fool me ... can't get fooled again

Last year at this time I was auditioning apples. This year I'm hoarding them.


I currently have 23 honeycrisps in my fridge, and if all goes according to my master plan I will squirrel away enough to get me through to local berry season, skipping those pesky grapefruit altogether.

It's an evil master plan, obviously.

biscuits, winter

I don't think I have a fight or a flight instinct. I'm more of a let's-get-this-over-with kind of girl. For example, winter. It's basically a long, dark, depressing, freezing-cold carb load. And even though Vermont has a beautiful autumn, and it's going to be in the 70s for most of this week, in my mind, summer is over and winter has begun. So when my book club came over last night, I made them a heavy, creamy soup, cheesy biscuits, and a midwinter salad of fennel and celery, in spite of the fact that it was 72 degrees. This was an exact replica of the first meal I posted on GFD, and if you come to my house between now and next May, which is when spring arrives in this godforsaken state, it's what you'll be eating.

I posted the recipe for Tomato-Cheddar Soup last March. Here's the recipe for the cheesy biscuits, a nice accompaniment that you can break into pieces and float in the soup like croutons, or eat in your pajamas in front of the television, which is how I will be spending the next seven to eight months: on the couch, in my fleece ensemble, eating biscuits and cupcakes and mashed potatoes. I chose this recipe from the many biscuit recipes on epicurious.com because (1) they contain cheese, and cheese in my biscuits will be my main source of protein as I hibernate this winter, and (2) the directions on epicurious state that the biscuits are "as tender as they are easy," and those are the two qualities I look for in a biscuit (and a man): tenderness and easiness. Oh, and cheesiness.


So, I present to you Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits for Dummies, with a few minor modifications from the original recipe.

1¾ cups flour
¾ cup cornmeal, not coarse [some people on epicurious bitched about the cornmeal, but a biscuit/cornbread hybrid could take over the world, whereas biscuits or cornbread alone will never conquer anything north of the Mason Dixon line]
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
½ stick (¼ cup) + a smidge more cold, unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
6 oz. extra-sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely grated (2 cups)
3 tablespoons finely grated parmesan
1-3 tablespoons chopped herb [I've used sage and chives, both of which were nice]
1 1/3 cups buttermilk

1. Put a rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 450º. Butter 1 large baking sheet.

2. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, then blend in butter with your fingers or a pastry blender with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. [This is the most effort you will have to put forth until June.] Stir in cheeses and herbs with a wooden spoon, then add buttermilk and stir until just combined.

3. Drop dough into equal mounds about 2 inches apart on baking sheet. [I got 12 mounds onto my large baking sheet and ended up throwing some dough away; I could've used two baking sheets, but it's winter, and this recipe is not Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits for Highly Motivated Owners of Multiple Baking Sheets.]

4. Bake until golden, 12–15 minutes, depending on the size of your...mounds. Transfer to a rack and cool until warm.


5. Turn on the TV and eat.

why i'll be canning tomatoes

Click image to enlarge.

More scary flowcharts (well, flowcharts are by their very nature kind of scary) here. Via.

i heart kenny powers

For someone who doesn't watch much TV, I watch an awful lot of TV. My current obsession is Eastbound and Down (six episodes since I got home yesterday afternoon). You know what it is? Hilarious. You know what you are if you don't like it? Wrong. That's right, Mojie. You are W-R-O-N-G wrong. And W-R-O-N-G rhymes with D-O-N-G. I'm just sayin'.

land shark

Last night we all went to Delmonicos, an old T.Daddy bar where the six of us were the only gringos and people literally came up and asked us what we were doing there. Answer: Drinking $2 Coronas and running the pool table. By which I mean, the British photographer and I played two games of pool, each of which lasted nearly 45 minutes, because she and I are so bad and our opponents were so drunk.

When I was about nineteen I actually managed to become mediocre at pool, under the grumpy tutelage of this badass bass player for a hardcore band who became so disgusted with the lame, flirty pool my old roommate and I played, she started bringing us to Walt's Game Room in Winooski for lessons. Any pool skills I developed were probably born out of fear that the badass bass player would beat me up if I didn't get it together, and once I stopped playing regularly, I immediately reverted to my previous level of suckatude. But I decided last night that I either need to get better at pool or stop playing entirely.

So I've made the obvious choice and am going to devote the rest of my time here in T-D.A.D. to developing my game. At 8:30 a.m. you will find me not at my desk (who am I kidding; I am never at my desk by 8:30), but at Delmonicos practicing my soon-to-be-killer bank shot. When I go on the national circuit (or whatever it's called), I'm going to use my winnings to take Chris on a Princess Line cruise.

beware the donald. no, the other donald.

Somehow I've managed to convince others to provide most of my meals lately, which is to say that all is going according to my master plan: First get others to cook for me, then get them to clean my house, followed by world domination and/or a nap.

Last night, for example, I was invited to my sister's for dinner, where she fed me delicious beer-battered-fish tacos with avocado salsa and warm corn tortillas. Unfortunately, my photos of the food didn't come out well (my dad suggested I hold a piece of toilet paper over the flash when I take pictures, but this has had no effect except to make me look crazy). However, under a special light in her basement Maura is growing pot plants, which photographed better than dinner did.


Naw, that's broccoli, or it will one day be broccoli if all goes according to Maura's master plan, which tends more toward crafting and gardening and making me dinner than world domination (now if she would just get over here and clean my house).

Maura also betters herself by listening to educational public-radio shows. Last night over dinner she told us all some biology-related facts she learned on Radiolab, concluding her mini-lecture by yelling, "And ducks DO rape," as if someone was going to argue the point.

Suddenly that Macho Duck song doesn't seem so funny, does it?