Flan is Yummy and Sort of Easy

Pictured: Hassle

I mentioned that I made some treats. Aside from pumpkin pie and apple pie and samoa cookies (twice) and brownies and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I also made a flan. It turned out pretty good. I ate half of it and gave the rest to my peeps that I shared the samoas with. They live walking distance and they have small kids so they're often home and (importantly) they don't mind if I show up with desserts that I already ate a generous portion of, as with the flan. Best kind of peeps.

Getting the caramel right is the hardest part of making a flan. I made a mexican flan with the lechera sweetened condensed milk so the custard part was a breeze. Making the caramel was a bitch. Fortunately I had the advantage of having eaten hundreds and hundreds of examples of flan over the years so I had a pretty good idea what I was aiming for with the caramel.

Took a picture of the finished product but the coating was the real magic. That's the goods right there. Gaze upon it in wonder.

Getting Caught Up

How was your thanksgiving? Was it good? Did you give thanks? It was a Thursday again this year (weird). Mine was good in that I got to visit with some friends that I enjoy, but not so good in that I made some pies that were merely adequate; the recipe sucked for one of them and then the other one I sacrificed so that my friends pie would turn out better. We shared filling, and she needed more filling for her pie so that it was amazing and delicious. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good. It was tough but I managed. Oh also shitty was my back went out on Thursday. I maybe aggravated it doing some boring and lame yoga poses (I don't do the zany shit any more). So I dunno. Just the cost of doing business I guess.

Did I mention that I made some treats the past couple weeks? I made some treats. It's not all about me but still: treats! Pictured here are the homemade 'samoa' cookies I got from a recipe off ye olde internet. They are no longer called samoa cookies btw, and the recipe got pulled for some unknown reason. Could be that the cookie name is culturally insensitive, or it could be that the recipe was not well vetted. It was obviously something that they built in individual parts and then gave you the quantities for those successful recipes; not much care was given to the amounts relative to one another.

Aside from not being well written, the recipe did not make nearly enough cookie dough relative to the enormous amount of caramel/coconut mixture, and then I needed about 2x as much chocolate as they suggested. In other words it was about what I would expect from a recipe that I got from a popular  internet site that puts shortcuts in almost everything. (Biscuit dough from a can is a regular ingredient.) Upside: The price was right and everything turned out well enough, all things considered.

Photo is from the second iteration because I had enough filling/topping to make a second batch. All I had to do was make more cookies, which was pretty easy since I didn't bother with the doughnut shape cookie called for in the traditional samoa. Rolling and cutting and baking all this was enough of a hassle. Plus it made spreading the topping on a little easier. I ended up sharing most of these with my peeps. They probably took them to work; it ended up being a lot of dense cookie by the end. I could barely eat three or four at a time like I usually do.

Happy Thanksgiving

Enjoy your day.

Colin Nissan is a True Hero for Our Time: Decorative Gourd Season

It's that time of year again! That's right, it's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. I'm ready. Are you ready? I SAID ARE YOU FUCKING READY? Get fucking ready because it's called Decorative Fucking Gourd Season for a reason, motherfuckers.

Usually this time of year is above average. I hear Fall is lovely in certain parts of the country. Recent events may have crushed dampened your spirit somewhat, but that's no reason to throw in the towel on Decorative Gourd Season. Now more than ever it is essential to fight the good fight. Do not let unrepentant asshats normalize aberrant behavior, and by that I mean fuck gluten free vegan desserts right into the goddamn trash where they belong. What did you think I meant?

Are you lonely and depressed and disappointed and disillusioned? Me either! So I'm going to give this playlist a try, make some desserts. It might be good. It might be rubbish! There's no knowing until you give it a listen. It's like a metaphor for life in that way. First track is very strong, so start there, and see where it takes you. If that's not doing anything for you then maybe try and take a nap.

See you out there.

Fundraisers: Wade's Army

Me in a t-shirt / Meredith is festive in a cape (She's rad like that)

My gym participates in a fundraiser every year for Wade's Army. It's a good cause, and the group that organizes it donates their time and resources so that all of the money they raise goes to families or groups that support the families with housing or resources. This is important, because most of the money donated to charity goes to the overhead associated with running a business, which is why most charities end up spending more money on marketing than they do on actual support.

So if you didn't already have enough commitments and were interested in supporting an organization that helps families with children that are battling neuroblastoma, then you can go here and make a contribution. If you sign up for the mailing list you can donate next year and get a free t-shirt (weights and man-tights not included*).



* It's very important to stay warm during workouts. Science.

This is a Motorcycle

Please Build This Please Please Please

We still love fast motorcycles in this space, although tastes have changed and I now prefer bikes that won't make my back hurt just by looking at them. This bike is a concept and it looks lovely. Put a light on it and go bananas.

This motorcycle is from Honda (it's a cb1100 TR) and it has an analog from Yamaha that is already in production. Supposedly that is a pretty good bike to ride. Unfortunately it is also a bug-eyed monstrocity. (What were they thinking?)

Our Long National Nightmare Is Ov- Wait, What? Oops - Our Long National Nightmare is Just Beginning

A lot of digital ink has been spilled over the last 12 hours about Donald "Grab them by the Pussy" Trump's historic win in the presidential election. Like most sentient people that vote in elections* I have some thoughts. Let's do this!

It's hard to be too surprised that Trump won an election when you remember that this country elected George W. Bush twice. He was a historically bad leader and as a result his successor(s) lost elections to a smart, polished, charismatic senator from Illinois. Obama was 'bad' for the country in that he tried to give poor people health care and protect the environment and reduce the absurd wealth inequality that characterizes America. Along the way he encouraged / forced the country to have some difficult conversations about racism. That is to say, difficult if you are a racist, which is something that a great many people are but would rather not cop to, as they find it upsetting. ("Why do people talk about race? It wouldn't be an issue if people would just not talk about it." - something that a co-worker of mine said to me with a straight face, as though a gangrenous infection that runs through our cultural body will get better all on its own.)

The right-wing media machine has been blowing that racist dog whistle long and hard for the past 8 years. Donald Trump was on board early with his birtherism bullshit, but you couldn't throw a rock in this country without hitting a conservative talk radio host or tv host or columnist or twitter egg trying to identify Obama as the Other. That message really landed!

The next big takeaway from all this is that white people don't care what a candidate says as long as he gives them something to believe in. It might be a complete fiction (immigration is not the problem in America, wealth inequality is the problem), but that doesn't matter if it gets people off the couch.

lol you probably thought the key word in that last paragraph was 'believe'. Gotcha, sucker. The key word was the male singular pronoun HE. White America refuses to be governed by a woman. Educated white America, uneducated white America, male white America, and female white America all voted the same way: Trump. Men by a wide margin (~70% Trump / 30% Clinton), women less so (54% Trump / 43% Clinton), but you can see the numbers and results right there for yourself. These facts are hard to reconcile given all the things that Trump said during his campaign. He is not religious, he had little support from the party. If Trump were even marginally qualified for office we could point to other factors. Fortunately(?) for us he is not, and this throws the gender and racism in the system into stark relief. Welcome to America! It's exactly as dumb as it looks on TV.

Look forward to four years of dismantling Obama's legacy on health care, the environment, wealth inequality (rich people are about to get even richer!), gender inequality, gay rights, and more. This country takes one step forward, three steps back. White America is stupid far beyond science's ability to accurately predict. Fuck them, and fuck Donald Trump.


* And unlike Donald Trump , who voted for only the second time in his life in this election; he is seventy years old.

Election 2016! PREDICTIONS!!1!ELEVEN!!!

Hilary Clinton is a not a great presidential candidate. I never in my life thought I would consider voting for a Republican president. I am not wealthy by GOP standards. I am not religious. And I am not obviously stupid enough to vote against my own interests. That the GOP promotes and enables religious fanatics and similar idiots does limit my options, but still: Hilary is not a strong candidate. If the GOP could field a decent alternative then they had a real chance at my vote.

The GOP did not field a decent alternative. The GOP trotted out a bunch of clown shoes masquerading as Serious Men of Leadership and Seriousness. The clown that won the party's nomination is historically bad.

There are alternatives to the two mainstream party candidates. These alternatives are also not good. At all. (Hat tip to Jeffy for the video recommendation.)

Is this the best America can do? It seems so, for now. 

In a few days days our long - very, very long - national nightmare will be over. I have no idea who will win, but I do know that an asshole will become president. You heard it here first.