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I’m the kind of person who likes their bread always toasted, and my hot dogs basically black.

Essentially, the crispier the better.

I’m also the kind of person who prefers edge brownies to middle brownies – the mushy crumbly center pieces get left in the container for as long as I can stand it. As M said, if there’s a brownie craving, then I’ll give, but if I can avoid it (i.e. push them off onto someone who will appreciate them) then I will.

Enter the All Edges Brownie Pan by Baker’s Edge

Shaped in a unique way that reminds me of a maze, the pan ensures that every brownie will have at least one edge, if not two or three! Ideally this sounds great! No wasted – or at least required to be passed off to other people – brownies.
However it’s not uncommon for innovative-seeming items to fail in the execution – great idea, not so great product. Would this one match expectations?

After reading the instructions (wash before use with hot soapy water, towel dry), I set about making my first batch of edge-full brownies.

First off, I should mention that the pan is much heavier than I thought it would be. Picking up the box, when I received it, I thought to myself “cast iron?!”
but in reality it’s not quite that heavy.
I suppose the increase in weight is at least partially due to it containing at least 40% more metal than typical baking pans, but I think the overall material is different, and not as lightweight as I’m used to. Hopefully this means higher levels of durability.

Pouring my box mix in (I’m lazy, forgive me!), I found it relatively easy to navigate the winding path without spilling batter all over the place.

When I did get bits on the middle/sides, I simply pushed it down with my spatula. The coating seemed very slick and the batter did not stick much.
I did have to take some time to even out the distribution, since I figured it wouldn’t settle naturally in the oven. (I do this also with regular brownie pans – I had a disaster one time where half came out burnt, the other uncooked (-_-; ))

The instructions warned me that the pan might cook brownies faster than normal pans, so I set my timer for 22 minutes (the box said 24-26).

22 minutes later, my center brownies were still not cooked.
4 more minutes after that, not quite perfect.
An unspecified amount of time sitting in the no longer actively heating oven, and I determined them cooked.

What I most had to get used to with this pan was not knowing how to cut the brownies. I’m used to doing two longway cuts and three perpendicular cuts to that, but the center metal makes this more difficult. I cut each section individually, to varying degrees of success. I think further practice will result in more equally sized brownies. (I ended up with some very small and some very large ones.)

Fresh after cooling, the first piece I took was the three-edged brownie from the top left corner.
Three edges! Impossible in normal pans <3
It was quite nice~

Sadly brownies are not quite as good a couple days later, even if reheated. Not bad, mind you, just not the special crispy goodness that my first piece was. I wish there was a better way to preserve it.

For $30, it’s a bit steep for a brownie pan, but if you love edges it might be worth it. (I bought mine with the geek points I’d saved up, so for me it feels like it was “free”, and therefore seems more than worth the price XD)

While eating out in the city tonight, I looked up from our table in the middle of a room with a very high ceiling to see this:

I thought that was interesting XD

I chose a simple sandwich with cucumber salad for the dinner, and it was pretty good :9 The sandwich had a dressing that was probably partially mayonnaise based, and the salad was pretty covered in an oil-based dressing, but other than that I think it met my relatively-low calorie standard okay. It was not at all part of a chain so I can’t easily look up calorie information.

Tomorrow I will aim to take control of my diet XD No family dinners for a whole week! Can I make it all week with no meat? I was able to do it in middle school, don’t see why I can’t now…. XD

Squished in the middle of two weeks of family time is not the best place to start modifying one’s diet.
Well, unless you need more fat or just more calories in general.
For me, however, the balance has to be tipped towards vegetables (and, to a lesser extent, fruits).

On a whim, I bought Eat to Live, that is, yes, another diet book, but one that doesn’t have bizarre theories about reaching exact numbers of calories/ratios that will somehow work marvelously for everyone.
Eat to Live basically advocates veganism – that’s the main point. Beyond that, it’s a low-fat, low-sodium, low-sugar, no-refined carb diet.
So basically, you eat vegetables, fruits and beans/legumes.
Written that way, it can seem kind of unappealing.
Not to mention daunting. For me, the girl who can drink two or more gallons of milk in a week by herself (though it’s not something I’ve done in years, especially after living in Japan), cutting out dairy products entirely seems impossible.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to ever follow the 6-week plan exactly (I keep sneaking a little white rice here, some cereal there) but I can certainly get close.
I don’t plan on becoming vegan. I don’t feel strongly about the use of animal products morally, and I’m certainly not interested in the political/activist side of the lifestyle. In fact, the latter is why I had never even considered leaning that way in the first place – the label of “vegan” is just too politically charged for a style of eating. (Yes, I’m aware vegans extend that to other products as well.) “Vegetarian” doesn’t convey “no animal products” and is also mildly charged. “Flexitarian” is a new term I ran into a few months ago looking into the Low-GI diet, which seems to indicate the ability/willingness to eat meat, but in a lower ratio.

Nutritionally speaking, vegan doesn’t automatically equal healthy – there are plenty of animal product-free foods that contain fats (from oils), salts and sugars, and therefore contain lots of calories. Sure there are a lot of skinny vegans, probably a lot more than those eating the typical American diet, but turning vegan is not a guarantee of weight loss.
Neither is jumping on the Eat to Live bandwagon, despite how the book makes it sound. Yes, it’s quite unlikely that by stuffing yourself with raw/cooked veggies, fruits and beans that you will gain weight – but you won’t necessarily lose it either. It is still possible to overeat even with high nutrition foods, because calories are calories. If you eat more than you burn, or just as much as you burn, you gain or stay at your weight respectively. It may be annoying to count calories, but if you’re serious about weight loss, it’s a necessary evil.

So, while I’m decidedly Not Vegan, that doesn’t mean I can’t browse vegan websites for recipe ideas. I have found some interesting sounding dishes I’m curious to try out, but there are elements that I’m not entirely comfortable with.
TVP is top of the I’m-not-sure-this-should-be-eaten list. TVP stands for Textured Vegetable Protein, and is used frequently in the production of fake meats (vegan burgers, sausages, etc). You can also buy it dry, and add it to what you’re making – it will absorb the flavor of the food (much like chicken and turkey do) and adds a meat-like chewiness. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Somehow, it creeps me out. It seems rather processed as a foodstuff, and I don’t really understand it. I’d rather make burgers out of ground beans and nuts than TVP.

Soy products like tofu are also on that list. I understand that tofu’s been used for years, and is supposed to be pretty good for you. Like TVP, it absorbs the flavor of the food it’s put in, and adds a variety of textures in different contexts. I’m definitely more open-minded about foods containing tofu, but until I understand it better, I’m likely to avoid it in my own recipes. I do like edamame though. Soy milk is also confusing, although supposedly not as gross as it sounds. I’ll reserve judgement until I get someone to provide me with a sample of soy milk they think is good (just like cow’s milk, there are good varieties, and not so good varieties…)

Substitutes for refined sugar are also confusing. Agave nectar is one I see listed pretty often, and I even noticed it in my local grocery store recently. I would prefer to just use fruit juices I have on hand, or even raw sugar, over a form of fructose that’s extracted by a mold (or so says wikipedia anyway).

Speaking of fungus, it’ll probably take me a long time to warm up to eating mushrooms. I have not been, and am not, fond of them generally. The only exception is Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, which, when used in a certain recipe, tastes pretty good. I tend to eat around the chunks, however. Unfortunately most of Campbell’s classic canned soups contain more salt than I should be consuming in a week, so….

In closing, here are a few foods I’ve been eating recently and mostly liked:
hummus (well, I already liked this. I make it without tahini since I don’t like it, and it adds fat anyway. lots of garlic :9)
fruitveg smoothie (spinach/cabbage base with fruits to cover up the taste – rasp/strawberries were last time’s)
pita chips (very little olive oil spray, pepper and garlic powder. eaten with above hummus)
salsa (admittedly from a jar, but I’m looking up a good recipe to make my own so I can reduce the salt content)

things I’ve tried again recently and decided I still don’t like them:
black olives (ugh blech)
avocados (I just… don’t see the appeal.)

For brunch today, I went out to dim sum.
I have to admit it.
I don’t think I like dim sum.
I mean, I like the concept of it, being able to pick and choose small quantities of food, with a large variety of types, but I just… I can’t really find anything I actually want to eat.
People think I might like Tapas better. I’m not sure. I might have the same problem.
So since I didn’t eat much at dim sum, we went to Friendly’s afterwards, where I had a sandwich XD
And of course I got some ice cream to bring home (even though it’s been in the low teens (F) lately…)

I was going to just go back outside and try to clear out the area by the mailbox (since the Postal Services left a little illustrated note showing how you should and shouldn’t keep the area around your mailbox clear… we hadn’t really being doing anything. It felt like a passive aggressive tactic to say “remove the snow or you won’t get any mail” XD)
BUT the Cat Genie was beeping and wasn’t draining properly :/

So I had to disassemble it and figure out what happened.
Apparently a TON of the granules had gotten into the hopper area so it couldn’t drain. I don’t know why still, so I can’t completely prevent it, but at least I know what to research now…
It seems to be working at the moment, but who knows what will happen tomorrow…

So after that mess, I went outside to clear the snow. Or, I should really say, ice. Layers and layers of ice.
It was a slow, incomplete process. I will try again tomorrow, since no mail is coming then anyway.

It’s only 5pm and I feel exhausted already XD

I don’t like being 4 entries behind so I’m writing another one now to lessen the gap.

I’ve been trying to drink more water recently. It’s hard to get into the habit, but once you’re there it’s natural. Zero calories, keeps you hydrated, and in this weather, in my house, it’s always cold XD (I hate drinking lukewarm water unless I’m really thirsty and that’s all there is…)

I don’t drink tap water. This the the result of a lifelong conditioning of tap water at my house not being safe to drink. Even though the water here is supposedly okay, it’s still well water, so I buy gallons at the grocery store. This results in a lot of plastic bottles lying around… we do recycle them, though.

I’m currently using a pink Kleen Kanteen bottle after the Nalgene plastics scare, even though my bottle wasn’t a Nalgene at the time I figured, this is probably more sanitary anyway. I do miss having a straw though…

I had to get the sports pop sippy top for it, though. The open mouth was just begging for a disaster every time I tried to drink out of it…
all down the front of my shirt ( ｉдｉ )

like every day was wet T-shirt day or something ヾ(´▽｀;)ゝ

Neosporin is my new favorite medical thing. I had a blister on my right hand from chopping ice, and I can’t play handbells with something like that, so I decided to drain it (using a sterilized needle, obv) and smother it with neosporin afterwards. Like a day later, completely healed. AMAZING. I have to remember to put it on my kitty scratches more often…

I’ve added twitter and plurk widgets to the bottom of the main page (the archives have been a little displaced, they’re further down) so you can check those out if you like!
Twitter I don’t update as often, but try to occasionally since I have friends who use only it.
Plurk, I love. It’s much more interactive (rather than just spewing 140 charas out into the blackness of the internet, you actually get replies!) and karma’s the hook (I’m aiming for 100 eventually! only 9 points to go, but at this point I only get ~0.8/day XD).
I do update on Jaiku/other services but only through socialthing! (which I will talk about later) so I don’t read replies there much.

CES didn’t bring me much I’m interested in this year, aside from the Mini 10 by Dell (720p and a TV tuner? crazy) which wasn’t even priced so I’m wary.

Just about 2.5 weeks until I’m 24 (@_@) Even numbered ages are always better for me… I’m hoping for good things!

Lately I’ve been feeling like everything basic costs too much o(；△；)o I hate paying money for things like food because they disappear so quickly! Which is why you’ll rarely see me in a restaurant that charges a lot for food (´ー｀) I occasionally think about getting a job to bring in some nice disposable income for me but with the economy the way it is I’m not sure I *could* find a nice, moderately-paying job. (No min-wage please, I have a degree! So what if it’s not relevant…) I’ll have to think about it some more. Cold weather crushes my motivation anyway… XD

Soooo my wonderfully progressive kanji studying got totally derailed by needing to pay attention to the cats nearly all the time during their acclimation to the Cat Genie (because I do not want them going anywhere else, you see) which isn’t even quite over. I haven’t really felt like I could just sit and study and lose track of time because I had to keep checking to see if they’d used it, and if they had, I needed to run it, and if I’m running it I close the door because I don’t want Mika to get spooked (and she will, because she’s rather skittish) so I have to pay attention to when it finishes so I can open the door again so they can use it XD which results in me staying on the main floor a lot since if I’m upstairs I can’t really hear it very well. And on the main floor is the TV, which is always on because the other person living in this house likes it on whenever he’s awake, basically, even though he barely watches it since he’s using his computer. And I do know the value of background noise but I can’t study with English in the background so, you know.
Anyway what I’ve ended up doing instead is flipping through cookbooks trying to plan meals, which has worked out not entirely horribly, except for the fact that doing so much involved cooking results in a lot of dirty dishes and the sink is still acting up (I know, I know) which makes the cleaning process longer and more difficult than it would be otherwise. Let’s see, things I’ve made recently include Shoyuu Ramen (with pork), Beef Rolls (which is just thin slices of beef wrapped around scallions. well, and cooked, with sauce obviously), Chicken Stew (uh, not from a recipe, because I couldn’t find one that didn’t require chicken broth or tomatoes so it was kind of random but okay) with Drop Biscuits, Tacos (not exactly elaborate but good anyway XD), Feta Cheese & Bacon Stuffed Chicken Breasts (very good) with Penne Pasta, a Flourless Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Sauce, aaaaaand I can’t remember farther back than that XD I meant to make Quiche Lorraine but I haven’t gotten around to it yet, because I’m unsure about making the dough/crust – cutting in shortening is not something I’m familiar with and I’m worried I’ll end up with big pockets of fat XD but the biscuits did okay (it called for cutting in the butter in a similar way) so maybe it won’t suck… haha XD but that would be a good breakfasty food :9
On a possibly 180° note, I’m trying to keep track of my calories. (And exercise and things but I’m not going into that atm) Previously I tried to do this, and every time I start I go “okay, this isn’t too bad…” until I have something that doesn’t really have a convenient Nutrition Facts label or that I can’t really find a good estimate for the recipe I used. I don’t know how to estimate it myself and I’m not sure you can, unless you take into account the NF for each individual ingredient for the exact amount you added but then you have to take into account how much, if any, was lost during the cooking process and do foods increase in calories if you add them together? (@__@) I just… I have no idea! I don’t really like menus people put together for dieting stuff because there’s always something I want to remove XD and I don’t know how it affects things and I feel better if I just eat what I want XD I’d count calories if I had the calorie information. But I don’t. So I suppose I will just have to get along without it.
On that note, time for breakfast.

Spam comments are ick.
So I added a captcha.
Now I have no spam.

…. that was an unintentional senryuu (though not completely a senryuu in terms of content, it’s moreso that than a haiku)
It would be nice if I wrote something interesting here, wouldn’t it?
I made a flourless chocolate cake yesterday, and although I’ve had it before, after knowing the process and ingredients I’m inclined to say it’s closer to fudge than cake XD It was good, though. Been doing more cooking in general lately, which has been at least somewhat interesting for me. I like flipping through cookbooks to get ideas, even if I don’t always like the recipes as they are. (I’m too picky, there’s always something I want to remove!) I also like reading cookbooks that have a lot of basic reference type information in them, like what different pans/knives/utensils are used for, or descriptions of spice flavors and substitutions. I do not, however, like reading the Joy of Cooking. It’s a good reference for standard recipes but I always get sleepy while reading it… the distinct lack of color is probably what does it. Black & white sketches of food do not really bring about any appetite in me XD

I’m completely out of backlogged photos for Poupée Girl and now must take more. … eventually.

So I suddenly had a craving for chicken 唐揚げ yesterday and decided I should try to make it XD I already had chicken breast meat to use for something else so I lucked out on that end. The recipe I found was pretty simple, just soy sauce, ginger, garlic, salt & pepper for the marinade, and then flour and cornstarch for the batter. Since I’ve never made 唐揚げ myself, I figured it would probably come out mediocre at best, でも大成功でした！It was really good! And the chicken didn’t dry out either, which is really good… personally I don’t care too much, but I feel kind of smug about it because 唐揚げ is one of my favorite foods and when the Boy was explaining it to his mother he described it rather unfavorably, saying that the chicken was dry. Ha ha! So it was well received, and he seems to be a moderately picky eater (though I am definitely more picky overall) in terms of what he accepts as good versus okay versus edible (笑)
Been watching らき☆すた lately ♥♥♥ I can’t lie, the OP drew me in 100% even before I understood what kind of show it was XD I will learn to sing that, no matter what XD (and do the dance, at karaoke… !) Out of everyone I’m definitely most like Kona-chan… if you don’t know why I’m not going to spell it out for you~ (Speaking of, I wonder when Clannad will end up on the PSP… I could just play the PS2 version but I’d rather PSP somehow… both Kanon and Air have made it onto that system.)
Still studying kanji pretty dutifully, a little stuck on readings for 241-300 but I’m nearly there! Writing is up to 140. As a treat, I bought myself kanji graph books from an online shop – they’re much better proportioned for this sort of thing; writing in normal graph paper I either have to make it too big or too small (@__@) there’s only 15 spaces across but that’s probably enough. I picked 20 because a mixi friend said she remembered how to spell English words by writing & saying them simultaneously 20 times XD It seemed like a good idea~
あ～ぁ　watching らき☆すた makes me want to go back to 秋葉原~ 池袋, too, for the Animate. I really miss being able to go when I wanted to & had free time…. 一時間過ぎるかかってもええのよ～