piss and vineger

Baking large loads of goodies is one of my favorite aspects of the holiday season, and despite the fact that I’ll be renovating and moving into my new house, this year will be no different! It might just mean that the food preparation will have to happen somewhere other than my new place (although I’m itching extra hard to prepare food in my awesome new gas oven). Here are some things I want to make:

(photos are not mine, unfortunately)

I discovered chocolate cloud cookies last year right before the holidays and they looked so yummy that I went out and made them right away. Totally worth it. I ended up giving some away as presents, and then made up a whole other batch to serve at my New Year’s Eve party. They were definitely a hit. Make lots. Once you’ve made them once or twice, they’re easy as pie. Bonus points for being able to use my cookie scoop!

I’m not even really a big fan of divinity, but I’m going to make it this year. It’s just a little (or a lot) too sweet for me, and I want stuff that I can snarf truckloads of, rather than things that make me swear sugar off for a year. However, this was a holiday food that my grandmother used to make, so I’ll be carrying on the tradition. I’ll post her recipe once I find it in my mom’s stockpile.

I didn’t realize until pretty recently that I really love sugar cookies. I don’t know if it was that I had been eating bad ones all my life, or if there are so many different varieties that I just hadn’t tried the right one yet, but I can say definitively that I’ve found THE ONE. These are easy to make, very mild and not too sweet, and they’re the perfect consistency (slightly crunchy) to make them firm enough to do intricate decorative icing on, but not so hard that they’ll break your teeth. Thank goodness for Real Simple.

I’m hoping to get an icing/piping set soon, and with that I’ll be able to do some fancy work on cookies. I’m looking forward to edible sparkles, nonpareils, shiny silver and gold balls, and all the rest. I have the feeling I’ll be spending too much money at the new Michael’s craft store out at the mall.

Back before I became a vegetarian, I made some very respectable efforts at making homemade marshmallows. I have faith that these efforts can be replicated in a vegan way, so I’m going to try it. I’ve heard that agar agar can be used as a 1:1 substitution for the unflavored gelatin. Let’s find out!

One of the downfalls of having the word “piss” in the title of your blog is having to see what search strings people were using when they came across it:

Now, I’m perfectly aware that there are genres of porn that involve peeing, and I’m even willing to bet that there are sub-niches within those genres that are enthralled by a woman who can have a long and drawn out urination session. But smelly? Who are these people?

How much do I love the new theme function of Gmail?

A LOT.

The holiday season is almost upon us, and this year it is going to be an exceedingly busy one for me and my loved ones. I took the Handmade Pledge this year, so most, if not all, of the gifts that I’ll be giving this year will be handmade or sold by independent artists. I would love for the same to be done for me, but there are a few practical items that I’d love that don’t necessarily fit the bill. (Click on the images for links to where to buy)

Kevin and I considered asking for Lowe’s or Menards gift cards as gifts, to allow us a little extra money to do some fun things to the new house. If we get one or a few of these, however, we can use them wherever we need them, instead of being stuck at one store or the other.

I really, really want one of these, but I’ll probably never buy it for myself. I dream of all of the things I could make with it (non-meaty, of course), like no-knead bread and casseroles and stews. Mmm! Also, it’s very attractive, especially in the royal blue color.

Hudson Valley Yarn CSA: This one I’ll probably buy for myself if no one gets it for me. How wonderful to be able to support a farm by buying into their yarn CSA! Also, I’ll be more likely to get a lot of knitting done if I’ve got yarn automatically mailed to me at regular intervals.

I would love just about anything from my Etsy favorites (and it fits the Handmade Pledge!).

Since I plan to make the curtains for the new house, a gift certificate to Home Ec. Workshop would be lovely. They’ve got the best fabric in town.

There are a couple of camera lenses that I wouldn’t mind, either: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Kevin and I are big calzone fans. There’s a restaurant in town (Sam’s Pizza, for those of you from or visiting Iowa City) that has a great meal deal where you can get two 2-topping calzones for $11.99, and we probably order it once a week when we’re in lazy, eating-out moods. When we’re being better about actually cooking our own meals, we like making them ourselves, too.

We’ve also both been semi-obsessed with the idea of grilling pizza and pizza-type foods ever since we started grilling in earnest a year ago last summer. We always want to attempt it, but we’re paralyzed with the fear that the food will be ruined and we won’t have anything else to replace it for the meal that night. At one point, we brought home a Papa Murphy’s pizza and grilled it while it was still on the paper backing, but it didn’t cook all the way and we had to finish it in the oven anyway.

A few weeks ago, after we both had a couple of beers in us after cleaning all day Sunday, we decided to make calzones and just go for it, since it was warm outside. The picture above was the result. I made up the dough from the following recipe, which I love for the fact that you don’t have to allow it much rising time:

1 0.25oz package of yeast (or 2.25 tsps)
1 cup warm water
2.5 cups flour
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
Combine yeast and water in a bowl, stirring until dissolved. Add sugar to mix, stirring until dissolved. Sift flour and salt into yeast mixture, combine until you’re left with a dough ball; coat with oil. Cover bowl with saran wrap, let rise as long as you want.

I split the dough batch into two balls, rolled them out, and filled one for each of us. Mine contained cheese and onions (no mushrooms, which I mistakenly thought I had). His contained everything but the kitchen sink: onions, jalapenos, pineapple, cheese, sauerkraut. Gross. Anyway, we laid the calzones on top of foil on top of our pizza peel, and took them out to the grill and tossed them on, foil and all. We coated the tops with olive oil and turned them over mid-baking. Afterwards, they were delicious and smokey. One thing I would do differently is that I’d coat the foil with oil before laying the ‘zones on top, so that they wouldn’t stick while cooking. Otherwise, I’d do it again in a second.

Yum!