Saturday, March 27, 2004

Here We Are Again

Me, not update for a week? Unpossible.

(Yeah, yeah, tired Simpsons reference, but whatever.)

I was thinking of an entry on the way to work, but I think I left it on the bus. Or it blew away in the bitter, cold wind as I walked from the bus to work. Update from last week: The 68 doesn't even run on Saturdays until 9 a.m., which is just too late for me. So I took the 73, which drops off a 10+-minute walk from the after-hours entrance. Exercise good; bus running late and having exactly 10 minutes to get here and not quite making it on time bad. But not too bad.

Oh, well, I'm not working on Saturdays during the quarter, so this is a problem of limited scope. My only bussing problem arises with the one night I close and can't catch a bus for almost an hour after I get off work. I'll just have to beg rides off Kevin every week, and I have no problem begging.

My many free afternoons, if unpopulated with coursework, are mostly left open for such exciting things as volunteering for SIFF at the end of the quarter, which, sadly, I haven't done for a few years. Except for Thursdays, I guess; mom is usually up on Thursdays with Paul and his bass for lessons and she likes to spend the time with her daughter, aww. We have been meeting at Uwajimaya or some other shopping destination where free parking is plentiful.

Whoa, it's time to follow that train of thought:
  1. We went to Uwajimaya yesterday and bought rice, basmati from India (Cook's Illustrated blew the lid off why actual Indian basmati is preferable to California-grown stuff) and brown jasmine from Thailand;
  2. then we came home to find the mess of a kitchen that was half my fault and half not, leaving me depressed and completely disinterested in cooking anything at all for a few hours until
  3. the hunger pains became to great, so we made sun-dried tomato hummus and feasted on that with some reheated pitas and tomato slices, but
  4. I still really wanted sugar. Crunchy, chocolatey sugar. Which I can't get at a store without getting pissed off about the shittiness of the ingredients.
  5. So I baked the awesome vegan double chocolate chip cookies right then and there.


Hey! I've got an idea! Anyone want a recipe?

That's what I thought!!

You will need:
-1/4 c. flour (I've been using whole wheat pastry flour, but others work fine.)
-1/4 c. cocoa powder
-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-3/4 c. sugar
-3/4 c. oats, pref. toasted
-1/3 c. semisweet chocolate chips
-1/4 c. chopped pecans or walnuts
-pinch salt

-1/4 c. water
-1 tsp. vanilla extract
-splash tasty liqueur, like amaretto, if you've got it

-3 Tbsp. canola oil

Preheat the oven to 350'F. Sift or otherwise mix together the first group of ingredients. Mix in next group of dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients (except oil). As the mixture is coming together, stir in the oil. Mixture should be thick and not at all runny. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto lightly greased baking sheets. Bake 9 minutes. Let cool on sheet before using a spatula to pry off.

This recipe was culled and slightly modified from Dreena Burton's The Everday Vegan.

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Some quick pimping: Jesse's recent entry about Christian Evangelist missionaries from Alabama visiting his Romanian town is rather interesting and enlightening for someone like me, who isn't Christian and is curious about how different sorts of Christians interact. My little brother, on the flipside, wrote a dismissive entry containing the phrase "fuck off," resulting in a comment war from his hosts/benefactors about how inappropriate it was. Take a pill, guys. And Wulffmorgenthaler is funny. Go read it.

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