I worry that after my graduate seminar on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, there’s not a thought left in my head for the WordPress post-a-day challenge.
I obviously have to rework my writing schedule.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blogging, graduate school, postaday2011, writing | 1 Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
I was out of town on Days 15 and 16, but I’m happy to say that within two hours of returning home on Day 17, I had completely unpacked the suitcase and put it back in its proper storage place. This level of post-vacation organization is simply unheard of here.
Posted in Do One Thing | Tagged challenge, Do One Thing, New Year, New Year's resolution, resolutions, suitcases, unpacking, vacation | 2 Comments »
Today, we talk about oatmeal.
I know. Oatmeal. It’s either bland and mushy, or oversweetened, artificially flavored and mushy.
This, however, is not the oatmeal I intend to talk about. Reserve your rolled oats for oatmeal and raisin cookies, and make steel-cut oats for breakfast.
Steel-cut oats (also known as Irish oats) undergo much less processing than rolled oats, and thus offer diners a completely different flavor and texture. Properly prepared steel-cut oats are nutty and chewy (no mush here), and I find them much more satisfying than rolled oats.
The bad news: Steel-cut oats can take 30 minutes or longer to cook if you haven’t soaked them.
The good news: Duh. Soak them and they’ll be ready in as little as 10 minutes.
The prepackaged brands of steel-cut oats always seem to carry a hefty price tag. You’ll be much better off purchasing them in bulk. I buy my supply at Earth Fare for $1.19 a pound.
They’re a cinch to make, but you have to plan ahead. Use a ratio of one part oats to two parts water; for two people I usually use 3/4 cup oats and 1.5 cups water. Soak the oats in the water overnight in the pot that you’re going to cook them in.
You can get the same results with only three hours of soaking, but not everyone has my luxurious Saturday schedule, which has me getting up at 5 a.m. to feed a geriatric cat and then heading back to bed until 8 a.m. or so.
If you’re feeling spiffy, substitute orange juice or cranberry juice for about a quarter cup of the water. The orange juice will add a real citrus bite to the finished oatmeal, and the cranberry juice will complement the dried cranberries that I’m going to talk about in a minute.
Put the pot of soaked oats on the stove after you roll out of bed. Turn the burner up to medium-high and let the oats come to a boil, then turn the burner down low enough to keep a slow boil without the oats boiling over. And they WILL boil over if the heat’s too high. Keep the lid on the pot, but lift it every couple of minutes to check your boil and give the oatmeal a quick stir.
After about 10 minutes, the oatmeal should be almost thick enough to serve. Lagniappe time. Stir in a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar, and add raisins and/or dried cranberries. Let everything meld together for a couple more minutes and then ladle the oatmeal into your serving bowls. Drop a few crumbled walnuts or pecans on top if you like.
Enjoy. And say goodbye to instant mediocrity.
Posted in Eats | Tagged artifically flavored, breakfast, brown sugar, buying in bulk, cats, citrus oatmeal, cooking, cranberries, cranberry juice, Earth Fare, food, instant oatmeal, Irish oats, mushy, nutty, oatmeal, oatmeal cookies, orange juice, postaday2011, raisins, rolled oats, soaking oats, steel-cut oats, stove | 4 Comments »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 13: Reorganized a particularly troublesome kitchen cabinet area. My house in Mobile, Alabama, had laughably little cabinet space, so I’m still getting used to maximizing the larger space I have now. I have this obsessive desire to keep all the baking items (mixer, cake pans, muffin tins, etc.) close together, but that just doesn’t work. I accept this limitation, and now I can reach the small loaf pans without interference.
Day 14: Cleaned out a box of hair accessories that was mysteriously stored in the nightstand in the guest room. Discovered that elasticized hair bands deteriorate and lose their stretch when stored in stupid places for long periods of time.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home | Tagged alabama, baking, cabinet organization, cabinets, challenge, Do One Thing, guest room, hair bands, kitchen cabinets, Mobile, New Year, New Year's resolution, nightstand, organization, postaday2011, resolutions, small loaf pans, storage | Leave a Comment »
Ran this image through the TiltShift Generator app and played around a little with the blur and color saturation settings. Cool results, but I would give it up if all this snow and ice would hurry up and disappear.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs | Tagged cold weather, ice, photograph, snow, TiltShift, TiltShift Generator, TiltShiftGen, tree | 2 Comments »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 11: You would think that being trapped in the house by snow and ice would provide the perfect opportunity to organize, sort and clean. You would be wrong.
I managed to figure out the state of several magazine subscriptions, however, so we’re in no danger of losing our monthly/weekly music/technology/cooking news fix. Note: Print is not dead yet.
Day 12: Third snow day of the week. I managed to help some class handouts that had been taken out of their notebooks find their way home. With a high of 25 degrees, that was really all that anyone could expect of me.
Posted in Do One Thing | Tagged challenge, cold, college, ice, magazines, New Year, New Year's resolution, organization, postaday2011, resolutions, snow | 1 Comment »
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.
Posted in As Pictured Below | Tagged alabama, Huntsville, icicles, photograph, postaday2011, snow, window, winter | 2 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.
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 | 4 Comments »
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.
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 | Leave a Comment »
-
Join 67 other subscribers
Join the discussion
-
-
Categories
Archives
Entirely Adequate 