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....

mint chocolate buddha please!

So, had my first day of chef class today. Chef Pat (our teacher) seems nice. Since the whole rest of the class is going to be practicing for service one week and doing service the next, she decided that these first two weeks should be our "fun" weeks, so today we got to make burgers and onion rings!! She even brought in beer.

...for the onion ring batter, you nitwits.

So we go into the kitchen and I'm like "It's nine o'clock, we've got six people to make burgers and onion rings, and service is at noon. That's a ton of time." So me and Andy leisurely cut up a ton of onions (we're feeding the HMT 112 class as well, plus the instructors, so we're cooking for [approx] twenty-five people), and I mix the batter together, and then we get ready to dip them. And THEN it gets decided that we need to take EACH individual onion ring (before breading it) and peel the membrane off the inside of it. Yeah, so that took forever. I didn't exactly mind, because it was easy, but it's the kind of mind-numbing chore where you can literally feel your IQ slowing dropping... and dude, I can't afford to let it get any lower!

So class finishes up, we eat our food (I put my onion rings on my burger - totally the right move), and then I catch the bus home. By "home" I mean I get off at main street, maybe six block from my house, but it's downhill, and I walk it all the time. (When I go to school, I catch the bus right in front of my house, but on the way home I take whatever bus comes first, and that's usually the one that drops me off six blocks at home) Only I knew I had some stuff waiting for me at the library, so I rode a couple of blocks past my stop and got off there. Now, I didn't figure it was a big deal because either way I'm walking home, right? Obviously I failed to take into consideration the extra distance from the library to my usual stop. So I'm walking, and I pass the United Dairy Farmers. Now, it's cold outside and there's slush on the streets and it's vaguely raining (Ohio weather is wishy-washy, it can't commit to full-on rain) so of course I'm hungry for ice cream, because I am a brilliant and sexy man. So I see UDF and I think "Dude, it's been forever since I've actually bought myself an ice cream cone or a milkshake" and then I inevitable think, as I always do, "naaaah, I got that stuff at home" and so I keep going.

So, as I said before, I failed to calculate the extra length from the library. As it turns out, my legs know exactly how long it takes to walk from the bus stop to the house, and once I'd walked that distance, my legs told me they were done. I tried to explain that, hey, I know you guys are tired from standing in the kitchen and wearing chef shoes all day - I'm tired too - but it doesn't work that way guys, you can't just stop. We need to get home. But my legs weren’t having any it. I tried promising them ice cream, but they complained that I didn't get mint chocolate chip, like they have at UDF, which is my legs' favorite, but I managed to convince them that I'd them a milkshake as soon as we got home.

So, there I am, trudging the rest of the way home, promising myself a mint chocolate shake as soon as I get home, my IQ once again dropping due to the mind-numbing weather and the tiredness, and I'm thinking "okay I have vanilla ice cream, milk, and mint syrup stuff, but what do I do for the chocolate? Chips are too waxy" and THEN I remember that for my birthday, my sister bought me a solid chocolate Buddha. (chocolate is my sister's hobby - she keeps her best pieces in a jewelry box the way others keep jewelry - and I can totally see how she'd be looking thru a chocolate catalog, see that, and think of me) I'd been saving it, because it looks cool, but today, I realize, is the day Buddha has to die. So I'm walking home and I'm talking to myself to keep myself motivated but my cognitive skills are rapidly fading, and pretty soon I'm babbling about "mint chocolate buddha - i'm gonna have a mint chocolate buddha" and somewhere in the back of my brain it occurs to me that by the time I get home, I'll be like a five year old, DEMANDING a "mint chocolate buddah" and getting steadily angrier as my mom can't figure out what that is. Finally I get home, and my mom is untying the door so I can get in (we tie the screen door shut because the springy thing is broken) and I'm talking in three word sentences as I take off my coat and unfurl my knife set and get out my microplane (which is like a super fancy cheese grater) and proceed to kill Buddha. I did apologize to him first - I even told him he was my favorite god that I don't believe in. ....well, him and Thor. But mostly Buddha.

The shake came out okay. The chocolate was good though! It was better eaten as pieces, though - the microplane grated it too fine and you couldn't really taste it in the shake.

Had my first school day of the new year today!

This quarter, my class schedule looks like this:

Monday:
Bar Operations Management 1:20pm-3:00pm
Kitchen Chemistry 5:00pm-7:45pm

Tuesday:
Advanced Food Preparation (Lecture) 8:00am-8:50am
Advanced Food Preparation (Lab) 9:00am-2:45am

Wednesday:
Advanced Food Preparation (Lecture) 8:00am-8:50am
Bar Operations Management 1:20pm-3:00pm
Menu Planning & Dinning Services 7:00pm-8:40pm

Believe it or not, I actually registered early - this crazy schedule was the only way to get all the classes I wanted this quarter. In fact, all of them except HMT 114 (Advanced Food Preparation) were only being offered in one time slot this quarter, so it's not like I had a lot of choice. The good thing about this schedule is I have reeeeally long weekends, and lots of time between classes (especially on Wednesday - yikes!) to get my homework done so that I can enjoy those long weekends. The bad thing is, so much for attending my weekly church activities on Monday and Wednesday nights this quarter... sorry guys.

I gotta tell you, I am pretty danged psyched to be taking nothing but food courses this quarter. I did really, really lousy last quarter, which was the first quarter in ages that I had financial aid, and thus the first quarter in ages in which I was a full-time student. Sufficite it to say life threw a lot of little curveballs at me before and during the first part of the quarter (such as being without electricity in my house for a week and a half) and by the time I'd gotten my head back in the game, it was too late to catch up. I still managed to pull out a B in my culinary class, but the other stuff I was taking, like English and a Dietician elective, fell by the wayside. So this time I'm taking classes that aren't only required for my major, but are classes that I actually want to take.

Bar Operations Management
Yes, believe it or not, that's a required course for Culinary Arts majors. Yes, we learn how to mix drinks in the class, and no, we don't use any actual alcohol in the class - it's a school for crying out loud! The actual consumption of alcoholic beverages holds little interest for me - having an older brother commit suicide due to alcoholism (back in 2001, in case you're wondering) will do that to you - but for some reason, the art of mixology and the process of brewing drinks fascinates me, so I'm pretty excited to be the class.

Kitchen Chemistry
This was the class I was most excited about this quarter; it's only offered at Sinclair once a year, by a retired guy who comes over especially to teach it, and I am all about food science. Well, all I can say is, I sure hope the rest of the class is more interesting then today, where we basically just talked a bunch about chemistry. Well, at least I know that if I can hold out to the end of the class, we get to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen.....

Advanced Food Preparation
So the way it works at Sinclair is, HMT 112 (Basic Food Prep) and HMT 114 (Advanced Food Prep) take place at the same time, taught by different instructors and in different classrooms, and we all spend one week practicing the menu (that the Menu Planning class from last quarter wrote), and then the next week, actual paying customers come in and we wait on and serve them, 112 handling the side dishes and 114 handling the entrees. So in other words, this is my actual cooking class, and I'm looking forward to it.

Menu Planning and Dinning Services
This class is pretty self explanatory (you learn how to write menus) so I won't say much about it, other then I wanted to take both this and the bartending class last quarter, but didn't sign up early enough.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Let me preface this by saving that I have (and have had, over the course of my life) a lot of ideas for video games. Making them up has always been a hobby of mine, even if they never (and they ussually don't) see the light of day.

One day several years ago, a friend of mine inadvertently put to words an idea I'd had for years. He said, "you should make a game where you have to figure out how to play it - an Everything You Know Is Wrong game."

Although it's not like the game that I (keep trying to) envision in head, this game that Jon recommended completely nails the whole "figure out how to play it" vibe (and it's fun, too!). Now, if I could just figure out how to cross that with the whole WarioWare/Rom Check Fail the-rules-keep-changing vibe, I'd be on to something......

And if THIS works, maybe I'll buy some of those flavored cream cheeses....

So, a couple of weeks ago in the grocery store, I noticed for the first time something I'd never paid much attention to before: flavored coffee creamers. It makes sense that I'd never gave them much thought, seeing as how I don't drink coffee, but dude, check out some of the flavors of these things: chocolate raspberry, southern butter pecan, cinnamon bun, chocolate eclair.... the only ones I don't get are the mocha flavors. Coffee flavored coffee? Really? If the brand of coffee you buy is so bad that you need coffee-flavored creamer, wouldn't it be easier just to, you know, buy better coffee? But the point is, I see all these delicious sounding flavors, and I keep thinking, there has got to be some sort of non-beverage culinary use for these things.

So today in the store I finally broke down and bought the bottle seen to the right, partly because it's a seasonal flavor so I'm less likely to ever see it again (at least for the next ten months) and partly because I figure this might finally be my chance to fulfill my dream of inventing Egg Nog Pie. To make this work, I'll need to start with a pie recipe that's mostly liquid, so I'm thinking custard pie. Question: if I make a custard pie, which is like 80% milk, and replace that milk with a 100% dairy free liquid, will it still bake into a custard? I mean it's creamer, so it's milk-like, right? Second question: if creamers are already sweetened, how much sugar do I cut from the original recipe? The answer to these questions and others will be answered the next time I have enough free time to bake a pie; but seeing as how I have a church dinner to (co)run tomorrow and a new quarter of school starting the day after, that might be a while......

True Story

Me & Richard are on the bus this morning, headed to the bus hub by the Salem Mall. As the bus starts to pull into the hub parking lot, a female RTA employee starts running towards our bus, grinning and screaming and waving, and our driver, recognizing her but unsure of what's going on, starts slowing down but keeps going forward. As the woman gets closer, it becomes apparent that A) she isn't going to stop, and B) she's headed right for the front of the bus, so at this point our driver starts putting on the full brake. Just at the bus lurches (finally) to a complete stop, the woman reaches the very front/side corner of the bus (on the driver's side), slaps the side window (with her hand) where the bus driver is sitting, and then collapses onto the ground.

Everyone on the entire bus sits there in stunned silence for a moment, looking at each other trying to figure out what just happened. Did we hit her? I don't think we hit her but the bus did kind of lurch right there at the end and, did we hit her?!

And then the bus driver says, "You are NOT getting worker's comp for that!" Relieved laughter fills the bus as the woman, laughing herself, gets up and saunters off.

Do things like this happen regularly around anyone else?

A New Year and A New Blog

So I was in the video store today, and they were playing movie clips - not a whole movie, but the ads they show on the Family Video "channel" - and they were playing a clip from the movie The Polar Express, which I have still never seen. And as I stood there watching the clip, all I could think was: Tom Hanks is a terrific actor, possibly one of the best American actors of our time, and an extremely talented man... but I could have died happy without having ever heard him sing. Seriously. Never once in my life have I been watching a Tom Hanks movie and thought to myself "sure, this is good, but do you know what would really make it better? If Tom Hanks just opened his mouth and belted one out in that silky smooth voice of his." And in retrospect, that was pretty good judgment on my part.

Hey, you ever notice how there's a million (approximately) different Christmas specials that they play every single year, and the one Christmas special that's considered to be the best, the most timeless, and the one by which all other Christmas specials are measured, A Charlie Brown Christmas, is also the only one that actually mentions Jesus? .....well, I guess there's also Nestor the Christmas Donkey.