Finally! After a botched attempt at making waffles from my yeast starters, I believe this a decent recipe that works. Many thanks are due to Smitten Kitchen’s essential raised waffles. My variation has different ingredient proportions to accommodate using the wet starter. I also use different flours because, in spite of having far too many flours in the pantry, I don’t have all-purpose wheat. So, some improvising occurred. 
The resulting waffles were light in density, and crispy on the outside. I froze the leftovers, which are a great replacement for store-bought ones.
Previously frozen waffle, reheated in toaster oven, then topped with choco-hazelnut spread. Yum.
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I finally learned how to turn my books in iBooks into audiobooks, by using either VoiceOver or through the Selection menu. This feature has been around for a while, but it took articles from TUAW and Mac OS X Hints to clarify the steps for me.
I prefer the VoiceOver method, but both work fine on iPhone and iPad in iOS 6.
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Thursday, 28 February 2013
[Actually made this cake nearly a year and a half ago!] Browned butter adds a hint of nuttiness to this cake without adding nuts. Because this cake is made with the sponge technique, rather than a creamed-butter-and-sugar one, it’d be drier without a syrup, so I’ve added that as well. Also, because three is such a nice number for combining different flavor procedures, I’ve topped the cake with a chocolate ganache, courtesy of Alice Medrich’s recipe from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies. The result is quite tasty. Unless you don’t like cake, oranges or chocolate, or the three together, which would be a bit sad.
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Looking back at 2012, I read quite a lot, even with school going on. As in previous years, the lightbulb ( 
) icon denotes recommendations—except that all items in the Shorter fiction section are podcasts where I had given the top ratings. Many goodies discovered this year, including tearing down my notion that Smashwords doesn’t publish good stuff—glad to be wrong there!
For easier list jumping:
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Wednesday, 2 January 2013
It’s strange given my love of apricots that I had not made apricot liqueur. Last summer I finally did, using an inexpensive brandy from Trader Joe’s, an orange, and some vanilla sugar. I filtered out the fruit solids after steeping for 4 months—using a double layer of fine butter muslin over a fine sieve. The result was still cloudy; I’ve tried using a coffee filter (with the Meyer lemon-ginger liqueur), but that was too slow and too easily clogged up, even after initially going through the butter muslin. I continue to dream of a vacuum-driven filtration system in my kitchen. O:)
What do I use this in? As with the lemon-ginger one, mostly cooking. Great with cooked fruit and sauces needing a fruity sweetness.
Apricot brandy, assembled for steeping.
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We’ve got a Bearss lime tree in a large ex-wine barrel. The peak of the crop, in the past, has been during the dead of winter, December through February. But starting this year, somehow the tree started to offer ripe fruit over a wider period. Like, dropping them frequently over the past couple months. While staring at the limes on the counter, slowly getting drier by the day, my brain told me, “Make curd! You won’t regret it.” I added a bit of ginger, since it goes so nicely with lime — and I didn’t want that rhizome sitting in the fridge to develop more mold *ahem*.
Yeah, this curd looks pretty much like the Meyer lemon one.
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As mentioned earlier, I’ve had both good and bad team work experiences. Some of the worst occurred in school, some of the best occurred during employment. So I enter a graduate program strongly emphasizing teamwork with a mix of trepidation and eagerness. Fear of loss of control and fear of conflict: “They are not thorough enough!” or “Why won’t they respond?” or “Why must they be so competitive/desperate to get the top grade?” But, also: the joy of discussion; the sharing of ideas, information, interests, whether similar or differing; the possible enlightenment gained from interacting and participation.
But the big question for me is often how? Just what are examples of best practices? Or, more realistically, what choices do we have during the process of a team-based class project? I kept asking those questions while going through Dr. Haycock’s talk.
And I’m soon going be assigned to a group in my first full course this session. Tomorrow! Hooboy. How will that go?
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It’s been many years since I’ve made my own alcoholic fruit infusions, and this being a boom Meyer lemon year encouraged me to get back into the habit. Sure, there are many recipes around for limoncello, but I wanted something different. Something with a bit more kick (ginger!), yet a bit more floral (vanilla!). I’ve enjoyed Canton liqueur, but my recipe doesn’t have its honey syrupiness. I’ve also savor the razor sharpness that is Stone’s Green Ginger Wine. But again, this is not that kind of recipe. It is delicious, yet my own. 
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I’ve spent several years in the software and Internet sector, as well as taken online classes. Nevertheless, I’ll still have a lot to learn both technically and socially when it comes to taking graduate school courses online.
Actually, a more appropriate phrase would be attending graduate school online, because attending emphasizes how this will be an interactive process — not merely a collection of essays or exam forms to submit.
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Salutations to San José State University folks in the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS)! I’m using my personal website to store publicly-accessible homework for SLIS, as well as my thoughts on libraries, reading, and information access. For the time being, I’ve organized such posts with the SLIS tag, under the Library category. To subscribe specifically to these posts, copy the following URL and paste it into your RSS reader of choice: http://iwaruna.com/tag/SLIS/feed/ — this way you will be spared from my cooking articles and home remodeling rants.
