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NaNoWriMo 2011!!

November 28th, 2011 by pladd

You probably remember that I do National Novel Writing Month ever year! This year I completed it with far less drama and heart break than usual, except towards the end when I realized Open Office, Microsoft Word, and the NaNoWriMo website apparently all count words differently.

Here is a pictorial representation of my novel, from Wordle:

NaNoWriMo 2011!

The word Percy is really big because she’s the main character! It’s short for Persephone. Crazy hippie parents, what are you going to do? I had a hard time deciding what part would best showcase its awesomeness in a random excerpt, but decided on this piece on the basis that it features my best idea ever:

“You’re disgusting,” she said to him as she pushed through the revolving doors. They were like normal revolving doors, but with a disco ball in the middle and a lot of flashing colored lights on the floor. Inside there was a reception desk made out of a giant stack of cookies and some stairs that were made of piano keys. Beside the stairs was a slide and a water slide, both apparently leading from some upper level. Before she could look around further a puppy ran up to her from a corral of them near the door where many others of different kinds and sizes were playing and wrestling. When she’d walked through, a motion censor had opened the automatic door to the puppy corral, allowing one to go greet her. Puppies as greeters were the newest thing, and also the best. The best ever.
Siegfried looked on jealously as she ecstatically rubbed the puppy’s belly and scratched behind its ears. “I’m puppy size!” Siegfried insisted. “But a giraffe!!!!” Percy ignored him.
“Welcome to Awesomesauce Publications Ltd, how can I help you?” the man behind the cookie reception desk asked. He was dressed like a roller disco version of Nicola Tesla, complete with roller skates that occasionally discharged badass currents of electrical energy between the wheels.

Puppy greeters, America! Make it happen!

Also, if you’re interested, here’s a look back at some past NaNoWriMo awesomeness: Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: nanowrimo

Posted in Things I've Made, Writing |

1991 Reunion

August 16th, 2011 by pladd

I think I’ve mentioned before about how my preschool BFF and I were unknowingly reunited in grad school last year, mostly through my mom noticing that my current friend had the same name as my preschool friend. We lost touch when we both moved away from Charleston at the age of 4 or 5 and unknowingly became friends again when we sat next to each other in the same class in grad school! Clearly I had amazing taste in friends even in preschool!!! Anyway, one of the relics of our long history together is this amazing picture Megan’s mom saved:

Note Thomas in the background, being a potato

We tried to recreate this at our recent 1991 reunion:

As you can imagine, this recreation was fraught with difficulty

Thomas manfully attempted to mash himself up into a little potato-like ball, and Megan and I pretended to be short, but the 20 intervening years have made the illusion somewhat less than perfect. Plus, my apartment doesn’t have a fireplace or a big pink chair.

Also we couldn’t stop laughing:
Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: pictures, preschool BFF, Thomas

Posted in Things I've Made |

Harry Potter Costumes!

July 22nd, 2011 by pladd

Steven and I had an entire dinner-long discussion about what costumes to wear to the midnight showing of the last Harry Potter movie! Since this is potentially my last chance to dress as a Harry Potter character in a public place and not have people look at me like I’m a freak, I really wanted to do something cool. Of course, I also had limited time and resources, so here’s what I came up with:

Moaning Myrtle!

I was super happy with this costume because I assembled it for pretty much the cost of a toilet seat! The tie and white shirt are both Steven’s, and the sweater vest was $2 on clearance at target. It looked very different when I bought it, but I was able to cut off the sleeves and ridic neckline. The cloak I already owned from my highschool RenFest years, and the skirt (not pictured) I made myself out of some grayish fabric and a shoelace! Exciting!!!

Clearly there was only one character to choose for Steven, given his hair situation:

Sirius Black!!! Unfortunately he didn't make Crazy Gary Oldman faces the whole time

This costume was even easier since it was essentially just poster board and some extra large women’s pajamas I got on clearance and then cut up and resewed messily in places to give them a “just escaped from prison” look.

Megan went with us too! She dressed as “Harry and Hermione’s love child” which we named Herry Harmione Potter. Her wand really lit up when you flicked it which was super cool!

I like this picture because my hand looks like I might be turning into a ghost!!

For some reason we thought taking pictures AFTER the movie at 4 in the morning was a really great idea, which led to this picture that I now am at a loss to explain:

Possibly I decided that was some kind of ghost gang sign

Yay for homemade costumes!!

Tagged: costumes, harry potter, preschool BFF, Steven, things I've made

Posted in Things I've Made |

The Amazing Cake Ball Tutorial!

April 26th, 2011 by pladd

If they look delicious, it's because they are

Cake balls are pretty amazing, and they are completely easy (and fun!) to make. They’re great to bring to a party since they’re small, portable finger food, and they are sure to impress despite their simplicity! Plus, there’s endless combinations of flavors to try!

Chocolate coating outside, cakey goodness inside

Here are all of the ingredients, plus some escape artist tulips:

1 box cake mix, 1 can frosting, 1 bag of chocolate chips

I’ve made the traditional yellow cake/chocolate coating before, but this time I wanted to try lemon cake, so I went with white chocolate chips and white frosting. I figured lemon frosting would be too lemony, but now I’m thinking there’s no such thing. And, okay, this picture is maybe a little misleading because, depending on your cake mix, you’ll probably also need an egg and/or some vegetable oil and water. Details. Besides, you have those lying around your house anyway just waiting to be put into a cake.

So, Step One: Make the cake

Ta-Dah!

It doesn’t matter what shape or size pan you use, since the next step is to wait till it cools and then

Step Two: WRECK THE CAKE

This is by far my favorite part

That’s right, get in there and smash that cake up! I usually crumble it into a very large bowl. It’s super fun just grabbing whole hunks of cake and crushing them into tiny pieces! Once that’s done it will probs look like this:

Make sure you start with a big enough bowl! I had to switch mine out

Now you’re ready for Step Three: Stir in the Frosting!

Frosting is serious business

Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: cake, food, recipes, tutorial

Posted in Food, Things I've Made |

Rainbow Cupcakes!!!!

April 12th, 2011 by pladd

I think I’ve found my new favorite thing to bake! Maybe not for their taste so much as the way they make people FREAK OUT upon seeing them. Not that they taste bad (they are delicious!), but this is not the kind of thing I would bake just for myself and Steven to enjoy some weekend. This is the kind of thing I would bake to 1) celebrate a 5-year-old birthday, 2) celebrate my own birthday (5-year-olds have excellent taste; I would also have a bouncy house), and 3) impress people. Last week I was making them for reason #3 since it was my turn to present in class. Everyone knows bringing food totally ups your grade, and distracts people from how you may or may not be pronouncing “manga” wrong the entire time. The main reason these cupcakes escalated into a somewhat more dramatic production than I originally intended was that I have a partner in this project! Rather than rein in my ridiculousness and suggest we should maybe concentrate on, you know, our content, he just egged me on.

Me: I was thinking of baking something for the presentation. What do you think would go with graphic novels (our subject)?
Him: I don’t know, we could just get Pocky or something.
Me: OMG! I could bake cupcakes and stick Pocky in them!!! Like antenna!!
Him: Awesome! I can make speech bubbles on toothpicks to stick in them!
Me: Man, I have to find a cupcake recipe exciting enough to be a good Pocky-and-speech-bubble foundation…

Don’t worry, guys, I found that recipe. I was thinking about how graphic novels are about the visual impact and wanted the cupcakes to similarly make a bold statement. I remembered last year seeing Rainbow Cupcakes on Baking Bites. Nicole Weston is one of the few food bloggers I follow who has never once steered me wrong, or whose perfectly good recipes I have never managed to screw up somehow, which is why I was totally okay trying this recipe for the first time late the night before my presentation. It was shockingly easy.

Basically, it’s a normal cupcake recipe, but you divide the batter into five separate bowls:

Steven had to take this picture because I was covered in blue food coloring

Then you fill the bottoms of the cupcake tins with blue, then green, etc. until you have layered all the colors of the rainbow! The only annoying thing about this was that I was making a 2.5x larger batch (the original makes 10), so it was really hard to judge how much batter of each color to put in each cup at the beginning. Some of the ones at the end had no blue in them, but whatever. It was kind of hard to tell after they baked:

This is one of the last ones, so it had way more red than some of the others

They sort of looked like mood rings from the top before I frosted them. Mostly red, but with little bubbles of other colors. Here are some of the leftovers that have their Pocky/speech bubbles:

Actually, it's Korean knock off Pocky, but no one could tell

I’d like to try this as a whole cake sometime instead of just cupcakes. Also, to cover them in Skittles to be even more colorful!

The other good thing about this recipe is that it forced me to buy buttermilk so I basically had no choice but to teach Steven how to make biscuits.

Tagged: baking, cupcakes, food, rainbow

Posted in Food, Things I've Made |

Happy Popcorn Easter!

March 28th, 2011 by pladd

My mom sends the BEST packages. Granted, they don’t come as frequently as they used to, since I guess she assumes that now that I’m Making It On My Own I can buy my own giant Mr. Potato Head or demonic singing hamster robot. They are even more exciting now because of their rarity! And the fact that Rachel is marginally less likely to throw them from a third story window through annoyance (or bloodlust?). This weekend I got a popcorn egg decorating kit! I assume for the lesser known holiday of Popcorn Easter, when a giant, sentient corn ear travels to houses at night and leaves popcorn eggs for all the children.

In case you are behind the times, a popcorn egg is just like a popcorn ball, but egg shaped!

Between hardboiled eggs and Cadburry Cream eggs on the Egg Tastiness Spectrum

The kit came with a bunch of different candies and marshmallows, and a tube of white “chocolate flavored candy glue” to attach them to the egg. It also had instructions that stated (among other things) that you would need “scissors and creativity!!” Megan insisted that reading the instructions was totally necessary but I was filled with the spirit of POPCORN EASTER ADVENTURE and paid her no heed.

Me, paying Megan no heed! Later she bit me in punishment.

Unfortunately, Steven, with characteristic and annoying artistry, clearly made the best popcorn egg person:

He's happy because he's made of smashed tootsie roll and popcorn!

After softening up the green tootsie roll, I twisted it in strands to give my guy greasy looking hair! Also, his mouth was made of pink Good N’Plenty pieces.

The owl napkin holder does not approve

Megan decided not to compete with Steven’s face making skills and did a pattern instead:

So ready for Popcorn Easter right now!

Unfortunately, the colorful sprinkled pieces ended up tasting like death inside:

The popcorn eggs themselves tasted delicious! Way better than the candy we had used to decorate them. I can say that this was, without a doubt, the best Popcorn Easter ever! Thanks, Mom Ladd.

Tagged: food, holiday, Mom Ladd, popcorn

Posted in Food, Things I've Made |

Pi Day!

March 14th, 2011 by pladd

As I’ve said before, Pi Day is a HUGE deal in my family. As everyone knows, it’s absolutely IMPERATIVE to eat pie on Pi Day if you expect to be able to do even the simplest math problems with ease. I personally suspect a lack of observance of this ancient tradition is the reason why so many people profess to “hate” math. And believe me, as someone who grew up going everywhere with a mom who wears an “I Love Math” pin every day, I have heard so many people claim to hate math. Or at least, a lot of the staff at the Seminole Publix. Oh what a slice of pie can fix!

I decided to make two pies, beef curry pot pie for dinner and chess pie for dessert. The beef curry pot pie recipe I saw about a week ago on foodgawker. I decided on chess pie after looking through one of my pie cook books (a past pi day present from my dad). I realized that though this is a Southern classic, I have never made it before! Natch I paired the filling from the book with my mom’s hereditary pie crust recipe!

So, after going over these three recipes, I made a massive grocery list, and then went through the kitchen crossing off things we already had:

Secret fact: I am pretty OCD about long grocery lists.

This step in the process was actually really good because I knew we had cornmeal and baking powder, but checking the cupboards revealed that both were pretty out of date! I’m not sure what happens with expired cornmeal, but I wouldn’t want to risk a tragic Pi Day case of food poisoning.

Curry Beef Pot Pie
This is called a pot pie, but it’s the looser version, a thick stew with a biscuit on top.

I probs should have taken more pictures of the process of making it, but I was hungry!

Chess Pie
Making the chess pie was pretty awesome because it only requires one crust as opposed to most pies I make which have both a top and a bottom. The only weird part about this is that my original pie crust recipe is for two pies, so I had to cut everything in fourths (luckily I ate my pie on Pi Day last year so this math was easy peasy). Unfortunately, this left me with things like “1/8 cup of water” and “1/4 of a beaten egg”. I definitely accidentally over-egged the crust by accident at one point, but adding extra flour seemed to make everything turn out okay by rolling time: