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Pandowdy!!

November 6th, 2012 by pladd

This week at the library I got a book called Rustic Fruit Desserts by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson. I was pretty excited to learn what the heck a “grunt” is! And also to make something besides pie. I mean, I still love pie, but you’ve got to branch out into pie-like things once in awhile.

If, like me, you were confused about the difference between a crisp and a cobbler, I’ve made a handy chart:

Next time I think I’m going to make a grunt or slump because it’s the only kind you cook on the stove!! But for today, the Pear Raspberry Pandowdy:

Delicious!!!!

A pandowdy doesn’t have a bottom crust, and the top part if more like a giant sweet biscuit than the pastry you’re used to in pies. I found it much easier to put together than a pie, probably because it doesn’t require any rolling pin action: you make the biscuit dough, and then press it out to the desired shape and size. I really like how it turned out when baked though! The top layer is crunchy and delicious, while underneath there are the soft, flaky layers of a biscuit. The only weird part was how watery the fruit filling became:

Oh, pears, you always thwart my cornstarch

But, whatever, it’s all going in your stomach anyways. Baking raspberries make the kitchen smell amazing, and the extra juiciness tastes all the better on some vanilla ice cream!! Pandowdy conclusion: I am definitely a fan!

Recipe: Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: baking, pandowdy, pie, recipe

Posted in Food |

The Best Cider Ever

October 30th, 2012 by pladd

Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary! I prepared a delicious feast of warm things, because it was really cold and raining outside.

Anyway, one of the recipes I found was a four hour slow cooker apple cider recipe! If you have a slow cooker, there’s no reason not to try this. If you don’t have one, how do you eat on weekdays? You could probably also make it in a pot on the stove.

First you take about 8 cups of cider from the store and put it in your slow cooker with six sticks of cinnamon:

I may have pretended they were olympic divers as I threw them in

Then you take an orange, poke holes in it with a toothpick, and fill those holes with cloves!

The weirdness of how it looked and felt was only eclipsed by its weirdness after cooking

Then cook on low for four hours, until it smells delicious and you’re super cold!

Steven had his with rum and a cinnamon stick, but I went for plain.

But there was nothing plain about it! Delicious and spicy and warming from the inside out! This is a recipe I will definitely be making again. Like maybe everyday this winter? We’ll see.

Also, since it was our anniversary, we finally lit this cool Halloween candle we got as a present! The spooky skeleton bride and groom seem perfect, but the best part is the red insides that drip down gradually like blood!

So romantic!!! And gross

Way more exciting than eating freezer burned cake!

Tagged: anniversary, cocktails, halloween, recipes, Steven, wedding

Posted in Food, Let Me Tell You About My Life |

BronyCon: Day 2

July 3rd, 2012 by pladd

Day 2 of our trip was the first day of the convention!!! Super exciting!! At first, some of my wariness from the night before lingered:

But luckily it was short-lived:

It was super easy and fun to be a scientist! First, because I am one, no matter what lies Dr. Dodds tells you, and second because I was totally dressed for it:

Daring Do, like Indiana Jones, is probably at least nominally a scientist, right?

So I spent the rest of the trip giving Live Science coverage! Which, like most science, consisted of extrapolating from limited data and guessing at statistics. Science!!!!

Steven also looked super awesome because he found a way to also dye his mustache rainbow colors!

Sorry, ladies, he’s taken

All you have to do is paint it with washable Elmer’s school glue, wait for that to dry, and then paint it with washable kids’ paint! The glue layer gives the paint something to cling to, but since they’re both washable, it came right off at the end of the day with just water. It hardened to a prickly consistency Steven likened to a “rainbow Christmas wreath”, but as long as he was a little careful how he ate lunch, it stayed on great!

Here is a full costume shot:

Yeah, applique butt tattoo!!

Here’s the front of the convention center before they opened the doors:

And another:

The big red truck was pretty cool. The side of it had rotating ads and art, and it played My Little Pony music, both from the show and fan made.

Taken later in the day, when I needed a break from the polite but persistent crowds

I’ve seen every episode of this show at least twice, but I was still way out of my depth. At one point, everyone started singing along to a song I had never even heard before. I guess it was one of the many fan made character theme songs, and somehow everyone but me knew all of the words. It’s okay, as a scientist, I’m used to be an outside observer. Here are some science facts I discovered:

I even think this estimate might be a little too conservative, but when you take into account guys in college, Steven was probably one of the oldest fans there! Weird! A lot of the high school guys had brought their parents, so I always had somewhat baffled sitting companions on the outside steps.

Then, at lunch, I remembered the first rule of science:

I mean, I DO have an MS degree.

SCIENCE!!!

The afternoon went much better after that, especially since the last presentation of the day was from a clinical psychologist about his giant ongoing Brony Study!!! Click the link if you want to take the survey (for bronies and non-bronies alike) and further amazing pony and fandom science!

Give me a chi square value at the beginning of anything and my heart will just melt a little.

Sorry it’s not a better picture; we were sitting about halfway back, by a speaker for maximum listening comprehension

It was an interesting, though perhaps too wordy PowerPoint presentation about brony demographics and motivations as compared with the general population. Both scientists were wearing lab coats, and whenever the audience would clap for something, they’d look vaguely annoyed, like “Stop interrupting me, class, I’m trying to teach you something.” It was definitely my favorite thing we saw. Is that sad? NO THAT IS SCIENCE

Yay!!!!

Next: BronyCon Day 3
Previously: BronyCon Day 1

Tagged: bronycon, costumes, diy, mustache, my little pony, science, Steven

Posted in Things I've Made |

Bronycon: MY HAT MY HAT MY HAT

June 28th, 2012 by pladd

Previously: Costumes, Cutie Marks, and Freezer Paper Shirts

So I bought some supplies for making wings, since both of our costumes are of pegasus-ponies, but we ultimately decided they would be annoying to wear all day. So I had all these left over materials, and decided to jazz up my costume a little bit. First I learned how to braid five strands at once (I know, getting fancy!!) and made a bracelet out of some wing-fabric so I’d have something the color of Daring Do’s coat:

I know it’s not rainbow hair, but we can’t all be as cool as Steven

I used a kind of combination of this bracelet tutorial and this headband tutorial.

Speaking of headbands, I decided to make one using the above tutorial out of some old gray t-shirts of varying shades to match Daring Do’s grayscale color mane and tail:

My expression says, “Steven, you’ve taken 12 pictures already, please let this be the first non-blurry one” And it was!

And then I remembered, wait, no one will even see this headband anyway, because, OH RIGHT I BOUGHT THE BEST HAT EVER:

Sorry I don’t have a tutorial on how to get this yourself. I guess just try to be awesome like me?

Next: BronyCon Road Trip!!!

Tagged: bronycon, crafty, hats, my little pony

Posted in Things I've Made |

BronyCon: Freezer Paper Stencils

June 28th, 2012 by pladd

Previously: Costumes and Cutie Marks

So the day before yesterday, after Steven dyed his hair crazy times to look more like Rainbow Dash, James Fox and some guy at Harris Teeter both said, “Too bad you didn’t dye your mustache too”. We’ve actually since worked out a strategy for that, but it made me say “Then you’d be Rainbow ‘Stache” and thus a cosplay knock off was born. But how best to inform everyone at BronyCon of his awesome new name?? Shirts, duh.

Making shirts with fabric paint and freezer paper stencils is something I’ve always wanted to try. It’s a simple process with a billion tutorials on the Internet. First, you make a design and trace it onto freezer paper (paper side):

Chances we use the rest of this freezer paper for anything non-craft related: 0%

Then you use a craft knife to cut it out, making sure to save the little inside bits of the letters:

“A meticulous, fine motor skill task that will take too long? I AM THERE” Steven shouted with glee

Then you iron it to the shirt (on medium heat? we guessed) and the waxy side sticks right down there. Then applying the fabric paint is a snap! Especially if you got the spray-on kind.

This is the test shirt, drying!!

The paint says you’re supposed to wait four hours, but I was impatient to see if our test had worked, so I pulled the stencil off after maaaybe one:

The letter-insides are still on there, but otherwise pretty good!

I think the remaining two shirts (one for each day of the Con) will probably get more than one coat to make them slightly darker. Pictures of the finished product later when our costumes are complete!!

Next: BronyCon: Everybody look at my hat

Tagged: bronycon, my little pony, Steven, t-shirt, things I've made

Posted in Things I've Made |

BronyCon: Cutie Marks

June 28th, 2012 by pladd

Previously: BronyCon Costumes!!

I know the term “cutie mark” sounds a little silly. Sometimes I even use the term “butt tattoo” because it’s slightly cooler. Even if you’ve never watched any iteration of My Little Pony, you probably know what I’m talking about:

Using Dr. Whooves as an example to head off the question of if there are boy ponies

Every pony has one once they come of age, and they’re supposed to symbolize what makes that pony special. Which… sometimes I buy, but other times seems to just be BS.

There are so many better things you could’ve picked to symbolize “teacher”. Cheerilee is clearly in denial about her gardener-destiny

Anyway, since these cutie marks are an integral part of each character design, we have to include them in our costumes!! Rainbow Dash’s looks like a cloud with a three-colored lightning bolt:

Here are the pieces of it I cut out to trace onto the felt!

Then, after some cutting, one memorable Skype conversation with Steven at work where I told him to “borrow a ruler from [his boss] to measure your butt” (for some reason he wouldn’t do this?? I ended up using the pockets on some of his jeans for reference), and some basic applique, this:

Again, Steven was just not willing to put these on so I could take a picture of his butt for the Internet. Weird.

Because I want to be able to wear my cargo pants after this convention, I decided to embroider it on the back pocket instead of appliqueing. It’ll be less noticeable, but I won’t feel weird wearing them to the grocery store in two months. Daring Do’s cutie mark is a compass rose, and I admit to going a little overboard with trying to make sure it was geometrically accurate. In my defense, I’m terrible at eyeballing things.

So proportions and geometry are two things I like. It’s allowed, I’m a scientist now

Also, yes, that is my family heirloom compass, and yes, it has like an old-fashioned pen nib on one end instead of a pencil. Yeah, that’s kind of annoying, but not an insurmountable challenge.

I own this too, what do you want from me?

Anyway, after much travail, I was able to make a guide for myself exactly fitted to the space I had to work with:

Thanks, Mrs. Branch from 8th grade geometry! I’m sorry I doubted you 11 years ago

Then I ended up watching TV while finishing it, so it turned out a little wobbly anyway:

Oh well

Next: Freezer Paper Stencil Shirts

Tagged: bronycon, my little pony, sewing, Steven, things I've made

Posted in Things I've Made |

BronyCon: Costumes

June 27th, 2012 by pladd

Along with 3750 other people, we’re going to BronyCon this weekend!!!

In case you’re not from the Internet, bronies are older-than-the-intended-demographic (usually 20-something male) fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Here is an article from The Washington Post explaining the brony phenomenon!! It’s the one with the least amount of baffled condescension I could find. Also, there’s a library in it!

At some point–I’m not sure when this happened–Steven went from watching this show with me to becoming an enthusiastic member of the brony community. At one point a few weeks ago he told me he was “worried I’ll run out of fanfiction to read”. Middle School Patricia screamed “HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE???” but 25-year-old Patricia just said, “Well, clears you should write some of your own”. Yeah, it’s a little bit strange–that so many guys would give this show a chance. I’m not surprised that they like it once they watch it; it’s hilarious and clever and self-aware without compromising its message. I’m also ecstatic that so many bronies feel comfortable owning it, because I think it represents a really great change in gender dynamics. If girls can like monster trucks and superhero movies, there’s no reason guys can’t like adorable ponies learning about the magic of friendship. But if your preconceived notions of masculinity make you uncomfortable with this, whatever, haters gonna hate, that’s not what I’m talking about today.

What I’m talking about is costumes!!!! When Steven first brought up the idea of going to this convention, I was a little skeptical. I’ve never been to a convention, and it’s in New Jersey. But then I remember conventions=costumes and FINALLY A CHANCE TO USE MY SKILLZ!!!! It is basically validation of all the time I waste playing around with fabric and modge podge and reading tutorials about freezer paper stenciling. “Some day this will be useful,” I lied to myself. SURPRISE, TODAY IS THAT DAY!

Steven decided to go as Rainbow Dash:

Because she is 20% cooler

She’s an athlete, the fastest flyer in Ponyville and the only pegasus to ever perform the Sonic Rainboom. Since we live only a few minutes from UNC, it was pretty easy to find him a t-shirt and workout shorts in that color blue. And of course yesterday he did this:

Of course he picks when we’re leaving Carrboro to finally join its ranks of wacky-looking folk

I decided to go as Daring Do, an Indiana Jones parody from Rainbow Dash’s favorite book series:

I mean, mostly for the hat, yeah

Luckily, I already have some explorer cargo pants and hiking boots! Sorry, I’m not dyeing my hair gray and black.

We’re assembling the rest of these costumes kind of quickly through trial and error! Stay tuned.

Tagged: bronycon, costumes, my little pony

Posted in Things I've Made |

Decorating with old books

May 11th, 2012 by pladd

So about a year ago I discovered a cache of books in our apartment complex’s paper recycling bins. Some of them were text books, others were more than a hundred years old! And about Belgium! So I rescued them, not because I particularly wanted them, but because, guys, this is not what we do. Some of them are still going to the library book sale, but I decided to use one to decorate a wooden trunk Steven made a few years ago that we’ve been using as a TV stand.

Sturdy, but ugly

I’ve never done anything like this before, but it was super easy! The first step is adding a coat of primer:

Remembering to tape around the hinges/handles/lock thing

Then after that dries a second coat of primer, just for fun:

I could've probably done a better job, but I was trying to finish before it started raining

Then, once that dries, it’s modge podge time! I got the kind for furniture, and just started carefully tearing/cutting out pages and gluing them onto the trunk.

Does it make me a bad librarian that I enjoyed it?

Don’t worry, it was just a collection of D. H. Lawrence short stories. And it’s not like it’s gone! Its spirit lives on in this way cool trunk I now own.

Anyway, my bottle of modge podge ran out after covering the trunk with pages and then applying a top coat. And when I went to buy more, well, you know how it is. I basically couldn’t help buying the SPARKLE version, it’s like an addiction. To glitter. So the top two coats may be incredibly sparkly.

Though you probably can't tell because by this time it was night.

Super exciting!! And easy! And I didn’t have to buy a bunch of supplies I’ll never use again. I guess besides the half a can of primer I still have left.

I still have quite a few old books I don’t know what to do with from that rescue, but you can bet I’m looking around my apartment for more things that need decorating!

Tagged: books, things I've made

Posted in Things I've Made |