A Few Quick Notes 561

-Though we had a surprise snowfall yesterday, today has turned out to be quite nice.  Actually, my only fear about today's weather is that it might get too nice.  By this I mean that we may see a 16 degree temperature swing that will bring us above the melting point and contribute to slush formation.

-Because of the aforementioned surprise snowfall yesterday I had to do some shovelling.



[Embedded video]

-I made another batch of chickpea cake last night.  Because Jeannette and I both overate at dinner we didn't have any last.  I guess we might have it tonight?

I am hoping that this batch will be better than the last one and that the changes to cooking time that I made this time around have paid off.

-I really should be doing work or eating lunch.

Cameron: 25
Neil: 0

Baking update

When I posted yesterday about the weird chickpea based cake that I made last night I probably came to a few hasty conclusions based on incomplete knowledge.  Now that the cake is a few hours older I think I am in a better position to judge the recipe.

First of all, the cake definitely needs time to set.  I would guess that the 40 minutes suggested for baking is really fine.  Any gooeyness that I experienced last night was likely just because I didn't give the cake time to cool and set.  When I came back to it today the centre was not the least bit gooey.

Secondly, as the cake seems designed to be accessible for those with restricted diets the recipe is on the sparse side ingredientwise.  I think an easy way to really improve the cake would be to add a few walnut or pecan pieces, though this wouldn't work if you were preparing it for someone with a nut allergy.

This is definitely a recipe I will make again, if mainly for the novelty factor and to test my hunch about the  addition of nuts.

Failed impulse

Last night, as I mentioned earlier, I decided to have a beer or two to celebrate a successful week of work. Of course, to have a beer or two meant that I would have to head to the store to pick up the beer that I would later be drinking.

Shortly after indicating my intentions Rebecca and Jeannette asked that if I could pick them up some candy while I was shopping. Because I am such a nice guy I agreed to pick them up some candy, though they were a little vague about the type of candy they wanted.

When I arrived in the store a few minutes later I started haunting the aisles, just checking things out and looking for inspiration. At one point I passed an end-of-aisle display that contained a number of on-sale cake mixes. I was immediately tempted. I quickly settled on a 'Swiss chocolate' mix, though I didn't and still don't know exactly how a 'Swiss chocolate' cake is any different than a 'chocolate' cake. Anyway, I then made my way to the candy and icing aisles to get my other purchases. Of course, I then when next door to the beer store to complete my acquisitions.

Almost as soon as I returned home I started the baking process, though to much less excitement than I expected. Not surprisingly, given that I was using cake mix, things moved quickly and I soon had two cake pans in the oven.

Until this point things were going well. Everything was working out exactly as I might have expected. It was only when I took the cake pans out of the oven that things started to go awry.

Though the cakes look fine, they weren't particularly interested in coming out of their pans when I turned them upside down. Instead of forcing the issue I decided to let them rest for a while. This is a trick I have used in the past to some success (I have always presumed that it has something to do with the baked good sweating and then loosening any of the item that is stuck to the pan).

Sadly, in this case, even after the extended sitting period, the first cake pan was left with about 25% of its content when the cake eventually did come out. Of course, the resulting cake was still circular, just not particularly iceable or photogenic.

Given this outcome I decided to let the second cake pan and cake rest a little while longer. Sadly, even with this additional rest/sweat the outcome was similar, though maybe somewhat less dramatic.

Given these two unstackable cakes I was somewhat at a loss as to how I should proceed. Instead of really dealing with the issue last night I decided to just cover them and leave them until this morning, hoping that I would somehow come up with a solution.

My solution, as unglamorous as it was, was hardly even complete. This morning I iced the more complete of the two cakes (and then had two pieces for breakfast). The second cake is still laying covered on the counter. I have no idea what to do with it as spreading icing on each piece like you would jam on a scone just seems strange and I am otherwise drawing blanks about appropriate consumption means.

Anyway, this outcome was really not what I expected when I dropped $1.49 on a cake mix last night. I really thought that things would be easier and not nearly as cognitively complex.

If you have any ideas about what I can do with the uneaten remnants of the first cake let me know. I would prefer not just composting it in a few days, or once it starts showing signs of mold.

I-Day +1

Last week a number of us noticed that one of the local grocery stores was selling cake mix and icing on a buy one get one free basis. Though I normally am inclined to prepare my cakes from scratch, for some reason I was tempted by this offer, the only thing that was missing was a justification to make the cake.

Seemingly out of nowhere Neil suggested that we might try celebrating Independence Day (a holiday I am not always inclined to celebrate), though particulars of the celebration were not immediately forthcoming. Almost as soon as this was suggested I thought of the aforementioned cake deal and suggested that I might make such a cake.

While we didn't quite manage to find time to engage in our celebratory activities yesterday, this afternoon I was able to bake the cake.



As you can see, the cake has been appropriately decorated to reflect that we missed the holiday proper by a day.

Hopefully the cake tastes better than it looks.

A Few Quick Notes 300

-We had another rather overcast day in Halifax, fortunately this wasn't accompanied by much precipitation. Hopefully the forecast isn't accurate and we won't have another few days of gray before we see the sun again.

-A few days ago I planted a few tomato seeds. As we haven't had much sun and as I had stashed the pots in the back of my room I was imagining that I had wasted the seeds. Just as this thought was beginning to take hold I noticed that several of the seeds had started to grow. At the moment I can see the early stages of four relatively undeveloped tomato plants. I wonder if me moving them from the back of my room to a position by the window help? I can't imagine that it did much harm.

I am hoping that a few more plants will become visible in the coming days. I think it might be a little over ambitious for me to expect that all 12-15 of the seeds that I planted result in full-fledged tomato plants, particularly given the conditions.

-As is their habit, my bean plants are continuing to grow at an excruciatingly slow pace. I really don't quite understand why it is that they are growing so much more slowly than the other bean plants. Anyway, I guess I should just be happy that they are continuing to grow.

-Earlier today McGill called to solicit a donation from me. While I am not particularly surprised that they are trying to get donations from me already, I am a little surprised that they have my number in Halifax. I guess I must have made the mistake of giving it to them, but I don't know when or why I would have.

-We had beans with vegetables and corn bread for dinner tonight. By cutting the meat from our meal I kept the total cost of the meal quite low, though surely the corn bread hiked things up a little. I might have some leftover rice and beans as a snack later tonight.

-A few days ago a friend of mine mentioned that she recently made a chocolate raspberry cake and that it turned out quite well. I was immediately quite tempted and asked for the recipe. Of course, once I had the idea in my head I couldn't get myself to wait for her to respond so I scoured the hinternet looking for a recipe for such a cake that didn't require me to head to the grocery store. After a little searching I found such a recipe.

While reading the recipe I noticed that the contributor mentioned that they hadn't made the recipe themselves, but that they had consumed it. This should have been a bit of a tip-off that this likely wasn't the recipe for me. Not only was the recipe somewhat misleading about how much batter would be produced, but also about how much baking soda should be used. I am pretty sure that the recipe called for about twice as much as should have been used.

While the cake is quite edible, I am quite sure that it would be possible to make a chocolate raspberry cake that is much better. Maybe this will teach me a lesson about waiting for tested recipes.

-For a reason unbeknownst to me, I have had the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" stuck in my head for the past number of months.

-We have received quite a number of phone calls in the past few days. If this keeps up I might be inclined to take the phone of the hook for a few hours a day.

A Few Quick Notes 271

-After yesterday's above zero temperatures, today's below zero temperatures have had the somewhat unwelcome effect of turning large sections of the city into ice sheets. Unfortunately, it seems that a number of the city's sidewalks seem to be presently located below these ice sheets. Aside from this, and occasional blasts of cold wind, things were pretty nice today.

-On Saturday I finally prepared some beans/legumes in my new pressure cooker. The preparation of such dishes was why I was given the pressure cooker in the first place.

For my first attempt I decided to go with a lentil soup recipe from the cookbook that came with the device. Not only was the soup relatively straightforward, basically just vegetables and lentils, it turned out quite nicely. Even Neil and Rebecca seemed to think that it wouldn't be too bad if we had it again. Hopefully I will be able to try a few more such dishes in the coming days and weeks.

-For those of you who are into comedy podcasts, episode 46 of Mike Schmidt's The 40 Year Old Boy is great. As far as I am concerned, the highlight of the show is the extended story about Mike going to Lake Tahoe with a friend to run a sports gambling system that the friend devised. As one might expect of 20 year-olds try to pull something like this off, it quickly went south and Mike and his friend were soon forced to fend for themselves in a relatively unknown city.

-On Saturday night our Ultimate team was once again smoked, though we did manage to hold things together for the better part of the first half. As usual, we really let things get out of hand as the game wore on.

-A few days ago I noticed that one of the recipes on the same page as a biscuit recipe that I frequent use was a recipe for "Cowboy Coffee Cake." For some reason I found this name rather tempting and have been trying to come up with a reason/time to make a batch.

After finishing dinner this evening I felt that the time had come and that I would try to whip up a batch of Cowboy Coffee Cake. Now that it is out of the oven I can't quite understand why they tried to associate with cowboys, it looks like pretty standard coffee cake as far as I can tell. I guess I should try a piece while it is still warm.

-This morning I removed the 'stache (olibama) that I acquired on Friday. I was pretty sure that its presence wouldn't endear me to the class to whom I had to give a lecture this morning.

Blog-off
Cameron: 11
Neil: 0

A Few Quick Notes 265

-Today was a pretty standard winter day, not particularly great, but not bad either. Temperatures rose to about zero, and then dropped to a few degrees below freezing as the afternoon progressed. We now seem to have settled in to a nice equilibrium at about -7 (it doesn't take to long for me to assert that we have reached a temperature equilibrium).

-As some of you may have noticed, Neil doesn't tend to post all that frequently. I find this somewhat bothersome because the idea behind Montifax was that it would be a joint venture, not simply a blog that Neil started and that I continued.

Anyway, over the past number of years I have tried to get Neil to post more frequently through a number of means. Of course I started by asking him nicely, and occasionally dropping hints as post scripts to email. More recently I have just been telling him that he should be posting more (using 'please' didn't seem to work so I dropped it from the routine to conserve energy). It seems that none of the methods I have tried so far have had any noticeable effect.

Just this evening I think that I may have come up with something that might get him to post a little more. Not only did I suggest that his lack of posting indicated that he was yellow (though I didn't use those words), I decided to challenge him to a blog-off, a competition to see who could post more in a given period of time. I thought that I turned it into a game and added points I might be able to get him to post more (he has such a hard time resisting games).

Anyway, after a few brief negotiations we seem to have preliminarily settled on a few ground rules and parameters.

Neil gets 5 points for each post he makes while I only get 1, he seemed unwilling to participate without me handicapping myself.

Each post, to qualify for the blog-off, must be at least 30 words long and tagged (within reason). I also feel that there should be at least some content, though who am I to talk, I post content-free crap all the time.

The event will run for the duration of February, so he has a few hours to mentally prepare himself.

An additional condition that I think that we should add is that for a post to count a tally of the score must be included (though this wouldn't count towards the word total).

Hopefully I will have a few more details in the coming hours or days.

-For those of you interested in learning a little more about the video New Townie Man that I posted yesterday you can listen to this CBC Morning Show interview with Roger Maunder and Colleen Power, the makers of the video.

-Today is a big day for me, I have consumed what may be my last Flintstones multivitamin tablet. While these are targeted at children, I have continued to consume them for years. Then, all of a sudden a few weeks ago, I just became sick of having my mouth filled with a sugary substance every time I had a vitamin and consequently decided to finish off the bottle and move on to swallowable multivitamins. Now I have to finish my chewable vitamin C so that I can go all swallowable and not taint my mouth with vitamin flavour.

-I baked a Texas Sheet Cake this evening. The downside of the decision to undertake this task was that it meant I had to head out to the grocery store to pick up some icing sugar. Only after I returned from the store did I realize that I also needed some milk, causing me to return to the store for a third time today.

-Though I have a fair bit of work that I should be doing, I don't seem to be doing a very good job at focusing on it. Maybe once I get this post off my chest I can hit the books hard for a few hours before going to bed.

Old Time Pork Cake for Christmas

About a year ago, I mentioned to Cheryl that I had a recipe for an “Old Time Pork Cake for Christmas.” After some examination of the recipe we decided that we should try to make a batch of the cake. Unfortunately, neither of us knew where to obtain either ground salt pork or candied citrus peel in Montreal.

After several weeks or months Cheryl located a butcher’s shop on St. Laurent that sold salt pork, though in a pre-ground state. Apparently the butcher’s shop was unwilling to grind the meat, as it would likely damage the grinder. So as we solved one problem we encountered another. It was only some number of months later that my mother offered to loan me her meat grinder (which I will now have to transport back to St. John’s on Monday).

The citrus peel also proved to be a problem. The problem of the citrus peel was compounded as I misinterpreted what the needed ingredient actually was. Instead of dry candied citrus peel, we were actually just looking for the more readily available wet stuff.
While I knew where to find such things in St. John’s, I didn’t have quite as much luck in Montreal. It seems that many baking or related products that one can almost take for granted in St. John’s just don’t exist in the same way in Montreal, citrus peel and salt meat being two examples. Finally this fall I was able to locate a store that sold citrus peel, both the lemon and orange varieties.

Once the ingredients, and the means of preparing them properly, were scouted, the remaining problem seemed to be time. As this isn’t any old cake, but a pork cake, the recipe recommends a three-hour baking time rather than the more standard one-hour.

As term was winding down, I was to soon return the meat grinder it seemed a little more urgent to find an agreeable time. Eventually we arranged to do it after our exam yesterday.

We started the process by visiting the stores on St. Laurent that we had previously scouted for the rare products and acquiring the desired ingredients.

In the butcher shop I asked the woman behind the counter for a cup of salt pork. She didn’t quite seem to know what I want and kept repeating ‘bacon,’ which really wasn’t what I was looking for. Eventually an older butcher came over, clearly having overheard the confusion, and with a wink, said that he would take care of us shortly.

Upon finishing with a customer he slipped into the cold room at the end of the store and vanished for a few minutes. Eventually he re-emerged holding a spike, with which he had skewered a long piece of salt pork. He asked us if this is what we were looking for and I indicated that it was. He draped the meat across a cutting area and placed his knife a few inches in and asked us if that was how much we were looking for. I suggested that we wanted a little more, maybe about another quarter inch.

He cut the meat, slipped it into a plastic bag and handed us back to the woman that had originally tried to serve us. She weighed the meat and gave us the price, $1.89. After paying I took my purchase and felt the meat, which was much softer than I had imagined.

We then went north and found the vegetarian bulk store that I had previously visited in my search for citrus peel. We quickly located the peel and scooped up as much as we thought we likely needed and went to the cash register and paid.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at Cheryl’s apartment we checked the recipe, which neither of us had examined in months, and learned that we had only purchased half as much peel as needed, and didn’t have the raisins or currants that we needed. We were also missing allspice.

A second trip was then made to the vegetarian store. We quickly re-found the peel and scooped the desired quantity. The allspice was also quickly located and an appropriate amount scooped into a bag. Unfortunately, it took us a while to find the currants, mainly because of a lack of familiarity with French vocabulary relating to dried fruit products. In the end we were able to acquire the desired products.

As we were checking out for the second time in less than an hour the cashier, who had also served us the first time, asked, in a friendly way, what it was that we were making. After a moment of collective hesitation, I stated that we were making a pork cake. At first the woman didn’t quite seem to understand what it was that we were making. Eventually we were able to express that it was basically a cake with pork, and raisins, currants, and citrus peel.

Shortly after returning I set to grinding the meat. The grinder was attached to the slat of a bench and a bowl placed beneath the outlet. Quickly at first, and them more slowly, the ground pork started to be extruded from the nozzle. Gradually more of the pork was added to the hopper until it was full and the turning of the crank seemed to be doing nothing. Somehow a break through was reached and the pork once again began to move quickly through the grinder.

Once ground, the pork was mixed with a cup of hot coffee and set outside to cool. It was about at this point that it was realized that even after two shopping trips we still did not have all of the required ingredients. We were missing two-thirds of a cup of molasses. Hugh kindly volunteered to pick some up at the local grocery store.

After the pork and coffee mixture had cooled the traditional cake ingredients, such as the spices, leavening agent, sugar, eggs, molasses, and flour were added. Simultaneously, the fruit, the raisins, currants, and peel, were coated in flour. Eventually the two mixtures were combined, both of which were of similar volumes.

The resulting dough was then added poured into a pan on top of three layers of parchment paper and placed in the oven. After a period of cleaning we basically just had to wait until the cake had finished baking, which we expected to be in about three hours.
Fortunately, the cake was fully baked after only about a two hours. The delicacy was then lifted from the pan and allowed to cool on the parchment paper.

Soon after the baking process was complete we decided to test our product and see if it had been worth the effort, or if it was even edible. Much to my surprise, the cake was very tasty and quite passable, particularly considering that it is a basically a fruit cake.

As it was a rather large cake, and of a somewhat strange composition, Cheryl insisted that I take some with me. So now, Nithum and I, just like most households in North America have a hunk of uneaten seasonal cake sitting somewhere, waiting to be served in case company drops in unexpectedly.

Fortunately, this situation will only last for a few days as it is my intention to the transport the hunk of cake to Newfoundland with me when I head out on Monday. Hopefully it will taste as good in a few days as it did yesterday.

A Few Quick Notes 108

[Written on Monday July 23, 2007]

-From yesterday’s rain and wind we have returned to the realm of beautiful weather. Fortunately, today managed to be beautiful without being oppressively hot and humid. High levels of humidity have been particularly problematic these past few days.

-As I was eating breakfast this morning I started to think about what I might want for lunch. Aside from the normal, and somewhat mundane, options, I thought that I might like a piece of the coffee cake that I baked on Sunday. As I was the only one in the kitchen I didn’t have a chance to make these sentiments known to anyone else. I continued along my way and tried my best to keep up with my typical morning routine.

After showering and dressing, I descended to the kitchen to finish my lunch preparations. Almost as soon as I walked in I noticed that my mother, father, and sister were sitting at the dining room table, each with a plate of scrambled eggs and cake in front of them. To add insult to injury, they left half a corner piece in the pan.

- While cataloguing a 1971 report on the population characteristics of unincorporated communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, I was struck by the first sentence of the report. The report opens by stating that it "provides basic detailed information…." While one can read it differently, it seemed a little odd to me that information could be considered basic and detailed at the same time. As I flipped through the report, this veracity of the statement became obvious. None of the information was complex, but certainly was detailed with age and gender breakdowns provided for very particular geographic locations.

A Few Quick Notes 107

-Today is another rainy day in Newfoundland (or at least St. John’s). The weather managed to change from just about perfect, or even on the hot side of things, to overcast, humid, rainy all in one night. Hopefully things will have dried up a little by the time I have to walk to work tomorrow morning.

-Though I did not have a particularly good reason to do so, I baked my first coffee cake this morning. After a quick search for the recipe card I was able to find what I was looking for. As all of the ingredients are pretty common I did not have to head over to the store before the baking process started. The only problem I encountered, and this hardly counts as a problem, was that about half way through the process I realized that my mother has been baking double batches of this cake for the past twenty-something years. As I had only added enough ingredients for a single batch my cake turned out to be much smaller than I had originally expected. Aside from the size, the cake turned out quite nicely. So far I have managed to finish off about a third of the cake, though I imagine that I probably will have to switch to a slightly more substantive food in the near future.

-Running out of propane is one of the more frustrating summer experiences. Several times this summer I have gone out to start up the barbeque only to find that it would not ignite. After a few minutes of fiddling around with the tank and nozzles it usually becomes apparent what the problem is. In this case I was a little thrown because some gas escaped, giving me the false sense that an empty tank was not the problem. Anyway, after eliminating all other possibilities and lifting what felt like an empty tank, I was pretty sure that that was it for my desire to barbeque last night.

-For the first time in about a year I was able to break out my Pictionary easels. Five of us engaged in a few exciting and vigorous games. In my opinion, Dougal’s drawing of civilian by first drawing a solider and then crossing it out to indicate a ‘not-solider’ stands as one of the better drawing sessions of the night. As usual, there were also a few correct guesses that occurred so quickly and with such sparse drawings that it is hard to believe that anything could have even been realistically guessed.

-While typing that last section I learned that Word does not recognize the name ‘Dougal.’ While I know that this isn’t the world’s most common name, I certainly would have thought that it merited at least a degree of recognition by the Microsoft empire, particularly when they recognize ‘McDougall.’

-This past week was a relatively unsuccessful trivia week. We managed to do quite poorly at the Rose and Thistle. The large number of pop culture questions really did us in. At Bitters I managed to be only 2.5 points out of second place. Unfortunately, we (at my proding) ended up making a few last minute changes that lost us a few points, though not enough to cost us the victory.

Texas sheet cake 2

Yesterday was Rebecca's birthday. As part of our spending quality time together during the evening, she helped me make a texas sheet cake. I first tried to make a texas sheet cake in the fall and it didn't work out as well as I had hoped; I have entitled this post to indicate this (and/or to copy Cameron's numbering). In the fall I deemed that one of the problems was the pan, so I bought a new one; I also decided doing dishes while making the icing and thus burning it was a bad idea. This time it mostly worked out well. The cake is rather flat, so it works best with a level oven, however (using my magnetic level from Santa Claus) I determined that my oven is off-level in multiple directions. Hence, my cake is taller on one half, but it still tastes good.