Well, got a hankering for buttermilk biscuits and looked up a recipe (or several) I could alter so that it was gluten free (GF).

The reason: Erin has been hankering KFC biscuits of late and I will go and buy them when she wants them and when KFC is open. I’m jealous.

So, I found a recipe and decided to substitute a GF All Purpose flour for the all purpose flour the recipe called for. I went to the store, bought the ingredients and then had to go back to the store a couple of times in order to get the rest of the ingredients I needed because I discovered we didn’t have enough things.

On the plus side, the dough was workable… Erin and I discovered (mostly Erin) that GF doughs were often sticky and more of a batter than a dough. The outcome is (really, really) messy.

Anyway, worked the biscuits, bought the ingredients, and baked them. They did not turn out. I will, probably, need to look at a variety of recipes to include GF ones to see what I can do the next time to improve the outcome.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Okay. Not a lot. Friday night Erin and I drove to Salt Lake so Erin could get her hair cut by Kelly. Kelly is a friend of mine that I met when doing Crimes of the Heart, which makes for a fun time when we go for a visit… mostly when Erin is getting her hair cut and done. This time, she was getting color added or removed or highlighted or something…. I actually spent the fist few minutes playing Guitar Hero and then did some homework that I didn’t have to do, but allowed my group in eLang to get information we needed to make an educated determination about some modern translations of Beowulf. Wicked fun, I am sure.

After that we went home.

Saturday is exactly what Saturday always is… we get up, putter around the house, clean a bit, run errands, avoid people, and then end up at home together still avoiding people. Sure. It would be cool if people wanted to hang with us… and sometimes we go out of our way to spend time with other people.

There was a bit, earlier in the week, about us going on a road trip, leaving Friday, coming back Sunday… but that didn’t pan out. Erin is still feeling ill most days (we are at, about, week 15). As a result, and because of other things, we decided that a long trip (eight hours one way) was not conducive to Erin‘s current state as a pregnant mom-to-be.

On Saturday we rented three movies, all relatively new releases. First was Dan in Real Life. This was an interesting movie. It stars Steve Carrel and has him as an advice columnist of sorts, a widower, and father of three girls, two of whom are teens. The film doesn’t offer more information than is necessary to allow the story to move forward. I am not, exactly, a fan of Steve Carrel, though people like to talk about his TV show The Office. His commedies are… stupid. And yet, this movie comes across more as a drama than a comedy – a dramedy maybe.

Anyway, it was enjoyable… very, very enjoyable.

Yesterday (Sunday) we watched Enchanted a Disney movie. At the time this movie was in theaters, people were raving about it. At different times, I heard people tell me that this was the best movie, coming out of Disney, they’d seen in a while. And then I watched the movie. I didn’t like it – I liked the ending, though… kind of surprised we made it that far.

The point, though, is that the movie starts and tries to shove an ENTIRE Disney animated movie into something like ten minutes. And then Amy Adams, Gisselle, gets pushed down a well, enters the real world, and begins to find that Happily Ever After doesn’t always happen. The movie was… uncomfortable; the animals (cartoon) were actually rather abusive, closer to the Simpson’s internal cartoon series Itchy and Scratchy than a Disney movie. At one point I think I looked at Erin and said, “If this doesn’t get better soon I am going to turn it off.” By the time we were done, we were done with the movie. This movie just didn’t come off as great as everyone thought it would and caused me to want to watch The American President for a blurb toward the end of the movie where the president is telling one of his staff members why people drink sand when they can find water in the desert:

People drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.

The movie actually turns the traditional fairy-tale story on its head, with the girl being the rescuer and the guy needing rescuing (in the end), it removes the notion that you can love someone immediately, and it promotes different ideals, such as dating and actually finding out if there is something in common between you and your true love.

Even with the on its head nature of the movie, it wasn’t very good and I think people are so desperate for Disney to return to the kinds of movies that made it a household name that they are willing to accept the 2D animation combined with live action and CG (chipmunk) and to accept animals hitting each other, knocking each other around, and more (in the beginning of the movie)…. This is sand. The movie is sand and not water. I think it’s pretty sad.

Finally, we also watching In the Land of Women. This movie was… odd. Basically, a man (26) who writes adult oriented movies breaks up with is girlfriend, decides to visit his grandmother (who claims she is dying) in Minnesota (north-mid-west), meets a neighbor whose husband is cheating on her, and spends time with her 17 year old daughter, and ends up having a life changing experience all the while talking about John Hughes films and realizing what is right in front of their faces.

This movie had a lot of potential and felt more biopic and poorly directed than anything else. The actors were all top-notch, and yet the acting came across as… BAD. We enjoyed the movie, sort of. And in the end, you know… I don’t have a lot to say about this except it wasn’t really worth watching and certainly isn’t something worth buying. Sometimes, I just wonder how a movie gets greenlit, financed, actors hired, time spent, and then distributed. Sometimes I sit there and think, “I can TOTALLY do better than that.”

And yet, school, work, and other things get in the way pretty constantly.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

I updated IOTW… the entry is on the nature of the crime procedural. Go, see, read, enjoy.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Yesterday, after having signed up for, and playing with (for a few days), StumbleUpon.com, a site that has a lot of different recipes on it. As I was browsing through the site (briefly) before hitting the button to move on to the next site, I saw a picture of Sweet and Sour Pork. I was immediately intrigued. After work, I spoke to Erin, briefly, about making it (mostly gauging her level of interest), and then raced off to the store to buy the needed items.

If you are interested you can find the recipe here.

Upon returning home I alighted to the kitchen, grabbing my computer, and started to put together the bits and pieces that go into making Sweet and Sour Pork.

At the outset, I didn’t have any idea how long this would take and had some materials that once opened had to be cooked. So, they got cooked along with the regular portions. Amazingly enough there was enough sauce and marinade and sweet and sour for the portions of meat that I cooked.

What caught me (a little) off guard was the distinct lack of a meat tenderizer that we don’t have. So, I took the rolling pin that we have and beat the tar out of the tenderloin on top of a cutting board. I would not suggest this as having to clean the rolling pin was a pain in the **woo-hoo**. However, the pork tenderloin was sufficiently tenderized and then dumped into a ziplock bag with the marinade which was all shoved into the refrigerator for a bit of time.

The thing about most American-Asian foods is the need for Teriyaki sauce… one of the key ingredients of Teriyaki sauce is wheat and so, I have to be careful before buying this. Fortunately, Erin found some a while back and I didn’t have to worry about that.

One of the other elements of American-Asian cooking is Sesame Oil… again, Erin had purchased some for a dinner she had planned for us, probably stir-fry, but (before going to the store) we didn’t have a lot left. By the time I was done with the first portion of the marinade, I was out of Sesame Oil (nasty taste on its own if you care to know), but fortunately bought some more at the store.

Anyway, there were a lot of little bits that all had to come together to make the meal work. For example, you serve this with rice. I wasn’t interested in fried rice, though I do know how to cook that; and had to start a pot of white rice (the remnants sitting the refrigerator so I can quickly have Sweet and Sour Pork quickly in the next day or so), I had to have the sweet and sour sauce simmering while I worked the pork; and I had to adapt the simple recipe for breading from the wheat based ingredients to a gluten-free friendly recipe.

Making the breading gluten-free I decided to go with Bob’s Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour… the other half was corn starch (which actually surprised me).

Once the pork was done marinating, I pulled it from the fridge and dumped the contents into the breading and then pulled a wooden (actually bamboo, don’t tell) spoon and pushed and pulled and mixed and everything through the flour to make sure everything was sufficiently covered.

While I was covering the pork with flour I had four cups of oil heating up in our wok waiting for me to get done. At first, I thought I could cook the whole bowl of pork at once, but then discovered that wasn’t possible. In the cooking phase, I found it interesting that you cook the pork pieces for three minutes, put them on paper towels, let them drain (and the oil heat up again) and then put them back into the oil for two more minutes. In this instance, I cooked half, let it drain, cooked the other half, checked the sweet and sour sauce, put the first half back in, dumped (and stirred) the first half into the sweet and sour sauce; and then did the same with the second half.

When the pork was all in the sweet and sour sauce I started the arduous process of cleaning the kitchen. Honestly, I don’t think there was a mixing bowl unused, a wooden (bamboo) spoon, measuring cup, measuring spoon, and etc. not used. The pile of dishes was actually on the verge of excessive.

I stopped that process as the rice finished cooking, asked Erin if she wanted some – RIGHT NOW – and then filled a plate with rice and sweet and sour pork and sat down to eat, far too quickly.

I think the process took me about an hour and a half to two hours. Cleaning took me between an hour and an hour and a half. When all was said and done I was done with the day. Granted, the cooking was good; I appreciated the fact that I found a recipe that was good and filling and that Erin liked (she commented that I experiment with foods and flavors too much and was surprised that this one came out well). In the end, I discovered I really enjoyed the process and, if for no other reason, signing up to a new website that will probably spam me way to much was totally worth it.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

I updated IOTW with my review on Neil Gaiman‘s Stardust. You should go over and check it out.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly