Typo of the week:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Quaker Maid Meats Inc. on Tuesday said it would voluntarily recall 94,400 pounds of frozen ground beef panties that may be contaminated with E. coli.
Television critic Walt Belcher brought in a loaf of Ice Cream Bread in to the newsroom today.
Walt’s a great cook, so I’m eager to try this simple recipe:
ICE CREAM BREAD
2 cups ice cream
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
Mix the ice cream with the flour until the flour is moist. Pour into a greased 4-by-8-inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.
Walt tried it with what he called “cheap Kash ‘n’ Karry ice cream.” His flavor: Peanut Butter Chocolate. Walt advises against using fat-free ice cream.
He says he’s keen to try some ice cream with nuts in it.
Last week, we asked readers in the Tribune’s Recipes Lost & Found column and also online here at TBO.com) to send us their favorite holiday recipes.
We’ve started to get some tasty examples.
Naomi Counts of Lake Placid sends along this delicious recipe:
WALDORF RED VELVET CAKE
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup red food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 1/2 cups flour (sift 3 times)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon vinegar
For the cake:
Cream shorteing and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat 1 minute. Put cocoa and food coloring in in cup to make paste. Add sortening and sugar over eggs and salt. Add vanilla. Add flour slowly. Alternate the milk and flour. Put vinegar and baking soda in a cup and mix. Put this in the rest of the mixture. (Don’t mix, just blend it in.)
Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees in two round cake pans.
For the frosting:
Cook 1 cup of milk and add it to 5 tablespoons of flour until think. Remove from heat and put in the refrigerator to cool. Beat 1 cup of butter, 1 cup of confectioners sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add flour mixture a little at a time.
I spend my weekends absorbing as much football as possible, so I’m bound to see some commercials along the way.
My favorite lately is for the new Cheese Nips chips.
Here’s the storyboard (at least the way I would write it):
ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Office hallway. Young, Souless Drone is seen through the windows of his corner, rectangular-box office wasting time behind a desk as the fluorescent lights burn off his vitamins. Co-workers pass his office in silence. Mechanical office sounds can be heard in the background. Office colors are sterile and muted, juxtaposed only by stark black, four-drawer office cabinets and dark office furniture dotting the landscape.
CLOSEUP - INTERIOR OF WINDOWED OFFICE: Souless Drone balances a pen on his upper lip, thinking no one sees him.
INTERIOR: Office hallway. “Cheesy” suit-wearing co-worker (actor from Geico ads) flirts with women who are quick-walking past him in an effort to appear busy and uninterested. Clearly he is a middle manager.
ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Office hallway. Cheesy Manager is seen through windows of Souless Young Drone’s corner office. You can hear Manager begin to address the Drone using inauthentic-sounding colloquialisms that are not age-appropriate.
MEDIUM ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Inside windowed office. POV: From behind Drone’s desk, shot over Drone’s shoulder. Cheesy Manager is facing drone.
DIALOGUE - Manager: “Whassup, my man?”
Souless Drone looks at manager with blank incredulity, does not speak.
CLOSEUP - INTERIOR OF WINDOWED OFFICE: Souless Drone notices something in the corner while he ignores Cheesy Manager’s meaningless verbal vomit.
CLOSEUP - INTERIOR OF WINDOWED OFFICE: POV of Drone, who sees a bag of New Bold Cheddar Cheese Nips on a chair in a corner behind Manager. Manager slowly walks backward, as if to take a seat. Drone says nothing, perhaps in a bid to see annoying Manager humiliate himself.
ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Office hallway. Cheesy Manager is seen through windows of Souless Young Drone’s corner office as he unwittingly sits on chair with Cheese Nips on the seat. A dusty mini-Hiroshima-sized implosion erupts. An intense-yet-muffled “WHOOF” is heard.
ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Office hallway. Cheesy Manager and Souless Young Drone disappear in a cloud of Nip fallout. Particles disperse with such force that some seep through the top of the corner office’s window frames.
MEDIUM ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Inside windowed office. POV: From behind Drone’s desk, shot over Drone’s shoulder. Manager is encrusted from head-to-toe with Nip dust. He looks, with a few stunned blinks, at Drone, who we can see from behind is covered in dust as well. They do not speak.
CLOSEUP - INTERIOR OF WINDOWED OFFICE: Souless Drone’s face appears stunned. The air is full of Nip residue. He blinks. His eyes appear not to focus on any object. His curly hair, pug nose and hollow, round eyes are Michael J. Pollard-esque. You know, if Michael J. Pollard had been covered in Cheese Nip powder.
CLOSEUP - INTERIOR OF WINDOWED OFFICE: Camera tilts up as Cheesy Manager rises from his chair. He notices a chip on his left sleeve that did not implode. He plucks it from its place near his elbow and places it like a communion wafer into his mouth. We hear an audible crunch.
MEDIUM ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Office hallway. Door to Drone’s office opens. Cheesy Manager steps out. He is covered in dust. The office windows are opaque with orangy Nip grit. Cheesy Manager sees a colleague across the room, points a finger and clicks his tongue as if to act like nothing happened.
DIALOGUE: Cheesy Manager - “Jimbooooo.”
MEDIUM ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Two-shot of Jimbo and unnamed office assistant. They they watch incredulously as Cheesy Manager strolls down the hallway. They utter no dialogue.
ESTABLISHING SHOT - INTERIOR: Office hallway. Cheesy Manager is seen walking away from Drone’s Nip-encrusted office. We cannot see Drone through the windows. A female co-worker walks toward Cheesy Manager. He flirts with her as if nothing is out of the ordinary.
DIALOGUE: Cheesy Manager (in a soft falstetto) - “Marrrrrcy.”
ANNOUNCER delivers Cheese Nips pitch and tag line: “Cheese Nips. When you love nips, it shows.”
END OF COMMERCIAL.
Dude, are you so lazy you can’t remember to just freeze the bottle every night?
Gizmodo, the gadget site, reminds us that fall is a perfect time to break out the homebrewing beer kit.
Their fave model: Mr. Beer.
Their reason:
“Mr. Beer is just about the easiest way to get a few gallons of good beer there is. Aside from going to the store, that is. Plus, you can make a theme song out of the name: “Mr. Beer, that’s my name. That name again is Mr. Beer!â€
The product’s tag line hooked us: “Playstation for grownups.”
We ran a story in May about home wine makers around Tampa Bay.
There are plenty of sources to get information on homemade beer and wine making:
Classes:
The Beer and WineMaker’s Pantry, 9200 66th St. N., Pinellas Park, offers a free class most Saturdays at noon (this week is a beermaking class, however). The pantry’s Internet site is www.beerandwinemaking.com.
Internet:
WineExpert.com , a manufacturer of premium wine kits, offers information in English and French.
Here are some other links for the brewtastically uninitiated to get started:
Cookbooks:
Check out “The Home Winemaker’s Companion, Secrets, Recipes, and Know-How for Making 115 Great-Tasting Wines,” by Gene Spaziani, past president of the American Wine Society (Storey Books, $18.95).
Beginners will like “Enjoy Home Winemaking,” by Robert and Eileen Frishman (Crosby and Baker Books, $1.99) Another is “Techniques and Home Winemaking,” by Daniel Pambianchi (Vehicule, $25).
An illuminating - if slightly snotty - interview by Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Magazine of former White House chef Ariel de Guzman was featured in Sunday’s edition.
An excerpt from the article:
I imagine you have fed many world leaders.
We ask them first if they are allergic to certain food. For one thing, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia - he won’t eat shellfish. He’s a constant visitor to the residence, and he is a very nice guy.
And when Bush was president and traveled overseas, did you ever worry that he would be poisoned?
No. Our guys will be in the kitchen, watching the preparation. It’s our guys who pick up the plate and serve the food to the president without anyone else touching it.
What about his drinks?
When he asks for a vodka on the rocks, it’s our guys who mix it from our own supply that we have to bring all the way around the world with us. Nobody knows that.
About six months ago, I contemplated doing a story on the 75th anniversary of Twinkies. Every other food section in America was doing it, I figured. Why not mine?
While trying to figure out how to do it, I cruised on over to the Hostess Web site in search of material. Once there, I clicked on the link to the Twinkie Shop. Lo and behold I witnessed an object I had to have:
Roughly three weeks and $19.95 (plus shipping) later, it arrived at my desk at work.
I didn’t really show too many people I had it. I tucked it under my desk and figured I’d stash it away until the right time came.
Then a couple weeks ago, I told my BayLife colleague Rommie Johnson it was under my desk.
That was all she wrote.
Before I knew it, we had hat bad boy out of the box and we were warming up the lightbulb inside, getting ready to make us some snack cakes.
We didn’t really have any baking utensils or bowls, so we did the best we could with some Styrofoam cups and plastic knives. Hostess provided the baking pans and the mixes for the cake and icing, but they boned me on the Twinkie part of the promise; only mix for cupcakes was included in the box.
Regardless, we poured the mixture into small cupcake and Twinkie-shaped forms. The smell as they baked filled the newsroom.
The directions called for putting icing on top of one of the cupcakes and then placing another on top to double its size. But since there were two of us, Rommie and I decided to just adorn each one with filling and icing on top.
As I said, we lacked the proper utencils, so a Ziploc baggie with a hole in the bottom had to be improvised for a pastry icing bag.
Actually, it worked quite well.
I’m not sure if someone on the Hostess staff was out sick the day they designed the kit, but they grossly overestimated the size of the looping icing form for the cupcakes.
The improvised pastry bag worked quite well on the Twinkie-shaped cupcakes, giving us plenty of room to adorn them with icing.
After a nibble of cupcake, Rommie posited on the treat’s flavor qualities and found them not to be lacking.
Co-workers belittled their size and mocked the results of our baking. One rude colleague even poked her finger into one of them as an insult, not unlike the way you’d poke a dead bird by the side of the road with a stick.
They derided us as “defensive” when we attempted to defend the desserts’ honor. We chalked it up to their lack of access to such delicacies and a deficit of forethought to provide their own baked goods.
Jealousy never shows a pretty face.
This photo captures the only moment in my existence on this planet that I failed to immediately engulf something this sweet and delicious. I think it would even be fair to say that I savored the experience.
And the world suddenly tilted off its axis.
Emboldened by our experiment, we went to the grocery store in search of other items we could cook in the oven. There has to be, we guessed, more out there in the culinary spectrum just waiting to be cooked.
Next episode (pictured above): Nachos and quesadillas.
Say hello to the little green sprout.
If your love for the Starbucks coffee chain knows no bounds, check out the latest juicy caffeinated tidbits at the Starbucks Gossip blog.
The site offers news that the company plans to donate money to clean-water efforts in third-world countries and that Louisiana State University students are protesting putting a Starbucks in the campus library.
Perhaps the most revolutionary idea floated on the blog: that the chain should hire a tough “Bad Barista” to deal with unruly customers, such as those “who talk on cell phones while ordering their drinks” and “guests” who order drinks whose names contain more than eight words.
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