I try not to make fun of my Catholic upbringing often but this time of the year is difficult for me. At Christmas time, everyone points out that consumerism has taken over Christmas and I’m busy stuffing my face with cookies. Easter has a guy that came back from the dead and invited his friends to poke his open wounds, a Monty Python musical to reference and a marshmallow candy that is begging to be microwaved.

For many Easters I tried to come up with the perfect dessert to name Sweet Jesus. No store bought cross cake or communion wafer shaped, raspberry jam filled cake would do. This year I decided to try Sweet Jesus, the alcoholic beverage. It came to me on the elliptical, dreaming about being out and drunk instead of watching the guy in front of me splatter sweat on the Stairmaster.

A Zombie and sangria mix. What better to represent the Easter Jesus?

I modified a basic sangria recipe and the zombie recipe on Wikipedia.

I don’t remember exact amounts for everything but the sangria contained:

1 orange

1 lemon

1 lime

1 bottle of red wine

1/3 cup sugar

some white rum

some orange juice

I let the fruit soak in the rum and sugar and then added the wine and juice. The the zombie:

about a cup and a half of white rum

about a cup and a half of dark rum

papaya juice

pineapple juice

orange juice

a little Triple Sec

You are supposed to add 2 more types of rum but I’m just not that fancy.

I created the drinks in two separate containers, mixed a glass of the two for myself and exclaimed

SWEET JESUS!

Add ice, encourage friends to drink, taking the rest to Easter at the parents. It is a really strong drink, strong like the power of Jesus!

In my unending quest to be a lazy Buddha lover, I Googled up some Buddhist holidays and celebrations. In not too much of a surprise, there are no “Buddhist” holiday traditions. There are Thai, Japanese, Tibetan and whatever other Eastern culture that has real Buddhist roots. I was looking for something universal, pliable and somewhat for show, like a Christmas tree. Instead I get traditions that make me feel fake for even trying to celebrate them.

I know I sound very negative about Western Buddhists but I did manage to find a balance once. See post about my wedding ceremony that I have yet to write.

Baking is much less strenuous on my quest. So here is my journey in making Neen Gow/Nian Gao  or Lunar New Year cake.

I hit up two Asian markets, one Korean and one Thai. The Thai market won for ingredient availability but it’s also a bigger store. I used this recipe. The ingredient I was most suspicious of was “brown candy”. The clerk at the Korean market was confused as me. Then at the Thai market:

What a creatively named candy!

Also some Haribo gummies. I don’t have a steamer so I got creative with the dutch oven and a metal bowl on the stove top.

The bubbles were too strong and the bowl kept moving around so I had the genius idea to flip it over and fill it with water. On top of that went a pie tin with the cake and then the lid. Ta-da! Steamer!

When the cake came out, it looked like this:

Which is how it is supposed to look! The last step of the recipe is to fry each slice which is important if you don’t like that fresh baked clay taste in your desserts.

I also made cupcakes inspired by Nian Gao. They are baked but still have the same chewy consistency of the cake. They felt heavier than the cake and were a lot sweeter. The recipe is here. I didn’t take any pictures because my cupcakes looked very similar to the cupcakes on the site.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Two years ago I tried to make glogg from a package of mulling spices I got from who knows where. They were probably stale and it was horrible. For the 2010 winter holidays of your choosing, I decided to put a little more effort in so I could possibly share wonderful glogg.

So glogg, gluwhein (with or without umlauts) and spiced mulled wine are pretty much the same thing. At Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza, it’s served in a boot mug (sometimes imprinted with the previous year) and its called gluwhein. When I find a recipe online that refers to it as glogg and follow that recipe, it is called glogg.

I used a recipe from user Happy Hat on the SomethingAwful forums. I excluded ginger because I did not have any and added grated nutmeg and cinnamon sticks. I played with some ingredients like water, sugar, rum, almond and raisins based on taste. I used a dutch oven on the stovetop to cook the glogg.

I purchased the spices from Whole Foods. I’ve found that stores where you expect groceries to be cheap, like Jewel, are expensive for spices. Cost Plus World Market and Whole Foods are usually cheaper and Whole Foods has some spices in bulk. The spices are the expensive part of glogg so make it in big batches to use all of the odd spices you may not use anywhere else. (Why did I buy so much nutmeg??) For wine, I bought the big jug of merlot table wine. Cheaper the better.

I took a few pictures of the first batch.

Adding the non-wine ingredients

Peeking in on simmering glogg

I should have taken more pictures of the bottling process but I was worried about knocking over bottles. A friend brews beer and he let me use some bottles, caps and capper. I sanitized the bottles, filled them with glogg with a funnel, spooned in the raisins and almonds and added a label to describe the ingredients.

The finished product

The ingredients and instructions from the forums:

Traditional Gløgg
Ingredients:

6 l red wine
28 whole cardamom (green)
80 whole cloves
4 thumb sized pieces of ginger
4/10 l sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
Grated rind of 2 lemons
Juice of 2 oranges
Grated rind of 2 oranges
4/10 l water
Half a bottle of rum
500g raisins
200g chopped, toasted almonds

Will yield about 8 liters

Soak raisins in rum and leave in airtight container in the fridge for at least 48 hours before using.

The next day, pour 1 liter of red wine in a small pot, add spices, sugar, rinds and juices and water – and simmer for 30 minutes covered – put aside, and leave for 24h
Strain the spiced wine and add to the rest of the red wine (in a larger pot), heat to 80 degrees.

Just before serving, add the chopped toasted almonds, and the raisins, and make sure that everybody gets a spoon with their drink to eat up the yummy good raisins.

What goes with an Irish car bomb Halloween costume? When you don’t like beer, Irish car bomb cupcakes. What happens when that cupcake recipe has way too many ingredients that are not already in the house? You make hipster cakes.

I started with this recipe for car bomb cupcakes. These cupcakes sound excellent but filling cupcakes with ganache does not. So I made the cupcakes with a few changes. Instead of Guiness, I used PBR. I didn’t have any sour cream, so I used milk.

I wanted a chocolate frosting, so I went with a chocolate cream cheese recipe. I started with this cream cheese frosting recipe and added unsweetened cocoa powder. We didn’t have whiskey but we did have some Green label! I boiled it so I wouldn’t get any kids drunk. Hot scotch does not smell good. I used about half of a shot. The recipe made a lot of frosting so I piled it on and still had a little left over.

Put it all together and you have PBR and a shot cupcakes!

The boy and I have been dieting and working out for a few weeks. We’ve both already lost weight and I’m feeling stronger but that isn’t really making the transition much easier. It’s great to step on the scale and see weight loss or to notice new muscle striations in my arms. It sucks to feel hungry or tired or crave candy.

We work out 5-6 times a week, for me a combination of cardio/weights at Bally’s and classes at Flirty Girl Fitness. Flirty Girl classes are surprisingly hard. I haven’t taken any of the pole/stripper-robics type classes. I have taken classes that involve circuit training, lots of sit ups with medicine balls and step ups onto chairs. (That last one practically killed me.)

So some foods that have kept me from going crazy with soo many boring salads and wraps:

Chicken salad with tofu herb dressing
I made the dressing seperately and use it like a salad dressing. I’m new to tofu so I don’t know how to cook with it but this recipe just requires food processing or blending. The dressing is creamy like a ranch dressing.

Banana “ice cream”
Peel and freeze a banana. Blend or food process it. Refreeze if its gooey. Add nuts or berries as toppings if you like.

Egg whites
Egg white scrambles for breakfast! Throw in whatever veggies you like.

Sugar free jello
Makes you feel like you’re eating something

Not that those foods completely keep me from going crazy and wanting to eat Zingers but they help :)

I realize this blog is kind of turning into a food blog. Eventually it will turn into something like This is why you’re Fat.

This cake actually wasn’t supposed to be very fattening. My friend asked me to make a rainbow cake for a potluck at her house. She sent me this recipe from The Omnomicon (love the name and I’m pretty sure the author is a SA goon.) There is no rainbow cake recipe, just a white cake of your choice recipe plus tips on making it rainbowed. This cake just called for soda and cake mix.

It’s all lumpy but I was afraid to use an electric mixer because of the carbonation. It doesn’t matter in the end because you stir it a lot more when you add food coloring.
So I divided out the batter into 6 bowls and used my pretty gel dye. I thought the dye would be brighter with less. I felt like I was using a ton of dye. I was scared to make the red an actual blood red because of the amount of dye I would have to use. Isn’t red dye poisonous to children? Oh well, no kids died at the potluck. That I saw.

Then I poured the batter in to the pan, one color on top of the next. One of my friends commented that the batter looks like fake food in the movie Hook.

And then I baked it according to the box instructions plus a few more minutes like the rainbow cake directions say. Its a very squishy cake because of the soda. I took the cake out when the yellow started to look dark.
I let the cake cool while I tried my new dino muffin tins with the leftover cake batter. I set up my cooling rack and tried to get the cake out with disastrous results. The entire middle of the cake stuck, one of the sides started to slide off the rack and I started to make howling noises. No way to repair with frosting. Oh the agony of a broken cake.
No pictures of the broken cake, it was too hard to look at. The dino cakes didn’t turn out well either. The cake didn’t want to come out of the tins. It was the first time I used the muffin pan so I may not have properly greased it.
So I didn’t want to make a new cake and I didn’t want to waste the already made cake. So I made some pudding, used the whipped cream my boy made the night before for dessert, some leftover berries and made a rainbow parfait.

And it was good! It was tasty and still rainbow and kind of pretty.

I was telling my boy yesterday that I think the best job would be reviewing bakeries. He pointed out I would be huge if I had this job but it would be a delicious premature death by suffocating in my own fat.
My roommate and I reviewed local cupcake bakeries for science a couple years ago with excellent results. The excellent result being using Sweet Mandy B’s for our awesome volcano cake the next year.
The boy and I are planning my No-Baby Shower and once again I have the chance to summarize cupcake findings FOR SCIENCE.
Reviews behind the jump.

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The more work I have, the less I do. I brought summaries of the grants I’m interested in applying for to the executives and they said yes to three! How do I go from zero to three? Could it have something to do with state budget cuts and the agency having no money?
One grant is only research, the 2nd is resurrecting an old program and the 3rd is mostly a program and I might throw some evaluation components in to give myself a part in it. Normally I wouldn’t get involved in a program grant but this one is big so I want to be part of it and see if I can get a raise out of it.
Even with my slacking, I’m still doing more work than I was last month. A lot of what I’m doing is independent work so it’s easier for me to get things done. I’ve stopped going to the 4 hour meetings. Now my boss just pulls me in for parts I’m involved in. I’m having more one-on-one meetings. And my boss finally laid the smack down on a pain in the ass director so I no longer have to chase him. It’s not that he’s suddenly doing his work. It’s just that I no longer have to follow up 10 times to remind him to do stuff. Let him sink.

I have 3 clients again at the GLBT center. The 3rd client is the easiest to work with so far. I identify with her in some ways which is something I will eventually discuss with my clinical supervisor. Last week we talked about one of my clients that is “internet famous” in her subculture and asked me to read her blog. I took her blog address without saying yes or no and I admit, I looked at it. I told on myself, knowing my supervisor would tell me I shouldn’t look at the client’s blog. My information should come from sessions, directly from the client, not through the information she shares with her internet community. The next session I told her I wouldn’t be reading her blog and she seemed OK with it. She has a lot going on in her past and I think she wanted to be able to say “just read this and understand me” but telling me all of those details in session is important to The Process. I’m slacking with clients, too. I haven’t done progress notes in forever and haven’t started my monthly report.

What have I been doing with my time? Not quite sure.
I went to the Chinese Democracy listening party, got a new GnR tshirt and the CD in the mail. The CD is growing on me, I really like Better. And the shirt is a total boy magnet.
I made Mac n Cheese Pancakes twice and they’re so simple and good. The 2nd time I made bacon, prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe and mimosas to go with them.
I’m making meatloaf cupcakes for the family tomorrow. My mom is jealous of hearing about my adventures in weird food and not tasting any of it. My mom called me today and told me a list of the liquors and wines she has at home and didn’t even mention food. I called her back and asked if we were just drinking this year and told her I fully supported that idea.

I was planning on making these for a pot luck months ago but got sick the day of the party. The little meaty guys have been stuck in my head so when my friend had another potluck, I busted out the cupcake tins.
I used this recipe with slight variations due to laziness. The recipe is for regular size cupcakes, not mini. I made minis because it was a pot luck and I wanted everyone to get to try one!

Step 1. Mix everything in a big bowl. The directions say with your hands but I was reluctant to touch the meats. This is not one of my prettier batters.

Step 2. Grease and fill the cupcake cups with meats. The meat shrinks so it is good to fill the cups to the top and pack it in so the cups don’t detach from the meat.

Step 2b. While you are doing all of this, boil some potatoes. I boiled the hell out of mine so I wouldn’t have to work hard to get the lumps out. You want the mashed potatoes to be nice and smooth so they look like icing.

Step 3. While meat is cooking, make your mashed potatoes. I decided to use a few drops of blue food coloring to make it looking more icing like.

Step 4. When the meats are done, ice those bitches! I slopped on a lot of icing but it still looked cute. I chopped shredded cheese into small bits to look like sprinkles.

Keep them warm, mashed potatoes don’t taste great when cold. Unless you’re serving them to kids. The kids at the party shoved the cold cupcakes into their mouths like rabid beasts.

I’m not a big fan of meatloaf but these tasted pretty good. My mom is asking me to make them for Thanksgiving!

This whole patriotism thing can suck me but I was loving the backyard fireworks this weekend. I stayed out late Thursday and Friday so instead of cursing the 2am fireworks in the alley, I was on my back porch watching them. Due to a technical failure (listening to a boy) I could barely see the city’s fireworks show on the 3rd. North Ave beach may be crowded on the 3rd but there are a bunch of goddamn buildings in the way between you and the fireworks. A ton of other people didn’t seem to know this either so I don’t feel too stupid.

Boxing boot camp is almost finished so I need something new to keep me active. Jabb boxing gym has similar classes that I might go to. I like boxing but I really want to run away and join the circus. OK, it’s not quite that kind of trapeze training but it’s still trapeze! My upper body strength has got slightly less sad since starting boxing but it’s still pretty pathetic. I’m hoping the aerial training class will help me work toward the awesome back I want. (Awesome back=showing off tattoos)

I didn’t do a pictorial like I usually do with new recipes but I made some really good granola just now. I’m taking spoonfuls while waiting for it to cool. I’m concerned how its going to clump when it cools. I used my friend’s family farm honey and expensive Irish oats that come in a tin. I didn’t use the wheat germ suggested in the recipe and my fruit is raisins, dried cranberries and dried cherries.

(Answer to the title is Yes. And there is a 5th,6th and 7th of July, too. Haha! Egocentric Americans!)