The Plentiful Vintage

It's truffle time again at Casa Machina! I've put up 16 dozen or so truffle centers so far, and should finish off the last four batches of centers (about 9 dozen) today. Then it's time to dip.

There was a short snag when I went to look up my truffle recipes. I store them here on Livejournal so that I won't lose them, but LJ was down, and past experience has shown that they could be MIA for days. Now I have the basic mix committed to memory, so I tried to soldier through and make a batch of mocha truffles from memory. Turns out my memory of the details was faulty, as I discovered a couple of hours later when LJ came back. Fortunately, no harm was done. I used incorrect settings whilst melting the chocolate in the microwave, but my habit of checking the progress a lot caught the mistake before I scorched the chocolate. And mixing up tsps of coffee powder with tbsps yielded deep chocolate rather than mocha truffles, which were on the list anyway.

I saved a copy of the recipes to a text file so that I won't have this issue again. The irony here is that normally I am totally against storing info in the cloud, yet I have this huge blind spot when it comes to my recipes, all of which are here in LJ and occasional scraps of hard to find paper.

---
( Some observations of the universe... )

---
I baked bread today, or rather, I took a bread recipe and made hard rolls with it, just to see how they'd work out. Just came out of the oven, so we shall see shortly.

Readercon 22...

( Friday... )

---
( Saturday... )

---
( Sunday... )

As usual, there were a few times when I couldn't find anything I was really interested in going to, but also as usual, mileage varies. Add in some homemade baked goods, two decent bike rides, and a couple of terrific meals at Lester's House of BBQ, and it was a pretty good weekend.

I'm sitting here with my coffee while waiting for the feeling to return to my toes. I rode my bike this morning, even though it was below freezing outside. It wasn't really my choice. I had to drop my truck off at the shop for some work (the heater stopped working this week, natch, among other things), and rather than hang around the waiting room for hours and hours, I figured I could tough out the ride back and forth.

It wasn't awful. I dressed properly, and apart from my toes (and around my eyes, early on) it was warm enough. Being early Saturday morning, there wasn't much traffic, and had it been warmer it would've been a pleasant ride.

The bike was less happy about things. It stays in the back of the truck when not in use, so it was very cold when I hauled it out. The biggest issue was that the rear derailleur wasn't moving at all, so I couldn't do any shifting with it, at least at first. The front derailleur worked, so I was able to use that to do very rough changes, and fortunately the first part of the ride was mostly flat. After a mile or so, the rear hub warmed up some, and the derailleur started working again. Sort of. There were still a few unannounced gear changes along the way. Anyway, I made it home (5½ mi), and the ride back should be a little warmer as it's supposed to get up into the forties today. As long as it's before sunset.

This morning's ride was the first time I'd been on the bike in almost a month. It's been too cold for comfort. I haven't been on the stationary bike much, either, which I need to change going forward.

---
Yikes! Just got a call from the shop. Repairs are going to be close to a grand (new radiator, new wheel bearing, new differential cover). Merry frelling Christmas!

---
Speaking of Christmas, I started in on my annual trufflemania. I had yesterday off, so since Thursday night I've managed to make 7 types of centers already, and I should be able to finish off the rest today, barring another unfortunate drop-the-cream-cheese-on-the-floor incident*. I may even start coating tomorrow. That's way ahead of where I usually am this time of year. On the other hand, I haven't even thought of a design for a Christmas card yet, much less begun production of same, so there's that.

* For family members who may happen to read this, no, I did not attempt to wipe it off and use it anyway. Even if it would've been fine, which it was when I had some of it on my toast this morning.

Also, with regards to truffles, I added one more flavor last year, but apparently never bothered to write it down, so here it is (the base recipe is here, and some additional flavors are here):

vanilla centers -

chips: white chocolate chips**
flavoring: 1½ tsp of French vanilla extract***

coating: milk chocolate

** A careful reading of the ingredient list for Nestle's Premier White Morsels (note the missing word) informs me that they do not, in fact, contain any chocolate or cocoa butter whatsoever.

*** For the record, French vanilla should not be a flavor. It's a style of vanilla ice cream made in the French manner, i.e., from an egg custard. That's why it's richer and yellower than normal vanilla ice cream, not from anything having to do with the vanilla itself. It really ought to apply only to ice cream. <Takes an ironic sip from his cup of French vanilla flavored coffee...>

---
Other stuff. I caught a bad cold the day before Thanksgiving, so I missed the family dinner for the first time in my life. That sucked. Took about ten days to finally shake the cold, too.

---
Toes have warmed up. Time to make some more truffles.

( Biking... )

---
( Buffistas... )

---
( and Basement... )

Supper tonight was hot dogs and mozzarella sticks, with a banana for dessert.

So I took some of the leftover roast chicken from last Sunday's dinner, and made a chicken pot pie last night. Mmmm, pie. I used Pillsbury crusts, which were on sale, and used a cast-iron pan as a pie plate, because the other pie plates I had were too small. The pan worked perfectly, and did an excellent job of browning the bottom crust as well as the top. It was very good, and I'm having some leftover pie for lunch as I write this.

I got the pan last year, and it is the first piece of cast-iron ware I've ever used. My mother never had any, and I don't ever recall seeing her mother use cast-iron. The ex bought a set of cast-iron when we moved into our house, but I never used any of it, and now that I think of it, I don't think she did much, either.

It is very cold today, but it's sunny, and I'm going to try to ride. I was thinking about it yesterday, but it never did get above freezing here, and it was windy to boot. I have the week off, so if today's attempt is successful, then I might be able to get in a couple more before I head to Jersey Thursday.

The little girl who lives next door delivered my Girl Scout cookies today. Was seriously considering eating all three boxes for dinner, but I refrained.

---
Derek Lowe got hammered by his old teammates today, giving up 5 runs in 2+ innings, but the Dodgers pounded a couple of minor league relievers for 7 in the top of the ninth to win the game over the Sox. Jason Repko hit a gland slam to put the game away. I like Repko. He's fun to watch. His problem is that he goes so all out the he invariably ends up injuring himself. If I'm GM he gets Pierre's spot on the team, but that'll never happen. As it stands now he looks to be one of the better paid players in AAA.

There's a strip mall a few miles down Rt. 2 from me in Exeter. It was only built three or four years ago, one of the newish sort where there are clusters of buildings surrounding convoluted parking lots, all masquerading as some sort of town center. Exeter has no town center of its own, so perhaps the developers are hoping that this will step into the void. If so, it's an odd choice of location, because although Rt. 2 is a main road, it's also very much a country road at this point. Not many houses or even nearby developments. The Agway is just a mile further south, as is Allen's Seed.

( If only there was a Chinese restaurant here... )

It's rained like crazy all day, although it's been more a fine, constant spray of small drops rather than a heavy downpour. It hasn't been especially windy, either, although now I can see the trees starting to sway a bit. Regardless, it's been relentlessly wet outside since morning with much more yet to come.

---
I've been sitting at my desk most of the day, noodling around on the template for Baseball Ex Machina. I went to post something early this morning, only to discover that Google decided to migrate me over to the NEW! IMPROVED! BLOGGER! today. Now, it's only been two weeks since I set up the new blog. I wanted to go with the new version, but they wouldn't give me the option to do so. So I went ahead, and created the thing under the old system, doing a bunch of customizations in the process. Then today they won't even let me log in the old way, but they promised that everything will be better if I just use my google user name instead, and that I'll really like it a lot.

Of course, the new system can't parse the old templates, so all the customizations and hacks I did were lost in translation. Truth be told, I wasn't crazy about the result anyway, so I started over from scratch. Several hours of fiddling and googling hacks later, Baseball Ex Machina 2008, was born. The main differentiating feature that I can see is that now I can tag posts. Of course when I wrote most of the posts over here, the only tag I used on them was "baseball," which won't be quite as useful over there.

---
Last night I went out to dinner with some of the volleyball crew, most of whom I haven't seen in a year or more. It was Brazilian rodizio place, where they bring barbequed meats to your table skewered on, well, swords. Great idea in theory, but in practice it becomes kind of awkward, at least when attempted at a table for twelve shoehorned into a barely big enough space. The food was mostly okay, but they use way too much salt on some of the meats.

---
My right foot hurts again, this time from a case of Achilles tendonitis that appeared without warning when I woke up Wednesday. It used to happen to me once in awile, but then it would disappear again overnight. No such luck this time. It does seem to be getting a little better, but I'm still limping like Chester.

Lordy, do I suck at dipping candies, even worse than I suck at wrapping presents. I've been making truffles based on a recipe someone (Beathen, I think) posted at b.org a couple of years ago. I made the exact recipe (for mocha truffles) last year, and they were well received, so I decided to experiment with different flavors this year. I have mocha, dark chocolate, peppermint, and coconut. The centers are all done, and I just finished dipping the mocha and peppermint in dark chocolate. I even bought dipping tools at A.C. Moore. The dipping went well enough, but I put them on a wire rack to set up, and most got stuck to the wires as the molten chocolate dripped down through the grid and hardened. Almost every one I picked up wound up losing a little grid-shaped patch of coating from the bottom. I redipped that side, but they look lousy. Eventually I got smart, and just turned the rack upside down and pushed them out of the grid. I'll do the rest (they get milk chocolate outside) in the morning.

I watched my tapes of A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Wish for Wings That Work while getting most of my non-food wrapping done. Have had to change two presents at the last minute. It turns out I still need to get something for evil niece, because I can't find the present I thought I had for her. I'd bought it a couple of years ago for a different niece, who then requested something specific, so I saved the original present for a rainy day. Now it's raining out, and I have no idea where it is. Bother. I'll get something tomorrow.

The other misfit present is a copy of Terry Pratchett's Where's My Cow? that I bought for cutie patootie niece thinking it would be a nice story about making animal noises. It only arrived from Amazon yesterday, so I flipped through it last night, and while it's a perfectly wonderful book, halfway through the key question changes from "Where's my cow?" to "Where's my daddy?" and given that cutie patootie niece's mommy and daddy have split up, I think I'll save that one for someone else. Or keep it for myself, given that if I put it aside, I probably won't be able to find it ever again. My niece will get the wooden pull-train with blocks on it that I found when I was out today. It's a lot like a toy I've been meaning to make for one or the other of my nieces or nephews since forever, so it's a fine substitute.

Pratchett featured in another oddball present this year. I came home the other day, and found a package in the middle of my front yard, as though the letter carrier had just flung it there like a newspaper, which is very unlike my usual letter carrier who always leaves packages on my stoop. Anyway, the package was from an Amazon associate seller, and I knew I'd bought what ever it was for myself, because I recognized the seller's name, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what I'd bought. My short term memory really has been spotty lately. I was watching TV last night, and someone said something that made me want to look something up on Wikipedia. A click later, the wikipedia main page opened, and I'd totally forgotten what it was I wanted to look up. Still don't remember. Anyway, my surprise Christmas present to myself turned out to be a hard bound copy of Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens. Cool!

Still to do tomorrow morning: 1) Dip rest of truffles, 2) prepare food baskets, 3) install Nero on the computer so I can 4) burn some Christmas music to listen to on the 5) drive to Jersey.