Brunching Epiphanies

[magid]

Impressions from an epiphanistic brunch at Cthulhia's:

Always good to know that a friend has a totally filled sheep, and that there are street-worthy bunny slippers out there. [being told I don't have two elbows]

Boggle while sitting on a cloud, Digger(s?) while sitting on the floor, tho ugh I suppose that's appropriate.

Finding out why Bitty had not been quite as pleased as I had when I bought that bar of chocolate (I'd like to point out that I'd just finished the other one when this new one arrived).

Hugs and kisses and backrubs.

Gifts that reminded me how thoughtful my friends are, not to mention Real Art . Now I have to make popovers, and read books, and hang art, and...

Contributing a challah and champagne; enjoying not only waffles, but potato kugel still hot from the oven, and (later) gingersnap ice cream cold from the freezer.
.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

That reminds me: prog coinage: Euchreists - people playing Euchre.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ack! I might be a Euchreist? What will people at shul say?!

[bitty.livejournal.com]

we've been tricked! you're out of the club!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Eek! And then I really would burn in hell!
@

[bitty.livejournal.com]

But not without your handbag!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, probably without any handbag, since I don't have one. Perhaps they'll let me bring my briefcase or Camelbak instead. And, hey, they're more capacious, so I might have a (slightly) better chance of fitting in one of them.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

i bet you there aren't any good books in hell.

wow, that so sucks.

i think maybe i should work on becoming a better person. i wouldn't want to be in a hell with no books.

or maybe there's the simpler route, and just convert to something that doesn't have a hell. i mean, everyone insists i'm jewish anyway; maybe this is a reason to just go with it...

[magid.livejournal.com]

If there are personalized hells, I suppose no one has any wanted books in them. I could imagine someone else having *your* good books in them, if s/he hated them enough, so all you'd have to do is sneak over to the right hell to get some reading material...

Or, yeah, choose a hell-free religion.
(I can't imagine any rabbinical view of an afterlife *without* books, though quite possibly not the ones you'd most want.)

[bitty.livejournal.com]

the idea of a personalized hell would be enough to get me to convert to something if there were anything i was converting from. however, being agnostic allows for significant apathy as regards hell.

i mean, i survived high school. what could a hypothetical devil throw at me that's worse than that?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Junior high.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

ouch. you win.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*falls over from shock*

Trade you evil junior high stories sometime (in person).
h

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Digging.

*HUG*

[magid.livejournal.com]

Aha! I was conflating a Terry Pratchett book (Diggers) with a Reiner Knizia game (Digging).
Thanks.

*hug* to you too :-)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Popovers are easy. Even easier with a small microwave.

Popovers

[magid.livejournal.com]

Why the microwave? (to melt butter?)

Popovers are a lot easier (and a hell of a lot more probably) now that I am the proud owner of popover tins ("pan" doesn't seem like the right word, somehow)(Thanks to Treacle_Well). I suppose one could make them in muffin tins, but I had none of those either.

(In fact, a cow orker was bewildered when asking about loaf sizes and finding out that I didn't have any loaf pans; I just use baking trays and make free-form loaves. Lazy, I know, but easier to store flat trays, and easier to clean, too.)
t

Re: Popovers

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Microwaves are indeed to melt butter.

I've been using muffin pans to make popovers for a decade. The ones I like most are "Texas" muffin pans because they make six large popovers instead of 12 small ones.

Remind me to bake some the next time you come by to visit.

Re: Popovers

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ah, er, that whole kosher kitchen thing.

I haven't had popovers in so long; other than the obvious size difference, is there any other reason the big ones would be better?

When would you like to come over and cook at my house :-) ?
)

Re: Popovers

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

The pyrex is glass, the muffin pan never has anything but popovers, and I can boil the mixerblades :-) but I'll respect that.

Big popovers have more of the soft inside in them and that's where the flavor is. Holds more butter/jam/whathaveyou too. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the outsides, but too much crust can be a problem. We'll have to arrange a night for popover baking... maybe a Sunday sometime.

Re: Popovers

[magid.livejournal.com]

History of the oven that the pans were used in, too, unless they were double-wrapped, which would be poor popover procedure, I believe. Feh.

I hear about inside : outside ratio. Perhaps I shall experiment. Of course, that means I have to make the first batch. Sometime this week, perhaps...

Re: Large Popovers

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I have a recipe from my mom that is very similar to popovers - some of the proportions are a little different, but the ingredients and baking method are the same - that she would prepare as a breakfast thing. Most of the batter is poured into a large glass baking dish, and she'd also pour smaller round pans to make single-serving sized. The recipe has the bizarre name of "Dutch Baby." They were served hot (of course) with jam - but always sprinkled with powdered sugar and fresh nutmeg as soon as they came out of the oven. And the single-sized pans did, indeed, have a lot of nice gooey insides to hold plenty of jam :)

Re: Large Popovers

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Popovers have a few things they're similar to, recipe-wise. There was one shown on Naked Chef/Oliver's Twist, where he put the batter into muffin cups that had hot oil in em. Looked tasty. Another was Yorkshire Pudding - yummy stuff, a real treat, substitutes rendered beef fat for butter (and if you keep kosher, either nondairy creamer or rice milk or soymilk - but when we were young we only had the first).

Re: Large Popovers

[magid.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Yorkshire pudding. Haven't had that in ages either, though that's more the function of being too cheap to afford reasonable cuts of kosher red meat.

Btw, do you like the Naked Chef? If so, I may have a cookbook for you...
N

Re: Large Popovers

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Naked Chef is OK, but I already do that at home (that style I mean) so the show actually isn't hugely interesting to me. I'll watch it sometimes if somebody else has changed the channel to him but that's pretty much it. He is good though.

Re: Large Popovers

[magid.livejournal.com]

I got a (free) copy of his cookbook, and something about the layout has made me not want to read it. Perhaps it would appeal to you, though?
i

Re: Large Popovers

[magid.livejournal.com]

I think you've mentioned that before. Could you send me a recipe?

Re: Large Popovers

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Proportions:

1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. milk/water/soy milk
1 egg

My mom would use 3x the basics to feed 4 people; that's about what I would make for two, which leaves plenty of leftovers :) This stuff is great as a cold snack later in the day.

Blend in blender (can be done otherwise, but I have been told blenderized is best).
Pour into pan which has had butter melted into it. The deeper the batter, the gooier the result, so depending on what you want, you can try it all in a big flat pan, or divided amongst smaller ones, etc.
Bake 20 min at 425? I'll have to check the temperature. They make the most incredible peaks and things while baking, which sadly deflat soon after removal from oven.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and fresh nutmeg. Serve with jam.

Re: Popovers

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Double wrapped??

How strict is the current halachic authority on ovens?

We better pick a Sunday soon, the 19th is Arisia and the 2nd I'll be driving back from Joisey.

Re: Kosher stuff, Sundays

[magid.livejournal.com]

Sundays: I've got some tentative plans this Sunday, Arisia the following weekend. So the 26th or Feb 9th? Or a weeknight?

Kosher stuff: Where heat (or spicy food) is involved, the history of the implements/pots/oven comes into play (with anything cold and nonspicy, as long as it's clean, it's ok). So whatever not-necessarily-kosher food was cooked in your oven previously would mean that the current food cooked in there wouldn't be kosher, either (this also affects the pans used). One solution is to kasher the oven (a pain unless it's a self-cleaning one) and use new pans. The easier solution for occasional kosher cooking is to double wrap all the food in some container. For ease of use and disposability, foil stuff works well. The theory boils down to: there are non-kosher cooties in this oven. They can bombard the outer layer of foil. This may infect the outer layer of foil with cooties, but doesn't transfer to the inner layer, so the kosher food in the inner layer of foil stays kosherfied.
(I know this isn't the best explanation...)

Re: Kosher stuff, Sundays

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

There are reasons I consider Halachic authority to be a bunch of small-minded control freaks at times - this is a pretty big example.

I'm just waiting for them to say that since breathing is ingestion and smell is related to taste that smelling tref is in fact a form of eating tref so you shouldn't get within smelling distance of tref. Seriously, their logic should cover that twist at some point. I am almost (but not really) tempted to point it out to them to see if they'll actually do that.

If they do go that route within your lifetime will you follow that ruling? I am extremely curious.

Sunday the 26th would be good. My weeknights are taken by games night (monday), date night (tuesday), OPN/other stuff (wednesday) - and you have potluck (thursdays)

Re: Kosher stuff, Sundays

[magid.livejournal.com]

Smell - they ain't gonna go there. Really. The rules are about edible things you eat in the normal way (plastic doesn't count, neither does stuff in an IV drip). I know it looks arbitrary at times, but the minutiae is a process of refining areas of halacha that have been around for ages, not new innovations. If you were to talk about medical stuff, that would be another matter entirely: there's lots of innovations that can have halacha applied in new ways, dealing with new situations (brain death, reproductive technologies, cloning come to mind first).
Oh, and practically speaking, there's not really consensus enough within the variety of religious communities to innovate with new halacha.

The 26th works for me. Btw, depending on potluck location and tiredness, I don't always go. But since I don't always know location much in advance, this doesn't necessarily help.
"

Re: Kosher stuff, Sundays

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

But doesn't that mean that you could literally snort minced pork (for example) and it would still count as you keeping kosher? Or somebody could (for God knows what reason) surgically implant lobster salad in your stomach without kashrut problems? Going back to the first example of this (snorting), I know it's not the healthiest way of ingesting food but...

26th it is then, I'll let Tigerlily know.

Pork snorting

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yup, I think pork snorting or lobster implanting would be ok. Disgusting, but technically not a kosher issue. Well, I'm sure there are, in fact, people who would come up with problems, but more on the level of religious-Jews-don't-do-that sort of level than the actual transgression level.

(thanks for putting those images in my head...)
i

Re: Pork snorting

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I'll let Appropriate Parties know that they can safely snort their clam chowder :-)

(And what are Little Brothers for? :-)

Re: Pork snorting

[magid.livejournal.com]

Hope the clams don't get stuck!

I have a *little* brother?
;-)
"

[dancingdeer.livejournal.com]

I haven't had popovers in years, and keep thinking about making them, and then deciding on something else. resolution: when I get back, make popovers. darnit.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Or, if it's merely necessary to eat them, come to my house, when I finally start popoverizing.
n

[bitty.livejournal.com]

i've been known to drive over 2 hours (one way) for popovers.

they're exceptional popovers. worth every minute of travel time.

dammit. now i'm hungry.