Happy Thanksgiving!

I am in Nashville for the holiday weekend spending time with my family. There will be updates no sooner than Monday.

Photodiary 1: Basic Fried Rice

Keep in mind that fried rice is widely customizable. There are a few key ingredients (for instance, rice) but the recipe will vary widely based on personal preference and what is available at the time of preparation.

Fried rice is best when day-old rice is used. Freshly made rice is acceptable but will often turn out too wet. It needs some time in the fridge to dry out a little bit for the soy sauce to sink in I imagine. It may be possible to simply not quite cook the rice all the way; I have not tried that way.

I typically make the rice with water (not broth or any other tomfoolery). It makes the leftover rice more versatile; if it was made with broth you don't want to eat it the next morning with milk and honey.

Right click and view image for a larger version of any picture. Enjoy!







My vegetables were carrots and beans. Other good things to put in fried rice are peas, pineapple, broccoli, bell pepper, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, and cashews. Different vegetables cook at different rates so when experimenting be prepared to occasionally end up with some over or undercooked parts.

Data Point 0

I'm doing some tests. This is the first in what I imagine will be a pretty taxing set of trials. There may even come a time when I have to ask you, my friends, to volunteer yourselves as guinea pigs for the good of science. The question of course: if making brownies from a box, which way is best?

Ingredients:

1 box	Target brand fudge brownie mix
2	eggs
1/2 stick	butter, melted
1/2 cup	applesauce
3 ounces	dried cranberries
1 tub	cream cheese frosting

Procedure:
Mix all ingredients other than frosting. Bake as directed on box. Microwave frosting until fluid, about 1 minute. Apply to brownies while still hot in order to easily spread uniformly.

I would like to make clear that I don't really take ownership of this recipe. While I did not strictly follow the recipe on the box (which asks for 2 eggs, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup oil) the changes were small. And come on, almost everything was premade which is really not in line with the spirit this blog. The only reason I didn't specify the brand of frosting I used is because I used the second half of my old tub (Pillsbury) and the first half of my new tub (Betty). They are slightly different colors but taste the same and are both mostly made out of sugar and margarine.


Gone too fast to get a picture

This recipe gets a "really good" on the Becca scale.

Things I Learned Tonight

There is a reason that you usually put things in the center of the oven and not up against one edge. Things near the edge get blackened real fast compared to everything else.

Just because a recipe has only four ingredients and three steps does not mean that it's easy.

Baking is much more sensitive than frying. The recipe is probably important. Some of you may recall that I've had trouble like this on multiple occasions, most notably with my matrix algebra carrot cake.

Sweet potatoes are pretty delicious no matter how badly you screw them up.

Photodiary 0: Stu

Tonight I made Stu, roughly a third of the recipe I described in my previous entry. I was not completely faithful to the recipe (in part because that's just how this recipe works and in part because of what I had on hand). Most notably, I used sausage links instead of ground sausage, and used canned green beans in place of fresh ones. I much prefer using fresh beans but I found myself to be completely out. The only reason there are any beans at all is because Taylor happened to have some around (thanks!). A particularly astute reader might also notice that I had to switch pans halfway through the frying since I was running out of room.

The images are all scaled down; if you'd like to see a larger version just right click and view image. Enjoy!