Baking Disasters

Just a few days after I proudly wrote a post about my baking adventures and how skilled and adept I was getting at baking, I had the ultimate baking failure on Thursday night. At work there is a food club and every week two people in the club bring in treats for everyone else. The schedule rotates every Friday and we all take turns bringing treats in. We usually gather in the mornings or afternoons, depending on the treats, and we usually spend about half an hour to an hour just eating and visiting with one another.

This week was my week to bring in treats and my partner and I decided to bring in breakfast treats. I had planned to "wow" everyone with my banana chocolate chip muffins, and he was going to bring in coffee, orange juice, and a fruit salad. I bought a large bunch of bananas the week before, and I hoped that the bananas would be ripe enough by the end of the week to make the muffins. Whenever you make banana muffins or banana bread, the bananas need to be really ripe. Actually they need to be beyond ripe and it's best when the skin is already completely black. The extra-ripe bananas make the bread or muffins taste better for whatever reason. Usually when I buy bananas just for eating, they are usually over-ripe by the end of the week. But for whatever reason, the bunch of bananas that I bought were still very yellow and under-ripe by the end of the middle of the week. The bananas at that stage, would have been great in cereal or just for a snack, but they weren't at the right stage for baking.

I read online that if you want your bananas to ripen faster, you can put them in a brown paper bag with an apple. When you close the paper bag, the apple gives off a gas that makes the bananas ripen faster. So on Wednesday I tried that trick and absolutely nothing happened. The bananas weren't any more ripe than when I put them in the bag.

So, because my bananas weren't ready for baking, I had to come up with a new plan. I decided that I could make blueberry muffins instead. I have never made blueberry muffins before, but I found a recipe that looked easy and you could use frozen blueberries instead of fresh ones. I went shopping on Thursday after work to buy the ingredients I needed. I decided to buy extra ingredients, just in case I screwed up and needed to make an extra batch. I guess I had a psychic moment.

Because there are 24 people in our food club, I had to make at least three batches of muffins. When I made the first batch, I thought I made everything according to the directions. The recipe said that the batter would be a bit lumpy, and my batter didn't seem lumpy at all. The batter was a bit on the watery side, but how would I know what it was supposed to really look and feel like when I haven't made it before. I put it in the oven and when I kept checking on them, they didn't look so great. They looked dark brown (not golden brown) and they didn't rise and puff up like they should have (they looked like hockey pucks). Even though this was my first time making them with a new recipe, I had a feeling that something was wrong.

I pulled them out when they were ready and set them aside and started to make the second batch. As I made the new batch, the batter immediately felt different. The batter was much thicker, a bit doughier, and, yes, lumpy. It was at that moment when I realized that I might have totally screwed up the first batch. I put the second batch of muffins in the oven and when I checked on them, they looked like real muffins. They were light, golden brown, and they were puffed up and had the rounded tops that muffins are supposed to have.

So, what happened? What happened is that I'm a giant moron and screwed up the measurements of the first batch. The recipe calls for 2 cups of flour, and even though I do have a 1 cup measuring scoop, it wouldn't fit in the flour bag. So, instead, I used my 1/2 measuring cup and told myself that I would just double the scoops I needed. Well apparently I can't count or I just lost count, because I added only half the amount of flour that I needed. In my defense, however, I was also trying to double the recipe for the first batch, so I needed a total of 8 scoops of flour. Apparently I have a difficult time counting to 8.

In spite of feeling like a giant moron and failure for a few hours, the next batches of muffins I made turned out OK. They tasted good to me, and when I took them to work my co-workers seemed to like them. Maybe they were just being nice, but at least no one choked on them or spit them out. So maybe with a little more practice, I will soon be able to perfect blueberry muffins.

Apartment Living

Well, as I might have mentioned in past posts, when you live in an apartment, you're bound to experience occasional noise from your neighbors. In the past, I've listened to my upstairs neighbors get into arguments about their child's haircut. And I've also listened to their children run and jump above me. Those neighbors moved out last month, and things have been really quiet since...until a few nights ago...

Part of my apartment shares a wall with the townhouse next to me. Unfortunately my bedroom and their living room share the wall. On Wednesday night I went to bed at my usual time a little after 10:30. I was all settled in and ready to fall asleep when I started to hear noises through the wall. It wasn't the TV or radio or just loud talking, but it was the sound of really loud and noisy sex. Oh my God! The girl was especially loud and I unfortunately had to listen to every moan, scream, and word she said. The worst part of it—but I guess the best part for them—was that it went on forever. Over an hour and three orgasms later they finally got to the "big one" that ended with the girl either laughing or crying (I couldn't quite tell) and it finally ended with a "wahoo" screamed by the girl. Yes, she really did yell "wahoo" as if she were watching a Nuggets game or something. Listening to the whole thing was gross, horrifying, and amusing all at the same time. But on the bright side, in the process I learned that my neighbor's name is David...

Demands

Last night's elections results are more or less final with the Democrats retaining control of the Senate and the Republicans taking control of the House. Just with the very fact that Republicans took control of the House, Republicans are immediately claiming that this is a "referendum" and that the voters are "sending a message" that they disagree with the "Obama/Pelosi agenda" and the pace of change.

It's no surprise that conservatives have had high expectations and have been extremely demanding to turn the country around. After all, it should be fairly easy to turn around an economic recession and set the country on the right path, right? And, therefore, the President is a failure for not meeting every goal, right? So now that conservatives are in charge, all the country's problems will be solved more quickly and easily. So, because that is the case, I've come up with a list of demands (in no particular order) that I would like the new Republican congress to meet.

1. Turn the deficit into a surplus
2. Reduce unemployment to 0%
3. End all wars and bring peace to the world
4. Make sure no home is foreclosed
5. Make sure no one defaults on his/her debt
6. Reduce childhood obesity by 75%
7. Reduce adult obesity by 50% (adults are dumber and lazier while children are still malleable and easier to influence, therefore the lower percentage number for adults)
8. Explore (with more enthusiasm) alternative energy sources such as wind and solar
9. Encourage more research into potentially curable diseases such as Alzheimer's, MS, Parkinson, etc.
10. Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell
11. Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and federally recognize same-sex marriage (can't blame me for trying)
12. Pass a law that guarantees everyone will have health insurance (oh wait...)
13. Fill the hole at Ground Zero with something, anything. (Seriously, the ancient Greeks built the Parthenon in 9 years, why can't we build something.)
14. Bring manufacturing jobs back to the country. (Hey, how about building solar panels and wind turbines or cleaner cars?)
15. Do something to improve education in this country so that we're not lagging behind other countries in the world.
16. Ban offshore oil drilling
17. Repair the nation's failing infrastructure
18. Provide training programs to people who will lose their jobs as we move away from oil dependence so that they will have new skills that can be applied in new fields

And I want the Republican led congress to make sure all of these demands are met within 22 months and they can't spend any money to make these things happen. If they spend money and don't achieve these things right away, they will be considered failures and there might be another "referendum" in the next election cycle. Now, get to work people...

This is just a partial list of my demands, and I'll continue to add to it as I think of things. Stay tuned...