Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

So I boiled up some tea for making iced tea...but I need to cool it down before I can have any.

It's 20 degrees outside (-7C)...colder than my freezer. I'll just leave it outside like I used to in Pennsylvania. :)

Question for the bakers out there.

I've been trying to make cinnamon rolls for a while now, and except for one time, they've all come out like this...where the rolls swell, but only at the bottom and they come out less like rolls and more like "mounds."

Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong here? The bread is good, and the rolls are tasty...they're just shaped badly.

Advice?

Spent the evening with some online friends watching some 80s and 90s afternoon animation. While I really really love Japanese anime, my real love is animation in general. I get as much fun from an episode of Macross or Ranma as I do from Batman: The Animated Series or Tiny Toon Adventures.

I haven't had much of a chance to share that love with anyone since the C/FO fell apart waaaay back in the 90s, but I'm glad to have an outlet to do so every so often now.

::Watching ThunderCats with friends::

"You know I never went furry, but Cheetara tried REALLY hard."
"It's never too late, you know."
"If Cheetara, FiFi Le Fume, and Cleo from the Cadillac Cats came into my life all at the same time at JUST the right time..."

This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Yeto's Superb Soup

My unexpected favorite cold weather soup. You wouldn't expect pumpkin, feta and salmon to make a good soup, but oh my goodness does it ever. AND it's Zelda inspired, which makes it doubly happy making for me.

There are some substitutions from the original recipe from Cucco's Kitchen. I use canned pumpkin filling instead of fresh pumpkin as that's fairly seasonal around here. And I had to substitute chicken broth for fish broth, as fish broth is very rare around here, and certainly not available during a last minute 12:30AM grocery run.

# Yeto's Superb Soup

Cucco's Kitchen

2.0 pounds canned pumpkin
4.0 cloves garlic (minced)
0.5 cup white onion (chopped)
1.0 cup carrots (chunked)
2.0 whole potatoes (chunked)
1.0 cup celery (chunked)
4.0 cups fish stock
8.0 oz feta cheese
1.5 cups heavy cream
salt
pepper
1.3333333333333333 pounds salmon

1 - Add the onions and 3/4 of the garlic to a pot with some olive oil and cook under medium high heat until brown.
2 - Add in pumpkin and add fish stock. Cook at a simmer covered for 20min.
3 - Add your stock to a food processor or blender along with the goat cheese and heavy cream. Purée until well incorporated.
4 - Add some oil to a pot and add the rest of the garlic till it browns.
5 - Add the rest of the vegetables and sauté them for 3 minutes.
6 - Then add in the purée and cook on low heat covered for 5 to 10 minutes.
7 - Cut 1/4 inch deep slices into your salmon on the skin side, and add salt and pepper inside the cuts.
8 - In a pan on med-high heat add the salmon and cook skin side first for 4-5min.
9 - Flip, cook for 3 more min and then flip back to skin side.
10 - Take off heat and rest for 3 min.
11 - Cut your salmon into pieces and add to your soup.
12 - Season the soup to taste.

9 servings at ~400 calories per serving

Calories 417
Total Fat 24g
Total Carbohydrate 21g
Protein 23g

#thisweeksmeals #cooking

The weirdest thing for me about prolonged sub zero weather is ice.

These ice pellets fell shortly before the temps dipped below freezing, about two days ago. It's not gone above freezing since. My brain had trouble comprehending that I've can get to a point that it won't melt. The first time I saw that in Pennsylvania, after nearly a week of sub zero temps, my brain broke.