Monday, June 23, 2008

Thursday, June 19, 2008

  • Currently Listening
    Illinois
    By Sufjan Stevens
    see related

    quiet.

    all of the girls are over at debi and miles' meeting/eating with their adoptive moms/babies.

    alright, let's get down to business. i made some cappuccino brownies today, and you should make them. for real.

    i made a couple of changes to them, so they're more like espresso brownies than cappuccino. okay here's the original recipe, and i'll put my changes in parentheses beside them.


    2 pounds semisweet chocolate chips (okay, the packages list the chips in ounces and not pounds. 2 pounds=32 ounces. i used the ghiradelli and used three bags with came out to 36 ounces, but who's counting?)
    1/4 cup instant coffee granules (i got instant espresso granules instead, a little stronger. and if i had it to do over, i would maybe do a little more. maybe even as much as 1/2 cup. up to you.)
    1 cup unsalted butter, softened(we didn't have unsalted, so whatev. also, i used a stick and a half of butter, and a 1/4 cup of vegetable oil just to make the brownies fudgier)
    2 cups white sugar
    8 eggs
    3 tablespoons vanilla extract
    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
    1 teaspoon salt
    2 cups all-purpose flour

    DIRECTIONS
    Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease and flour four 8x8 inch baking pans.

    Place the chocolate chips and the coffee granules in a double boiler over simmering water. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until melted and smooth. Set aside.

    In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs two at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in vanilla, cinnamon, and salt, then mix in the melted chocolate.

    Mix in flour until just blended. Divide the batter equally into the prepared pans, and spread smooth.

    Bake for 35 minutes in preheated oven, or until the edges pull from the sides of the pans. Cool on a wire rack. Cover, and refrigerate for 8 hours. Cut the cold brownies into bars to serve.
    ____________________________________________________________________________________________

    alright, go ahead and disregard the "refrigerate for 8 hours" crap. they're awesome right out of the oven--i mean, give them a few minutes not to burn the skin off the roof of your mouth.

    also, this makes a LOT of brownies. this batch made 1 large pan, and 2 small ones for me. but the thicker the batter was in the pan, the better they turned out. so, maybe whichever pans you use just make sure the batter is 2ish inches thick. don't skimp. i mean, we're already a cup of butter and 2 pounds of chocolate in, no looking back now.

    so..to wrap up. this recipe is good, and i say make weird changes, like some starbursts or something.



Wednesday, June 18, 2008

  • Currently Watching
    The Family Stone (Full Screen Edition)
    By Claire Danes, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Dermot Mulroney, Craig T. Nelson
    see related

    comfort and joy

    i am up in my room. it's june. i know it. but i just put on 'the family stone'. which is obviously a christmas movie. the other day i almost watched 'it's a wonderful life'.

    i'm not sure when 'the family stone' became a comfort movie for me, but here i am, on june 17 wrapped up in the opening titles of this movie. with holly berries and christmas wreaths.

    [also, a comfort movie for me=something i can put on and completely ignore because i know every scene, every nuance, every favorite line, etc. a movie that i can go to sleep to. and many times a movie that at one time or another has been watched by my entire family]

    the last few weeks have been weird.

    starting out with jessi being gone, then a few days trying to get back to normal, then jared and maria were here (i was off), now we're back to normal, but the girls are leaving in just a few days.

    in limbo.

    anyway, the evening began with jessi and i starting out on a walk to the starbucks that is a 5 minute-ish drive from our house. we realized very early on that this walk would take substantially longer than we wanted, and that we would end up walking back in the dark (on a very large, somewhat suspect road). thank God we went back, grabbed the car, and ended up being able to sit and debrief on life, instead of running in and out of starbucks with no talk time.

    life is weird. and i can't breathe through my nose. but that's not why life is weird. it's weird because so many times we don't get what we deserve. both in positive and negative ways. the most obvious of which is how i can't even begin to deserve the affection that the Lord has towards me. on the contrary, many times i whine and complain about not getting what i want or think that i deserve. little things like how much money i made in the past, or even the clothes i put on, or the just in general, a better position in life.

    i'll tell you this. i do not deserve this life that i am living.

    i am insanely thankful to live here. more specifically, i am thankful to the point of tears to be able to live here WITH people that i consider family. the last couple of days have been an actual reward/gift. jessi and i have been able to spend some hilarious time together. which has been wayyy harder to come by than you might think. i feel life starting to slow down every so slightly, and i don't think it will last. i am really treasuring the slowness, and the knowing that life and its pace will pick back up sooner rather than later.

    all that slowness means we have a nice long wait until christmas rolls around. but it sure is nice to get a little taste of it, even if it is still six months away.