yes yes, two posts about cooking in just over a week. I oughta be ashamed, because there’re are so many other WORTHY things to blog about. (SARCASM FACE!!!!!) I have to do that sometimes at my work, because there are many times where sarcasm just doesn’t translate over the instant messaging.

Anyway. This evening I had Cocunut Chicken Curry, made from a recipe in A Man A Can A Microwave, made complete with Chapatis (not from the same cookbook, but from this bread recipe book). I would have made Naan, but I didn’t have any yogurt. It made me sort of sad. But the chapatis recipe was two pages after the Naan, and it took all of 45 minutes from beginning to end. I was happy once more.

Mmmmmm…..

One thing about the Man, Can… books and the recipes in them is that they’re never quiiite as easy as it’s made out to be. Important ingredients are often in the little section above the picture called “also”, so it’s not a complete meal made out of 3 items like the pictures make it seem.

Even so, it’s a good cook book because of the variety of “simple” things you can make. I think my biggest problem with it is rhetorical…it’s not set up in a traditional cookbook with the list of ingredients at the top, they’re scattered throughout the page, which makes it irritating as all hell to cook with if you haven’t read the recipe through 7 or 8 times. I almost forgot to add the ginger…and as we all know, then the curry sauce would have been much too sweet.

True facts.

off and on all week. I enjoy it, because all these californians look at me sideways like I’m crazy because I don’t have a jacket or a sweater on.

Apparently one of the main reasons I like living here is that it makes me feel tough.

egg foo yung? more like egg foo yuck.

if Helen Keller was telepathic, would you say she had a fourth sense?

So this is the tale of the jello. For my recipe, it was green jello mixed with carrots. I followed the specs, and grated about 6 carrots so that I’d have a little over 3 cups of grated vegetable. I knew, somehow, before putting it in the jello that this was an unnatural occurrence. I’m sure that some dark pagan ritual in ages past had probably been designed just to protect against such an action…jello plus vegetable = unholy.

Anyhoos, that was a lot of carrots. I waited until the Jello (also, interesting sidenote, if you don’t choose to say “vejello” you could pronounce jello with the j pronounced as an h…emphasize the first syllable and you’re there…back to it)…anyway, the gelatin was starting to coalesce when I did what few people outside of old church goers in the midwest do, I added the carrots. At first they sat on the surface, just sitting.

Then they began to sink slowly, like some orange monstrous entity that had risen briefly from the depths of a swamp to sniff hesitantly for prey before submerging once again. That’s when I began stirring. Stir stir stir beat beat beat. For those of you poor sods who’ve watched star wars christmas special, I was a bit like harvey korman the cooking robot.

Anyway, this is what I ended up with:

Not even a blind man would try this stuff. I decided to rely on the time honored tradition that members from my church relied on all the time: deception. How better to get them to try something so obviously uncouth? I came up with the perfect answer. Whipped cream, pineapples and maraschino cherries. Oh yes. Apparently I can sink to depths of evil unheard of in polite society. What was once disgusting was now delectable (bwahahahahaha!):

oh yes. This truly was unethical, if not a crime. How could one not be tempted to try this treat? It had cool whip! Pineapples! Maraschino cherries! Even if they were put off by the appearance of green jello with carrots once dished up, they’d still try it because of the toppings.

And try it they did! One would assume, with the texture, the taste, and overall rudeness of such a concoction that any sane, rational being would not have tried it. Especially those people after the person who dished it up first. But alas, there was nothing they could do. Such a delicacy must be at least attempted at this potluck, and though they might rue the decision, such attitudes are ingrained within us by our society. As such, this is what was left after the evening was done:

Certainly this was no worse than what was perpetrated by the first mixing. In the end the crime was finished. I still feel a LITTLE guilt (very little) about taking advantage of other’s politeness by having them partake of such a travesty.

I totally mastered arrays today, and accessing MySQL databases.

I’ve got mad zkillz.

only time will tell whether or not this will work.

Specifically 4 hours until I unveil it at a potluck.

bwahahahaha!

But as a back up, I’ve got grape jello made with vanilla iced cream. Mmmmmmm.

Yes, my Jello Kung Fu is strong. You could say I’m the Gerent of Gelatin. Hold on, I’ll wait. Go ahead, look it up. I had to.

***UPDATE***
um, wow. I don’t suggest veggies in jello at all. It’s just…well, according to one of the guys, immoral to have to chew jello. Pictures in tomorrow’s update.

this movie was the best flick I’ve seen all day.

It’s also the worst.

It’s a crap shoot, really, for which impression will stick with me. Ok, that’s a lie. hahaha, wow. This was a bad movie. Colin Firth should stick with the period movies. And Ben Kingsley…well, he must have had a gambling debt OR SOMETHING. Uff da.

sort of done. That’s right, I’ve reached the 50 page mark for writing the dissertation. Editing is going to be a bear when I get to it, as I’ve still got probably 20 more pages before this chapter is done.

I feel guilty because I skipped church to do it. That’s an aspect about grad school work that is completely not mentioned in any pamphlet, advertisement, or advice column: the amount of guilt one feels for missing out on EVERYTHING ELSE IN LIFE while grad school is happening.

Thank goodness I ain’t got one of them social lives. That could change at any instant. Of course, I could also win the lottery and be struck by lightning and a train at the same time. Sure none of the previous things is likely, but they’re possible.

was a surprisingly solid action flick.

we’re not talking intelligent, but entertaining rarely has much to do with intelligent.

Especially since it was at the cheapo theater for $3.

Some claim it’s because he’s a scientologist…I just want to clarify my opinions on the matter.

I’m not prejudiced against Tom Cruise because of his “religious” beliefs, I’m prejudiced against him because he’s bat shit crazy.

an entire pot of coffee, and 4 pages of notes (10 pt font) later, I think I’m done for the morning/afternoon. I’ll probably take up the torch this evening and attempt to get some writing done.

Those 4 pages of notes will likely translate into about 10-15 pages of writing (hopefully). But we’ll see. My printer is out of ink, so things are stalled until I can get to office depot and pick up some more. I should also pick up an extra piece of marker board for the wall adjacent to the other one.

It’s bizarre, but it’s how I operate, gotta see where I’m headed so I don’t get distracted too much from what I’m reading. Same thing happens when I clean my room, I’ll be picking up books off the floor and then get distracted and crack them open and read them. Ask my mom how long it took me to clean my room back in the day. Weeks on end. Now I just stack the books in a neat pile and attempt to ignore them.

There are times that I wish I could have been happy being a construction worker.

I just got a couple of books off Barnes & Noble using a christmas gift certificate. I think it’s moderately sad that I’m using christmas gifts to further my dissertation aspirations (there’s a bit of a rhythm there) but on the other hand, I’m kind of filled with glee at the prospect of these books. There is no hope for me. Hide your children lest my habits infect them with geekness.

Anyhoos, the two books:
Beowulf and the Critics - a book that goes into much more depth about the literary criticism of Beowulf than the Beowulf and the Monsters lecture he gave (which I have read and found it to be very very maze like). This collection has more info and is an easier read according to everyone. Good times.

Out of it: A Cultural History of Intoxication…sweeeeeeet. We’ll see how this one goes. I think this is going to be more for entertainment than for actual dissertation grounding, but it may open up some possible avenues for the argument. The critics weren’t TOO kind on this one, but I figure, screw the critics. Buncha no-good-nicks.

I’m randomizing them. I’m sick of staring at the same one for months on end.

now it’s a random quote out of 15. Good times!

When white people such as myself use ebonics speech (such as any combination of the following: hizzy, fo’ shizzle, fo’ sho’, da hizzouse, my nizzle, the haps, the downlow), those words become immediately uncool for the rest of humanity to use.

I’m helping the language along its evolutionary path by creating a constant need for innovation.

It’s my contribution to the whole reparations issue.

I can be thanked later.