hype, and Christmas products, and aisle upon aisle of red and green stuff in every single store, I only want one thing. One tiny request.

What? you ask.
Some freakin' mint chocolate M&Ms!

They are truly awesome. You can only get them at Christmas. I have been to 3 stores at least, all of which claimed to have them amongst their piles of other m&ms (red and green; all green; peanut; almond; dark chocolate). Those are all fine. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT I WANT! I feel forsaken by the holiday marketing gurus, its really very sad.

Feeling forsaken, I decided instead to feed my new ridiculous obsession with Celestial Seasonings CandyCane Lane Christmas tea. This is not normal peppermint tea. It has vanilla, and all kinds of other things, possibly including crack. I found this at one place. I bought it there twice (seriously its a problem, I'm drinking multiple cups a day). I went back today (looking for the M&Ms and for lights for my little tree), and they were out. There wasn't even a hole on the shelf so that I could pretend like they might get more. Seriously people, I'm trying to buy something from you, here!

Feeling even more forsaken, I decided to manufacture my own holiday cheer (while drinking one of my rationed final CandyCane Lane teabags). This took the form of... taaaaa, daaaaahhh... Mexican Wedding cookies (courtesy of my good friend Valerie's very nice Mom, Nancy. So, it is a Mom-approved recipe which seems appropriate this time of year). Yum!

1 cup butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup finely chopped nuts (I used pecans)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix butter, sugar, and vanilla. Work in flour, salt, and nuts until dough holds together. Shape into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes (be careful, they go from sort-of-done to over-cooked very quickly). Roll in powdered sugar (this is fun, because they are hot and the sugar kind of melts onto them). Let cool slightly, and roll in powdered sugar again. Makes 4 dozen or so.

Moving on to Peppermint...

So, today I saw this recipe in the New York Times that according to this article is a recipe originally published in 1879. What is it for, you ask?

Well... I gave it away already, but its for Old Fashioned Peppermint Candy. It has 3 ingredients and one of them it water, so obviously I had to try it immediately. The article makes it sound sooooo easy... just add 2.25 cups sugar, some amount of water thats not totally clear, and 1 tsp peppermint extract. Being the prudent sort that I am (ha), I decided to start with a small batch. I used 1 cup sugar, .5 cup water, and .5tsp extract. I got going, and it all was going swimmingly- it boiled really well, it just took FOREVER and wouldn't turn brown. Then things started going downhill fast. In pretty much no time, it looked like this:I really have no idea what made it stop being clear and melted and start being a giant mass of hard crystalized sugar, but obviously this does not look like pepperminty goodness at ALL. Instead it more strongly resembles my last kitchen disaster, the infamous sweetened condensed milk debacle.

Never one to be deterred, I got right back on the horse and tried again. This time, I used less water- maybe 1/4 cup water to 1 cup sugar. And..... (*DRUMROLL, PLEASE!*)... it totally worked! As you can see here, it poured out nicely looking remarkably like the stuff in the article:
(by the way- that is a teeny cookie sheet, not an enormous batch of stuff).

In addition, if you are impatient for it to cool, like me, you can bend it into cool shapes, like this:

And then it shatters- it is seriously super hard and the edges are very sharp:

Generally speaking, this is my review of the situation- I recommend it, because it needs almost no ingredients and is kind of fun. But, if I were doing it again, I would add more peppermint (maybe 1 tsp for 1 cup of sugar) to make the flavor stronger. Its not really minty enough to do much, but it is tasty. I would also put in food coloring at the end when you add the extract- its just not that cute the way it is now. Unfortunately, I used up all my red food coloring making red velvet cupcakes, and all I had left was the empty bottle. And finally, I would capitalize on the phase where you can bend it around- you could make something cool. This stuff tastes pretty good, but there might be some fun garnish kind of thing that could be done with it for some other dessert (I'm thinking chocolate).

Anyways, now you try!