In the end, I had no choice but to open the window, pop out the screen and lean outside to take this photograph, 25 degrees or not.
Archive for January, 2011
As Pictured Below: Icicles
Posted in As Pictured Below, tagged alabama, Huntsville, icicles, photograph, postaday2011, snow, window, winter on January 13, 2011| 2 Comments »
Mysteries of the cake pop revealed
Posted in Christmas, Eats, Photographs, tagged Bakerella, cake balls, cake pops, chocolate, chocolate coating, Christmas, cooking, cracked cake balls, dipping cake balls, double boiler, food, food blogs, holidays, lollipop sticks, microwave, photograph, postaday2011, preventing cracked cake balls, sprinkles on January 11, 2011| 4 Comments »
I got cake balls right this year. I followed Bakerella’s instructions, for the most part, but I also scouted around on a few other food blogs to try to improve on my last effort.
I discovered four secrets:
- Chill the undipped cake balls in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to get them firm enough for dipping. If you’re in a hurry and decide to pop them into the freezer instead, prepare for cracked cake balls. I only used the refrigerator for this last batch, and I had exactly ZERO cracked cake balls. More than half of the previous batch, which all went into the freezer so I could dip them more quickly, cracked within an hour after dipping. Plan ahead and leave yourself plenty of time.
- Put the refrigerated cake balls on lollipop sticks before you dip them into the melted chocolate coating. This technically turns cake balls into cake pops. Go with it. Dip the tip of each stick into the melted coating before inserting it into a cake ball, then put the cake balls back into the refrigerator for at least five more minutes. The lollipop sticks make the coating process a lot easier, and, if you heed the advice in steps 3 and 4, they give you a more professional-looking product.
- Melt the chocolate coating in the microwave if you like, but hold it over simmering water in a double boiler to keep it thin enough while you’re dipping the cake balls. This will make the dipping process go faster, since you won’t have to worry about thickened chocolate that has to go back in the microwave every few minutes. Maintaining the melted coating at the same consistency throughout the dipping process simply results in prettier cake pops, too.
- After dipping the cake balls in the melted chocolate coating and letting the excess drip off for a few seconds, drizzle the wet cake balls with colored sugar or sprinkles — if that’s your decor of choice — and stick the clean end of the lollipop stick into a sturdy piece of Styrofoam (you may want to poke tiny holes in it before you start so the sticks will go in easily). This eliminates the flat spot and messy melted chocolate spread on the bottom of the finished cake balls.
I covered the business end of most of the cake pops with a small, clear treat bag and secured it with a small piece of Christmas ribbon, quickly tied into a simple knot (you can also just use twist ties). This made the cake pops fancy AND portable and helped keep them fresh for the better part of a week.
I won’t lie. These take forever and a day to make, and you’ll be cleaning chocolate smears off your stove and countertop and sweeping colored sugar off your kitchen floor for days. But well-made cake pops are beyond delicious and will impress the heck out of most people. Especially the 5-year-old princess fanatics in your life.
Do One Thing: Filing cabinet clearing
Posted in Do One Thing, tagged challenge, desk, Do One Thing, filing cabinets, home office, magazines, New Year, New Year's resolution, New Yorker, postaday2011, resolutions on January 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 10: Cleaned off the filing cabinets next to my desk, because old New Yorkers deserve a proper burial after they’ve done their duty.
Don’t hesitate to buy a Publix king cake
Posted in Eats, tagged alabama, bakery, cakes, cinnamon roll, food, French bread, holidays, Huntsville, king cake, king cake babies, Louisiana, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, plastic babies, postaday2011, Publix, Randazzo's, stats, sugar on January 8, 2011| 5 Comments »
Update (2-9-11): You may want to hesitate to buy a Publix king cake this year. The king cakes I saw there today were absurdly flat, like somebody forgot to add yeast.
My blog stats indicate that people are eager to know whether the king cakes sold at Publix are worth buying.
Answer: They are, indeed. Publix king cakes aren’t going to compare to a masterpiece from Randazzo’s, but I assume if you’re close enough to New Orleans to get the real thing, you’re not looking for advice on grocery-store king cakes.
The first year we bought a Publix king cake in Huntsville, Alabama, the bakery folks told us they imported the unbaked cakes from someplace in Louisiana, then baked and decorated them at the store. Over the past couple of years, it seems like they may have discovered that a king cake is pretty much a giant French-bread cinnamon roll coated in colored icing and sugar, and they’re making their own version.
Publix may include mysteriously gigantic plastic babies in their king cakes, but they’re got the basics of the delicacy down: Publix king cakes aren’t overly sweet, they’re pretty and they’re big enough to serve a crowd at a fair price.
Buy one. You won’t be sorry.
Do One Thing: Swift thrift shift
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged A New Leash on Life, bad habits, challenge, clutter, decluttering, Do One Thing, home, New Leash on Life Marketplace, New Year, New Year's resolution, office, resolutions on January 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 8: I have this bad habit of decluttering and then leaving the box of decluttered items in the house for weeks, turning it into clutter.
But not this time. I brought last week’s New Year decluttering remnants to the New Leash on Life Marketplace this afternoon. They can sell it faster, and I have a cleaner home office sooner.
Do One Thing: Wine organization achieved
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged challenge, Do One Thing, kitchen, New Year's resolution, pantry, postaday2011, Pylones, resolution, Stack, stacking wine bottles, storage, wine, wine pyramid, Wine Stack, wine storage on January 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 7: You can see why I had to have the Stack. Look at this perfect pyramid of wine.
Because I’m storing the wine in the pantry, I’m getting twice as much work out of the Stack, using the two halves of the device to secure two wine stacks against two cabinet walls. Better utilization of the pantry space enabled me to liberate four forgotten bottles of wine from the stairwell closet today, which led to all sorts of afternoon organizational maneuvers.
The Stack appears to have originated from an Australian company called Make My Day.
The Stack in its original packaging.
Electric Reindeer, proof that I will bring cheap, hilariously named wine to your party.
Two halves of the Stack.
Do One Thing: Magazine reduction
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged challenge, decluttering, Do One Thing, home, magazines, New Year's resolution, office, recycling, resolutions, travel on January 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 6: I decimated a pile of travel magazines taking up space in my home office. The recycling bin is going to be heavy next week.
First 2011 food find: Little Debbie Banana Pudding Rolls
Posted in Eats, Family, Photographs, tagged alabama, artificial ingredients, banana, banana pudding, Banana Pudding Rolls, barn, brother, bubblegum, caramel, Chattanooga, childhood, children, chocolate, coffee, coffee break, cookies, Devil Squares, family, farm, farmland, food, Forrest Gump, freedom, friends, gas station food, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, hay bales, husband, Kool-Aid, Little Debbie, Little Debbie Banana Pudding Rolls, Little Debbies, manual transmission, Mardi Gras, marshmallow pies, mississippi, Mobile, MoonPies, mother, Nutty Bars, Oatmeal Pies, peanut butter, ponies, pony, postaday2011, Publix, puppies, Shetland ponies, Shetland pony, snack cakes, snacks, sophisticated palate, South, South Mississippi, Southern, Star Crunch, sugar, Tennessee, tomboy, Twinkies on January 7, 2011| 5 Comments »
It’s good to have friends who help you maintain a positive attitude and healthy habits. It’s also good to have friends who urge you to make questionable choices every once in a while.
When I emailed a photo of a surprising food find — Little Debbie Banana Pudding Rolls — to a former colleague earlier this week, he responded immediately: “My professional advice to you is to buy two boxes of them right now. Why two? Because you’ll eat one box on the way home from the store.”
How could a girl resist?
I grew up eating Little Debbie products at my grandparent’s house in South Mississippi — my brother and I could always find a box of the treats on top of the refrigerator. I am the Forrest Gump of Little Debbie products, with a readily accessible running list of the different varieties taking up valuable space inside my brain. Ask me about nearly any of the company’s products, and I can run down a quick review for you. Here are just a few that popped into my head this very minute:
Devil Squares: Their substantial filling and sort of weirdly textured chocolate coating combine for a unique and delicious culinary experience that made me, as a child, feel slightly more sophisticated than my tomboyish habits generally merited. (more…)
Do One Thing: Decluttering and remodeling
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged bathroom, challenge, contractors, countertop, decluttering, Do One Thing, faucets, granite, home, home improvement, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, remodeling, resolutions, shelves, vanity on January 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 4 saw the decluttering of one small shelf. Baby steps, people.
Part of Day 5 was spent waiting on the contractors to install a granite countertop in the downstairs bathroom, and the rest of it was spent obsessing about said installation and trying to pick out a faucet. Home improvement: It counts.
Do One Thing: Wine problem solved, piano bench cleared
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, Travel, tagged baking, challenge, Christmas, Do One Thing, holidays, husband, junk, kitchen, marriage, New Year's resolution, New York City, pantry, piano bench, postaday2011, Pylones, resolution, stacking wine bottles, storage, travel, vacation, wine, wine pyramid, wine racks, Wine Stack, wine storage on January 4, 2011| 1 Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 2: I labored over whether I should include purchases in this challenge. As the sole board member, I voted “yes.”
When we were in New York City in early December, I saw this nifty little device in Pylones that allows you to stack up to 10 bottles of wine safely and efficiently. I realize that other people have wine racks on their countertops and walls and even on top of their kitchen cabinets, but proper wine storage demands protection from light and temperature variations. Thus, most of our everyday wine (“everyday wine” … we sound so sophisticated) is stored in the bottom of the pantry, far away from the stove and other sources of heat.
The bottles, however, tend to arrange themselves in a mishmash, no matter how carefully they’re initially placed. Any stacking at all requires something extremely heavy and unneeded to prevent rolling, and unstacked bottles rolling around on their sides waste a tremendous amount of vertical cabinet space.
Thus, when I saw the incredibly neat pyramid of wine bottles enabled by the Wine Stack, I pointed it out as just the thing we needed to fix the wine problem back home. My husband looked at it and declared that we would definitely figure something out when we got back.
I should have picked up the Wine Stack and carried it to the register, but what I didn’t realize at the time (yep, still learning after 15 years) was that his comment could be translated as follows: “I do not recognize this wine problem you describe; therefore, I shall forget this discussion in approximately 3 minutes.”
So, when I was trying to put the pantry in order last week after a round of holiday baking, I mentioned this solution we were going to figure out. The husband paused for a couple of seconds, and said, “I guess we should have bought one of those wine things while we were in New York.”
Sigh.
I ordered my Wine Stack on Sunday night, and I’m counting it as my second Do One Thing act of the year.
Day 3: I cleared off the piano bench, a hotspot for downstairs junk like books, magazines, gloves and scarves. Every house has a spot like this. Of course, now that I’ve swept it clean, I need to maintain a subresolution of keeping it clean.
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