Baking Cookies in a Post-Apocalyptical Wasteland

I recently read “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy and although it was redonkulously bleak, it affirmed my belief that everyone should know how to, at the very least, bake a Madeleine.

The Madeleine is to baking what a steak is to the cooking world. If you know how to bake a Madeleine and a steak, you can probably survive the zombie/robot/alien/nuclear apocalypse.

The Madeleine is simple, yet infinitely complex depending on the preparation and execution. First, disregard the name. A Madeline is nothing more than a buttery, cake cookie. From Wikipedia, “Madeleines are very small sponge cakes with a distinctive shell-like shape acquired from being baked in pans with shell-shaped depressions. Aside from the traditional molded pan, commonly found in stores specialising in kitchen equipment and even hardware stores, no special tools are required to make madeleines.”

I imagine ingredients will be scarce in whatever apocalypse occurs. However, the Madeleine can be made with four simple and easy to find ingredients: flour, butter, eggs and sugar/honey. The only specialty item you need is a Madeline pan, which can likely be looted in the event of the apocalypse.  I also imagine that raiders or post-apocalyptic n'er do wells would invite anyone into their clan if they had a fresh batch of Madeleines.

How to bake Madeleines in the event of an apocalyptic disaster:

Before disaster

1. Buy a solar powered oven. About $230 on Amazon. Good to be prepared.

After said disaster

1. Raid a specialty baking store or even the home department of your QFC for a Madeline pan. (Do not raid store if apocalypse has not yet occurred)
2. While at the store in #2, get some flour, sugar or honey. Best not to get eggs or butter, probably rancid.
3. Go to a farm and get some fresh eggs and churn your own butter.
4. Bake Madelines:

a)      Preheat oven to 350°F.

b)      Butter each Madeleine mold in pan and dust with flour, tapping out excess.

c)       Melt 9 tablespoons unsalted butter

d)      Cook until butter turns golden brown, stirring often, 3 to 4 minutes. Set browned butter aside.

e)      Beat egg whites, sugar and all purpose flour in medium bowl until mixture is blended and smooth

f)       Add browned butter; beat to blend. Spoon 1 tablespoon batter into each prepared Madeleine mold.

g)      Bake Madeleines until tops are just dry and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 12 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Gently tap Madeleines out of molds.

Like that, you’ve learned how to turn an innate, (mostly) inedible set of ingredients into my favorite baked goods and survive whichever post-apocalypse environment that you are in. This is the quickest and easiest cookie on the planet. 20 minutes start to finish and you can be the head pastry chef with any post-apocalyptic gang you want.

Makin Whoopie...Pies

Yesterday, Oddfellows Cafe on Capitol Hill held the first annual "Whoopie Pie Bake Off." Yours truly was one of the lucky few vying for top prize of Whoopie Pie Champion. A whoopie pie (alternatively called a gob, black-and-white, bob, or "BFO" for Big Fat Oreo) is a baked good made of two round mound-shaped pieces of chocolate cake, sometimes pumpkin cake, with a sweet, creamy frosting sandwiched between them. The rules: bake an original, classic whoopie and bake your own rendition.

My first attempt was an epic failure. Tried to make Devonshire cream, but ended up with something resembling thin vanilla yogurt. I tested my second attempt at a classic whoopie pies on the staff here at Porter Novelli. Confident in my whoopie pie skillz I was ready for the big day.

My personal conception of the whoopie pie was comprised of white chocolate cake with a raspberry, marshmallow fluff and lil' bit of homemade raspberry jam dusted with cocoa powder.

The competition began at 11 am. The judges: the Long Winter's John Roderick, Chamber of Commerce head Michael Wells, ice cream entrepreneur Molly Moon, the Stranger's Christopher Frizzelle, Chelsea Lin of Seattle CitySearch and the community attendees. The challengers: 11 other amateur and professional bakers from the corners of Seattle. 24 different pies with 144 pies total. Gone by noon.

The results. I lost to a 7 year old girl, though her pie was super delicious. The little girl an d Audrey McManus tied for "Best Classic Whoopie Pie." "Best Overall" and "Most Interesting" went to Heather Earnhardt of Volunteer Park Cafe.

It is hard to get upset over losing a baking competition and I can honestly say it was a lot of fun. From the Slog, "[to] the baker who put raspberry jam in the filling. It was the perfect summer touch." Thanks Chris Frizzelle. In the words of Tugg Speedman, "It was an honor just to be nominated."



You mean I’ll still have to work past 2012?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock… or just haven’t watched the History Channel lately, then you’ll have heard of the Mayan prediction about the end of the world happening in 2012.

According to some folks (let’s not call them scientists, okay?), some bad stuff is about to go down on December 21, 2012. End of the world, meteorites, sweet baby Jeebus coming down from his UFO… whatever, the Mayan calendar says that the world is ending. THE WORLD IS ENDING YA’LL!

Um, except no one told living Mayans about this.

I came across an AP article (is the AP going to come after me for linking to it?) by Mark Stevenson that says, actually, guys, Mayans are saying…. “Wait, what now?”

So let’s backtrack a bit, shall we? This doomsday prophecy is based on the end-date of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, which apparently lasts 5,125 years (there’s been a few arguments about this) and terminates on December 21 or 23, 2012. Some people think that this will mark the beginning of a new era… or that all hell will break lose.

There actually will be a change on that date- on the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. I mean, that’s cool in and of itself, right? So why can’t we look forward to that- a known natural phenomenon- without attaching some weird doomsday prediction or the “second-coming-of (insert your deity here)” to it all?

This reminds me of the Y2K meme. Everyone was sure that the world as we knew it would face a dramatic shift once all the clocks hit 00. Instead, a few lights flickered, a stray computer burped… and that was it.

Anyway, back to the AP article. Mayans aren’t saying the world is ending. In fact, most of the people spouting that nonsense are, uh, not Mayans.

So if the descendents of the folks who actually created the calendar are saying “You people need to chill out and quit with the end of the world stuff” on one side and pseudo-scientists are predicting a massive disruptive occurrence based on said calendar (which really doesn’t point to anything crazy happening) are on the other side… guess which side I’m leaning towards.

Anyway, keep an eye out for more media to focus on this end of the end of the world/2012 stuff as we draw closer to the date. Let’s see how much mass hysteria can be produced by fear mongers using big words and Indiana Jones-style drama to drum up new book deals and television shows on the History Channel (my favorite source for trashy reality shows now).

The lights are off and everyone is home

If you live in the lower Queen Anne area, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

This weekend, LQA folks experienced two power outages    that lasted between 1.5 – 3 hours long, depending on where you were located.

Seattle City Light (@SEACityLight) had a helpful tweet on Friday that stated:

“Planned outage for maintenance Sat. AM near Seattle Center. Affected customers were notified directly. More at http://powerlines.seattle.gov”

So there was a planned outage for Saturday morning that should have lasted from 12 am – 8 am. Cool, those are hours when most people are either not home, at home asleep, or crawling back home inebriated from that evening’s festivities. I’m not entirely sure what happened (if the scheduled event took place) but an outage took place from about 9 am – 12 pm. Yeah, not such good timing.

Not sure what you were doing around that time but I had just gotten home from the gym and was ready to start my weekend by hopping into the shower… when the power went out. Fortunately, I could wait it out (the beauty of a lazy Saturday is that you can be lazy) but I know folks in my apartment building were doing laundry, cooking and, if you were my roommate, getting ready for a wedding.

When the power first went out, I immediately jumped online (via my handy dandy iPhone) and looked up Seattle City Light contact info. I dialed the “Report an Outage” hotline… and got a busy signal. I stared at my phone for a minute, in disbelief (“What is this, 1998? A busy signal? In this day and age??”) before I jumped on Twitter.

I did a quick search for “Outage” and “Queen Anne” and found a plethora of folks who were going through the same thing I was:

It didn’t make me feel better (because… yeah, I just wanted power back) but it did comfort me a little. Now I knew that it wasn’t just my building affected, it was lower Queen Anne. But most importantly- I wasn’t alone!

I then tweeted King 5 (@King5Seattle) to ask them if they had heard anything. The response was prompt:

I continued tracking all of this on Twitter until the power in my building came back on. I even sent a couple of tweets to @SEACityLight but got no response. It later turned out that something had happened to a feeder… or something. I don’t really know the specifics but it resulted in thousands of people going without power for a couple of hours.

Sunday night rolls around and the same thing happens. Lights flicker and then go out. I immediately jump on Twitter to see what’s going on and if I can find any helpful information. Once again, I get more info from people around me and from @KING5Seattle than I do from @SEACityLight or their website.

So what’s the lesson here, kids? Well, Twitter is effing useful in situations where you don’t have access to TV and online sites are updated too slow. I got all my information about the outage, its parameters and cause through people on Twitter than I did from anywhere else.

I’m sending out good karma vibes to @KING5Seattle- whoever manages that handle is fantastic! They were on the outage like white on rice as well as other local news- I do hope that person got some sleep last night.

So even if Twitter is just a fad, it certainly helped me get through a power AND news blackout. I don’t think it helped get the power back on by any means (although it may have helped the news desks at several local stations hear about the situation first) but it did help one person not feel so freaked out and alone.

I even made a new friend (Here’s looking at you @GourleyGirl) and some people could find the humor in the event:

 

I knew the Decepticons were up to no good!

For info on what to do when a power outage happens, check out the Seattle City site: http://www.cityofseattle.net/light/neighborhoods/nh4_pout.htm

If you want to report a power outage, dial these numbers:

Seattle City Lights Customer Service at 206.684.3000.

Outage Hotline (recorded message) at 206.684.7400.

Edited to note: Check out @QueenAnneView on Twitter for news around, you guessed it- Queen Anne. They were also tweeting about the outage this weekend and posted quick updates on their blog: http://www.queenanneview.com/ 

…or check Twitter. That’s what I did…

Weird Animal Day

Because I have nothing else I want to post about. Seriously- I could have written about Swine flu, the new HIV vaccine or climate change or something else more serious and relevant. But you know what? It’s Friday and when I mentioned the shark with a member on its head (no really, read further), everyone on this side of the office had a strong reaction.

So today’s fluff post brings you animal oddities for your viewing pleasure:

…Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?:

I came across an i09.com post on a new species of cartilaginous fish called chimaera that has a (rhymes with weenus) on its forehead. Right. New species- always cool. But I dug a little further and found that Chimaeras are cool little freaks of nature. They’re distantly related to sharks but unlike sharks, male chimaeras have retractable sexual appendages on their foreheads.

Above is an image of the Hydrolagus melanophasma- the new species. I couldn’t find a picture of a Chimaera with the retractable, um, member but you can search for one yourself with a nifty thing called the Intertubes.

…His Friends Call Him Hop:

Uh, yeah. This one is pretty self explanatory. The backstory is that an old woman in Suining, a region in China found a snake “clinging” to her wall. I’m not exactly sure how anything could “cling” to a wall with one foot and no Gecko-like fingers but whatever.

Check out the rest of the pictures from the  Unbelievable Stuff blog and be horrified. I’m trying to figure out if it really is possible for a snake to grow a freaking FOOT- yes, there are mutations but dude. It’s a snake with a foot. It’s not another head (which is a rather common mutation… common in the loosest sense of the word) or another tail, but a foot. As in, a feature the animal does not have normally. Not trying to make the case for evolution here, but uh, clearly something was going in this snake’s past…

Anyway, I pose you fine readers with this question: Photoshopped or real?

…What I Wanted for my Fifth Birthday:

Last year in a nature preserve in Italy, a deer was born with a single horn on its forehead. Park officials named the deer “Unicorn”… which is pretty uncreative if you ask me. Personally, I would have named my unicorn (if mom had ever come through on the birthday, sheesh), Giggles.

 …You Thought Jaws was Scary?:

By now most of you have heard of the Anglerfish (another sea creature with a stylish forehead accessory) via the Discovery, Travel or Animal channels... or Finding Nemo. If you haven’t, Anglerfish are basically bony fishes with a fleshy, glowing “lure” on their foreheads to attract and catch prey (similar to the method of fishing called angling).  Note that only the females have this accessory.

It’s not a very big fish (average size is about a foot) but OMG check out the freakshow of a thing this fish calls a face:

Not something you’d want to run into in a dark alley… underwater. But the cool thing about this fish is the way it mates.

Remember how I said only the females have that cool rod? Well, the males don’t need this adaptation because they’ve become almost like parasites when they mate. They are fed and cared for by the much larger female.

Once the male of the species finds a mate, he latches onto her with his sharp teeth.  The male Anglerfish then physically fuses his own body with that of the female’s own. Their bloodstreams fuse as well… and everything else pretty much. He loses his eyes and all of his internal organs except for  the testes, and remains there for the rest of his life.

The female fishes have permanent mates and can/will carry as many as ten males on their bodies. The average is about five or six though.

What a lazy bum the male Angler is, right? But consider this: when mature, the male's digestive system shuts down, rendering him unable to feed independently. So he has to find a mate or else he dies.

Anyway, that’s it from me. Have a great weekend, folks!