For Science

Recently, we got a package from some friends. It included some excellent Anchor Bar and Dinosaur Barbecue sauces, along with a package of root beer extract for brewing your own root beer. I was very excited, and if it works, I plan to get some of the birch beer extract. Lee was highly skeptical, but we followed the directions, cooking some sugar and yeast in plain old water, adding the extract, bottling the concoction, leaving it out until it the yeast fermented enough to pressurize the bottle and then put it in the fridge to continue to mature for about a week and a half. We made some Chicken Parmesan (sans Parmesan and using panko as bread crumbs) and tri-colored rotini for the taste test of the root beer. It's a bit flatter than we'd like, but the flavor isn't bad. We'll just have to experiment with more yeast or not filling the bottle with additional waterfor the next batch.


One of my colleagues went to America for the summer and brought back some snack bags of US chips and snacks. I got a bag of Cheetos here and decided to compare them. On first glance, yes, they are different. The Japanese kind is a lighter orange, with granules of what appear to be sugar. The US kind are that shocking orange that really shouldn't exist, even in snack food, and are very obviously junk food. The Japanese ones are a softer orange that seem almost more wholesome.


The ones from the States tasted like they were supposed to. Lee wishes he were filming my reaction to the Japanese ones, because oh boy, were those not what I was expecting! Very, very odd - sweet and cheesy, and unless you're eating some soft goat cheese with jam or Manechega and quince paste, sweet and cheese do not go together! Well, I suppose the right kind of sweet and cheese - there's a really good recipe of granny smith apple slices coated in cinnamon and sugar topped by a piece of cheddar on a Triscuit and baked at 350 for about 10/15 minutes that is really quite delicious, but that has spice and tart and salt, not just sugar and cheese. Anyway, I will NOT be purchasing the Japanese style Cheetos again.  Ever.

Mice.

This is a followup to an offhand comment I made at the end of last year.  We never posted about our experience, and while there are no pictures, the story itself has some interesting elements.

The something that seemed like it was trying to get in through the air conditioning unit turned out to be multiple somethings.  We were pretty sure there were mice or vermin of some sort living in our ceiling.  We could hear them scratching and running about at night, and one night it was so bad we thought they were going to scratch through the bedroom ceiling and fall squealing onto our faces, so moved into another room to sleep.  Of course, the vermin were living above the bedroom, most likely because that was the one room that was heated most days.

We had our official helper Mieko call the real estate company to let them know something was going on.  At first, they didn't believe us.  A lot of "Is it still there?" and "Are you sure?" ensued.  It took a bit for them to agree to send someone in to take a look to see if there were mice, because of course, they can't send in someone to exterminate until they're sure that there is a problem, and understand what the problem is.  We first were concerned December 21, a couple of days after the noises started because they didn't stop.

We were finally able to get them to send someone on January 9, though part of that was because everything shuts down for a bit around Christmas and New Year's Day, so there was a bit of a backlog.  I just wanted to get a cat/borrow someone's cat for a bit, but Lee vetoed that one.  A man came by, went up into the ceiling (incidentally, to get into the ceiling requires putting a big stepladder up in our shower), and looked around.  He took a picture on his phone of what was up there to show us and to have as proof that something was going on.  Yes, it was mice.  They were shocked.  I thought - is it so hard to believe that we said that we heard multiple little things running around in the ceiling and were not making it up?

Now that they believed us, we scheduled two further appointments for the exterminator to come by, one for him to set out poison and sticky traps, one for him to clean up the sticky traps and make sure there were no more traces of mice.  January 29, we had the all-clear, no more evidence of mice.  Hopefully we won't have the same problem this winter!

Home Cookin'

Baking, really.

Last weekend, I bought a large quantity of bananas for a small dinner party because I was making Bananas Foster for dessert and the bananas were on sale. We ended up using less than anticipated, so had a very large number of bananas left over. I assumed we'd use 10 to 16, and bought 32. We used five. Lee and I had some delicious smoothies to use up some leftover ice cream and fruit juices from the punch, froze some for later banana bread, and I wanted to make something else with bananas.

I found a recipe for Spiced Banana Cake, thinking Lee might like it, and a Vanilla Glaze that sounded simple and delicious. We both like the cake, it's very moist and the banana flavor is mild but present against the spices, which is nice. I love the glaze; it's almost exactly what they used to put on the heavenly cinnamon buns at the bakery in Animal Kingdom (before they changed the supplier), but Lee thinks it's a bit sweet. I learned that the Japanese cake pan is a bit smaller than an American one when the cake rose up about 1.5 inches from the top of the pan, dripping extra batter into the center, making a lovely little secondary cake. Once I finished glazing and admiring the cake, the question was what to do with it (aside from the obvious). I give you our makeshift cake plate:

Once we're in the States again, I'll need to get myself an actual cake plate. A large Pyrex bowl over a dish, while obviously an acceptable solution, is not an elegant one!

Apples were on sale a bit ago as well, so instead of one $30 apple pie, we were able to get two out of approximately $20 in supplies. Since I've only made one type of pie crust before, and that crust has worked well for me (but is not The Pie Crust according to Lee), Lee made one and I will make the second for his birthday. We can't make two at once because we have only one pie dish. He realized exactly how odd the flour is here while making the crust; he's made the crust before but it's never been quite so yellow or wet before. The apples also aren't quite pie apples. They work, but are not quite as firm or flavorful as we'd like. Oh well.


We also got some lovely little peppers on our pepper plant. Lee ate the ripe one raw, and we're still waiting for another four or so to ripen. We'll definitely get two, and there are a couple more little buds that may turn into peppers if they get there before the weather gets nasty.

Typhoon Day! (not tsunami as originally posted)

Most of the schools in the area have closed today due to high winds and rain from a  typhoon (it hit the other side of the country but it is wet here too).  It's really not that bad, and they probably could have held classes today, but as a precaution, everything is closed.  Well, not everything, Lee still had classes today.  Last night it was very windy and rainy, but today it's fine:

I have now had snow days, too cold to go in days, ice days, oh-my-gosh-we-think-it's-going-to-ice-but-actually-it's-beautiful-out precautionary closings, and now a typhoon day.  Luckily, no swine flu week or other sickness closings.  I'm wondering how many weather related closings I'll be able to rack up by the time I'm no longer in academia!

To round out this post, here's an Ikebana arrangement:

     

Apparently I never photographed the one seen in the sushi post: