Jay tagged me but I think that it is only because he wants to find out if I will change the name of my blog from "mostly blank" to "somewhat blank with the addition of even more content. Here it goes:
1. Three things I love:
When my wife finds a great deal on clothes or shoes for herself
A&E's production of "Pride and Prejudice"
Getting teased for being different
2. Three things I miss:
The weather in my hometown of Eureka, CA
Pulling green chain at the lumber mill and cleaning carpets for Chem-Dry
Getting a tax return
3. Three people who make me laugh:
Dwight Shrute
Ogden Nash
My children
4. Three things that scare me:
My wife dying or leaving me
Losing a child and being partially responsible
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
5. Three things on my desk:
A pencil holder made by my son out of a soup can and pasta shells
Layers of Carl Hatch's sweat
A Diet Mountain Dew
6. Three things I want to do in life:
Climb Mt. Rainier
Pick up each of my children from their missions
Skydive
7. Three things that I can do:
Coach T-ball
Bluff
Sue people
8. Three things I can't do:
Swim
Keep my mouth shut
Avoid half-off, day-old donuts
9. Three things I would like to learn:
Spanish
Swimming
Calligraphy
10. Three things I regret:
Hurting people's feelings
Missing stuff with my kids
Arguing with my wife
11. Three of my favorite foods:
Gluten filled chocolate chip cookies
Wheat thins
Salad only when I feel like it
12. Three of my favorite shows as a kid:
A-Team
Night Rider
Air Wolf
Well there it is. I will tag no one because I have to go and I need to keep this blog "mostly blank."
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Our trip to Portland
A few friends and I decided to load up some of our kids and take them to Portland for the weekend. There is an Amtrak line that starts in Chicago, goes through the Northern States and through the Tricities on its way to the end of the line in Portland. The "Empire Builder" makes the journey in about 48 hours with stops about every 1-2 hours for stations or "fresh air/smoking" breaks. It comes through the Tricities at 5:35 am and reaches Portland at about 9:30 am.
Ryan, Craig, Rusty and I woke our kids up at 4:30 am to make the train. I took Ansel, Jonas, and Owen; Ryan took Ian and Jakob; Craig took Jake, Carson, and Luke; and Rusty took Ryan, Derrek, and Amelia (sorry if I misspelled any names). All told we had 10 boys and 1 girl all under the age of 9 and four fathers. The kids were totally excited as we planned on spending the night, going to the zoo, and to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).
When we arrived at the train station, people were pretty taken back by the large mass of children and the station master did a double take when he asked how many were in my party and I replied, "15, 11 kids, and four adults."
We boarded the train in complete darkness trying not to awaken the huddled masses of cross-continent travellers. I almost heard a symphony of groans as our kids kept boarding and walking down the aisles. Owen was especially excited and as he only has two volume levels - loud and ferociously loud, we basically woke up the entire traincar.
The lights came on in the car about 6:45 am and our kids had already consumed most of the over 2 metric tons of junk food that we had brought for them. Luckily the train snack bar opened and we could purchase more or we would have most definitely had a mutiny on our hands. We split our time between the rear car - where our seats were - and the observation car at the front of the train immediately behind the engine. I was surprised by how quickly Owen could disappear and I almost thought he had detrained in Wishram when I walked the entire length of the train without finding him. I finally found him "hiding" from me under a bag in the back. He proved to be quite adept at diverting my attention to something else and then disappearing quickly throughout the entire trip.
The most popular thing was the Ritchie's DVD players and the Bagley Nintendo DS game systems. It was nice more than once to see my kids huddled around this little game system watching someone furiously play BBall or Mario Bros. I did not have to worry about them exploring through the sleeper cars or begging for money for the snack bar of the multiply tatooed and body-pierced passengers. Ansel directly and loudly announced loud enough for most of the passengers that were not completely deaf that a passenger next to us had, "Alot of earrings and things in his lips and nose." Score one for teaching your children to be observant and honest.
When we got off the train in Portland we had little clear recollection of where our hotel was. I did not bring the address or phone number so we just wandered in the general direction of where we thought the hotel should be. Finally, I called and got the address, the clerk told me that it was just three blocks away from where we were. It ended up being about eight blocks further and I began to realize that city-folk have a different sense of distance than us country-folk. It was a funny site seeing 11 small children and four fathers pulling luggage and hefting backpacks through downtown Portland. We were mostly worried about one of the kids running out ahead and getting hit by a car or truck as the kids seemed to be completely oblivious to the speeding traffic all around them on the city streets. Each of us agreed that it would be at least somewhat awkward explaining to our wives how it was that one or more of the children had been lost, killed, injured, maimed, or kidnapped. I think that unpleasant picture was in each of our minds as we cooperated in herding the kids from point A to point B throughout the weekend.
We were able to check in early and take a potty break and drop off the luggage before taking the light rail to the zoo. The light rail enters a tunnel in the hill that the zoo is on and you get out in the subway portion and then take an elevator 450 feet up to the top of the hill where the zoo is. We dutifully purchased unlimited train passes for each of the adults and the 11 children before realizing that the zoo train stop was within the "free ride zone." I hope those native Portlanders appreciate the subsidizing effect of tourists like us that cannot figure out the train schedules and needlessly purchase tickets at $4 a piece. The train ticket stubs did give us 50 cents off at the zoo though as I guess Portlanders are gracious about confusing tourists out of their money at the light rail stations.
The zoo was a hit. We lost and found each of the kids and each other about every 5 minutes. We spent most of our time in line at the only lunch cafe open in the entire zoo. We spent about 45 minutes waiting for some microwaved hot dogs, sodas, cookies, greasy pizza, and chips. By the time we got the front of the line, we were so panicked about making sure that we had enough food that we each ordered four of everything they had just to make sure we had enough and did not have to go back for something else. We had a ton of overpriced, disgusting zoo food. Just to spite the zoo staff what we didn't eat we fed to whatever animals we could reach. Who would have thought the ring-tailed lemurs and ground hogs would have eaten pepperoni pizza so quickly?
After the zoo we jumped back on the light rail only to have it break down about halfway home. We waited for about 15 minutes before giving up and deciding to walk (a Portlandite told us it was only about three blocks) back to the hotel. It ended up being about 18 blocks and we were passed by the train about five minutes later. Again with the stares from people and trying to avoid sudden death of one of the children at every cross walk.
Back at the hotel we took the kids swimming, then they were ready to collapse. It was about 5:30 and I put Owen in his PJs and he fell asleep almost immediately. The kids had not yet consumed quite their body weight in pizza and soda so we ordered Pizza Hut and soda and the kids ate with abandon polishing off four large pizzas, cheese bread, and a couple of liters of soda. (Interesting that the U.S. uses liters for soda, but we still purchase gallons of milk... could it be that soda is a Canadian plot to weaken America's resolve to stand firm in the fight against globalization of the godless metric system?)
We had a two room suite with Ryan and his kids and Rusty and Craig had another one for them and their kids so we did our own thing that night. Our kids watched a PPV movie "Night at the Museum" then collapsed in bed.
At 4:30 am I was awakened by Owen jumping up a down yelling, "We go train now, we go train now?!!" I was still exhausted and prayed my most fervent prayer that I would get him back to sleep. He fell back asleep after waking Ansel and Jonas and instigating an Indian Leg Wrestling tournament between them as they were sleeping side-by-side on the floor. we got up about 7:30 and went for breakfast and swam in the morning before checking out and heading to OMSI.
The boys liked OMSI, except the movie about saving the muddy water swamps around New Orleans. Jonas thought it was boring, except for the part about the hurricane that came in and destroyed all the people's houses and cars and boats. (He is referring to the destruction of hurricane Katrina that was shown in the movie.) I tried to teach him about the need for conservation and the effect of pollution and industry, but environmentalism is not his strong suit right now. Maybe if there was a superhero with a light saber that went around saving the world from heartless corporate polluters and industry...
We got home late last night. Immediately upon detraining, Jonas threw all of the junkfood that he had consumed over the last two days on the train platform,... in front of everyone. I got some weird looks when I praised him and told him he was a "good boy." I was just glad he didn't throw up while still on the train or later my truck, or in his bed... all in all that was the best place I could imagine at the time.
The kids are glad to be home and we have some great memories of our trip. We will definitely do it again and I am already planning how to take all future trips via Amtrak. I'm going to leave the driving to them from now on.
Ryan, Craig, Rusty and I woke our kids up at 4:30 am to make the train. I took Ansel, Jonas, and Owen; Ryan took Ian and Jakob; Craig took Jake, Carson, and Luke; and Rusty took Ryan, Derrek, and Amelia (sorry if I misspelled any names). All told we had 10 boys and 1 girl all under the age of 9 and four fathers. The kids were totally excited as we planned on spending the night, going to the zoo, and to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).
When we arrived at the train station, people were pretty taken back by the large mass of children and the station master did a double take when he asked how many were in my party and I replied, "15, 11 kids, and four adults."
We boarded the train in complete darkness trying not to awaken the huddled masses of cross-continent travellers. I almost heard a symphony of groans as our kids kept boarding and walking down the aisles. Owen was especially excited and as he only has two volume levels - loud and ferociously loud, we basically woke up the entire traincar.
The lights came on in the car about 6:45 am and our kids had already consumed most of the over 2 metric tons of junk food that we had brought for them. Luckily the train snack bar opened and we could purchase more or we would have most definitely had a mutiny on our hands. We split our time between the rear car - where our seats were - and the observation car at the front of the train immediately behind the engine. I was surprised by how quickly Owen could disappear and I almost thought he had detrained in Wishram when I walked the entire length of the train without finding him. I finally found him "hiding" from me under a bag in the back. He proved to be quite adept at diverting my attention to something else and then disappearing quickly throughout the entire trip.
The most popular thing was the Ritchie's DVD players and the Bagley Nintendo DS game systems. It was nice more than once to see my kids huddled around this little game system watching someone furiously play BBall or Mario Bros. I did not have to worry about them exploring through the sleeper cars or begging for money for the snack bar of the multiply tatooed and body-pierced passengers. Ansel directly and loudly announced loud enough for most of the passengers that were not completely deaf that a passenger next to us had, "Alot of earrings and things in his lips and nose." Score one for teaching your children to be observant and honest.
When we got off the train in Portland we had little clear recollection of where our hotel was. I did not bring the address or phone number so we just wandered in the general direction of where we thought the hotel should be. Finally, I called and got the address, the clerk told me that it was just three blocks away from where we were. It ended up being about eight blocks further and I began to realize that city-folk have a different sense of distance than us country-folk. It was a funny site seeing 11 small children and four fathers pulling luggage and hefting backpacks through downtown Portland. We were mostly worried about one of the kids running out ahead and getting hit by a car or truck as the kids seemed to be completely oblivious to the speeding traffic all around them on the city streets. Each of us agreed that it would be at least somewhat awkward explaining to our wives how it was that one or more of the children had been lost, killed, injured, maimed, or kidnapped. I think that unpleasant picture was in each of our minds as we cooperated in herding the kids from point A to point B throughout the weekend.
We were able to check in early and take a potty break and drop off the luggage before taking the light rail to the zoo. The light rail enters a tunnel in the hill that the zoo is on and you get out in the subway portion and then take an elevator 450 feet up to the top of the hill where the zoo is. We dutifully purchased unlimited train passes for each of the adults and the 11 children before realizing that the zoo train stop was within the "free ride zone." I hope those native Portlanders appreciate the subsidizing effect of tourists like us that cannot figure out the train schedules and needlessly purchase tickets at $4 a piece. The train ticket stubs did give us 50 cents off at the zoo though as I guess Portlanders are gracious about confusing tourists out of their money at the light rail stations.
The zoo was a hit. We lost and found each of the kids and each other about every 5 minutes. We spent most of our time in line at the only lunch cafe open in the entire zoo. We spent about 45 minutes waiting for some microwaved hot dogs, sodas, cookies, greasy pizza, and chips. By the time we got the front of the line, we were so panicked about making sure that we had enough food that we each ordered four of everything they had just to make sure we had enough and did not have to go back for something else. We had a ton of overpriced, disgusting zoo food. Just to spite the zoo staff what we didn't eat we fed to whatever animals we could reach. Who would have thought the ring-tailed lemurs and ground hogs would have eaten pepperoni pizza so quickly?
After the zoo we jumped back on the light rail only to have it break down about halfway home. We waited for about 15 minutes before giving up and deciding to walk (a Portlandite told us it was only about three blocks) back to the hotel. It ended up being about 18 blocks and we were passed by the train about five minutes later. Again with the stares from people and trying to avoid sudden death of one of the children at every cross walk.
Back at the hotel we took the kids swimming, then they were ready to collapse. It was about 5:30 and I put Owen in his PJs and he fell asleep almost immediately. The kids had not yet consumed quite their body weight in pizza and soda so we ordered Pizza Hut and soda and the kids ate with abandon polishing off four large pizzas, cheese bread, and a couple of liters of soda. (Interesting that the U.S. uses liters for soda, but we still purchase gallons of milk... could it be that soda is a Canadian plot to weaken America's resolve to stand firm in the fight against globalization of the godless metric system?)
We had a two room suite with Ryan and his kids and Rusty and Craig had another one for them and their kids so we did our own thing that night. Our kids watched a PPV movie "Night at the Museum" then collapsed in bed.
At 4:30 am I was awakened by Owen jumping up a down yelling, "We go train now, we go train now?!!" I was still exhausted and prayed my most fervent prayer that I would get him back to sleep. He fell back asleep after waking Ansel and Jonas and instigating an Indian Leg Wrestling tournament between them as they were sleeping side-by-side on the floor. we got up about 7:30 and went for breakfast and swam in the morning before checking out and heading to OMSI.
The boys liked OMSI, except the movie about saving the muddy water swamps around New Orleans. Jonas thought it was boring, except for the part about the hurricane that came in and destroyed all the people's houses and cars and boats. (He is referring to the destruction of hurricane Katrina that was shown in the movie.) I tried to teach him about the need for conservation and the effect of pollution and industry, but environmentalism is not his strong suit right now. Maybe if there was a superhero with a light saber that went around saving the world from heartless corporate polluters and industry...
We got home late last night. Immediately upon detraining, Jonas threw all of the junkfood that he had consumed over the last two days on the train platform,... in front of everyone. I got some weird looks when I praised him and told him he was a "good boy." I was just glad he didn't throw up while still on the train or later my truck, or in his bed... all in all that was the best place I could imagine at the time.
The kids are glad to be home and we have some great memories of our trip. We will definitely do it again and I am already planning how to take all future trips via Amtrak. I'm going to leave the driving to them from now on.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Today is the greatest...
Okay, today's theme is Mexican (Hispanic, Latino, whatever) Flan. After sampling my first real Flan at the office today I decided to try my luck at one of our southern neighbors more delectable treats. This was inspired by one of my legal assistant's bringing in a big plate yesterday for everyone to share. The whole staff was oohing and ahhing and I thought to myself, "hey, I bet I could make Flan. It doesn't look that hard to me. Probably just some egg, cream, and sugar. Piece of cake!"
So tonight about 9:00 after the kids were in bed I decided to see if I could find a good Flan recipe. Admittedly I don't know what criteria one would employ in determining the difference between a good and a bad Flan recipe. I turn, like any other red-blooded member of generation whatever generation I am, to Google.com. I type in "flan recipes" and choose the "I feel lucky button," certain that the first website to pop up will contain a good Flan recipe. The recipe pops up and I begin to run down the list of ingredients: 10-12 eggs, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 can evaporated milk, cinnamon, and vanilla. I look to the refrigerator and find that I only have three eggs to work with. My choice is to either split the recipe 25% or find a less egg-intensive Flan recipe. Finally, I find a recipe that calls for one egg and five egg yolks. I estimate that three eggs contains roughly the same volume as one egg and five egg yolks and so I decide to use that recipe substituting my three whole eggs for the recommended egg and yolk concoction proposed by the recipe. Aside: It is a constant point of contention between my wife and I as to whether recipes need to be followed to the letter, or whether their instructions are merely suggestions. I typically employ the latter of the two philosophies and thus my successes and failures in cooking are spotty at best. (The one thing I have learned, however, is to always cook chicken and other poultry according to the directions. My prior experiments in cooking chicken until it was "about done" or "probably done" were all dismal failures with uncomfortable consequences.)
At any rate, I had solved my little egg shortage issue and moved on to determine the status of our cache of sweetened and evaporated milks. I found sweetened, but could not find any evaporated milk. Admittedly evaporated milk is not something that we typically store between our constantly rotating boxes of mac and cheese and Tootie Frooties; I thought I might get lucky.
After tearing into each of our pantry cupboard and finding no evaporated milk, I decided to determine whether there was a good substitute for evaporated milk on the Internet. I locate a couple of promising options each with instructions more complicated than those for my original recipe of Flan. After estimating the time it would take to attempt to create an evaporated milk substitute and comparing it with the time it would take to drive the 2 miles to Albertson's for a sure fire purchase of ready to use evaporated milk, I intelligently determined to make my own evaporated milk substitute problem was I only had skim milk and the recipe indicated that only whole or 2% milk would work. At first I thought maybe I could substitute skim milk for whole milk in my evaporated milk substitute recipe and then I actually thought I would drive to the closer than Albertson's by 1/2 block mini mart to get some whole milk for my evaporated milk substitute recipe. Finally, I decided to just go and get some evaporated milk at Albertson's
Now if you are like me you can never walk into an Albertson's without checking out some of the day-old bakery items prominently displayed at the front entrance with enticing "Only 99 cents" and "Fresh yesterday" stickers on them tempting the risk-taking, deal-finding part of each of us. I determined that I could probably only consume one dozen day-old donuts even though they were only $1.99 and selected one of the more assorted dozens complete with a cruller and maple bar. Then I purchased enough evaporated milk for my Flan and could not pass up the two 24-pack Pepsi for $4.99.
I made it home in time for my wife to hand our new baby to me and inform me that I needed to be a little more helpful in the childcare department. Now I am living the Flan dream baby. Kid in one hand, Flan ingredients burning a whole in my other hand.
The recipe instructs me to "caramelize sugar by heating it in a saucepan to a nice dark brown." I place the suggested amount of sugar (plus a little extra for good measure) into a saucepan and turn on the heat. First the sugar clumps together into small stones, then it actually melts, and finally it begins to produce copious amounts of acrid smoke as it turns something akin to a "nice dark brown" color. I wonder to myself whether I need to keep it on the heat and "cook through" this acrid smoke phase and into the sweet caramelized phase as my fears of a smoke detector going off build and build. Finally, I determine that I have likely overcooked the sugar and remove it from the heat and use cold water to cool the mixture and chip it out of my saucepan.
Feeling that I should not let a little sugar mishap dampen my Flan enthusiasm, I through myself a fresh 1/2 cup of sugar into my newly cleaned saucepan and use a lower heat to bring the sugar to a nice golden brown thick bubbly texture. Just as the sweet aroma hits my nostrils I instinctively put my left index finger into the sugary, bubbling nectar for a little taste. Now I don't know whether the average person knows this, but apparently it takes quite a few Joules of heat to actually liquefy and caramelize sugar. I don't know exactly how hot the mixture was, but let's just say I have a nice second degree Flan souvenir on the tip of my left index finger.
I grab an ice cube, pull the now solid candy bit of caramelized sugar off of the tip of my finger along with some skin and pour the liquid into to the bottom of my authentic Flan pan. (read: glass pie plate) I then mix the other ingredients without incident substituting and tweaking the recipe as I will according to what I think will work for the best final Flan product. (You know what they say about jazz musicians and just being able to improvise and jam on the spot while creating beautiful, soulful music. Just think of me as the jazz musician of Flan cooking.) I pour the soupy mixture onto the caramelized sugar mixture and then read the rest of the directions.
Apparently, it is good to read recipes all the way through at least once before beginning any cooking project. At least, that is what other non-jazz musician Flan cookers would have to do. At any rate, I now learn that this pie plate needs to be placed in another oven safe container filled with water and placed into a pre-heated 350 degree oven. The potential problem I see is that I do not have a container large enough to fit the Flan filled pie plate. I struggle with the reasoning behind cooking Flan in a container that is in a container filled with water. Is this a suggestion? Is this something that can be left out? Can't I just stick a pan of water on the stove and boil it while the Flan cooks in the oven? I decide to construct a water container out of foil, place my Flan container into it and onto a cookie sheet and then place it into my now 350 degree oven, cook for 45 minutes, let sit while I typed this and here is the finished product.
So tonight about 9:00 after the kids were in bed I decided to see if I could find a good Flan recipe. Admittedly I don't know what criteria one would employ in determining the difference between a good and a bad Flan recipe. I turn, like any other red-blooded member of generation whatever generation I am, to Google.com. I type in "flan recipes" and choose the "I feel lucky button," certain that the first website to pop up will contain a good Flan recipe. The recipe pops up and I begin to run down the list of ingredients: 10-12 eggs, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 can evaporated milk, cinnamon, and vanilla. I look to the refrigerator and find that I only have three eggs to work with. My choice is to either split the recipe 25% or find a less egg-intensive Flan recipe. Finally, I find a recipe that calls for one egg and five egg yolks. I estimate that three eggs contains roughly the same volume as one egg and five egg yolks and so I decide to use that recipe substituting my three whole eggs for the recommended egg and yolk concoction proposed by the recipe. Aside: It is a constant point of contention between my wife and I as to whether recipes need to be followed to the letter, or whether their instructions are merely suggestions. I typically employ the latter of the two philosophies and thus my successes and failures in cooking are spotty at best. (The one thing I have learned, however, is to always cook chicken and other poultry according to the directions. My prior experiments in cooking chicken until it was "about done" or "probably done" were all dismal failures with uncomfortable consequences.)
At any rate, I had solved my little egg shortage issue and moved on to determine the status of our cache of sweetened and evaporated milks. I found sweetened, but could not find any evaporated milk. Admittedly evaporated milk is not something that we typically store between our constantly rotating boxes of mac and cheese and Tootie Frooties; I thought I might get lucky.
After tearing into each of our pantry cupboard and finding no evaporated milk, I decided to determine whether there was a good substitute for evaporated milk on the Internet. I locate a couple of promising options each with instructions more complicated than those for my original recipe of Flan. After estimating the time it would take to attempt to create an evaporated milk substitute and comparing it with the time it would take to drive the 2 miles to Albertson's for a sure fire purchase of ready to use evaporated milk, I intelligently determined to make my own evaporated milk substitute problem was I only had skim milk and the recipe indicated that only whole or 2% milk would work. At first I thought maybe I could substitute skim milk for whole milk in my evaporated milk substitute recipe and then I actually thought I would drive to the closer than Albertson's by 1/2 block mini mart to get some whole milk for my evaporated milk substitute recipe. Finally, I decided to just go and get some evaporated milk at Albertson's
Now if you are like me you can never walk into an Albertson's without checking out some of the day-old bakery items prominently displayed at the front entrance with enticing "Only 99 cents" and "Fresh yesterday" stickers on them tempting the risk-taking, deal-finding part of each of us. I determined that I could probably only consume one dozen day-old donuts even though they were only $1.99 and selected one of the more assorted dozens complete with a cruller and maple bar. Then I purchased enough evaporated milk for my Flan and could not pass up the two 24-pack Pepsi for $4.99.
I made it home in time for my wife to hand our new baby to me and inform me that I needed to be a little more helpful in the childcare department. Now I am living the Flan dream baby. Kid in one hand, Flan ingredients burning a whole in my other hand.
The recipe instructs me to "caramelize sugar by heating it in a saucepan to a nice dark brown." I place the suggested amount of sugar (plus a little extra for good measure) into a saucepan and turn on the heat. First the sugar clumps together into small stones, then it actually melts, and finally it begins to produce copious amounts of acrid smoke as it turns something akin to a "nice dark brown" color. I wonder to myself whether I need to keep it on the heat and "cook through" this acrid smoke phase and into the sweet caramelized phase as my fears of a smoke detector going off build and build. Finally, I determine that I have likely overcooked the sugar and remove it from the heat and use cold water to cool the mixture and chip it out of my saucepan.
Feeling that I should not let a little sugar mishap dampen my Flan enthusiasm, I through myself a fresh 1/2 cup of sugar into my newly cleaned saucepan and use a lower heat to bring the sugar to a nice golden brown thick bubbly texture. Just as the sweet aroma hits my nostrils I instinctively put my left index finger into the sugary, bubbling nectar for a little taste. Now I don't know whether the average person knows this, but apparently it takes quite a few Joules of heat to actually liquefy and caramelize sugar. I don't know exactly how hot the mixture was, but let's just say I have a nice second degree Flan souvenir on the tip of my left index finger.
I grab an ice cube, pull the now solid candy bit of caramelized sugar off of the tip of my finger along with some skin and pour the liquid into to the bottom of my authentic Flan pan. (read: glass pie plate) I then mix the other ingredients without incident substituting and tweaking the recipe as I will according to what I think will work for the best final Flan product. (You know what they say about jazz musicians and just being able to improvise and jam on the spot while creating beautiful, soulful music. Just think of me as the jazz musician of Flan cooking.) I pour the soupy mixture onto the caramelized sugar mixture and then read the rest of the directions.
Apparently, it is good to read recipes all the way through at least once before beginning any cooking project. At least, that is what other non-jazz musician Flan cookers would have to do. At any rate, I now learn that this pie plate needs to be placed in another oven safe container filled with water and placed into a pre-heated 350 degree oven. The potential problem I see is that I do not have a container large enough to fit the Flan filled pie plate. I struggle with the reasoning behind cooking Flan in a container that is in a container filled with water. Is this a suggestion? Is this something that can be left out? Can't I just stick a pan of water on the stove and boil it while the Flan cooks in the oven? I decide to construct a water container out of foil, place my Flan container into it and onto a cookie sheet and then place it into my now 350 degree oven, cook for 45 minutes, let sit while I typed this and here is the finished product.
It looks pretty darn good, smells even better, and I can't wait to see the faces of my staff when Christopher the Chinese-speaking, Flan-cooking Gringo lays down this Flan-cooking gauntlet. Is that some form of jazz I hear playing in the background?
Sunday, November 05, 2006
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