Ode to a Strange Dog

So this is about neither biking nor food, but rather something much more important.

Remember this little screwball that I posted a picture of around Christmas?

That's Shelby.  When I was 12, I went to the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania with my mom, grandparents (who were visiting from Arizona) and sister, and we made the mistake of wandering into the pet store.  Now, my family are a bunch of hopeless dog-lovers through and through, so although we don't support the sort of stores that sell animals like they're things (it even makes my ears twitch when I hear someone call a dog "it"), our hearts melted when we saw a four-month old cocker spaniel who was shoved into a cage that was too small for her.  She was on clearance.  While I'm not sure if they were planning to euthanize her, I doubt that her future was looking too bright.

So after much begging from my sister and myself, Mom let us play with her.  She had a lot of pent-up energy and she was really skittish.  Not exactly a cute and adorable fuzzball, either--she had awkwardly large feet, a lazy eye, and scraggly fur.  After looking at her pedigree, we discovered her father's name was "Booger".  We loved her.  Though my grandfather wasn't at all pleased, we took her home.

When we all piled out of the car, the neighborhood kids immediately saw her and taunted, "She looks like an upside-down cow!"  And they weren't totally wrong.  Shelby had all-white legs and a mostly black body, and she had spots everywhere.  On the pads of her feet, on the skin around her eye (which accounted for the "lazy eye" look)--even her toenails were different colors.

Her personality matched her goofy appearance.  She remained skittish, and she was mean to other dogs.  Although Mom had bought her partially to liven up our older cocker spaniel, Lady, Shelby assumed the position of alpha dog, bossed her around and stole her toys. (As an aside, Lady was the nicest, gentlest dog anyone could ask for.  She got put down when I was in high school.)  She liked to chase cars, and she would do so while woofing with her stuffed pink pig (i.e. "The Pig of Safety") in her mouth.  After she ran away one time, we had an electric fence installed, but that hardly stopped her.  She would just bound across the yard along with the cars as they drove by, muffled woofs emanating from her jaws.  Shelby also had "submissive urination" issues, and she would pee all over the floor whenever she got too excited or scared.  Oh, and she was racist and didn't like men--she barked especially loudly when black or Hispanic males came to the door.  She also hated my ex boyfriend.

She was very curious about my sister's parakeet.

In spite of her quirks, Shelby quickly became a member of the family.  We're all a little nuts, too, so the relationship worked somehow.  She learned to come when she was called, she learned how to walk on a leash, and we taught her how to sit/shake/down/roll over (and once taught, she would only ever do those tricks in that order).  Rebecca discovered that she howled when she heard the sound of a sheep, so we spent many fun hours going "Baaaaaa!" at her and making her howl.  We even found her a toy sheep that baaed.

Ultimately, she morphed into adulthood well.  She loved car rides and got really excited when Mom jingled the car keys and said, "Let's go get the girls!" When my sister moved out of the house, and when I went off to college, Shelby still got excited whenever we were coming home and she heard, "Let's go get the girls!" When my parents moved back to Arizona, Shelby patiently rode with them in the truck's jumpseat across the entire country.

Most of all, she loved my mom.  She would follow her around the house, "helping" with various chores, shoving her nose into Christmas boxes as Mom wrapped them, snuffling around for crumbs whenever she cooked, wandering around listlessly with the pink pig in her mouth whenever she got tired and wanted Mom to go to bed (so she could go with her, of course).  She liked to spread herself out on my parents' king-size bed, and we have more than one photograph of Shelby's head resting atop one of Mom's legs as they both slept.

Unfortunately, this past Christmas was the last time I got to see Shelby.  I knew something was wrong because rather than running around and unwrapping everyone's presents for them (she loved the sound of ripping paper), she just laid quietly on her side.  On Christmas Eve, we discovered blood on the floor, called the vet, and on his advice, took her to the ER.  After a vet tech ran $500 worth of tests, we were told that the results were inconclusive, and that we would have to wait.  They gave her some antibiotics, the bleeding mostly stopped, and Shelby seemed to get a little better.

Last night, I got a call (well, four calls) from my sister.  Apparently after looking at some ultrasounds, the vet discovered a rapidly-spreading form of cancer.  Chemo would only have bought her a few more months, and my parents had to make the very tough decision to put her down.  My parents fed her lots of roast beef and peanut butter, I got to see her on Skype, and Dad was tasked with driving her to the vet this morning.  He did take her pink pig with her.

I can't write conclusions for crap, and now I'm crying all over my keyboard in the middle of an office building, but needless to say, we love her and we'll miss her.

Snow

God bless the person who thought to put bike racks on buses.

When you think to yourself "I should wear my ski jacket today", you should probably actually do it.  I have established that pea coats are useless about seven times this winter.

Kate is less of a wuss than I am and biked back in the snow.  To be fair, I was nowhere near properly dressed.

On the way TO work, a man stopped next to me on Western Avenue, rolled down his window, and said, "Man, you must be cold."  Yes sir, thank you, I was.

On the way home FROM work/a friend's/getting off the bus, this guy commented "I've never understood how people do that" as I took my bike off the rack.  Is it really that hard?  Am I missing something?

Snow is pretty.  Sort of wishing I had been wearing proper attire and biked home like a non-wuss.

2 recipes from a blender

Man.  Blenders and food processors are great.  Don't ever let anyone bullshit you into thinking they're not, because once you have one (or both), you'll never look back.  Yes, there's lots of components to clean, and yes, there's blades that can slice up your fingers, but if you don't feel like chopping, dicing, or mixing, these will do all of that work for you.  You can taste as you go, and change the flavor profile of a sauce or drink with just the touch of a button.  Here are two of my favorites:


The best peanut sauce ever...

I don't know if any of you readers own the Moosewood Cookbook, but I found a copy of an older edition awhile back, and I found a recipe for fragrant rice noodles with peanut sauce.  This is one of the simplest, most delicious peanut sauces I have ever made. You'll need:

1/2 c. peanut butter (the original recipe calls for creamy, but I prefer chunky)
1 scant c. vegetable broth
2 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt, soy sauce or fish sauce (I strongly prefer the third option)
the juice from 1/2 lime, along with most of the rind, grated
3 gloves of garlic (or 4, if you're like me)

Throw ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend. 

This is tremendously versatile and quick.  I like to add cilantro and ginger to mine, but you could also add white wine, beer or coconut milk as part of the liquid or maybe some Sriracha or other hot sauce to make it zingy.  Typically, I eat this on rice noodles or Asian wheat noodles, but it would be reeeeallly tasty as a dip for grilled chicken or shrimp, or possibly as a marinade (you'd probably need some more liquid if that were the case).

A drink the whole family will enjoy...

Irish cream!  A friend made a bunch for a Christmas party, and my grandmother makes it at home, so I wanted to try my hand at it, too.  I went to go find some whiskey for this a couple of weeks ago, and when I asked an employee at Pearson's what he recommended (I hate whiskey unless it's mixed with lots of stuff, and thus I know nothing about it), he got down a bottle of Bailey's and said, rather condescendingly, "Well you know...this stuff is called Bailey's, and it's a pre-mixed Irish cream..."  Wellll no shit, Sherlock.  Did he really think I had never heard of Bailey's?  I adore car bombs and Irish coffee. But where's the fun in just buying a bottle?

There's a way to make this with eggs (my grandma does), and I imagine that would make it thicker, but I didn't feel like straining it or making a mess, so I opted for the simpler version, found on allrecipes.com.

Take:

1 c. cream (light or heavy--I used light to make it less rich)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 - 2 c. Jameson's, or whatever whiskey you have on hand (how much you add depends on how much you like whiskey)
1 tsp. instant coffee granules (I thought it needed more, but I love coffee)
2 tbsp. chocolate syrup (mine was homemade--probably should have added a touch more)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
A dash of cinnamon would be really good in this

Slop all of the ingredients in a blender, blend, pour contents into an old bottle.  Bring to a party where everyone is so liquored up that they forget it's there so that you look like a good house guest, then take it home and enjoy it as a dessert for a couple of months to come.  I like to mix this with coffee and Kahlua.  In fact, I'm drinking it as I write this.

Observations

Sometimes I find it easier to blog in list format, especially since I don't blog about my rides every day...I'm not terribly creative, so it would get monotonous.  So here's a summary of the last few days...

1) Connecticut Avenue during rush hour is not a good route to take into Bethesda.  Connecticut Avenue during rush hour is not a good route to take anywhere if you're riding a bike.  The last time I rode all the way up, the road was under construction through Woodley Park and nearly rattled my teeth out...and it had been that way for a few months.  It's finally nice and smooth there, but becomes a total shambles again around Van Ness.  Chevy Chase Circle scares me, so I just took the sidewalk.

2) There is no way to get to Bethesda via a street that is not a major road because the back roads between DC and Montgomery County are blocked by a country club and a golf course.  Sigh.

3) I may be keeping my brakes too tight.  I like them that way, but I have about 1/32" of clearance between the brake pads and the rims.  They rub a lot (especially when it rains and all the buildup somehow gets magnetically attracted to that area), and it makes me feel very slow.  Center-pull brakes are not my favorite.  My boss talked me out of disc brakes due to my complete lack of ability to ever fix them should they come out of alignment, but I'm not sure that was the correct decision.

4) Though I often love the general public, being a lone, young female working in a gigantic, obvious glass shop with thousands of dollars worth of bikes next to a very busy train station can sometimes be unnerving.  I had to put my rude "go away" face on for a few creepers today who just didn't get the message.

5) 4 layers of shirts/jackets + fleece-lined cycling tights + wool crew socks + hiking shoes + a hood + mittens = the ultimate in dorkdom....and somehow still cold.  WTF.

6) Hikers often say that they prefer ascents over descents.  In the cold weather, I'm inclined (ha!) to feel the same way about cycling.

Got the day off (finally) tomorrow, so I'd like to try out a recipe I got for a salted caramel pie...

Floods and cars and things

L'Enfant today.  And what a circus traffic was getting down here...I really need to start leaving at 8 instead of 8:30.  I was a little worried about the roads potentially being flooded since it rained pretty much all night, but except for one felled tree and one flooded traffic circle, things were surprisingly fine...on my route.  Since then, I have gotten at least 5 Alert DC emails about road closing elsewhere.

Cutting through Observatory Circle to get out to Massachusetts, there was a guy walking his scooter on the sidewalk.  Guess he didn't want to wait in the very long line of cars, which was fair--he got to the intersection faster by walking.  He was wearing reflector suspenders and a DOT helmet, so I wonder if he was some sort of official or traffic geek or something.  I also took the sidewalk down and cut onto the road at Rock Creek Dr.   

Sheridan Circle was a bathtub, as it always is after a rainstorm.  I was trying to avoid a puddle, and in doing so, allowed a giant black SUV to cut uncomfortably close to me.  At Dupont, an elderly gentleman cut across the circle and narrowly avoided a cab driver who ran the light.  Said gentleman continued down the sidewalk after Dupont, ringing his bell at pedestrians to get out of his way...this confused me.  If you're going to be that territorial, just get on the damn road! 

The song of the day was "The Popular Thing" by Jukebox the Ghost (worth a listen!).  I caught a few strange looks as I biked by singing it.

A strapping DC-type lad on a Segway passed me while I was stopped at a red light along the bike lane.  He's the second Segway commuter I've seen in as many days.  And it annoys me more than it should that they're legally allowed on bicycle lanes (ever been caught behind a Segway tour?), but I shouldn't hate.  They'd just get mowed over in traffic.  Though tell me, someone...what's the appeal?  You don't even get to sit down, and it doesn't really count as exercise.

Lots of bikers on Pennsylvania today.  I passed a girl on a CaBi with a bad case of skunk tail up the back of her lovely white fleece jacket (it was quite puddle-y out, and the puddles were muddy...that sounds like something out of Dr. Seuss...).  I then followed behind a guy with a Brooks saddle and corks in the end of his handlebars.  This isn't the first time I've seen this, and I'm not sure if people are just using old wine corks or whether bicycle companies have started manufacturing plugs that purposefully look like wine corks.  Either way, it's pretty inventive.

The last exciting moment of the commute happened when a sprinter misjudged my speed, cut the light on Madison Avenue across 7th Street, and I had to swerve to avoid hitting him.  It would really be nice if pedestrians/joggers watched before they cut lights or meandered into the road/bike alen.  Being on a bicycle shouldn't make me invisible.  I may not be a car, but I still have mass and velocity, which means I have momentum, which means that if I hit you, both of us will feel the effects...

Next post will hopefully be about cooking.  I might make a peanut butter sandwich or something.

And now back to work.

Henri's Tale

Once upon a time, there was a 1985 Schwinn Traveler named Henri (pronounced "Henry").  Upon finding her on Craigs List, her owner, Rachel, rescued her from a life of mold and neglect in a Northern Virginia garage, ripped off her dry-rotted grips, replaced them with fancy yellow tape, and gave her new pedals and a fancy saddle.  They spent a few happy years together (minus an incident in which Henri's front wheel got tacoed by an SUV door and Rachel may or may not have cried.....) until Henri's back wheel developed a nasty habit of popping out of the rear drop-outs.  And also the gears didn't work.  And the saddle consistently came loose.  Et cetera.  

Having graduated from college a year prior and needing a more reliable form of transportation, Rachel decided it was time to buy a bike that wasn't older than she was, and thus purchased a 2011 Gary Fisher Lane named Vancouver.  She took off the pedals and saddle from Henri, took her to a shop to find replacement bits, and sold her to a friend.  Apparently Henri felt so betrayed that she adamantly refused to work for the new owner, and in spite of having been examined by a mechanic, got even more broken.

So after several months, Rachel got Henri back after work one day and tried to bike her home.  She nearly fell off three times (because the rear wheel likes to cuddle up against the frame, which causes the wheel to slip out entirely--is this a broken hub???), threw Henri on the bus, went home, and now has a total of 3 bikes sitting in a very small hallway.  

This is why you can't become too attached to bikes.  Because they end up broken, in your hallway, and blocking your way to the laundry room.  And then you end up writing blog entries in the third-person about an overly personified bicycle that has a personality, feelings, and apparently, an evil agenda.

....I'm not selling her again, that's for sure.  I feel entirely too guilty about selling someone a broken bicycle.  Henri may have a future life as a single speed with cruiser handlebars if I can find the parts for cheap enough.  

This photo was actually published in Bicycle Times, and, less famously, on this blog.

Happier times for that bike.

On an entirely different note (pun not intended), this is a great song to have stuck in your head while biking.

Post #2

I know I already posted this morning, and I know it was long, but I would just like to say 2 things given the change in weather: biking in the snow is fun until you realize that your gloves aren't waterproof and you have lost your outer mitten shells, and biking down a hill with snow flying at your face just feels downright dangerous.  In winter weather, I find that climbs are preferable to descents. Also, to Melanie Suzanne, I am very sorry if my idiotic "I like to earn spring!" comment cursed the weather for this area (if only I had that kind of power).

Speaking of climbs and descents, I have become slightly obsessed with the Appalachian Trail.  In the past week alone, I have read David Miller's Awol on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods (both excellent reads for very different reasons), and watched the Nat Geo documentary.  It has entered my head to do a study on the folklore about the trail and on the trail itself, and if someone handed me a couple thousand dollars, I would quit my life and go hike it in March.  I would also consider doing the Pacific Crest Trail, because holy COW, wouldn't that be cool!  The other major item on my bucket list is to bike across the continent to Vancouver (then maybe, just maybe, up to the Yukon), but I doubt I can afford both.  I wonder if anyone has done both, and if the latter is really as dangerous as they say.

Anyway, I need to start small, so I wonder if anyone has advice on super awesome hikes or long bike rides in the DC area....

That's really it.  Stay warm out there!

In which I ramble a lot

Since I was working at Union Station yesterday, I got to bike downtown for the first time in about 2 weeks (3 weeks?) and it was glorious.  I rode out of the cereal bowl that is Glover Park with great gusto, and soared down Massachusetts Avenue with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face.  Actually, to be fair, I kind of creeped up Wisconsin then trundled down Massachusetts, my very rattly lock shaking to and fro in my rack, but whatever.  It was fun.  The only real obstacle was the few pedestrians near the Dupont Farmer's Market.

I have a bad habit of singing songs to myself as I ride, and usually there's one stuck in my head for no reason at all--yesterday morning it was "Oh Atlanta" by Alison Krauss.  Lord knows why.  I'm not even Southern. Generally, I only know about half the lyrics, so I sing a small part (usually the chorus) very loudly, then I make up words about what I'm doing to kind of fit the song ("I am crossing...thruuu this reeedd liight...because...there are no ca-aars") and the like.

While Massachusetts would have taken me all the way to Union Station, I despise that road past about 11th Street, so I cut over to Pennsylvania Avenue.  On the 15th Street cycle lane, I passed a group of guys in chef pants who were leisurely talking, laughing and making their way down the road.  I think they got offended that I passed them, though, and they quieted down and tried to race me.  Those situations are always a little awkward--I just chose to ignore them.   Anyway. It was a fun ride down Pennsylvania, and if you've never ridden downtown early on a Sunday morning, I highly recommend it.  It's a sense of freedom to be able to, say,  shift lanes and turn left onto Louisiana Avenue without anyone honking at you or being practically mowed down by a tour bus.  There were quite a few other bikers and joggers out, I assume because the weather was beautiful.  Who would know it was January?  In fact, on Saturday, I read a book on my roof deck.

On the way back, I took Mass Ave into Glover Park (I loooovvee Observatory Circle because it avoids the worst part of the hill...), passing a gentleman with a super bright vest and 3 blinky back lights.  Sir Blinks-a-Lot, I dubbed him.  He was very well-equipped for the dark--certainly better than me, as I only have a single red LED on the back of my helmet. 

From Glover Park, en route to Friendship Heights, en route to Bethesda, I noticed on 45th Street a sign that said "BEWARE OF DOG" posted on the fence of a yard with a small white terrier.  He/she barked (or more accurately, yapped) at me.  Sometimes when a dog gets all freaked out that I'm passing on my bike (or even just walking by), I bark back or stare it down...I resisted that urge yesterday because there were people around, which was probably a wise decision.

I took Wisconsin into Bethesda, because unfortunately, the other options all suck equally.  You have to be really, really careful along that road at night because there are massive potholes and uneven pavement close to the curb, and the streetlights become non-existent for a short stretch going into Bethesda.  I usually plant myself as close to the middle of the lane as I can....fortunately cars usually have enough room to go around me. 

There's a new pizza place opening on Wisconsin Avenue, just past the Bethesda border.  I think it's going to be called Haven, probably as in New Haven style pizza (apizza?)....it's close to Stromboli, which has my loyalty, so this newcomer will have to be pretty damn good and also cheap to live up.  But yay, pizza!

ANYWAY.  All told, I think I rode about 18 miles yesterday, which was a nice change.  My thigh muscles started twitching at work yesterday, as if they were being woken up.  I need to find other weekend excursions beyond biking to one of my places of employment....

Bangers, Mash, and bike blogs

Note: I have been informed that "bangers" and "mash" do not exist as separate entities, but that the name of the dish is simply "bangers and mash."  However, I have the sense of humor of a 15-year-old boy and enjoy referring to sausages as "bangers."


Other note: Mid-way through this post, Comcast finally credited my account.  It took 41 minutes and 17 seconds for that to happen.

Since I am currently on hold with Comcast for the 22nd minute in a row (they decided to sign me up for Xfinity TV and charge me for it, although I specifically asked them not to), I figure now is as good a time as any to blog.  Apparently it takes a full half-hour for them to credit $27 back into my debit account.

My commute this morning will consist of getting up from my couch and walking to my desk, so not too much in the way of excitement there.  Working from home is a joy in the winter, though I do miss the insanity of the 15th Street bicycle track and the chance to run into the awesome bike-blogging crowd of DC.  Plus, it's going to be 60 degrees today.  My commute this afternoon to my other job (to clarify: I have 3 jobs) will be slightly more exciting, in that I get to go a full 3 miles to Friendship Heights....but maybe excellent things will happen.  You never know. 

Speaking of awesome bike-blogging crowd, my roommate (her name is Kate, if you haven't figured that out yet) was featured on TFTS yesterday!  It was a very exciting evening.  I was so excited that I took a picture of her with her blog post--that probably makes us excessively dorky, but we're not the sort of people who care about that sort of thing... 

  

Thanks, Brian!

I also got to use my newly seasoned cast iron pan last night!  My mom found it in my grandmother's old things a couple of years ago, so I packed it in my suitcase and brought it home.  Since I am a lazy slug, I only recently got around to seasoning it properly, since I figured it would be a proper vessel in which to cook sausages and apple/onion gravy.

As usual, I stole the recipe from elsewhere: here, to be precise.  Some of the measurements were in milliliters , so I got to feel very European while making this dish.  It is a quintessentially British dish, though I didn't have traditional "bangers," whatever those are, or any orange pippin apples, but this came out deliciously anyway.  I used:

• 4 kind of large pork, apple and gouda sausages (I cannot stress how good these were)
• Several Yukon Gold potatoes
• 3 Gala apples
• 1 red onion 
• 2 tsp flour
• a few glugs of red wine (actually, I may have measured this out to 150 ml)
• 120 ml hot water
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• unmeasured butter
• unmeasured milk
• shredded New Zealand cheddar (kind of salty/sweet/tangy...a good find at Whole Foods!  And it was on sale!)
• salt

Chop your potatoes, slice your apples into wedges, and slice your onion.  In that order, otherwise if you eat the apple scraps, they'll taste like onions.....which, as we discovered last night, is not as heinous as it sounds.

Put a pot of water on the stove and heat until it's boiling.  Add chopped and rinsed potatoes (I left the skins on).  Let boil for about 12-15 minutes, depending on how big your chunks are and what kind of potatoes you're using.

Heat up the skillet on medium, pour in some oil (like 2 tbsp?) and fry up the sausages.  Mine were precooked, so I only kept them in for about 8 minutes.  I imagine this dish would be better if they started off uncooked, in which case, you would need to fry them for about 15 minutes.  Shove the sausages off to the side (or remove them if you are using a 10" skillet that doesn't fit everything) and toss in the apples.  Fry up for a few minutes until they look cooked.  Remove from pan and place on a paper towel.  

Add the sliced onion (with more oil, if needed) to the skillet, put the sausages back in if you have removed them, and cook the onions until they start to look soft and slightly browned.  After about 10 minutes, add flour.  Mix wine, vinegar, and Worcestershire, and add them gradually.  Let the whole mess bubble on the stove for a few minutes until the sauce starts to thicken.  I had no concept of how thick this was supposed to be, but I like sauces a lot, and I felt it could have used more liquid.

Pre-liquid...

Post-liquid...

Once things are looking gravy-ish, add the apple slices back in and let them heat through.

At some point during this cooking process, drain your potatoes, put them back in the pot, and mash with butter, milk, and shredded cheese (this was a really nice touch).  Add salt to taste.  I think you're supposed to plate it all together, but since SOME (*ahem*) people are finicky about food being mushed together, I added them to the plate separately.

I failed to get a non-crappy picture of this dish, but hopefully you get the idea.

Anyway, this was ultimately pretty easy and super yummy.  Kate, although she does not eat meat, was a good sport and watched the gravy for me while I did dishes.  She is great.

Smushed cupcakes, among other things

A fair amount of biking (by which I mean like 9 miles, which really isn't that much at all, but given that the high was 31 with a wind chill of a lot, I think I earn extra brownie points) today...biked back from Bethesda this morning in the freezing cold, biked to Friendship Heights in the freezing cold and in the middle of a snow squall, and took the bus home in the freezing cold because I had to carry a box of delicate cupcakes.  Not because it was cold, believe it or not, but because I found out last week that this is what happens when you try and carry cupcakes home on your bike rack:

 

You will be glad to know that, this evening, all 6 cupcakes made it through my front door in one piece, primarily because they were frozen.  After getting through the door, they lasted about 30 seconds before my roommate and I got to them.

I discovered a lovely little route to Friendship Heights that doesn't primarily involve Wisconsin Avenue.  After New Mexico Avenue (which is a hateful hill), you just cut through AU's campus, go down Massachusetts, cut through 45th over to 44th, past Garrison Street, then cut up the curb of Harrison Street (rhyming streets?  Come on, DC...) then straight up to....um....maybe it's Western Avenue.  I'm not sure.  Either way, the first day I tried it, I tried to make a left onto Wisconsin Avenue from the left turn lane, it was a disaster, and I narrowly avoided a bus.  So.  Yeah.  Using the crosswalks during rush hour from now on.

Speaking of which, I had a major I-am-an-asshole moment today.  After biking up New Mexico, I was kind of overheated (a down jacket and a new biking coat in 25 degrees may be too much, methinks) and out of it, so I tried to cross when I definitely didn't have the light and I definitely made a little white car slam on its brakes so it didn't hit me.  If you're out there, driver of the little white car, I am really x a bjillion sorry.  That was stupid of me and I know that maneuvers like that make all cyclists look bad.  Also, doing anything that dumb near Ward Circle is a really bad idea. I might end up looking as bad as those cupcakes....

Usually I am not that klutzy on a bike, but I can get a little disoriented when I'm in new situations and panic unnecessarily, which causes me to do silly things.  One of my new year's resolutions is to (pardon my French) chill the fuck out in many arenas of my life, and being in traffic is one of those arenas.  It doesn't really help that I just got a job at a place that deals primarily in sugary baked goods and caffeinated beverages....my lunch this afternoon consisted of a cupcake and a latte.

Still going to blog about the bangers and mash, in case you were holding your breath. I might change that to bangers and risotto, though that has less of a ring to it...  I also need to blog about the joys of polenta, because it's actually my new favorite thing.  I came home tonight and ate some more of an existing loaf, but it didn't last long enough for me to photograph it.

Stay warm!

Blogging therapy: More cupcakes!

Happy new year, all! As I'm finishing up graduate school applications, I'm feeling woefully inadequate about my academic abilities....so I'm lessening the stress by interspersing my document-printing with seasoning an old cast iron pan that was my grandmother's, listening to every Great Big Sea song ever, looking up recipes, and now, blogging.  I am nothing if not a productive procrastinator.

The slew of pre-Christmas potlucks invited some creativity in my kitchen, and I had one mild success with these Mexican Chocolate cupcakes.  The recipe was a blatant rip-off from one of my favorite food blogs.  Everything she makes is just so creative and tasty-looking that I had to try this particular cake.  I altered the baking time to make cupcakes, and I filled them with the mascarpone frosting and topped them with chocolate ganache (because it's just so damn easy and tastes so damn good).

I did lots of things wrong, but fortunately, this recipe was extremely forgiving because they tasted delicious.  The batter has olive oil, balsamic vinegar and cayenne pepper in it...apparently, I used the wrong type of cocoa, because instead of looking black, mine was a pleasant chocolate-y brown.

                                                   

 (I was one cupcake wrapper short, so I substituted aluminum foil).

They baked up beautifully in about 20 minutes, with some lovely crackling on the top.  I let them cool before doing anything else to them.

(Sorry, it's blurry.)

I followed her recipe for the Mascarpone filling to the letter, but I either didn't fold in the whipped cream gently enough or something, because it was more goo than fluff.  Fortunately, I was planning on using it as a filling, so this actually worked out better.    It's amazing how impressed people will get at filled cupcakes, and it's incredibly easy to do.  You can fill one of those frosting injectors and do it that way, but I don't have one. I just spoon some filling into a baggie and cut off one of the corners. Then, using a sharp paring knife, I cut a little cone out of the top of each cupcake, plop in some filling, cut off the pointy tip of the cone (and eat it), then replace the "lid."








Next came the ganache--also easy--equal parts good chocolate and cream with a bit of butter, all melted over a double boil. I used a good quality but relatively cheap Icelandic chocolate you can find at Whole Foods.  Using the baggie method, I drizzled some on top of the cupcakes.  It was a little thick (as I intended), and I was in a bit of a hurry, but they turned out nicely anyway.

And, since I am aware that my photography is somewhat boring, here is an "aww" inducing picture of our cocker spaniel, Shelby, from home.  She is a bit of a goober and likes to perch on the couch like that.

Next up: Bangers and Mash with apples and onions!