Posted by barb on Mar 1, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts This time around I decided to try Bitch, PhD’s suggestion of using colored sugars or rainbow sprinkles anchored in the horses with butter. (I had thought about using colored sugar, etc., but couldn’t figure out how to make it stay in the horses – I might be able to do complex integrals, but anchoring sugar in a cake pan with butter is just too hard to figure out on my own.)
I tried lots of different sprinkles to see what would turn out best – several colors of sugar, rainbow jimmies, rainbow nonpareils, rainbow sequins. After loading up the horses, I put the pan in the freezer for a few minutes while mixing up the batter. This kept the sprinkles in place when I put the batter in the pan.
I’m not sure it turned out better than the colored batter attempt:
The jimmies, nonopareils, and sequins all ended up melting into the cake, though they did still keep their colors basically in the shape of their respective horses. The sugars seemed to slop all over, despite my best efforts to clean up the pan before adding the batter. The purple actually looks pretty good, and the blue and purple show up much better than the pink and green. Hmm…I didn’t have any of the crystal-type decorative sugars…I wonder if those would have worked better. I have one other idea to try, too; though, I’m beginning to think I might be stuck frosing the horses after baking.
Tags: baking
Posted by barb on Mar 1, 2006 in
Random Thoughts I’ve probably mentioned that I’m a part-time contractor and a part-time grad student. The excitement of being a contractor is that every 5 years or so the contract is put up for bid, and I have the choice of either working in my current position for the winning company or finding a new job. To add to this excitement, I’m a contractor for the government, which means that that my job is hinged on the national budget and how it’s allocated to my particular corner of the world.
But why am I bringing up these specific joys of my job right now? Because both of them are currently in play, and I’m not sure first of all whether I’ll even have a job in a couple months, and secondly, if I do have a job, what company I’ll be working for.
My project got hit very hard in the budget submitted to congress a few weeks ago, and it’s going to be a struggle for it to keep above water. (Though, the man in charge of this particular project said that we could either look it as terrible or “not as bad as it could have been”. In other words, the project was not zeroed-out in the budget, so it might still be possible to recover if next year the budget for this project grows.) Translation: they have already made a few cuts, and my position is not exactly critical to the mission. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks.
On the other side of things, we had a meeting with our new overlords this morning, and I need to get my resume in order so that I can “apply” for my position (which might not exist soon). Sigh. I’ve got to finish my PhD so that I can figure out what it is that I really want to do when I grow up.
Tags: suckitude, work
Posted by barb on Feb 26, 2006 in
Random Thoughts Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let the supply of Gas-X with simethicone in the house run out. Ever.
Especially when my loving, caring husband is going to be out of town for a week and I’m going to be stupid and have spicy Chinese food.
Tags: health, suckitude
Posted by barb on Feb 21, 2006 in
Random Thoughts I know things have been light around here – I took most of January off, and since then have had only light, fluffy posts. I must confess that I’m tired. There’s been some “drama” at work the last couple weeks, and I’m struggling with apathy in my chosen profession, so when I get home I’m tired, and the last thing I want to do is think about what to post on my blog. Instead, I’ve been doing Sudoku, scrapbooking, and vegging in front of the TV. I’m not necessarily proud of this, but it’s what I need to do to keep going right now. I don’t know when things will pick up, but bear with me if you can.
Tags: admin
Posted by barb on Feb 20, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts I tried baking with my carousel bundt pan again – this time I didn’t make the mistake of topping it with powdered sugar, and I think it turned out better than last time. Instead, this time around, I took out some of the batter before filling the pan, colored it, and then put the colored batter into the horses. Then I filled the pan with the uncolored batter, and baked it. I think the horses came out a bit better, though the colored bits slopped out of the horses.
I have one other idea to try, and I might do that next weekend. Any other suggestions out there?
Tags: baking
Posted by barb on Feb 20, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts Last weekend:
This weekend:
Posted by barb on Feb 8, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts I took a quick trip to Minnesota last weekend, where my Dad gave me a cold, so I’ve been in my jammies for the last two days. The room has finally stopped spinning enough for me to write up a quick post.
I flew out on Thursday, and got to have dinner with Sweetie and her sweetie, Jeff (too many Jeffs!). Poor Jeff was in for a grilling, but he came through with flying colors. (My first question was what makes him good enough for my best friend, and his response was that he probably isn’t good enough – good answer! Not that he’s a not a good man, but no one is good enough for my Sweetie.) After dinner, Sweetie and I had some “girl time”, but I’m not at liberty to divulge anything that we talked about (like Las Vegas, what happens during girl time stays in girl time!).
The above pictures are my mom’s cats. Alexis (on the left) was actually originally my cat, but Mom got attached, and wouldn’t let me take her with me (actually, I couldn’t take her with me when I first moved out, but later, when I could, Mom wouldn’t let me). Allie has been a part of my life for 17 years, and I probably won’t see her again. But it was really good to see her on this trip – she’s gotten really thin, and has kidney disease, but perked up while I was there. I’m not sure if that’s because I was there, or because of the fluid treatments that my Mom has been giving her (probably the latter), but I’m glad I got to say good bye.
Callie, on the other hand, is a bit of a terror. Mom and Dad have a lot of antiques and collectables at their house, and many of them have had to be put away, because Callie likes to knock things off places she wants to sleep. She’s also a clutz. But she’s cute and fuzzy, so she does her job.
Read more…
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Jan 31, 2006 in
Random Thoughts Adjust the tongue on my sneakers before getting into the car. And for Goddess’ sake, failing that, adjust it before getting onto the Beltway; otherwise, I’ll have an unhealthy fixation on how much my foot hurts all 35 miles to work.
Tags: mental note
Posted by barb on Jan 29, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts One of my Christmas presents from my parents was this cool bundt pan in the shape of a carousel. Tonight was my first attempt at making a cake with the pan. I used a Death by chocolate bundt cake recipe from Recipe Source.
The cake turned out really well; however, I wanted to try and bring the carousel out more. My first thought was to sprinkle it with powdered sugar. As you can see in the picture, that was a big failure. The carousel animals were visible in the cake, but completely disappeared after I sprinkled the powdered sugar.
Next time? I’m not sure. I’d prefer not to have to frost the animals all individually, but it may come down to that. Any ideas out there?
Tags: baking
Posted by barb on Jan 23, 2006 in
Random Thoughts Drink a lot of water with the prozac in the morning. Otherwise, it seems to lodge somewhere, the capsule breaks apart, and I belch up prozac into my nose. This is not a pleasant experience.
Tags: health, mental note
