Brining, figs and books

So I experimented with chicken brining for the first time! My foodie friend Ray introduced me to this process; I was surprised at how easy it was, and how much it improved chicken breasts, especially for grilling. Anyone else out there try brining before? I especially love the word "brining."

What's happened to me in the past few years? I used to hate cooking. Now I'm all excited about trying pork brining next. Something happened to my brain when we moved from a downtown condo into a house in residential North York. :-)



Thanks for the comments about my figs and pluots post, everyone. Some useful things I've learned as a result:

Some pluots are also known as dinosaur eggs. (Thanks, Sherman and Tibicina)

One way to prepare pluots is to cook them in the microwave then serve them slighty warm with yogurt and maybe a drizzle of maple syrup and lemon.(Thanks, mvt)

There are two types of figs: green and purple. Tibicina, who is lucky enough to have figs growing in her yard, advises serving figs (halved or quartered) with any soft, sweet cheese or fresh cream, and says that they're good with brie. "You can also cut an X in the top, put cheese in the middle and bake them just until the cheese is slightly runny. Again, I'd suggest softish, mild cheeses like brie or white stilton (not regular stilton, the white kind which doesn't have the blue veining) or ricotta or marscapone. They might do well with some of the relatively mild goats milk cheeses, depending on taste. They can be good with a drizzle of reduced balsalmic syrup or wrapped in prosciutto or both."

Amanda Page likes her figs either raw or prepared as follows: "Slice a cross in the top and then under the grill (broiler). In the mean time, toast almond slivers in a pan. Put them to one side and heat honey in the same pan until it foams and thickens a little. When the figs are a little brown, put onto a plate, drizzle the hot honey over the top, and then sprinkle the almonds." She also has a yummy-sounding Fig Quesadillas recipe online.

But I'd liked to stop drooling on the keyboard now and turn the subject from food to books...



A few years ago, I mentioned that Rand's brother David was featured in Time magazine. David Bellavia recently published a book called House To House: An Epic Memoir Of War, and it was released last week.

You can see the video in Simon & Schuster's book video channel, also on YouTube:





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Will Write For Chocolate

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. The page on the Offpanel site is still full of errors and I'm not sure why; the OffPanel people haven't responded. As nice as they are, they seem to be pretty distracted -- I haven't had replies to any of my e-mails for the past 6 months or so, so am making plans to move my comic to my own server.



Above: my dinner last night. I've been eating out a lot this past week and had a craving for a home-cooked meal but wanted one with minimum prep time. So I dropped by the local grocery store and found a small package of pre-sliced salmon for $2 (I wasn't looking for pre-sliced, but it gave me the idea for a stir-fry), and bought some asparagus to go with it. It made a quick stir-fry and I served it with white rice. I purposely opted for no seasoning.



I also picked up a healthy-ish dessert while at the grocery store: fresh lychees (above) and figs (below):



And because I always try to pick up something new that I've never tried before, I also bought a single pluot:



I had never heard of this fruit before, but apparently it was developed in the late 20th century and is a cross hybrid of plum and apricot. It was good; the taste and texture reminded me more of a plum than an apricot. I have to wonder about the name, though. Did the creators hope a word like "pluot" would catch on?

I went to see Hairspray again yesterday. I liked it even more this second time around and y'know, I didn't mind John Travolta quite as much, and even got teary-eyed during the rooftop and march scenes (to Ryan C.: stop making faces!), a scene which only made me cringe the first time I saw it. I think I might have to see this movie at least one more time before it leaves the theaters. There were only four people in the theatre last night, so I suspect it won't be around for much longer.

I also saw the trailer for Elizabeth: The Golden Age again...I am so SO looking forward to seeing this after enjoying the first movie so much.

For those of you who haven't yet seen it, here's the trailer for Elizabeth: The Golden Age...





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Buffalovisit (part 2)

I'm writing this in a Buffalo train station; I just found out that my train is apparently behind a freight train and will therefore be delayed at least an hour and a half, possibly longer. :-(

Fortunately I have my laptop, and I've found a seat near the only power outlet in the room. No Internet, but I'll upload this when I get home. There's a little girl staring at me right now. I smile at her and she asks something I can't understand because of her strong toddler accent. Seeing my blank stare, she asks me again, and this time I understand her: "Zat your 'puter?"



I tell her yes, it's my computer, and ask if she has a computer. Her smile widens and she answers, but I don't understand. Argh. I feel like a stupid grown-up. Fortunately I am spared further humiliation; her mother grabs her hand and pulls her away, saying they have to go. The little girl and I wave good-bye at each other; no spoken words needed. :-)

I had a wonderfully laid-back trip to Buffalo, visiting with my friends Rand and Erin. During the day, I took my laptop and Wacom Artpad and worked in Rand's library. Without Internet access, I got a surprising amount of work accomplished, plus read two books (The Stormchasers by Tim Bowler and Anne Boleyn: A Study (sorry, forgot to write down the author's name)).



Some highlights from my Buffalo trip:

- Lunches with Rand. Because of life/schedulestuff, Rand and I don't tend to see each other as often these days, so it was good to catch up in person. E-mail and phonecalls are great but they can't beat face-to-face conversations, IMHO.

- Dinner with Erin one night while Rand taught a class. I tend to only see Erin when she's with Rand, so it was nice to be able to hang out with her one-one-one.

- Working in Rand's library during the day. WONDERFUL library, and I got a ton of work done. Plus I always love seeing Rand at work.



- Dinner outing at A Taste of India with Erin, Rand, Doug White & his wife Kathy, Dennis (friend of Doug's, Adam has performed with his band), Adam English and his girlfriend Jolene (sp?). Doug runs Watchmen Studios; Allison, Jodi and I visited there when we did our vocals/instrumentals for Less Than Art (click on "Still Can't Buy Me Love" to hear a sample from Ookla's 10th anniversary remixed/remastered version).

- Doug's tattoo. Holy cow. (See one of the photos above)

- Visiting Bath & Bodyworks. Toronto doesn't have a Bath & Bodyworks, and I have a weakness for certain toiletry products. I picked up some deliciously minty hand soap, shampoo and conditioner as well as pump-containers of Tupelo Honey and Lemon soap.

- Seeing Chunky Rice again. I have already Blathered about Rand's turtle from previous visits. :-)

- Checking out an Asian foods store (can't recall the name, but it was something like "Hoo-ah," I think) near Taste of India. It reminded me of Toronto's T&T stores except it had a cozier atmosphere: much smaller and obviously family-run.

I saw Mochi Ice Cream, which I had always wanted to try, and lamented the fact that it would melt before I got it home to Toronto. Intrigued, Adam bought it as well as some other products, and insisted we all try them as soon as we stepped out of the shop.



And that remains one of my favourite moments from that night: all of us standing there in the parking lot, yellow light from the store spilling out across the pavement as we sampled each other's purchases, our hands sticky with mango juice (Adam bought some frozen mango bars as well), nibbling at chocolate-covered sticks and mochi-covered red bean ice cream.

Adam also had some interesting-looking varieties of dried plums, and I volunteered to try them with him. We ended up spitting them out into a shopping bag, but they certainly were ... um ...unique-tasting.

The mochi ice cream was fantastic, though; I must get some in Toronto -- maybe T&T has it.

Anyway, I'm home now. It was a great trip...THANK YOU, Erin and Rand, for your wonderful company and hospitality.

Now to unpack and catch up on e-mail...

Trivia O' The Day

I mentioned this a while back, I think, but it bears mentioning again here. Some of you may be familiar with the hit single "Cupid's Chokehold" by Gym Class Heroes. It reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on the Billboard Pop 100 Airplay, and #3 on the UK Singles Chart.

The interesting trivia o' the day, however, is that Rand is one who sings the "Ba da da dop" and Adam is playing keyboards. Cool, eh? You can hear the music in the video below or watch the video on YouTube if you have trouble viewing the imbedded video below:



Rand's voice is the first one you hear in the song. :-)



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Buffalovisit

So I'm in Buffalo right now, typing this from a cafe near Rand's library. I'm very much enjoying my visit with Erin and Rand. They kindly let me take some pics with my new camera, and I've posted some of these in today's Blathering. It's the first time I've tried any couple portrait photography with my Rebel.

Erin's a photographer's dream -- she's expressive, relaxed, and is able to have fun in front of the camera. Rand, who is usually like Jeff which it comes to having his photo taken, was much more relaxed as a result of being with Erin. :-)



All photos on this page were taken with my Sigma 30/1.4 lens. To reduce the amount of Stuff I was bringing, I opted to leave my other (bigger) lenses at home. I know that some people think me a tad loopy for choosing the Sigma as my walkaround lens but so far, it's still my favourite.



We went to a great Korean BBQ place last night, where pieces of seasoned chicken and beef were cooked on a grill at our table after we were served a large variety of appetizers that included radish kimchee, something I've never had before. Yum.

Anyway, we wrapped up the barbecued bits of meat in large pieces of lettuce along with some rice. Wonderfully messy and VERY good. :-) I'm going to have to look for a Korean BBQ place in Toronto.



I've spent most of today working in the library, taking notes and doing background stuff in prep for my next novel; I'm using Scrivener, taking a ton of notes and starting to build up my character profiles. Looking forward to hanging out with Erin tonight while Rand teaches his class!





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Camera innards & nerd jewelry

Jeff and I went to our friend Scott's housewarming party yesterday, at which one of the activities was dissecting his old Nikon Coolpix. Turns out the repair costs needed to keep the camera working weren't worth it...and of course if you can't fix something, why not take it apart before you throw it out?



Fascinating to see what some of the innards looked like. I asked to keep a few more interesting pieces to turn into nerd jewelry. If I come up with something half-decent, I promise I'll post pics. Speaking of nerd jewelry, looks like the HTML Head earrings ("Make sure you don't walk around without a properly formatted Head!") I was lusting over a while back are available again! I immediately ordered a pair, and it looks like the seller still has one pair left. For those interested, there are other nerd earrings in the seller's collection, too, like these Pi earrings and even C/Alto Clef earrings for music geeks!

But back to the housewarming: one of our friends brought Beef Lahmejune (sp?), also known as Armenian Pizzas, topped with ground beef and spices; I've never had these before. They were quite thin, and we rolled them up to eat with our fingers. Yum!



To all you cat people: thanks for all the feedback re: reading cat expressions! Holy toledo. Some of you are clearly half-cat yourselves. :-) I'm finding the discussion fascinating; it's also making me wonder how difficult it would be to learn "squirrel body language."

There's a grey squirrel that's gotten into the habit of lounging on a tree branch outside our kitchen window, and he stares at me meaningfully when I'm cooking or washing up. Exactly HOW meaningfully, I'm not exactly sure, but I'm sure he's up to no good.



I'm going out of town to visit with friends this week, so Blatherings and my e-mail contact will be sporadic.





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