Tabbyclaw

Coming in just under the wire, tonight was this month's New Year's Resolution cooking. The first savory new thing of the year: goat curry. A quick (well, comparatively so) recipe that makes a hell of a lot of food involving a meat I'd never eaten before, so it's a good thing I ended up liking it.

Jacqueline's shock at how little anyone else cared about her cause came as a surprise to me. I wouldn't have expected her to think these people were contributing to any of their pet causes for any reason other than to make themselves look good, given that this is her own first time actually caring about something. I was also assuming at first that she'd deliberately chosen the 'Turtle Island' name for the gala because she knew they wouldn't recognize it and would assume it was a generic environmental 'good cause.'

There is an urban fantasy novel in my head that will never be completed that was inspired by that exact mishearing.

Kouign-amann = success. I think they probably could have come out flakier, as I apparently let the dough warm up too much before the first turning and the butter broke through, but oh my god they are so good.

"Baby's. Best. Friend."

@MargeGunderson Ooh, that's a definite keeper! I've actually wanted to make kouign-amann ever since seeing it on GBBO, but that's the first recipe I've seen where I feel like I actually understand exactly how to fold it all together. I will also definitely hold onto the ideas of pickles and mozzarella for later. (My mother is on a restricted diet for the month that doesn't allow her dairy; if I made cheese now while she couldn't have any she might disown me.) Kimchi and sauerkraut are out, unfortunately; not an apartment but a shared space whose other inhabitants would not appreciate it.

I have the vaguest request ever. As I mentioned in the baking thread, my New Year's Resolution is to make at least one thing every month that I've never tried before. In January it was macarons (shaky, but a success) and in February it was a chocolate soufflé (pretty much a failure). At some point later in the year, when I have some time to myself, I plan on cooking veal and possibly goat if I can get my hands on it, and I may do eggs benedict for a mother's day brunch in May (hey, it doesn't have to be exotic to be new to me!). But this month my well is running dry. I need suggestions for other foods or techniques I can undertake. I live in a decently-sized city with access to a wide variety of ingredients, my kitchen is well-equipped, and I am totally cool with setting aside an entire day to cook when the mood strikes. Some unusual/specific things I have already made before, most of which I quite enjoyed doing: bread madeleines (due for another attempt, though of course it won't count as new) various cheesecakes venison rabbit from-scratch pie crust whole roasted birds deep-fried foods butter cheese marshmallows

My mother found a recipe last week for buffalo ranch chicken stuffed bell peppers with guacamole. Which is probably great if you don't hate bell peppers and guacamole, which I do. But I can certainly get behind some buffalo ranch chicken, so I ended up taking the chicken itself and tossing it in a burrito with a little rice, some chopped onion and cilantro, and a smear of bleu cheese dressing. Perfect combination, and the leftovers were a great lunch for the next couple days.

I have recently discovered Wolf 359, an addictively entertaining science fiction audiodrama. The crew of the USS Hephaestus has been orbiting the titular star for a little over a year, and things are getting...tense. Pop-culture-overdosed slacker communications officer Eiffel is constantly reaching new heights in his efforts to get out of doing any actual work, head (and only) scientist Dr. Hilbert is doing god-knows-what in his lab and keeping his interactions with everyone else as minimal and creepifying as possible, hardassed by-the-book Commander Minkowski has her hands full keeping the station running, and even ever-pleasant ship's AI Hera is starting to develop some quirks of her own. How do you keep yourself sane in deep space? What does Command actually expect them to find out here? And has anyone else noticed that this station seems really large for a four-person* crew...? The show is alternately hilarious and heartrending, with an excellent mix of action, character study, and intrigue. All the acting is stellar, the production quality is high, and it's just well-made all around. It takes a couple episodes to find its feet, and a couple more to go from slice-of-life to the serial adventure that it's become, but once it gets there it hits the ground running. It's a biweekly podcast that just started its third season (29 episodes + 3 minisodes in total as of this writing), and it's available on iTunes, its official site, and several other platforms linked from there. *God help you if you so much as imply to Minkowski that Hera isn't a person and a member of the crew.

That was the best series finale I've seen in a good long while. True to the show's spirit, full of fun little nods to what's come before, and wrapping everything up with a sense of love and fun. I went into it with high hopes, but the show exceeded them all. And my best friend and I are trying really hard not to let our bitterness about certain other shows leach into other fandoms, but he did spend a whole lot of the finale yelling "Haven, this is how you do it!" at the screen. But on a creepier note, there's a secret hiding in Bill's death scene...

I learned about the hyoid bone was because of its appearance on so many forensics shows, reality and scripted. Not terribly useful to me, but a fun piece of trivia.

Nope, actually. It's sunflower and coconut oil. It's all the saturated fat ever, but it's "natural."

My New Year's Resolution this year is a fun one: At least once a month, I have to cook or bake something I've never done before. So yesterday I made macarons. Specifically these guys, flavored with Ovaltine. They are kinda chewy and they squeezed out around the edges a lot, but they taste great and I'm declaring them 'pretty damn good for a first try.'

ALenore, braised short ribs were one of my first 'fancy' cooking adventures. They are awesome, but I haven't made them in a long while.

Not a fan of Disturbed's original stuff, but they do some damn good covers. This is another excellent effort from them, even if it took a verse or two to really catch me up in it.

Yep, that's who was out of it when we were looking.

We ended up buying phyllo shells and making pecan pie filling from scratch, and apparently it came out great (I don't like pecans and didn't try them myself). The pastry cups will be repurposed with other filling at a later date. Thanks for the suggestion, though, PRGal!

Mabelland's plan for ensnaring Dipper was doomed even if he'd been genuinely lured by the false Wendy. It hinged on granting him his desire to be older than he is, and since the whole place is built on Mabel's fear of growing up she never would have allowed him to age. Not even gonna pretend I didn't get all misty eyed when Dipper was showing how the two of them have looked out for each other over the years.

I've been living off of club sandwiches from Honeybaked Ham the last couple days. Not exactly by choice -- that's who catered the Black Friday madness at my store -- but I'm not exactly complaining either.

Honestly, I think the amount of stuff all the characters have been through lately is one of the major problems of this season. It's throwing crisis after crisis at the audience and not allowing ample time or space for the impacts to land. There's no breathing room between the explosions in which the audience can recognize and appreciate the impact and feel what the characters are feeling.

Minor food emergency! We were planning on mini pecan tarts for Thanksgiving and banking on getting a jar of premade pie filling, but absolutely no one has any in stock and we already bought the premade pastry cups. I need a recipe for a filling that can be cooked separately on the stovetop and added to a prebaked crust. Halp?

This is 100% baseless speculation on my part, but I have a suspicion that after Isabella takes back her kingdom she'll take Richard's as well because he's accepted that he's just not good at kinging and doesn't want to do it anymore. And then he'll join the singing monastery.

Good. Not in the sense that the show is ending, but that it's ending on the creator's terms.

@Blixie I made that cake as my birthday cake this year! I didn't split the layers (so it was two rather than four) and halved the frosting, and it was still a little much. In the best possible way, though.

She ran off in understandable terror when an aether-possessed Duke tried to attack her. Her whereabouts are currently unknown.