For the record;

McDonalds, I forgive you everything, up to and including stale coffee one day that made me very sick, for bringing back fried baked cherry pies (I miss fried things).

I have a terrible feeling this will end badly at 2 for 1.00, is what I am saying. Though honestly, there are much worse reasons to have a heart attack.

We had relatives, food, and three kinds of dip because I was unwary and said, sure, I'll go with you to Central Market to get those last few things and there was brie.

Uninteresting Notes

1.) Why does Central Market hate me and rearrange their coffee every time I go in there? I am not ashamed of my coffee preferences, but I am conscious of the fact that in general, my economic class does not say shit like, "No, not the decaf free-trade organic Sumatran with the full body and high acid; I mean the regular free-trade organic Sumatran low-acid, shade-grown, full caffeine." I sound like a parody from Family Guy. It's not that I am mocking people who are environmentally aware, but I feel like a very specialized afterschool special for the Montessori crowd whose parents went very green five years ago and talk about their composting strategies.

( my love/hate relationship with central market )

2.) I finally got the bluray thing working on my server by dint of turkey-induced madness and strangely enough, what I'd been wondering about for a while.

( after this is a tragic story of my server, so you may need to read this for context )

3.) At 11:23 PM last night, dreamatdrew received this email from me.

...I think I'm uninstalling my entire server by accident

( this is where everything went to hell )

On the bright side, I've reinstalled ubuntu server so many times I could do it in my sleep and now I actually know which programs I need and which ones I don't and cause problems. When I get around to doing it, which I haven't, because my deep sense of betrayal is too great, and um, I slept super late.

4.) Tonight is the next great server install. Earlier this week my router was under DoS from bots and while telling madelyn about it and reading the logs while color coordinating them and whirlwinding through my securities and ports, she was thoughtful before mentioning she was glad I was enjoying myself so much. Last night, after a long pause, dreamatdrew told me he was glad I was having so much fun.

I can't lie; if Horace still has my media okay? I don't even care. This is fantastic. I'm not bored. I don't foresee in the near future I will be. What could be better than that?

I went through a period of time for most of yesterday in a truly horrible mood. Today I'm going to post something positive and uplifting, or at least, on the less-rage portion of the continuum, because undirected rage is both exhausting and terrible for the complexion.

Tea

I ordered--okay, at this point, we can call this a tea habit--a lot of tea. I even ordered those UV containers for my tea. Short version; I have a lot of tea. It has its own shelf that is overflowing.

( experiments with tea )

( a short digression into the art of ice tea in texas and the greater south )

( back to tea mixes )

One day, I hope to have time to explain why the Fajita* is considered the perfect food, as well as Why When Someone Says They Are Making Tamales, Do You Want Some, you say "God, yes, thank you."

My tea arrived on Wednesday, so it has been Tea Central of Tea-ness around here. I got ten samples and two full size of the ones I knew I'd love--Irish Breakfast and Apricot--so below, my completely pointless thoughts on Tea, Tea, I Need More Tea Now.

Did Not Like (Not Tea's Fault)

Earl Grey - I am not a fan of Earl Grey except very occasionally; it's a very occasional/social tea for me. Basically, it could not be done in a way I'd love. Gave to friend who loves Earl Grey.

Did Not Like (Tea's Fault)

Golden Monkey - I can't explain why it was ick, but it really was. There was some kind of back bitter/sour thing going on with an underbelly of something vaguely earthly in a bad way. I checked to see if steeped too long, but no. This is the only one I didn't finish. Gave to boss because I'm like that.

Not Sure Yet

Grapefruit Oolong - I need to try this one again with a shorter steep. It was really zest-like notes in it that were bitter and not delicious. But I like grapefruit, so reserving until I can try again.

Good/Great

Darjeeling #12 - It was good but not magical. I'd drink it again.

Ceylon Sonata - very good. It's Ceylon. It's hard to do it wrong.

Orange - very liked, orange a tiny bit strong but I think steeping it thirty seconds less would take the edge off. Very nice sweet edge without citrus sharpness, clear white flavor.

Nepal First Flush - I like this one, but I am getting the steep time wrong. Five minutes is too long, but three is too short. Dammit. Very nice, a tiny bit earthy.

My God Yes

Yunnan Jig - this is a black tea of the freaking gods, okay? I'm almost done with my sample. It's clear medium dark brown, steep time at four minutes thirty seems to bring the best results, water just at boil before adding to tea. I am drinking a very large pitcher of this right now. It has a round heaviness at the first taste and is very mellow with a low warm golden flavor.

Currant - perfect currant tea. Almost done with my sample already. Clear medium-medium brown, steep between four and four and a half minutes (I am not grooving the full five minute seepage; that seems to bring out something bitter that doesn't get picked up if I do it a little earlier). I am in love.

Apricot - it's hard to get apricot wrong (though I have had contenders) but this is very nice. Very good scent, good balanced flavor, full five minute steep to get all the deliciousness.

Unreviewed

Irish Breakfast and English Breakfast - unless something in the Force changes mightily, I'm not seeing how these could go wrong. Irish Breakfast is my go-to tea of go-to-ness. This is my coffee of the tea world (though yunnan jig is really giving it a run for its money; I need to try the yunnan golden now).

Anyone want to throw out their favorite flavors? Adagio or otherwise. On the first will be the second tea buying fit and its nice to be prepared.

I am having a spiritual experience with a breakfast burrito, as it has ham, egg, potato, bacon, and cheese, and if I am not mistaken, after assembly, was rolled about on a grill for a while to achieve a state of crispy tortilla deliciousness that I am not entirely convinced is moral nor do I care.

Visited Central Market, as I tend to do to get out my shopping vibes and not break my credit rating. As theoretically, there's really only so much food you can buy. I was okay through most of the fruit (fine, the pluots spoke to me--they had three different types!), and two types of apples since Child is a junkie and who am I to get him clean. So far so good--escaped the figs (I love figs, but not like, love-love), and these huge Washington blackberries (they were shiny and flawless and terrifying; I wasn't certain if I should eat them or use them for some kind of fruit-related performance art project about the fall of western civilization), and made it past the Table of Unrecognizables (I have a weakness for things I can't pronounce with shapes I would swear aren't found in nature).

I got through the bread (just one! I was strong!), the cheese (fell, of course), the delicious horror that is the crackers and olives and various chicken salads (tarragon chicken, apricot chicken, I ran), and managed to only stop in the chocolate of many variations area and bravely got away with two. I was golden. I was a fool.

However, I always (never) forget the coffee section.

Adventures in Coffee Consumption

So I'm weak.

Note for Coffee People: I'm a fan of medium and breakfast roasts and at thirty-two, my stomach no longer wishes to deal with high acidity, so take that as your warning on my taste. I prefer milk (whole or 1%) to any of the creams and I like the final color to be within two shades darker than my skin color (three darker with the lighter blends). I like sweet. I am not a good judge for the general coffee drinking population. I am not a coffee snob. I am a coffee slave. There is a difference.

(I still cannot find any that mix in chicory. This is Not Happiness.)

( five coffees, three reviews pending )

Question--how long can you keep beans refrigerated before they are useless?

ETA 9/17/2008: Added review of Sumatran coffee under cut

I don't think life really gets much better than when someone hands you a sausage kolache.

I was extremely lucky growing up in that my great-grandparents, rejecting the ways of their parents' home countries (God be thanked), refused to feed their children any food that could not easily be found at a local grocery store at that time (or grown on the unsuccessful family farm; I come from a long line of really crappy farmers). This has led to a real lack of food that frankly, would have scared me, since my Bavarian (okay, fine, I totally get a kick out of that part. Bavarian! In Bavaria! When--it, you know, existed as a country) ancestors were like, Bavarian peasants and ate really terrifying food. If they ate. Being, you know, peasants and whatnot. Could be why they left. Really don't know. Though there was a minister of some sort involved in the entire expedition.

Right, food, coming back to that.

Except saurkraut. That, and cabbage. Couldn't get away from it. Saurkraut, luckily, only came out with such accompanying dishes as macaroni salad, potato salad, and hot dogs (the traditional ancestral food of the gods). Which--I guess that's a food that is common amongst the German peasantry? But those two. And like, this range of Polish to Czech food things that, in some kind of show of middle European solidarity (I really have no idea here) would be dragged out, for years were considered the Traditional Ancestral Foods of My Family until we discovered a.) we had reached the age of majority and b.) no one in the family could work out the Traditional Ancestor who was that hot for Americanized bread pudding.

However, cabbage grew on me. Saurkraut, Polish sausage, anything with the word blood in it in any language, no, and that's after being forced to visit A Million Heritage Festivals (Texas hill country. There were festivals at the drop of a hat in order to Introduce Our Heritage of Not Hot Dogs, the bastards).

It's like this entry had a point, huh? Just wait.

So whilst in college one year, I had this professor I loved and who died, so we really won't linger over that part, but he had this argument that America had no culture, which even then I thought was bullshit but he would smoke with me, so what can you do? We talked about defining characteristics and cultural anthropology and you know, all the stuff liberal arts students talk about with their professors while sober. Now, about ten year later, I finally want to tell him I found my defining characteristic of at least my family's culture, and it is gravy.

This came to me when I realized:

a.) not everyone could match gravy type to meat at a glance and a taste.
b.) some people don't have a gravy for everything. And I mean. Everything.
c.) some people make cream sauce and call it gravy (my soul hurts)
d.) some people do not like gravy and in fact, really cannot comprehend them

I once dated a guy who did not like tea, coffee, or gravy. I should have known we were doomed. He also watched a lot of japanimation and refused to buy a new bed no matter how much it squeaked, which is beside the point but weirdly funny right now.

And the query I was running just ended. Sample of the latest tests sent to us to write:

PSRjd 4028: DT8000_080 FOR EDG 100084969 AND TRACE ID 184231617

Dear Programmer Person,
Please tell me you thought this was funny.
--jenn

(Yes, I do know what it is, but that is because my mother wrote the error code. Otherwise, I would still be at the colon going "eh"?)

Dump cake with brownie mix == INSPIRED.

For those few who are not aware of dump cake the single most awesome food ever invented:

1 box brownie mix
1 can cherry pie mix
1 can chopped pineapple
1 stick butter

Dump fruit in pan. Mix casually. Dump mix on top. Cut butter into slices*, place on top of mix**. 350 at fifty-five minutes. Eat.

*Minimum eight slices by tablespoon, but I did it to fifteen, and I'd recommend more than that and spread over the whole surface. It's dump cake. If you do it twice the same way, you are doing it wrong.

**also can melt butter and pour on top.

Any other variations anyone uses? I am very into the brownie topping.

Wow.

(Link found at OTF_Wank at Journalfen)

A Flame War on Shepherd's Pie etymology.

This is possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. It goes from food to education to World War II to the Revolutionary War to education to canned gravy to football to the war in Iraq. Yes. From Shepherd's Pie.

Highlights

Tony Blair - on those darned Americans messing up words!

That's a Cottage pie, shepherd's pie is made with lamb, the clue is in the name, shepherds don't herd cows do they?

Americans get so many things wrong, that doesn't mean you have to go along the wrongness, use the correct phrases and terminology and educate your people.

Stop perpetuating ignorance.

( more below cut! Because I am seriously amazed )

Read the whole thread. It's beautiful.

Is this how non-fen feel when they read about shipper wars?

For the record:
1. Tater tot casserole? Now want.
2. Shepherd's Pie? I will call it Cottage Pie over my dead body.
3. Canned gravy? Okay, I have no defense of that one. I'm from Texas. Gravy is a food group. I have never seen it canned. So I have no idea.

ETA: Link to Wikipedia's entry on Shepherd's Pie. This is now gospel, because I agree with it.

ETA 2: Oh my God, they dragged in Scottish history.

( no, really. King Eddy. Seriously! )

This is awesome.

...the coffee at work tastes really good today.

This is so disturbing.

*worries* Does this mean that I no longer have useful taste buds or that the world is ending?

I'm really craving something fried right now.

Not in a pan, either. Something from a deep fryer, with sunflower oil. Something rolled in raw egg and then flour (or cornmeal)and salt and pepper, dropped into boiling oil, turning golden-brown and crispy and delicious. I want--hmm. Chicken fingers, the ones that turn deep tan and the edges flake off. Or God, chicken, still with skin, soaked in egg and milk, rolled in flour and salt and spices, resoaked, re-rolled, then dropped in and made golden-brown perfection. Eggrolls. Deep fried potatoes. Fajitas sealed with hot cheese and grilled onions on homemade tortills.

God, I am hungry, and no one around here serves anything in the overly greased family. Dammit.

Yes, yes, yes, arteries, but God, food.

however, I will say this.

Sweet and sour chicken can, in fact, minister to a mind diseased. Or at least yearning for God, better coffee, please.

Mmm. Sweet and sour.

For those waiting with bated breath--the nailpolish is gone, no stains, breathing again.

Yes, I'm sure that this was a worry to everyone.

The Warren

Sloppy and Bryante had a tragic break-up at around six this morning, in various stages of loud and louder, in which Bryante, finally fed up with Sloppy's constant attentions, somehow--don't ask me how, according to what I understand of physics, this is *not possible*--leaped *over* the halfwall between his portion of the fortress and the atrium, down to Reggie. This is a good three Bryante-lengths distance. I'd be impressed if it hadn't scared me to death.

You know that the break-up was bad when anyone goes to Reggie for comfort. Reggie has all the tact, subtlety, and well, empathy as toilet paper. This is so sad.

But there have been signs. The arguing, the refusing to cuddle, the desire to chew paper instead of pile together, constant spraying of all available surfaces (and I mean, all. Available. Surfaces. And guess what? I'm a surface! God.), an unwillingness to share carrots--I mean, this tragedy is really only a surprise to Sloppy. I think all of us watching pretty much saw this coming a mile away.

Mr. Waffles, AKA The Rabbit That Bit Me, is still zenning out in the penthouse and is above all pettiness. When I woke up this morning, however, the mess of their cage was--I mean, I have no words. You'd think I keep those rabbits in squalor. Oh God, I sound like my mother talking about me and my sisters. But seriously! Newspaper--not just shredded, but *destroyed* and wrapped around objects in ways eerily reminiscent of toilet-papering a house. All of them are *fingerquote* marking territory */fingerquote* like it is going out of style. Pretty much the only thing I can say to this is thank God for vinyl tile. Thank God, thank God, thank God.

In other news--wait. Did I ever say I had a life? Right. Never mind.

Coffee

On Friday, Best Friend kidnapped me for coffee and food at Austin Jaffa--no, that's SG1--Java, right. I think. It's generally downtown past sixth and in a fairly older neighborhood. The coffee was excellent, the queso was worth its weight in cheese, but I can say now that never will I ever eat turkey sausage again. I--it's this weird consistency thing. It's like a hotdogish type mushy thing going on. Not something I was really ready for.

Right. Coffee. Saturday I took my mother to Central Market. She is not a huge fan, since it's a.) kind of large and twisty and b.) the salespeople need to seriously remove yuppie stick from too-tight ass. But they always have cool bread and cheese samples, and I usually try to get something that won't give me nightmares in the strange food family (see, blue cheese, *twitch*). Also, I was looking for new lettuce for my rabbits.

Okay, I was pricing *butter lettuce* and Boston head red lettuce for my rabbits. Okay? Fine.

Yes, it all comes back to the rabbits.

Okay, serious good times in the coffee section. God, the *smell*. I picked two I've already mentioned here, and the employee choice one, which smells like a lot of different coffees and kind of scares me. The cherry chocolate cordial is kind of like a chocolate covered cherry, and the vida dolce thing is--well. You know, it reminds me fainty of really really good dessert, but like, hard vanilla cookies covered in chocolate or something. Yeah, something. This one smells like *coffee*--strong, don't sleep, live-and-die-wired coffee. So I keep wanting to save it for a day I really need to be awake, since I only got enough for one pot.

I think my next adventure in coffee might be the Ethopian triple roast dark (insert more words here meaning Freakishly Strong Coffee). I mean, at this point, just to prove I can. Looking at it was a lot like looking into a black hole--no light escaped. I just don't see this being *tasty*. I see it being so close to a controlled substance that they might ID me leaving the store, but tasty? Not so much. I tend toward the light or medium roasts for home; espressos and things that can double as cleaning fluids are for coffee shops, where I can pay to twitch and pour in inordinate amounts of sugar, the better to get the double shot of sugar rush and caffeine rush.

For those of you who have seen me and the sugar container bond--yeah. Pretty much like that.

And that covers my report on current happenings. Sent a story to beta, sent Child to my sister's for swimming, and have three days until The Great Seaworld Adventure, and two days until I get to spend an entire day in my jammies in bed, drinking coffee and watching SGA season two reruns to prep myself for the new season. Oh the hardship fo watching Trinity again.

So I wrote out a long, long, dear God long, depressing entry last night, then my computer crashed.

Everyone should be thrilled by this. I am.

So. Because I'm in the mood.

Recipes! Failsafe! These are recipes that are completely idiot proof they are so easy. I mean, I can make them without messing them up.

Sand Tarts, from the Helen Corbitt Cookbook.

( sand tarts )

Seven Layer Cookies from Christmas Cookies by Oxford House

( seven layer cookies )

Peanut Butter Blossoms (no idea WHERE this came from. Small piece of notebook paper in bottom of recipe box)

( peanut butter blossoms )

Forgotten Cookies from Christmas Cookies by Oxford House

( forgotten cookies )

And for those in need of a cookbook for people who don't stock every kind of everything in creation. (hating Joy of Cooking)

Helen Corbitt's Cookbook.

It's not in print anymore as far as I know, so whenever my grandmother see one at a used book store or garage sale, she buys it. Simple, easy to make, no really, recipes. Strangely, when she says you probably have the ingredients as leftovers, she's usually right.

My mother's is full of notes, since my grandmother tried everything and gave it as a gift to my mom on her wedding day. Mine's just getting started. *G* I work in pencil since I'm not as confident in some of my choices. Especially recommended are the Beef Deutsch and the Beef Stroganoff, which as far as I can tell are basically the same thing, one starting off with cooked meat and the other not, along with some vegetable variations. I usually combine them to get the sour cream sauce right. You really can't go wrong with green peppers, pimentos, and mushrooms. I also make the sour cream sauce separately before adding. It just thickens better that way.

Hmm. Wow, this was a useless entry, wasn't it? Still, it can never hurt to share the recipe blitz.

Recs:

Yellow by RivkaT. Excellent, gorgeous, fun, and funny. And plot! Mmm.

The Bed Is Empty by Jessica. Wonderful, sweet Clark and Lex fic of sheer happiness. *sighs* Just lovely.

Naughty and Nice by Caro. *grins* I love Christmasy cuteness and this is definitely one of the most fun.

Winter by RachelRhiannon. Mmm. CLex in winter. Smut. Lovely use of style.

Coming to Town by ingrid. I haven't chuckled this hard in awhile. Santa! Lex! Clark. REINDEER! And even Rudolf! Read and love.

The Gingerbread Party by meret. Awww. Schmoopy loveliness. *hugs* Just as nice as hot chocolate on a cold day.

My email is behind again, because I'm procrastinating it big time. I'm still wired, since I had to be up most of the night to listen for Small Niece, since sister and her fiancee were needed somewhere else for the night, and I was too tired last night to risk sleeping and not being able to wake up if she needed me. Oh the coffee. Oh the shopping I still have to do. Oh my to-do list frightens me.

Oh, poor buggery, who I was AIMing last night until my computer crashed. Sorry, babe. I was in too--uncertain--a mood to get back on.

But! Firefly pilot tonight!

I moved most of the rest of my webpage to illuminated text, though the links haven't been corrected for the stylesheets or pretty much anything else. Just a little more to go. Plus, it keeps denying me permissions for bizarre reasons. *shakes head*