Hey, so it turns out I totally don't like blue cheese

Our teacher assured us that if we didn't like blue cheese, it's only because we've never had real, good quality blue cheese. And he brought some in for us to try! So I did. So I'm chewing on this peice of cheese in my mouth, right? And right at first it wasn't so bad. But then it just keeps getting worse and worse and stronger and stronger. And then once it had completley overwhelemed my sense of taste, it started moving on to my other senses. Pretty soon I was feeling and seeing blue cheese as well. By then of course I had swallowed, but blue cheese is a fighter - it doesn't give up. I had to eat a bunch of apple slices to get the taste out of my mouth (and eyes and fingers).

Comments Made While Playing "Super Mario Galaxy"

MATT: You know, all of this could have been avoided if Mario's parents had just bought him a pet turtle as a child.
RICH: And stopped making him finish all his mushrooms.

Tales of the Flavored Coffee Creamers, Part III

A few weeks ago, I bought a bottle of egg nog flavored coffee creamer, because I hoped I could make something delicious out of it and because it was a seasonal flavor that I probably wouldn't see again. I wrote a blog entry about it, but what I think I failed to mention was that my brother ALSO bought a bottle of coffee creamer (carmel apple flavor), ALSO in the hopes that I would make something tasty out of it and because it's a seasonal flavor. So today I finally got around to it - I was a little worried that it would have went bad by now, but then I remembered, hey, no dairy! That stuff will probably outlast me. So I took a no-bake cheesecake mix and made it according to package directions, only replacing the milk with the creamer, and it tasted fantastic. Then for good measure, after it had set up, I poured a can of apple pie filling on top and squirted some carmel ice cream sauce over that. Yeah, for dinner tonight we were serving myself, my brother, my mom, and a friend, and their was absolutely no pie left afterwards, so I guess I must have done something right!

Mmmmm.... Bisquick.

I got up this morning, decided to cook Sunday brunch for my family (at my house, "brunch" means breakfast food served at lunch time... your family's definition may differ), and, on a whim, tried looking up crepes on Bisquick.com Sure enough, I came up with a recipe:
1 cup Bisquick
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
So I tried it! The results weren't really crepes so much as they were super thin pancakes - like Swedish pancakes. Whereas crepes are basically flat, like delicious edible paper, these guys - although very thin for a pancake - still definitely retained that trademark pancake fluffiness. And they were delicious. Instead of any of the fillings or sauces suggested on the site, I just cooked up some scrambles eggs with sausage chunks and then spooned some into each crepe, burrito style. My brother ate his first that way, but then switched to apricot preserves and cool whip for the rest of his. No shame in that.

So, file this under: One more recipe that my family raved about, but would probably get me stern looks (at best) from most of my culinary professors. Bisquick indeed!

unfortunately, there's no spell check in chat windows

11:23pmBeth
heyyy
11:23pmMatt
Hey! Wasup?
11:23pmBeth
question for you
11:23pmMatt
Yeeeees?
11:23pmBeth
dont look it up
11:23pmMatt
Okay!
11:23pmBeth
but tell me if you know
11:24pmMatt
Well then I have a question for YOU:
11:24pmBeth
what is the difference between baking soda and powder
lol
11:24pmMatt
What kind of dog is Cujo??
I bet you don't know
11:24pmBeth
i dont know
you are correct
11:24pmMatt
Dude we just discussed this in my kitchen science class yesterday
11:24pmBeth
dang it! i knew you would know,
11:24pmMatt
Baking soda is a base used to leven stuff but you have to pair it with an acid for it to work
But baking powder is like half baking soda and half cream of tartar, so the acid is built in
And, Cujo is a St. Bernard. Isn't that crazy?
11:25pmBeth
i read that soda is sodium bicarbonate and thats it :) haha
11:25pmMatt
Cause when people always use "Cujo" to refer to a killer dog, you always think of like a rotwieler
11:25pmBeth
i had no idea
st bernards are super cool
11:25pmMatt
But it's an old steven king movie
(and book too I'm guessing)
I like St Bernards. They're neat!
Except for Cujo, he's scary
This conversation sounds like a blog entry to me!
11:27pmBeth
i'm not sure i've ever seen it
11:27pmMatt
I'm guessing you'd remember a movie about a scary killer st bernard

non-dairy pie-like custard-substitute dessert product

So, last night I threw away the remaining half of the eggnog pie I'd baked a few days earlier, because it was become increasingly clear that no one (including myself) was going to eat any more of it. The recipe I ended up settling on was a pretty simple one:

1 bottle (16oz) eggnog flavored coffee creamer
3 extra-large eggs
1 8-inch pastry pie shell

So, the eggnog flavor was certainly there, and it didn't suffer for lack of sugar or salt or anything like that (oh yeah and I sprinkled nutmeg on top, which you do with custard pie anyways). But it had a texture that I can only describe as "not custard pie like". Part of the problem was that, in order to get it to set up all the way, I had to cook it a lot longer then custard pie is suppose to cook, so the very topmost layer of filling was basically cooked eggs. Even peeling that off though, the rest of the pie... well it was set-up, technically, but it just tasted mushy. So, I think we all learned a valuable lesson about using something other then milk when making custard: Don't. I do still have plans for some carmel apple creamer lying around though.... I'm thinking no-bake cheesecake.

my spellchecker doesn't recognize the word "smore"..... maybe because i left out the apostrophe....

The other day my family and I discovered toasted coconut marshmallows. You buy them in a bag, like regular marshmallows, and they are like regular marshmallows, except that they are coated in toasted coconut (the best kind of coconut). By themselves they are perfectly okay but they make the best smores. In fact the bag even has a recipie for using them as smores, and while smores are something I usually file under the "Didja really need a recipe for that?!" category (right next to the recipe for a ham sandwich on the back of the mayonnaise jar), this one is actually nice because it tells you how long to microwave the marshmallow for (15 to 20 seconds) so that it puffs up all nice and warm and gooey - and then you just mash the top graham cracker on the whole thing and mmmmmm.

So today in chef class I'm talking to my good buddy James, who's assistant kitchen manager at The Melting Pot, a restaurant that serves nothing but fondue (and they overcharge you for it), and I'm telling him about toasted coconut marshmallows and how great I bet they'd be in a chocolate fountain, or in fondue, and he says "at work we have marshmallows coated in oreo cookie pieces." The story ends there because I'd hate to accidentally imply that my good buddy would ever give away the recipe for anything at a place where he worked, because he'd never do that - but, to change the subject, I have a little secret to share with you guys: put a little water on a marshmallow, and it turns out you can stick it to anything. Now if you excuse me, I have some new marshmallow possibilities to go consider....