So Wednesday was acanthusleaf's birthday, or at least the observance of it, and her fabulous apprentice organized a birthday dinner and drinks for her. Dinner, drinks, and dessert were had at the Los Gatos Brewing Company in downtown San Jose, and we took up a long table that spanned the entire back of the restaurant. There were upwards of 20 folks there, all ( Read more... )

Last week, I started craving pecan pie. Now, it is very hard to get real pecan pie - by which I mean one that actually has pecans throughout rather than a scant few on the top - out here in California, so I went with the philosophy that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. In short, it was high time I learned to make pecan pie ( Read more... )

I've been experimenting a bit in the kitchen again. The results have been delicious.

1. Earlier this week, I wanted brownies again. My Brownies of Win, to be precise, which are the Moosewood Fudge Brownies (recipe here) with the addition of cinnamon and dried cherries. I was out of dried cherries, though, so I decided to substitute orange zest ( Read more... )

Woohoo! Yes, I have once more entered the kitchen and once more emerged victorious (and full). The project this time: peanut butter thumb-print cookies. Basically, I wanted peanut butter cookies and had been thinking about jam thumb-print cookies, and then I thought, Ah ha! I'll do both! In the same cookie! Dun dun DUNNNN! (Also, it was an excuse ( Read more... )

OMG, Collegium and the Perfectly Period Feast are on Saturday! I am much closer to having clothes (houppe in progress with more work happening today, hose acquired with leather affixed to the soles (thanks, GM and zoccolaro!), hat to be borrowed from Cin, belt to be borrowed from vittoriosa, shirt likely to be borrowed from either GM or Klaus), I just sent off the ( Read more... )

This past weekend, I headed down to Fresno with Greg for the premier screening of Star Wreck: Spoilager, a Voyager spoof that Tom and a number of his friends had done in 2001, with a bit of re-shooting done in 2006. ( A gimpy, broken ship with a mostly-incompetent crew: what could possibly go wrong? )

I'm going to go "blah" about a bunch of things, at length and in no particular order unless I accidentally got them chronologically, so I'll play nice and put most of the lengthy bits under cuts.

1. Beltane (April 30 - May 2) was pretty awesome. ( Beltane stuff, including Bard of the West competition )

Yesterday afternoon, my housemate Greg and I decided to go for a bike ride. We headed south down the Guadalupe River Park trail and then continued along the 87 bike path. I'm not entirely sure how far we biked or where, exactly, we were when we turned back to head home, but we were riding for something like 1.5 to 2 hours. It was a ton of fun, and ( Read more... )

I'm making apple pie tonight. As of right now, I've got the pie dough chilling in the fridge and am procrastinating slightly on prepping the filling. Fortunately, though, we do have one of those nifty peeler-corer-slicer things, so I don't have to prep the apples completely by hand ( Read more... )

My room is now no longer claustrophobia-and-broken-ankle-inducing, thanks to four hours of work this morning and yesterday with a professional organizer. The floor is mostly clear, the bed is fully visible, and the top of the desk actually exists! Next step: the Closet of DOOOOOOOOOOM! It feels really good to have the room livable again, even if I ( Read more... )