Picture a Day - Day 292

Hello, dearies. Auntie Maim here with another great homewrecking tip, this time we're visiting that heart of the home the kitchen (of course that's one big problem right there if you're storing food and pots in your heart, might want to look into that or at least swallow a couple magnets).

About the biggest crime against nature one can commit in the kitchen that doesn't involve a couple of goats and a dominatrix is the wanton destruction of a carefully crafted recipe. But it takes skill to miss the pool and belly flop onto the parking lot so amazingly when it comes to baking.

The first trick is finding the recipe you wish to destroy. I suggest looking through magazines as they are most likely to not bother to have a team of editors comb through for mistakes and a professional kitchen creating 30 versions of it for that perfect no way you could ever achieve it picture.

I chose a caramel apple cake. It seemed surprisingly easy and next to impossible to screw up but I like a challenge.

The first task is to skim over the recipe getting the gist of what you need. Apples, caramel, cake mix. Got it.

You never want to write a detailed list, or to even bring the recipe with you or you could accidentally come home with all of the correct ingredients. In this case I substituted Honeycrisp apples with Granny Smiths and to really mess with it I hand chopped five apples instead of slicing up three.
But that isn't enough to really mess up a recipe. No, you must forget at least one important ingredient so there's a good chance your cake could refuse to form something other than a soupy mess or even turn into an evil mutant bent on the earth's destruction.

In this case I decided to forgo the radiation poisoning by adding in plutonium and skipped the suggestion of a box of pudding. It was a bit tricky as you'd think that would stand out in reading over the recipe but I made sure when at the grocery store to never go anywhere near the aisle ensuring I'd forget.

There was a brief moment when I hesitated but a horde of kids pushing the "Customer in Training" carts came baring down on me and all manor of Cosby type desserts was forgotten.
Now you could do the rookie mistake of just never turning your oven on and declaring it a failure but that's only for those who are too lazy for the final "What the Hell Happened?!" reveal. Skip the lazy way out and actually turn your oven on and let the thing bake. (You could at this point but it in the wrong pan though, giving it the chance to burn on the outside and refuse to bake inside).

The trick comes towards the end. Instead of finding your stash of toothpicks you have fun for baking, accept that they slipped off to the interdimensional kitchen of the damned along with your colander and melon baller and just pull the cake out of the oven when it's been an hour without checking for doneness.

When it's cooled enough that you're ready to get it out of the pan you should wind up with something that looks a lot like this:
For that final, hand toss "well it could still taste good" melt something and just dump it on top. Nothing fancy or sneakily covering it in frosting. How could people know it's a failure if you actually hide the evidence?
If you follow all of my tips and maybe throw in a few of your own (it is still classic to forget the eggs or confuse salt for sugar) you too will have a completely destroyed recipe taking up your counter space.

Next week I'll teach you how to remove spilled wine spots by employing a sand blaster and how to house train a griffin. All that and more on the Happy Homewrecker.

Picture a Day - Day 291

When one receives a shipment packed in Dry Ice there's really only one thing to do.Pull out the camera and play.

While it was fun messing with the Mad Scientist look I suddenly was struck by the creativity train and had a neat Halloween idea:



Now I'm set if I ever need a picture of an eerie witches cauldron for a painting or to set the mood. I just have to get a graveyard at midnight, a tap dancing skeleton and Frankensteins Monster waiting in line at the post office and I'll have filled my monster watching card.

Picture a Day - Day 290

Some days it's really nice knowing both of the parents of our little Essie quite well. I can see the gorgeous coat and strange Elvis lip curl of her mother and the co-dependence and millions of puppy kisses from her father.

So I barely batted an eye when she picked up this latest habit.

I'd throw her toy out in the backyard.She'd run off and get it pretending she's making her way back to me. Then, at the last second, veer off.And make straight for the leaf pile:
Just for good measure she'd do it a few more times before finally letting me take the toy from her:That is 100% of her father there, who always has to take the longest route back possible to show off that he got the duck.

So I'm just gonna sit back, try to keep the leaf pile from scattering around the entire yard, snap some pictures and laugh at her.

Rifftrax Live: Encore

I get a lot (okay not a lot per se, but a handful well at least a couple you have to give me that) of e-mails from people asking me to pimp various goods and services of theirs. Actually it's kinda funny as it wasn't til after my own wedding and the blog change that it really started and it was only for wedding stuff like a wedding photog or someone trying to sell really weird plastic cups.

Basically a whole bunch of stuff that had little to no impact on my life or anyone elses (how do some of you manage to pull in so many companies that offer you stuff to giveaway? I'd love to give out some cool Indian spices with a favorite recipe). But then yesterday came a surprise, an e-mail from New York.

Someone had been looking at my blog and suggested that my readers (hi, all five of you) would like information about this encore event.
You may or may not remember but I attended this first RiffTrax live event and blogged about it. For those who don't have the time or mental focus to read the it all (hey over here! Look squeaker toy!) to sum up Awesome time had by all. Great experience in the theatre and am so glad I went.

And apparently I'm not the only one as they are going to rebroadcast their Rifftrax Live in theatres due to so many selling out. (It was fun to stand in the line with a bunch of other MSTies joking about how we could go see Rifftrax live --which I already had tickets for -- or Julie & Julia).

The Encore will be October 8th (eek 10 days from my first anniversary. Should I be planning something for that?) and you can go here to the main site to see if it will be held in any local theatres.

I only remember Chesney said her hubby and kids might be interested in the idea but if there are any other closet nerds who like bad movies, laughing or have ever even seen Plan 9 (or watched Ed Wood just for Johnny Depp) I must recommend once again you got to check this out.

It was a great time and it was pretty obvious everyone involved was having a fantastic time as well. I love attending live events when the performers are genuinely happy and excited to get to share their craft with the world (and maybe just a touch humbled to have the opportunity).

So once again, for anyone listening Rifftrax Encore. Totally hilarious. Must check out. October 8th. Be there or be something corrugated.

Picture a Day - Day 289

If there is one thing I hope to accomplish in my lifetime it is to break the long held stereotype that science labs are full of various colored chemicals percolating inside glassware so needlessly complicated it looks like the glass blower got the hiccups.

It is just simply not true, no matter how much B-Movies may try to convince you. Not once do we have bright green or red things being distilled down into a test tubes to do unspeakable horrors.

Er um, well okay so sometimes there are bright pretty colors.
But the rather entertaining thing is I'd say at least 80-85% of the time the brightly colored stuff you see is actually probably fairly innocuous (to begin with). Colors are used to keep track of pH for us as cells and bacteria have a funny habit of deciding they want to die off if an environment becomes too acidic or basic (they're just incredibly lazy, whining about their working conditions to OSHA).

So the bright pinks and reds mean a solution is usually neutral and perfectly safe to touch or play with. However if it is cell media that has the words "STERILE" stamped all over it you risk a crazed cell lab technician coming at you with a box full of 24 well plates if you do open it up to touch it.

And what was in my perfectly safe bright red and yellow tubes (the yellow is due to a very acidic nature)? Just a few grams of bacteria all waiting to go to bacteria heaven in the autoclave. See, that's why one shouldn't actually go around eating anything in the lab (well that and God only knows what was on the counters over the years). It may be safe in the packaging but you never know what the mad scientist is going to put in it.

All of my pretty tubes had to get dumped for a good scrubbing so they could be re-sterilized and then used again for more fun bacteria experiments. You can see the now dead bacteria caked all over the bottom of the tubes.
If you've ever wondered what concentrated bacteria smells like just take a piece of rather ripe cheese on a submarine sandwich, hide it behind a radiator for a month and then take a good whiff. It's still missing that autoclave burning pow to the nose but you're pretty close to what I got to clean out yesterday.

There's really only one solution to a snout full of bacteria laden media:
This is why every lab has its own flower box growing the most fragrant roses in the world on the windowsill. We'd share with the rest of you, but we're much too busy putting gel in our hair for that rabid Einstein look and placing an order for more dry ice for the mood setting mist we all work in.

I hope I have been able to convince you that most scientists are not like what you see in B-Movies. We're all upright slightly better groomed individuals working hard to further research who only try to take over the world on the weekend.

In Puppy News, last night my husband and I made a fairly typical garlic laden pasta sauce mixture. As is wont to happen in chopping and distribution a few pieces of garlic slipped off and vanished under the cupboards.

Early in the morning Essie starts her ritual of clawing on my arm so I'll get up and get her her breakfast. Once that's inhaled she begins the "looking in the kitchen for any last scrap of food missed" move.

I didn't think too much of it, there were just a few crumbs from chips or so I lost, and when I sat down on the floor to play with the puppy I got this super strong whiff of garlic. "Did we leave some food out last night on accident?"

"No, I know we put it all away and wait the scent is gone again. Essie."
If you're a vampire you better turn bat if you see this face coming at you or you'll be covered in garlic puppy drool. My puppy has turned into Essie: The Vampire Lick Slayer.

I just hope she works all the little puppy garlic farts out of her system before we come home tonight.