Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Things I learned this week

Published
by
ashley
on October 31, 2008
in things i learned
. 0 Comments

1.  First things first, Pepsi has a new logo.  I feel like for the past three weeks, I’ve made comments about new logos that companies have adopted.  I was pretty turned off by the Pepsi logo when I first saw it - I hated it.  I hate the font, I hate the little grincircles (I don’t know what else to call them) and oh my goodness, I hate the abbreviation of Mountain to MTN.  Sigh.  And I hate the Sierra Mist can.  I don’t understand why Pepsi, a company with such a recognizable brand image, would do something of this caliber.

2.  Today is Halloween.  A year ago today, while driving the six hours home from my interview, Marques and I made the decision to move here.  I am very grateful to the company I work for.  Anyway, if you’ve got Halloween plans (unlike me and Marques) and you still don’t have a costume, here’s a list of easy literary costumes you can probably pull off before your party tonight.

3.  I love this group of homemade Obama signs.

4.  I wish that we had this Halloween candy code when I was a kid.  I love the “out of candy, now giving out expired sauce packets from Taco Bell”.  HA.

5.  This evolution of the Los Angeles Times front page (and website) design is really interesting.

6.  These zombie wall decals are AWESOME.  Need and want.

7.  A good menu for election night parties.  I’m thinking about making little cake balls in red and blue for my office, since that’s where I’ll be alllll evening.

8.  Or maybe I can just make Obama cookies.

9.  I would totally watch sports…. in space.

10.  I love this gallery of pumpkins carved with video game characters!  I love the Katamari pumpkin and the Bowser pumpkin the best.

Bacon-palooza is not approved by your doctor

Published
by
ashley
on October 30, 2008
in baking, friends, life and work
. 2 Comments

I will say this now - I am not that big of a fan of bacon. I don’t like eating it by itself (I don’t like breakfast meats in general) but I love it on pizza and hamburgers.

And, I suppose, now brownies.

This madness started two weeks ago when I posted the link to bacon cinnamon rolls. I was telling my co-worker Scott about them and he got overly excited. He does that and it’s cute. It was a late evening, we were the only ones left in our department. When it’s just us, there’s lots of food talk.

Scott’s reaction to the bacon cinnamon rolls pretty much went like this:

Oh. My. Gosh.

(revered silence as he stares at the picture in awe)

This. Sounds. So. Good.

So we started perusing the Bacon Today website, just checking it out. And I found their post about bacon brownies.

Holy. Crap.

A plan was immediately formed. I would make the bacon brownies and Scott would make the bacon cinnamon rolls. Team Bacon is go!

I did not make homemade brownies. I was tired, I had already made pizza, and my entire apartment smelled like bacon. My best baking sheet had a half-inch thick layer of bacon grease on it. So I pulled a mix out of the pantry. Mixed it right up, poured it in a pan, and crumbled some cooked bacon on top of it.  It looked like this:

Ignore that tiny little unstirred chunk of brownie powder.  Also, this looks kind of disgusting.

I baked them for 30 minutes then took them out to cool.  The bacon pieces had kind of sunk down into the brownies, but you could still see them.  I was hoping the time in the oven would cook the bacon pieces into crunchiness, but unfortunately, they were still kind of chewy.  Here’s what they looked like after baking:

I thought they were okay.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would’ve used more bacon.  The bacon definitely added a nice salty, smoky taste, but it was odd to eat a brownie and hit…. meat.

Scott really enjoyed the bacon brownies - he ate most of them.  Everyone liked trying them, though, and a lot of people who thought they would be grossed out actually liked them.  So bacon brownies = semi-hit.

This week, Scott made the bacon cinnamon rolls.  He just took a can of refrigerated cinnamon roll dough and rolled some turkey bacon up in it, then baked them.  Scott is clearly more health-conscious than I am because I used thick-cut fatty fatty bacon.  The bacon cinnamon rolls were good, too, even though Scott slightly burned them.  I’m the queen of burning things, so I had no problem there.  The turkey bacon had a lot more bite-give too - if he had used actual pork bacon, I think they would have been really chewy.

I couldn’t take a very good photo of the rolls, but here’s a photo I took on my camera phone:

So bacon-palooza is finished for now.  We might try to make bacon cupcakes, perhaps, but I think we need to give our arteries a good rest first.

Maybe I should just drink more

Published
by
ashley
on October 30, 2008
in apartment, books, friends, i am ridiculous, marques and no thanks
. 1 Comment

There are, naturally, certain times each month where I become unbearably cranky and downright difficult to deal with.

I do realize that I whine a lot in general, even when I’m not the mayor of Crankytown, but those are usually things like having to walk home from the metro or we’re out of butter pecan ice cream.

Today was a cranky day.

It started in the morning, where I had a difficult time waking up.  Marques woke me up at 5:45 a.m. while banging around in the shower.  I then fell back asleep until he woke me up at 10:10 a.m. where I growled at him, saying things like, “If you don’t leave me alone, I will eat you.”  Finally, I woke up at 10:45 (YIKES) and I rushed to get in the shower, go to work, etc.

Walking to the metro sucked.  It was cold and windy and my head hurt.  When I got to the metro, the train was too hot and I had to take my jacket off.  Then a guy who smelled like cinnamon rolls got on and sat in front of me.  Normally I would want to lick the back of that guy’s head, but cranky me kept thinking, “Did this guy bathe in cinnamon roll cologne?  Perfume that smells like baked goods should be outlawed.”

Work was fine - work is always fun for me, actually.  Though I opened my egg sandwich to find moist sticky bread (gross).  Amanda brought us cupcakes from Hello Cupcake which gave me a brief five minute vacation from Crankytown.  Though eventually I started complaining how their cupcakes are too rich.  Seriously.  If you were around me today and managed to not punch me in the face, I commend you.

(sidenote:  It’s strange that I thought their cupcakes were too rich as I am never the girl who thinks things are too rich.  If someone is all like, “Oh, woe is me, this macaroni and cheese is too rich for me to finish!” then I’m always like CHOMP CHOMP YUM.  I have no “rich” tastebuds.  But maybe I am growing some.)

On the way home, no problems.  I’m re-reading the classic graphic novel Watchmen, but was actually slightly embarrassed to pull it out in front of all these middle-aged women and men who are reading Jim Webb autobiographies and Nicholas Sparks novels.  Then I got cranky because I was afraid I would be embarrassed and inside, I’m thinking things like WHO ARE YOU, MAN, TO JUDGE MY READING MATERIAL?  Oh, “The Kite Runner”?  Yeah, welcome to 2006.  Way to be a late reader.  (I say this while reading comic books from the mid-80s)

I decide to walk home and realize that my legspan sucks.  I’m comparing my tiny bird-like steps with those of the people walking next to me.  It takes these normal people 1 and a half steps to clear a sidewalk square.  It took me 3.  I’m a pretty tall girl, 5′8″ish, and I wear a size 10-11 in shoes.  Yet I’m walking like I was forced to undergo foot binding as a young girl.  Then I became self-conscious about my tiny steps and tried to make efforts to make my steps bigger, which made me look very odd, I’m sure, to the cars driving past me.  I probably looked like a fat drunk toy soldier on weekend leave.

Home.  Marques is sleeping.  This immediately annoys me for no good reason.  I turn on Unsolved Mysteries, eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes.  There is an odd mildewy smell in the kitchen, possibly from the washer/dryer.  Get annoyed.  Attempt to throw empty box of Frosted Flakes away, but trash can is full.  Is Marques’s job.  Get annoyed.  Get annoyed at having to scrub cast-iron skillet so hard although it’s my fault for letting it sit unwashed for three days.  Get annoyed at emptying dishwasher.  Get annoyed that the first thing Marques does when he wakes up is turn on the television to Sportscenter.  Try to make Marques eat goat cheese on a Triscuit.  Get annoyed that he doesn’t like it.  Spend 30 minutes cooking dinner while Marques watches the World Series.  Get annoyed that he didn’t offer to help do anything even though he doesn’t know how to cook.  Marques didn’t offer to get me another bowl of pasta or another glass of water.  Get annoyed.  Log onto internet, read e-mail, have 3 of the same e-mails from random liberal organization.  Get annoyed.  Buy bridesmaid dress for Lorrie’s wedding, get annoyed that my coupon code didn’t work and had to buy 2 more things (jeans and a bathing suit in a size too small in one of those “Oh, by the time bathing suit season rolls around I’ll be able to fit in it” attempts) to get it over the deemed amount.  Finished “Julie and Julia”, get slightly annoyed and jealous that I don’t get to have a job where I work in my pajamas.  Marques goes to bed early.  Get annoyed.  And bored.

It would be in your best interest to stay away from me.  I either need to be punched in the face by Don Draper or I need to start drinking three glasses of wine with dinner.

The pizza chronicles, or why I should keep track of my oven

Published
by
ashley
on October 29, 2008
in baking
. 11 Comments

It’s been a month since my last Daring Bakers challenge, which means, well, here’s another one.

This month, the challenge was hosted by Rosa, who asked us all to make pizza.  Uh, you don’t have to tell me twice.  I love making pizza - I went through a really big kick last March and April where I made pizza like every week with fun toppings.

However, I never made the dough.  I always bought the dough balls from Trader Joe’s because they were only a dollar.  And when I read the procedure for the pizza dough, I got a little concerned because I don’t have a stand mixer (yet) or a pizza stone.  So I kept putting it off and putting it off until finally, last week, I decided to stop being a baby and suck it up and make some dough.

The dough is supposed to rest in the refrigerator for 24 hours, and then you let it rest at room temperature for 2 hours before you use it.  That’s a lot of time.  So I made the dough late Monday evening after dinner.  It wasn’t too bad - I didn’t knead it for very long (about 5 minutes maybe?) before the dough started coming together.  It was very quick - I think I had my dough mixed, kneaded, and cut into balls in maybe ten or fifteen minutes.  The recipe Rosa gave us said it made 6 balls, but I think those were for personal size pizzas because I got 3 family-sized balls.  I stuck them in the refrigerator and called it a night.

The next day, I planned to make a pizza for our dinner that night.  I had Marques take the dough ball out around 7 p.m. while I was still at work, and when I got home around 9 p.m., I started our favorite kind of pizza - caramelized onion and gorgonzola.  Sometimes I put bacon on it, but I hadn’t planned to for this one EXCEPT my co-worker Scott had challenged me to make bacon brownies that evening, so since I had to cook bacon anyway, I put bacon on the onion/gorgonzola pizza.

Rosa asked us to take pictures of us tossing the dough, but honestly, I didn’t even have to toss it.  I put my ball of dough on my knuckles to spread it out so I could toss it, and it just stretched its way into a pizza shape.  It was very thin in places, too.  I caramelized my onions with a healthy dollop of olive oil and freshly minced garlic and spread that on the dough - the onions were so soft they almost formed a sauce.  Then I sprinkled the top with pieces of thick-cut bacon and chunks of gorgonzola.  I also put a couple of extra onion pieces on, too, just for some crunch.

My kitchen had low-light and my hands were shaky in pizza eating anticipation, so my pictures aren’t the greatest.  I tried to pull the best one:

I left my pizza in there a little too long.  This was a common theme among all three of my pizzas.

The next day, I made two more pizzas - a plain barbecue chicken one for Marques and a tomato, garlic, olive and feta one for me.  Here’s the veggie one before baking:

I actually burnt the crap out of this pizza.  I was eating some of the barbecue pizza because I cooked that one first (also, slightly burnt that one too) and I lost track of time.  One side was completely black.  Good job, Ashley.

All in all, I thought making the dough was fun, though I think I would only do it if I was making a lot of pizzas for a party or something.  Otherwise, it’s really easy and cheap to pick up a ball from Trader Joe’s, especially if I’m running low on time and ideas.  I’m really looking forward to November’s challenge now, and crossing my fingers that it will be something sweet.  Recipes for the dough and toppings are below. Continue reading ‘The pizza chronicles, or why I should keep track of my oven’

This is why I’m not losing any weight

Published
by
ashley
on October 28, 2008
in i am ridiculous and marques
. 0 Comments

Monday night.  We’re laying in bed, disappointed that Game 5 of the World Series has been rained out.  I look up at Marques and say, “Maybe we should go work out now.” because lately in the evenings, we’ve been going over to the gym and walking on the treadmill.

He looks at me, his face a mixture of reluctance and disgust with a little bit of regret and says, “Maybe we should go get tacos instead of working out.”

Then we rock-paper-scissored to see which one we were going to do.  Either work out and burn some calories or go get tacos and gain some calories.  Decisions, decisions.

We ended up doing neither.  I made us each a cup of hot chocolate (with mini marshmallows) and we finished season 2 of 30 Rock and started season 2 of Mad Men.  We spent the rest of the evening in bed, reading, watching television, drinking hot chocolate.  Yes, okay, maybe we should have put on gym clothes and walked a mile, but it was such a cold evening and though I feel a bit guilty for skipping out on healthy things, at least we didn’t go get tacos.

Scarfgate - conflict resolved

Published
by
ashley
on October 27, 2008
in i am ridiculous, marques and television
. 2 Comments

It is important to note that, 4 more weeks after I posted this entry about how much I wanted that green plaid scarf from Target, I am now finally in possession of it.

Marques came to pick me up from the metro on Friday afternoon after I had gotten off work.  It had been a particularly harrowing ride home.  I had gotten to Farragut West to catch the blue line, got on it, and then was promptly forced to get off due to a service malfunction.  This meant there were twice the people on the next train, which annoyed me because if I wanted to ride a ridiculously packed train, I would’ve moved to Clarendon so I could ride on the orange line.  I was lucky enough to perch on the edge of a seat, but then this group of tourists got on at Rosslyn and the girl was dressed, looked like, and whined like Kenley Collins, my least favorite Project Runway designer ever.  I then spent the next 20 minutes listening to this horrid girl who talked so loudly that I could hear her over my headphones.  At one point, I glanced over at my seatmate - a lovely-looking woman in her upper forties, I’d say - and she was staring at this girl in total annoyance.  We both gave each other the sympathetic “what do you do?  kids these days” glance which is kind of hilarious because, you know, I’m 25 and I can also be annoying.

So I get out of my annoying commute home and I’m walking to Marques’s car when I spot a flash of green on the seat.  I immediately think, “Oh, yay, my ebay purchase came!” (so, yes, I bought two new scarves from ebay making my grand total of scarves to… an embarrassing number and I should be killed) but then I think, “No way, I just bought those yesterday!” and then I think, “But maybe it was fast shipping from China!” (oh, yeah, the scarves are from Hong Kong.  Hopefully they’re not made of melamine, but hey, I’m not going to eat them) and as I get closer, my heart starting bursting with joy because I realized, hey, TARGET GREEN SCARF.

My boyfriend is so great.  Whee.

I immediately decide we need to have a proper date night so I can wear my scarf in public.  So we drive down to Old Town in Alexandria, do some walking, do some PaperSource lusting (I drool over paper), do some waterfront gazing, and eat dinner at Mai Thai, which is our favorite Thai restaurant because Marques would make out with their panang curry if offered.  Afterward, enamored with each other and panang curry, we decide to drive down to Del Ray and grab some Dairy Godmother.  The Dairy Godmother, by the way, is my favorite ice cream shop ever - I would make out with their custard if offered.  The flavor that day was chocolate Heath bar, which was good, but Marques got a pumpkin milkshake, which I pretty much drank half of.  Their pumpkin milkshake is worth a trip to Del Ray, I don’t care where you are.  You need to do it before they stop serving it.

Then we went home and spent the rest of the night watching season 2 of 30 Rock (I have a major, major crush on Kenneth, that kid is so. cute.)

“I don’t drink coffee, sir. I don’t drink hot liquids of any kind. That’s the devil’s temperature.”

So anyway.  Green scarf now in my possession.  Kenneth Parcell is cute.  I love pumpkin milkshakes from The Dairy Godmother.  See how easily that wraps up?

You should probably keep adult protective services on standby

Published
by
ashley
on October 25, 2008
in baking, i am ridiculous and marques
. 2 Comments

Scene:  this evening, cleaning out our freezer to make room for the giant bag of chicken nuggets we bought at Sam’s as well as preparing room for two pounds of ground turkey.

Marques:  “Do you know how many containers of ice cream we have?”

Me:  (not a clue)  “I don’t know, how many?”

Marques:  “SIX.”

Uhhhhh….. yikes.

We threw three of them away - the ones I didn’t find particularly appetizing (I’m looking at you, Wegman’s brand brownie crunch and Giant brand Andes mint) or the ones I found too appetizing and didn’t want to eat the last bite because I wanted to save it for a particularly hard day (that would be you, Turkey Hill butter pecan).

Little victory today?  Was confronted with ginormous pumpkin pie at Sam’s - seriously, this pie was like 16 inches in diameter - and turned it down.  It looked delicious and could have been mine for the low, low price of only $5.88.  I was tempted not once, not twice, but three times and each time bravely kept my resolve up although inside I was dying to rip open the box and start shoveling chunks into my mouth as soon as humanly possible.  I. love. pumpkin. pie.

Solution?  Am making my own pumpkin pie this evening, but forgot to buy whipped cream while at the store and now have to venture out into cold rainy night for container of Cool Whip.  Also we spent like $60 on groceries tonight and came out of the mix with such goodies as a giant Mr. Goodbar, fun-size 100 Grand bars, cauliflower, 60 packets of hot chocolate mix (I love Sam’s Club), pumpkin pie ingredients, and lots of cereal.  Diabetes, here I come.