Success! This month’s Daring Bakers challenge came out great.

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I ended up making a variation to the filling – using a poppyseed filling reminiscent of the makovnjača (mah-COVE-nya-chah) my mom has made ever since I was a young ‘un – that ended up tasting delicious. However…finding poppyseeds in bulk with a royal PITA. Just about every place I visited (or called – I eventually got smart about it) only had tiny little spice jar-sized containers, for sprinkling poppyseeds decoratively on foods like bagels or kaiser rolls. Fortunately, Rainbow Grocery had them, in a big jar in their refrigerated bulk section.

For the filling, I used Hungarian Girl’s recipe. It was easy and very, very, very delicious. But you do get poppy seeds stuck in your teeth afterward.

The coffee cake recipe was also divine–moist, not too sweet, and just yeasty enough. I actually prepared my coffee cake on a Tuesday, froze the baked cake until Sunday, and reheated it. It was perfect.

Since it wasn’t terribly hard to make, and it turned out delicious and freezer-safe, I’ll be making this again.

I redeemed myself in the kitchen this month. After last month’s travesty, I was afraid of February’s challenge. Fortunately, I had a better go of making a panna cotta and florentine sandwich cookies with chocolate than I did with last month’s dessert.

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

Some of the variations I made to the recipe as posted:

• I added a little vanilla extract to the panna cotta, even though Giada’s original recipe does not call for it (probably didn’t need it, but it was a nice addition)
• I made a strawberry and red wine syrup topping to it, using David Lebovitz’s recipe for the syrup (it was incredible)
• I halved the recipe for the florentine cookies, since I didn’t want too many more than were for dinner guests that night
• I filled the florentine cookies with a combination of milk chocolate and mocha dark chocolate

Overall, our dinner guests and I were pleased! This was relatively easy to prepare overall, so I could easily make both of these again.

You know you’ve heard it. It’s the dreaded warning that you’ll be listening to scratchy music interspersed with short ads upselling you or encouraging you to get answers online for the next 30-40 minutes before you hear a couple of beeps and your call is unceremoniously dropped.

The messages to get your answers online instead are particularly galling, since anyone with a brain and an Internet connection nowadays will do ANYTHING to avoid having to get on the phone since we know that entails at least an hour of Muzak-overrun purgatory. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve emailed my bank, Internet provider, or other service and gotten a canned email response saying that they would love to help me with my inquiry if I would just call them at their toll-free number.

Let’s think about what years of “unusually high call volumes” really means. It means that call volumes are unexpectedly high, even higher than they were last year, when they were unexpectedly high, too. That implies that the number of calls has been growing exponentially for years, even if they were stupid enough to imagine that, after every year of call volume growth, the next year’s call volumes would grow linearly.

Now, let’s assume “normal call volumes” were those experienced at approximately 3:17am on a balmy August morning, back in 1987, otherwise known as the Pre-Call Center Era. The growth that would have had to occur since then in order to justify the “unusually heavy call volumes” claim would probably necessitate about 86% of the planet to be working at a call center right now.

In fact, we would all have to be simultaneously calling call centers from multiple numbers, and answering multiple calls, after, of course, each call had been sitting in queue for at least 30 minutes.

Another annoyance: “Your call is very important to us.” If that were true, don’t you think they would hire more people so that they could answer calls promptly? Or maybe they really mean, “Your call is very important to us, but your time isn’t”?

OK, a departure from my usual blog snarkiness (although, only a little…I will save it for the demonic French bakers who invented this insufferably inscrutable dessert!). I started participating in the Daring Kitchen‘s monthly Daring Bakers Challenge, a non-competitive collaborative effort to push us novice bakers out of our comfort zones and create something new. Every month, literally hundreds of intrepid bakers take on a new dessert, one that has foiled many. This month, I totally failed at this month’s dessert: the entremet with biscuit joconde imprimé. (See the pictures below if you don’t believe me)

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

So here’s what this dessert is: a multi-layer dessert cake, usually round, with soft layer fillings held in by a “jovially-imprinted biscuit” that wraps around the dessert. This is what they’re supposed to look like:

Now, look at mine:

Um, yeah.

So this was my entremet:

• chocolate biscuit joconde imprime (base & sides)
• vanilla bavarois (Bavarian cream) – this came out delicious; I used a real vanilla bean and I think this gave it a much better flavor than extract
• a pretzel/chocolate “croustillant” layer – this came out nice, too
• a hazelnut mousse – tasted delicious, but would not set, even after chilling in the refrigerator for 2 hours
• a chocolate mirror glaze – couldn’t really see it reflect, since it plunged past the soft mousse

I had really wanted to make a hazelnut mousse, but there was only one recipe I was able to find that also didn’t include chocolate. I had never made an egg-based mousse before, so I suppose I didn’t know how to troubleshoot any oddness in the texture.

It was an amusing afternoon, though. My thoughts as I was composing this thing:

• Man, the French love eggs! I swear I used about 15 eggs making the damn thing. Every single item except the two chocolate layers—tellingly, the recipes were by Americans—involved lots and lots and lots of eggs.
• There were so, so many steps involved. I was working furiously for about 3 1/2 hours to make everything. Patisserie chefs clearly have created items that are not easy to duplicate at home, ensuring themselves plenty of work even when the economy goes soft. (Maybe not when people opt for low-carb diets, though)
• Making macarons (French macaroons) is far easier.

Just the same, I look forward to destroying the kitchen and wiping batter off the ceiling in next month’s challenge!

Our DNA is the root to understanding our genetic makeup, and, in many ways, our biological destiny. While you might be fortunate enough to get mowed down by a bus driven by a furiously-texting operator when you’re old and frail anyway, most of us will be felled by any assortment of diseases: cardiovascular disease, cancer, even restless-leg syndrome (imagine driving along a winding cliffside road and you get that need to stretch your leg…).

If you’re someone like Jimmy Carter and know that pancreatic cancer has knocked off just about every member of your family, maybe you can focus your energy on maintaining that organ’s health and maybe even getting the thing excised when you’re sick of worrying about it. But what about the rest of us? Most of us have complex DNA makeups, with a smattering of grandma, uncle Joe, and your distant great-aunt Melba thrown in for good measure. Maybe family secrets have prevented you from knowing much more about your family beyond what your parents reddening faces suggest when you bring up the topic.

Enter personal genomics. Spit in a tube or swipe the inside of your cheek, and cough up upwards of $500, and you’ll get to know much more about what kind of future, and past, your genetic material spells out for you than you ever imagined possible. There are a few companies offering this service: 23andMe, founded by Google founder Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki, is the lowest-cost option at about $500. You get a fairly impressive risk profile for all sorts of genetically-influenced diseases and ailments, and some fun stuff: where your ancestors trace their prehistoric origins, and an indication of whether you’re likely to end up lactose intolerant and bald or not.

At the other end of expense is Decodeme, which costs 4 times as much but scans twice as many possible alterations along your DNA strands and can tell you about your likelihood of contracting Alzheimer’s (23andme can not). I won’t get into more of the details but you can read a comparison review. It might be meaningful to you to know that Decodeme’s headquarters are in the spa-like environs of Iceland. Maybe not.

When does this stuff get scary? First, 23andMe offers you insight into knowing whether you’re likely to develop Parkinson’s, which is a bit of a scary bit of knowledge knowing the future that’s in store and how little you can do about it. (Would you want to know that you’ll almost certainly be contracting a horribly debilitating illness relatively early in life, and there’s not much in terms of testing or preventive measures that you can do about it?)

Second, knowing you’re at risk for several diseases just might make you obsessed about it. You could spend your whole life eating whole-grain oat husks washed down with raw, fermented aloe juice in an attempt to stave off colorectal cancer, only to come down with a particularly bad case of the Mondays and bite it. Wouldn’t that be terrible?

Third, on the ancestral origin picture, what if you had attributed your ginger hair, lifelong love of the four-leafed clover, and preternatural draw to the bagpipe and Guinness to your Irish heritage, only to find out that your genealogical roots point east of Minsk? And that O’Malley was Omalsky before the illiterate Ellis Island intake clerks butchered your family name? It could happen.

At any rate, most of these risks are surpassed by the utility of knowing more about yourself, and how much of your fate is hereditarily determined. If you’re like me, you probably don’t think your ancestral origins are anything more than a passing curiosity. And as for your health diagnoses: knowledge is power. Besides, both 23andMe and DecodeMe force you to opt-in to knowing about the really scary stuff. You can find out if you have a propensity to gain weight eating a diet in monosaturated fat without knowing if Parkinson’s is something you’re going to have to surrender your life to eventually.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Irish are genetically distinct from other Europeans (politics.ie)
• A sad day for personal genomics (scienceblogs.com)
• Navigenics, 23andMe slammed in government report (mercurynews.com)
• Why DNA testing could be free by 2020 (ctv.ca)

…I’d like to propose another law that will uphold the respect for the law, and prevent much harm to befall an innocent, law-abiding populace.

The police will have the right to enter and investigate any house they suspect of having a party where alcohol is available to people under the age of 21. (“Reasonable suspicion,” of course, should suffice.)

There are many reasons why I think politicians—especially Arizona governor Jan “Chosen by God” Brewer—should support this:

• the law simply enforces a law that prohibits adults, even a child’s parents, from allowing a child access to alcohol
• if a parent doesn’t break the law, s/he has nothing to worry about; only those who would violate the law should feel put out as policemen storm their house looking for underage drinking
• in a recent survey, 28% of teens had been to a party where alcohol was served to minors and parents/adults were present
• teens who start drinking at age 15 are 5 times as likely as those who start after 20 to end up abusing or becoming dependent on alcohol
• 23% of the teenage drivers involved in deadly car accidents had a blood alcohol level of above 0.08%, about 1,100 per year, and with the economic equivalent cost of over $9 billion annually, nationally

Obviously, parents turning a blind eye to—or even encouraging—drinking among children under their care are responsible for an enormous cost financially and in terms of lives. Should innocent, law-abiding taxpayers have to pay the price for other people breaking the law?

Parents who are found providing alcohol to children under the age of 21, even a glass of champagne on New Year’s, should:

• be imprisoned
• have their children put in foster care
  (I mean, we can’t deport them, right?)

Much like the illegal immigrants knowingly violating our nation’s laws, and, in many cases, breaking other laws and causing crime, these parents who ply their children with booze are violating our nation’s laws, leading to their children breaking other laws and causing crime, death and destruction.

SO…when can we expect the law-abiding, proudly conservative folks who supported Arizona SB 1070, to support this as well? Unless they’re utter hypocrites, they certainly should!

The world’s most famous living physicist, Stephen Hawking, sounded a bit of a sci-fi warning recently, suggesting that life beyond our solar system is probably likely, and wouldn’t necessarily be friendly to humans if we were to make contact with it. Since when did Hawking become such a paranoid? you might say. Well. Think about it. Even our own evolutionary history on earth–I’m talking about every living thing, not just homo sapiens–has been more marked by aggression towards other species, not peacefulness. Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. Brutal, but such is the fascist temperament of Mother Nature.

This reminded me of a very short episode of The Twilight Zone, one bereft of dazzling special effects, but laden with a thought-provoking twist (A Small Talent for War – SPOILER). In it, an alien arrives at the United Nations and announces to the world’s representatives that they had created mankind millions of years ago, and that he was sent to see how the species was coming along. He states disdainfully that humanity has “a small talent for war” and that it would have 24 hours to show more promise, or else it would be destroyed. The UN urgently spends the next day furiously arguing to hammer out a worldwide peace deal, to impress the aliens and allow man to continue to exist. When the alien reappears and looks at the peace deal, he laughs and intimates that he seems to have been misunderstood; the aliens are in the business of creating warriors, and this latest attempt at peace proves that mankind is definitely not up to snuff, and will be promptly vaporized as an experiment gone awry. (Don’t know how much longer it’ll be available, but it’s here at Vimeo)

So this had me thinking: will mankind’s propensity for violence eventually vindicate us? Will our nuclear, biological and other weapons of mass destruction eventually be useful when we’re locked in mortal battle with another life form? Maybe the continued tensions around the world and the military-industrial complex that have grown to coddle them are all part of a master plan that will ensure our eventual survival. Maybe we need togive war a chance.

Or will our violent nature end up encouraging us to do to other extraterrestrial species what Hawking suggests might happen to us? Having outgrown the space on our planet, we’ll be turned outward in search of lebensraum and resources in order to survive, and will end up obliterating the life forms that have sprouted up in the universe’s oases.

Or maybe we’ll need those weapons when manmade robots rebel against us and attempt to destroy us? Hey, if I, Robot, Terminator and Battlestar Galactica have all seized on this theme, maybe there’s a nugget of truth to it. Maybe.

Impossible to know, but it makes you wonder if Mother Nature, in all of her awesome yet cruel power, continues to favor long-term survival over compassion.

This is an extension of an earlier post: What Europeans think of each other. I’m sure this will get as many attacks as that one did.

Let me start off by saying that, because the US is a young country, and people move around a lot, and we share a common language, nationality and (federal) legal system, the differences between an Alabaman and a Georgian are not going to be as great as those between an Albanian and, well, a Georgian (the Caucasian version).

Because I was raised in southern California, New Jersey and North Carolina, but have spent most of my adult years in northern California, I have a more objective perspective than your average American. (I probably spent most of my formative years in NJ and think mostly like a New Jerseyan, but still consider myself a Californian, strangely). Take this for what it’s worth (i.e. not much).

Californians – Northern: Considered “the land of fruits and nuts” by most of the rest of the country, especially by midwesterners who are afraid of anything that isn’t beef jerky. There’s some unsaid envy of the state’s technological and entertainment prowess, and its weather and beaches, as evidenced by plenty of schadenfreude at its current budgetary woes (not anything unusual for those who have lived here for a while). Northern Californians are said to think Southern Californians are a bunch of fake-and-baked bleached bimbos. Maybe that’s the case. Maybe Northern Californians (San Franciscans, in particular) are just jealous of the truly warm weather of the South. Some will tell you it has to do with water rights. They’re lying.

Californian – Southern: This is the land of Hollywood and Baywatch. There is a certain glamour and joie de vivre that Northern Californians lack, although other Americans are pretty safe when they say SoCal folks are preoccupied with appearances. Dressing well and being in shape are of paramount importance; living a healthy lifestyle is more popular here than anywhere else in the States. Megachurches dominate, especially in conservative Orange County, a dubious challenge to the hedonism of the area (the religious are just as shallow, if not more, than the non-religious). Southern Californians are proud of the fact that they don’t take things too seriously. They’re lying.

Pacific Northwest: I’m putting Washington and Oregon together here, and Seattle and Portland dominate the impression we get of this rugged, cold region of the country. Oregon’s said to be a blend of rednecks and hippies; I heard a comic say once that it’s the only place you’ll see a hybrid car on blocks. Both have the cool intellectual heritage of Northern Europe, in contrast to the Latin feel of Los Angeles and the Southwest. It rains often, and people don’t mind getting wet. Getting outdoors and hiking, biking and skiing (in Canada) are popular. People are relatively quiet.

Southwest: This area includes Arizona, Nevada (parts), New Mexico, and western Texas (at least to me). Think dry, arid, lots of cactus and tumbleweeds, the stuff of movie roadtrips and Spaghetti Westerns. Everything either has an Indian (Native) or Spanish name, and even though the old white people here are conservative, they don’t mind it. Lots of space, weird insects, arachnids (including scorpions and black widow spiders) and snakes. Old people wear cowboy hats and bolo ties. It gets absurdly hot in the summer, and freezing cold at night.

Upper Midwest: This includes the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and maybe Nebraska and Kansas (the Great Plains). People I know here are almost always of German or Swedish stock, or Norwegian if they’re from North Dakota. Cold, cold, cold and boring, boring, boring. It’s relatively progressive (proximity to Canada?) and Minnesota, at least, is relatively well-to-do. Wisconsin is famous for cheese, and both Minnesotans and Wisconsonians hate being confused with each other; neither has an issue with Iowans or Canadians. Dakotans are considered idiots (it’s claimed it’s their Norwegian blood). The Great Plains states – Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas – are considered 100% rural and agricultural: mile after mile of corn fields.

The Rockies: This is Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, with a bit of special case for Utah. Majestic red rock, crisp air and a bit of the pioneer spirit. Lots of skiing, and a general love of the outdoors. Utah, with its heavy Mormon population, is a bit different – relatively poor, religious, no alcohol, no working on Sundays, “family friendly”, etc.

Midwest: I’m including Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan here (maybe western Pennsylvania, too). These are considered the Rust Belt of the country. A bit cold and flat, a lot of erstwhile industry that might have not adapted well to changing times. I lived in Ohio for a couple of years and found it boring. Chicago is a nice exception, but the rest is the pits: it feels like everyone lives in the suburbs and there is no civic life whatsoever.

Southern Midwest: I don’t know what you would call this region, but I’m including Arkansas, Oklahoma, northern Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee. These are a hybrid of Southern (they speak with a Southernish accent) and the Midwest. Very conservative but without the polarized racial dynamics of the South (at least it seems that way to me). Known for being a bit rednecky, especially in the areas near Appalachia.

South: Includes Louisiana (except the Creole New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, northern Florida, and South Carolina (arguably North Carolina and Virginia, since they were part of the Confederacy, but they seem a bit different). Considered lazy, fat, uneducated, racist and stupid by most other Americans–or, what Europeans think of Americans, in general–although there is a vestige of respect for their literature and plantation-like elegance. Of course, there are some incredibly intelligent and open-minded people here, but they are outnumbered. Atlanta is an exception in many ways.

East Coast/Eastern Seaboard: I’m subtracting out New England and putting that in a different category, so this includes New York, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Washington DC, and arguably Virginia and North Carolina. Former engine of the Industrial Revolution in the US (along with New England) and still very progressive, wealthy and technologically-advanced. One of the “coastal elites” that the flyover states dislike but still depend on for government handouts. Heavy Italian, Jewish, Irish and Eastern European influence to the culture.

New England: Includes everything from Maine down to Connecticut. They have their own accent, and a brusque coldness to their demeanor. “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire has a defiant libertarianism, while its neighbor Vermont has a hippie-like relaxed nature. Connecticut is wealthy, Rhode Island is tiny, and western Massachusetts and Maine are considered the boondocks. All have architecture reminiscent of their namesake, and I personally can’t help thinking of witch burning and the Scarlet Letter – a severe form of Protestantism that’s mellowed out in recent times.

Outliers: There are 3 that come to mind: southern Florida, Alaska and Hawai’i. Perceptions of each: Southern Florida is Cuban-dominated, sunny and festive. Alaska is remote with tons of lumberjacks and breathtaking scenery. Hawai’i is tropical and full of surfers. These are all no-brainers, and plenty of non-Americans might have similar perceptions.

Anything I missed or I was wrong on? Please share below in the comments.

I work at a very small company, and a while back I was in charge of handling the customer service emails. For the most part, this is pretty routine, brainless work – perfect for the late afternoon when the sun is roasting me and my mind isn’t working all that well anyway.

Most of the emails I get are either polite, or curt (because, I’m guessing, they think a machine is at the other end, so there is little point in adding niceties). I don’t care either way and I respond in kind – politely.

Occasionally, you get a real dipshit that, completely unprovoked, lashes out in an email. In every single case I can think of, we have done absolutely nothing wrong–these people just have an axe to grind against the world and we’re just the most accessible target.

I don’t really lower myself to engage in a flame war with these people – but I will amuse myself at their expense. Talking down to these people is a lot of fun and pisses them off more than anything else.

Here’s an example.

In response to an automated signup confirmation email, one person wrote a pithy–and completely pointless–reply:

Your gay.

To which I replied:

Thank you for being our gay.

Funny, right? This guy didn’t think so. His response:

i am talking about you d i p s h i t

How dare he insult our automated email sender! I had to defend its honor. My riposte:

I suggest you take a class in b a s i c  E n g l i s h then. Terribly sorry about the confusion.

Heh.

Then we had “the doctor.” I got this guy’s email apparently the first day of a two-week vacation.

There is some personal information about me on your site that you must remove immediately. If you don’t remove it within 1 hour, I will sue you! (I am a lawyer AND a doctor)

So, I got back a couple of weeks later to read this guy’s email, and thankfully (whew!) didn’t see any papers served to our company. So I responded exceedingly politely, basically asking the guy what the hell he was talking about.

The reply went along the lines of:

I am in a relationship with a very nice French woman who was disturbed to find a personals listing I had posted a long time ago on your site. Please remove it immediately or I will sue you within an hour!

Since our company is the furthest thing from a dating service, I was still completely in the dark. I asked him ever-so-politely for a URL. In addition to threatening to sue me within an hour (for the third time), he provided a link to a review of an online dating service where this jackass had posted a personal ad in the form of a comment.

Let’s be clear about this: this guy was so stupid as to think a blog post about a dating service was the dating service, and that publishing a comment in the blog post would share his personal ad with thousands of eligible young women.

What a dumbass.

So I patiently explained in an email that this was not Match.com, that he had just posted a comment, but that I had deleted it. I wished him and his nubile French girlfriend a happy life together.

I got another panicked reply from Dr. Jackass later, saying that it was not removed. After a few back-and-forths later, it turned out that his girlfriend was still seeing the comment in Google search results. That’s because–you guessed it!–Dr Jackass used his full, real name in posting the comment. I explained that it would take Google some time for that deleted comment to flush out of their search results, and that he should take it up with Google.

Thankfully that was the last I heard from him.

Another person who didn’t understand the difference between a review about email providers and the actual email provider was a lady I’ll call Dumbelina.

I got an email from her saying:

I can’t seem to log into my email account. It says it’s locked or something. Please help me. There’s important mail I have to read.

I wrote back, and having learned from the Dr Jackass experience, asked her which email account she was trying to access. She said Yahoo Mail.

I wrote back.

You have reached us in error. We are not Yahoo Mail, and we are not in any way affiliated with Yahoo Mail. We’re [Our Company]. We have no way of helping you access your Yahoo Mail account, but you might consider contacting Yahoo if you’re still having difficulties logging in.

Crystal clear, right? The response I got back from Dumbelina:

I don’t know about this [Our Company] business. I ‘m just trying to log into my Yahoo Mail account. I can’t get in, and it’s been ONE WEEK since I’ve been locked out. There are VERY important things in that account that I have to access, and you are not helping me. HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Um, delete?

I can laugh now. Back then, I was cursing these people for being born.

D. is currently living in Copenhagen. She loves the Danes. “They are superior people…they eat lots of fruit.”

My generous employer gave us two options for breakfast this morning: apples and danishes. One high-fiber, one low-fiber. One rich in antioxidants, the other clotted with sugary frosting. One that Danes eat, and another only named after them.

I hungrily made my choice, polyphenols be damned. I apparently don’t have a drop of Danish blood in me.