(no subject)

[cleolinda]

Odds and ends:

I've got a little story today for you about baked goods gone horribly, horribly wrong. Well, actually, if you want to get technical, we're talking about fried goods--Sister Girl is having to do cajun cooking, or something New Orleans-related, essentially, that resulted in her having to make beignets.

Now, I bought her a box of mix at Café du Monde that produced light, fluffy, delicious beignets. But seeing as how this is cooking school, they are not so much interested in the box mix. So Sister Girl makes the beignet dough from scratch and lets it sit for a day to rise and all that, and she takes most of it to school and leaves a plastic bag of leftovers at home. (Side note: this was mutant beignet dough to begin with. The day she made it, she came back that night and it was, like, already bubbling over and trying to climb out of the bowl and take over the world. "Uh, I think your dough is riz," I said. "Uh... YEAH," she said.)

Two days after that, she gets it into her head to actually make beignets from the leftover dough. Now, I can make cake or cookies from scratch, but generally my experience with baking is the glorious boxed mix, so I'm all like, "You let it rise for three days? Is it... still good?" Also, she didn't refrigerate it at all--just let it sit on the counter, in front of a window, in the sun. So she's heating her oil and getting it ready to fry and she doesn't like to cook (or do much of anything) alone, so I'm downstairs as her audience. And then she opens the plastic bag to roll the dough out. My Lord have mercy, I could smell it from across the room. What did it smell like? Beer.

"Your dough... fermented?"

"...Apparently."

But Sister Girl is nothing if not intrepid, so she decides to make the beignets anyway. Now, the last time I was really, truly ill with a stomach bug, I think we all decided that it was actually very mild food poisoning, and I can specifically point to bad pizza we were eating that night. And my God, was that painful. So I'm sitting here now going, Oh God. If she makes them, I'm going to have to eat them, because she always gets upset when you don't eat her cooking, even though maybe I don't WANT to eat baby cow, okay? And I seriously do not have time to die of bad beignet.

But the oil gets hot and she drops one in and it puffs up like whoa and she fishes it out and powders it down with sugar and drops another one in and this one is mine and she cuts each one in half and hands me one half on a fork. Hilariously, she makes a big show out of biting into hers and says, "Mmmmm, it is SO GOOD." So I carefully, gingerly sort of approach mine with my teeth and tear out a nibble and MY GOD IT BITES BACK.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you a new taste sensation: the beergnet. Those of you who don't have time for pastry and booze, well, now you can get them both in one convenient atrocity. My tongue immediately went numb. It was awful.

"Uh... yeah... it's... I really... I think I can still taste the beer."

"No! It's not that bad! All the beer cooked out. You just think you taste beer because you're expecting to."

What I really want to say is, "No, really, dude. It's okay. It's not your fault. But this is mutant beergnet and we have to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure," but she's very touchy about her cooking, and I really don't want to cause a scene.

"So! I! I really! I really need to get back to--! I'm just going to--! Take my beignet and--go back upstairs!"

But Sister Girl looks sort of unhappy, and the oil is getting a little too hot and starting to smoke, and Mom is unobstrusively fiddling around at the sink pretending not to be up in Sister Girl's culinary Kool-Aid, and there's some sniping going on, and--well, I grew up as the family mediator. I'll stay a few minutes longer, just to make sure that Sister Girl does see reason and decides to close down the Little Beignet Shop of Horrors for the night. Unfortunately, she's still got one last monstrosity floating in the oil and--you know--she really hasn't--it's been a while--hey, you might need to--for the love of God, turn the beignet over!

And then the stove bursts into flame. So that was interesting.


Today was a houseworky day. One of Sister Girl's classmates is coming home tonight to show her how to cut up a whole chicken, or something, and they're going to watch The O.C. (or this poor guy is going to be forced to watch it while he butchers, I guess), so Mom wanted me to clean up the house a bit. So I turn up Heart's "Crazy for You" really loud and put it on repeat, because I like the opening guitar bit (duh dundundundundun dunnnnnnnnnn), and get to work. The thing is, the things we have to do to clean the house are, occasionally, a little... counterintuitive. For example, we can't vacuum the carpet; the pile is too low, and what with owning two Pomeranians, a cocker spaniel and a cat and all, you have to get down on your knees and scrape the hair off with a household brush. So instead of vacuuming the carpet, after that, I take the vacuum cleaner downstairs and vacuum... the wooden parquet floor, because there's crazy cobwebs and bits of fluff and dead leaves from the plants and lovely presents from the dogs and some rogue powdered sugar left over from the mutant beergnets skulking under the cupboards, and I mean, I guess you could sweep that up, but why bother, when you can just put on the hose attachment and be done with it? On top of that, Mom apparently washed a bathmat that died on the operating table in the washing machine and shed its yarny threads over half the house, so I'm on thread patrol sucking up bits of yarn in the laundry room... and living room... and the front hall... and the den... and the dining room... and the kitchen... and then that massive wad of dog hair I coaxed out of the stairs and hall carpet mutinies and tries to make its escape and I have to beat it back into submission with the vacuum hose, which is hard, because it's about the size of a basketball and it's got a lot of fight left in it. (This is what happens when you don't brush the carpet for two days, people. Hey, at least we don't have the two rabbits anymore.) By the end of it, I had a dozen mice following me around singing, "Cleolindy, Cleolindy! Go up and do the hall stairs and go down and do the hall floor, you can do them both together! Brush the carpet, beat the dog hair! CraaaAAAAaaazy on youuuuuuuuu!"

So, having saved the universe a couple of times over now, I'ma watch me some TV, dammit. I don't watch a lot of TV, aside from... wow, just Lost at this point. Kinda fell out of the Veronica Mars habit--I keep forgetting it's on. Fnarr. But I admit that any time I hear someone interesting is on a talk show, I will track it down and watch. Wow, Jennifer Love Hewitt is twenty-six today? I feel like I haven't accomplished that much in comparison. Oh, wait, except that I have a college degree and half a master's and people look at my face instead of my breasts and I managed to avoid having I Still Know What You Did Last Summer on my résumé. Whee! Aaaaand... Ellen is doing bird calls. And singing like a parrot. Okay.

So I admit I'm watching this because Gerard Butler is going to be on--he was on Leno last night, and I realized I'd never seen him in anything but Phantom of the Opera or... really, heard him speak in a non-musical way at all, pretty much. And I'd heard he was Scottish, and I remember hearing about him being on Leno like, just two months ago, so he must be a pretty good guest, right? Okay. So, I watch last night, and you guys? Seriously, like, imagine the most Scottish accent you've never understood and, like, double that. Soooooo cute Scottish. I have no idea what he said, mostly, except that there was some story about Viking horns at a drunken law society party. Although, really, you can't blame it entirely on his accent, because when he came out, good Lord almighty, I have never heard women scream that loud. I thought living with a teenage Hanson fan once upon a time had taken my hearing to the limit, but I was wrong. So it was a little while before I recovered my aural faculties, and by then we were in the middle of a story about... wait... Ellen is now dancing with a wooden puppet and a sock monkey? I am perturbed. But, like I said: I don't watch a lot of TV... excuse me, I have to go now.


Links and quizzage:

As a reporter, it's important to say what you really think:

Are you dating anyone now?
Nothing serious, but I'm not lonely. I'm kind of in a phase right now where I'm in love with my girlfriends. I'll literally be sitting across the table from them and I'll think, Your eyes are so pretty.

Keri, that's called being a lesbian.
[Laughs] I might be. I love them so much.

I told you people would start handicapping next year's Oscars.

Now we are all going to die. (Thanks, supersyncspaz7.)

It's the latest multi-arc story from the filmmakers behind ''21 Grams'' and ''Amores Perros.''
by Gary Susman (www.ew.com)

Paramount hired talent manager-turned-studio chief Brad Grey for his ability to attract stars. In his first week on the job, he seems to be making good on his reputation. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Paramount has assembled an all-star cast for Babel: newly-minted Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, former Grey client and business partner Brad Pitt, and Motorcycle Diaries star Gael Garcia Bernal. It's a film from director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarrítu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, the team behind 21 Grams and Amores Perros, the movie that put Garcia Bernal on the road to international stardom. Like those films, Babel will interweave several stories set in motion by a single catastrophy, in this case, a tragedy that strikes a married couple on vacation. The four stories are set in Morocco, Tunisia, Mexico, and Japan. No word on whether Grey, who used to negotiate for top dollar on behalf of his clients, was able to get the stars at bargain rates now that he's working the other side of the fence.

You Are As Cool As They Come

(You are more dramatic than 10% of the population.) Rational and relaxed, no one could accuse you of being dramatic. You roll with the punches, and nothing ever gets you too worked up. You are able to maintain perspective and see the big picture. And even if you're emotional inside, you don't let it show. You're great at keeping it together, and you're rewarded for that. People see you as an ideal friend, employee, and partner.

Are You a Drama Queen (or King)?

Comments

[chickenflicker.livejournal.com]

Haha, love the lotto ticket.

Indeed, you are cool.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Okay. Quite possibly the greatest story ever. I implore you to shop some non-movie writing around as soon as the pain of giving birth to M15M passes.

[majormeg7.livejournal.com]

I feel for your sister. I totally set a pan of Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese on fire when I was babysitting.

[ambiguousreason.livejournal.com]

Wow, Jennifer Love Hewitt is twenty-six today? I feel like I haven't accomplished that much in comparison. Oh, wait, except that I have a college degree and half a master's and people look at my face instead of my breasts and I managed to avoid having I Still Know What You Did Last Summer on my résumé. Whee!

*chokes* Teh funneh is overpowering, Cleo. How do you come up with this stuff?

My God, and all this time I've been thinking that I've had cooking experiments go very, very wrong. Ohhhh, no they haven't. Not compared to Sister Girl's mutant beergnets.

*screams at lottery ticket* I'm not sure what exactly it was, but all the "dun dun DUH" around those numbers on LOST freaked me out but good. At the end, even though I'd already read your recap and knew what was going to happen, I screamed when the camera zoomed in on the numbers. Jesus.

I love The O.C. Except tonight's is a rerun; do they know that?

MmmmScottish.

[meredith-mae.livejournal.com]

Your sister is so funny. I mean, she's going to school to cook, but she seems to... not do so well at cooking. Of course, I suppose we only hear about teh screw ups and not the wild successes.

Tivo! You should get tivo and it tapes stuff for you automatically. (Says me... who has no tivo...) I know the del, though. The only shows I currently watch are Lost and Gilmore Girls, and I've forgotten to watch Gilmore Girls a few times this season.


Have you ever seen Eric Bana on a talk show? He was on Conan once and omgsosexy. He told this story about driving around the US on vacation when he was about 21, and trying to take a shower under the tap outside a gas station. When someone called the police he told the officer "It's alright, mate, I'm australian!" My friends and I just said that line to each other over and over for weeks.

Heart is some great music.

[kotszok.livejournal.com]

LOL! XD Beergnet! In the undying words of Homer J. Simpson: "Mmmmm... fattening."

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

"Your dough... fermented?"

Well, yeah. All dough leavened with yeast ferments, that's what yeast does. Baker's yeast and brewer's yeast are the exact same organism: Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The difference is that you generally let bread dough ferment for a few hours, instead of several or weeks as is the case with beer.

Given the very *rapid* initial fermentation, it might have been contaminated with something, like a sourdough batch gone bad.

[angeljen.livejournal.com]

beergnets: a perfect flavorful mix representing all that is New Orleans; the booze, the grease, the carbs, and that crazy sensation that feels oh so much like that second-day hangover....

[greenwitch.livejournal.com]

*doesn't understand the lotto ticket*

[cpip.livejournal.com]

So, maybe I'm missing something.

Your sister wants to be a cook. Is studying to be a cook.
And any criticism of her cooking, she gets touchy about?

Why am I seeing parallels to certain touchy, hostile writers? (Nobody by the name of A.R. Definitely not...)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

It's from last night's Lost--one of the characters played a series of numbers in the lotto that turned out to be cursed, and everyone around him was, like, struck by misfortune and/or death, and now someone's apparently gotten the bright idea to play them in real life. (Actually, someone was joking this morning that that's going to be the worst set of numbers to play ever, because you're going to have to split the jackpot with all the other Lost fans.)

[barrelgoddess.livejournal.com]

One of Sister Girl's classmates is coming home tonight to show her how to cut up a whole chicken, or something, and they're going to watch The O.C. (or this poor guy is going to be forced to watch it while he butchers, I guess)

On the one hand, I pity him. On the other, though, I suppose it might be conducive to such a chore. I know if I had to watch it I'd feel like hacking into stuff with sharp implements...

[marciamarcia.livejournal.com]

Keri, that's called being a lesbian.

I might be.

What is this? Validated high school fantasies day?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Which story--the beergnets, or saving the universe from dog hair?

(Trust me, I'll be taking this summer to write some non-15M stuff between book galleys.)

[jantalaimon.livejournal.com]

XD now, see, i like to let many a bread dough (and bagel dough, and pizza crust dough, and english muffin dough, and pretzel dough, and...you get the picture) rise for almost a whole day, or overnight (if i plan on baking the next morning), but generally that's as long as i let it go. the only exception is when making certain rye bread recipes, particularly this one for Swedish limpa, because you actually do need two days to make the dough before baking it.

if you think the beignet dough smelled alcoholic, don't let your Sister Girl near a rye bread recipe. particularly one that calls for dough to rise for two days. i swear that one could get drunk on the fumes from this dough, and that's how it's SUPPOSED to smell. the bread it makes is delicious beyond describing, and doesn't taste alcoholic at all, but good lord the smell...XD

[greenwitch.livejournal.com]

Heeeheee.

Aww, man, curse my having to be at meetings from 6-9pm every Wedensday night... *is waiting for the DVDs, as has no VCR in the dorm*

[sadcypress.livejournal.com]

Cafe du Monde beignets rock my socks off.. I haven't had any since an eighth grade field trip- gotta love Louisiana History. ;)

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Except tonight's is a rerun; do they know that?

Wait, it is?? I thought...but...*checks listing*

Oh riiiiiight. And dammit, it's one of the like four episodes I saw last season. Crap. Does this mean I have to do more work?

[pygmymetal.livejournal.com]

*is amazed at flying beagle*

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

except for me, who's pretty much going to be the what, 5th French person to try them on the French lottery? *smug*

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Mmm, beignets. Beergnets...I'm not so sure about. Funny story, though. It seems like forever since we've had a good Sister Girl story.

Also, I had been meaning to ask whether you still watched Veronica Mars. It's too bad you haven't; it's been great! I'm working on a primer--okay, technically, I'm working on working on--to get new viewers caught up before the final seven episodes that start running March 29. If you want to jump back in, I can let you know when I post it.

Inarritu may need to get a new gimmick. He's becoming the M. Night Shyamalan of Mexican indie cinema. Amores Perros was good stuff, but I practically hated 21 Grams.

And heh on the lottery ticket. Plus, Texas! w00t!

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

"Crazy for You"--- yay! You rule again. lol

And the beergnet story is priceless. I have to pass that around to everyone I know now. :-D

[scornedsaint.livejournal.com]

OMGWTF Beignets.

That is all I gleaned from this entire post. "Mhm, acoholic pastry, yeah, yeah, how quickly can I fly to New Orleans and get some?"

[zen-child.livejournal.com]

I always hear about these hot actors interesting people on talk shows like Leno and... others whose names I can't remember, and I just sit there all "Aw, fuck." 'cuz I don't think they show here. I want Gerry interviews!

But seriously, does everyone love Scottish accents? I mean, I've read all over that women find a Scottish accent on a man very sexy, never heard it about women funnily enough (maybe I've just been reading the wrong people's opinions), but then it's all I hear every day, so maybe I'm all desensitised to the sexiness of Scottish accents. America just seems to love non-American accents, at least that's what it seems.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Much as I like the dog-hair story, the beergnets story is a new classic of Western literature. Particularly the "Aliens" homage. Though I'm not sure the CDC shouldn't send some people by in Hazmat suits to investigate the beergnet barrage....