Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Parentalpocalypse Edition

They wanted home made Hour and Sour Soup, Fried Rice and Beef and Broccoli. And they got it in droves.

Dad wanted Sweet and Sour Pork, but after six hours of cooking my back and neck said "we're done." Tentative plans to make that on Thursday....

For now, though... ::collapses::

This is what happens when mom buys the groceries. And I'm 100% happy with this decision.

Where I am now....

Parentalpocalypse, Day Three: One thing my parents and I enjoy, is roadtripping. And we are getting thos emiles in while they're here. Today we explored northwestern Washington State, and actually got to within feet of the Canadian Border.

Just took a small drive up the old Pacific Highway route. While in Marysville, we came across an antique car show, including a still running 100 year old Model A! Apparently, they just hang around this parking lot every weekend.

We took our time climbing the highway up towards Blaine, showing off some little ghostowns here and there, such as Bow, and slightly less ghost towns like Edison and others.

We came back, and I did something I wanted to do for a LONG time. Back in 1982, when I was a little kid, Saturday Nights were staying up late with the parents, watching Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. Occasionally with a black forest cake or A&W Root Beer Floats.

Under the guise of getting coffee for the morning, I snuck out to the grocery store, got coffee, and some cake slices for the folks. At 10:30, I switched over to Plex, and on came Twilight Zone. Then Star Trek. Then Battlestar Galactica.

I really wanted to do this. I missed out on the chance last time they were up here, I wasn't going to lose it again. So for two and a half hours, I got to be eight years old again, keeping my parents up, while we watched Sci Fi. And I wanted to have a night of those good times again.

Fifty is the new Eight.

Where I am now.

Fashion Goals:

This Week's Celebratory Birthday Meal: Fairy Bread

So I have a close friend in Australia who, a few weeks ago, told me I needed to make scones after she saw my Popeyes Biscuits. That did me right, and she mentioned Fairy Bread to try as well. It's been on my radar for my birthday ever since.

Yes, it's not quite my birthday yet (about 25 hours from now). But as my parents will be here for the next two weeks I made this now so I could have some before they got here.

This is really good. For something so simple, it's REALLY good. Since becoming diabetic and cutting back on my sweets, I've lost a bit of my sweet tooth. I like cake, but rarely finish a slice in one sitting before it's too sweet. This has a really subtle sweetness that builds as you chew it, and a heckuva crunchy texture.

This is dangerous. Now I can have something lightly sweet anytime I want. And all it takes is a TON of butter and a TON of sprinkles. :)

# Fairy Bread

A slice of bread.
Enough margarine (or softened butter) to thickly spread on the bread
A whole lotta nonpareil sprinkles

1 - Grab you a slice of bread.
2 - Spread butter on bread VERY thickly, making sure to cover the whole slice.
3 - Add enough sprinkles to spread across the bread, covering it completely.

#thisweeksmeals

Ending Day Three of Super Adulting:

Spent the last two nights introducing a friend to Ranma 1/2. I really love that they're enjoying something that gave me a lot of joy over the years.

This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Klobásník (aka Kolaches, aka Pigs-in-a-Blanket)

Last time I made these, I marked them as "remake." Mainly because they came out very sweet. Almost too sweet. When I made these this time, I tried to see where I could cut back on the sweetness, but didn't find any place I could really cut back. So I just tried to make them again.

This does use my kolache dough recipe, which has mace in it, so I left the mace out this time...and it tasted good! Not overly sweet like last time, so maybe that was the culprit. The honey butter says to use unsalted butter, but I may go with salted next time just for a bit more flavor on the bread.

# Klobásník

Multiple
5.0 Klobásník

0.25 cup milk (scalded)
0.25 cup sugar
0.5 tsp salt
0.75 package yeast
0.25 cup water (dough)
1.0 whole egg (beaten) (dough)
0.25 cup salted butter (melted)
1.6666666666666665 cups flour
2.5 slices American Cheese
5.0 whole sausages (hot dog sized)
0.5 tsp water (egg wash)
1.0 whole egg (egg wash)
1.0 tbsp unsalted butter (honey butter) (melted)
1.0 tbsp honey

1 - Combine milk, sugar and salt. Cool to lukewarm.
2 - Stir yeast into warm water; let stand 5 minutes.
3 - Add to milk mixture. Stir in eggs and margarine and enough flour to make a soft dough.
4 - Knead on lightly floured board until smooth and elastic.
5 - Cover, let rise in warm place until double in bulk.
6 - Punch down, cover and let rise for 30 minutes.
7 - While dough is still rising, add the sausages to a large skillet and cook until warmed through, turning while they cook to ensure all sides are lightly seared.
remove the dough to a work surface lightly sprinkled with flour.
8 - Cut the dough into equal amounts, depending on the amount you are making)
9 - Prepare a large baking sheet with a silicone mat or sprayed with non stick cooking spray. Set aside.
10 - Working with one piece of dough at a time, press the dough into a larger square shape, slightly larger than what's needed for the sausage to fit on one side.
11 - Place a half slice of cheese on one side, then the sausage.
12 - Roll the dough and pinch together where it meets.
13 - Place on the prepared baking sheet with the seam side down.
14 - Continue until all the klobásník are prepared.
15 - Place the klobásník on the baking sheet with approximately 1/2 to 1 inch of space in between, they rise while they bake, but it’s ok if they run into each other.
16 - Cover and let rise for an additional 45 minutes.
17 - While rising, preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
18 - Remove the cover from the klobásník
19 - Prepare the egg wash by beating the egg with the water. Brush this over the top of the dough.
20 - Bake for 14-15 minutes until the tops are golden. Turn the baking sheet during the middle of baking if needed for even browning.
21 - Remove from the oven, combine the melted butter and honey, and brush this on top of the klobásník while they are still hot.
22 - Let cool for several minutes, then serve warm.

Makes 5 klobasniks at ~37.5g carbs per klobasnik.
Calories 571
Total Fat 31g
Total Carbohydrate 48g
Protein 16g

#thisweeksmeals #baking

Where I am now....

Comics are coming. ETA: August 23rd, 3797AD

The Onion gonna Onion

This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Breakfast Calzones/Rolls

This was a recipe I had trouble with last week, so I tried again this week with a few changes, and they came out pretty darned good. It's a recipe from Robyn Nixon, and it was fairly bare bones, so I updated the recipe.

The main problem I had the first time was that this recipe calls for pizza dough. For some reason I could not get the pizza dough to stretch into a size that I could make the calzones/rolls with. It would just snap back.

This time, I ended up substituting crescent roll dough (which in itself is a substituion for dinner roll dough which I can never find around here), and it came out fine. When making the scrambled eggs, I'd very much season them like you normally scramble eggs, as they're the biggest flavor you have in the calzone/roll. I did forget I'd need cubed potatoes, so I substituted tater tots. They're potatoes.

I'd also suggest doubling the cheese portion, but that's just me. :)

# Breakfast Calzone

Robyn Nixon
6.0 calzones

14.0 oz Pillsbury pizza crust (cut into rectangles)
4.0 whole eggs (scrambled)
2.0 tbsp sausage (cooked) (crumbled)
2.0 tbsp bacon (cooked) (crumbled)
2.0 tbsp of potatoes (cooked) (finely cubed)
12.0 slices pepperoni
4.0 tbsp shredded Cheddar cheese
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)

1 - Spread out the pizza dough to comfortably make the number of calzones you'd like.
2 - Cut pizza dough into the number of rectangles you need.
3 - Layer cheese onto half of each rectangle.
4 - Layer pepperoni on top of the rectangle.
5 - Spoon remaining ingredients on top of pepperoni and cheese.
6 - Roll the dough over mixtures. These can also be made into calzones by pinching all four sides of the pouch instead of simply rolling them.
7 - Pinch edges if you can. Might have to stretch dough. Rolled them over so the seams were on the bottom.
8 - On a parchment layered baking sheet bake at 400 degrees for 13 minutes
9 - Once browned removed from oven and spray with olive oil.

6 servings at ~37.5g carbs per serving
Calories 306
Total Fat 10g
Total Carbohydrate 39g
Protein 13g

Yields 4 servings normally

#cooking #thisweeksmeals

"Hey, look!" She said trying to not doomscroll or get into CNN News Junkie Mode.

I got the Atari 800XL up and running! Just seeing it boot up and the keys register was good. Getting software to run from a flashcard was a little dicier, but I got most of it working.

I'm not sure if I can stream from it, though. The real-time video encoder I use does NOT like the video signal, showing it as a black and white semi-scrambled video signal (almost like composite video over component). But it does show it live making it easy to play games.
My elgato shows it fine, but there's a 1 second delay between what the Atari outputs and when it shows on screen making it impossible to play action games.

I think I did this before with my VCR and pumping a signal through composite to an encode AND coax to a TV. I'll figure something out.

Now...well, can't put off CNN News Junkie mode forever....

Saw this on my way home today....

IT IS 88 DEGREES IN MY LIVING ROOM

Thankfully, the office has AC.

That isn't promising.

Macross: Do You Remember Love

I've seen this movie many many times, but never on the big screen. For her 40th anniversary, I decided to fix that (even if it was a virtual big screen).

I saw this for the first time in 1988, and while Macross wasn't my first anime (I got bit by the bug in 1978 with Battle of the Planets), it's one of the more important ones to me.

The movie really hit different after I transitioned. It's certainly a product of it's time and culture. While the main protagonist has a journey from being a mysogynist jerk to someone who cares about the women around him, Misa/Lisa's journey is harder to take...that all she needs for happiness is to find a love and become a homemaker (however temporary).

It's still an amazingly lovely animated movie, and I wish we'd get movies with this style of animation in the US. The only ones I can really think of like this are Heavy Metal and the 1984 Transformers Movie....

This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Packaged ramen.

Yeah, I screwed this week's recipe way up. It was a SUPER vague recipe with confusing instructions. I'll try again next week.