How to bake a cake

Yesterday was Bryan’s birthday so he got to choose what kind of cake he wanted and he picked a German Chocolate cake with traditional coconut and pecan caramel frosting. (Side note: how eerie that this was the cake that both of us always requested from our Mothers as children? Do we need more evidence that we were meant for each other?) Those of you who read my blog know that I have an extreme aversion to “box products” or the like. I don’t even like to buy a pre-made dessert, I prefer to make it myself. So I had to haul out the recipe book and the ingredients to make his cake. I decided to deter a bit from the traditional by adding a bittersweet chocolate ganache between the layers rather than the traditional caramel frosting.

First step in baking a cake is to assemble all the ingredients you will need, including the best tool in my kitchen, my KitchenAid stand mixer.

Mix the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla, baking soda, salt, buttermilk and chocolate together and pour them into three cake pans. It generally works better if all three pans are the same size, but if not you’ll just have to make do.

While your cakes are baking at 350 you should really get started on the frostings. Ask yourself who’s stupid idea it was to have two different types of frosting on one cake and begin to make the chocolate ganache. First step is to chop up an entire bar of baker’s chocolate. No, surprisingly enough, this does not taste good.

After your hands stop cramping, put the chocolate into a saucepan with 1 cup of whipping cream (hey nobody said this was a healthy cake) and melt together.

Depending on your chopping speed and skills the cakes should be just about done. Check them with a toothpick and if done, pull them out and put on cooling racks.

While the cakes are cooling you need to get started on the caramel, pecan & coconut frosting. Dump the evaporated milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla into a saucepan and stir over medium heat. Don’t believe the recipe when it says this only takes 8-10 minutes to achieve the color of caramel you want - it takes much longer. Keep stirring and keep cussing the mixture. Switch to a whisk because the damn wooden spoon is just not cutting it.

Take a break from stirring the frosting from hell to start assembling the cake. Get out the cake stand (how gay is that I not only have a cake stand, but I have two cake stands?) and put the biggest cake on the bottom, cover with the chocolate ganache, top with the next cake and cover it with ganache as well. Finish with the third cake and wish that all your cake pans were the same size because this cake is going to look a bit lopsided.

Once the frosting from hell is finally complete get it on the cake. Don’t forget the sides and hope that no one notices how lopsided the cake is. Taste is more important than looks right?

Have a piece, it’s yummy - looks be damned!

We really are taking over!

The word came down from on high yesterday that we are still hiring the new guy for one of the curriculum development positions in my department and he starts on Monday. Surprising considering the company just RIFed people yesterday.

This is the guy that S & I interviewed a few weeks back, the guy that I Googled and came across his Flicker Photostream, the guy that had a picture of a penis cake and a picture of him wearing a t-shirt that says “I loved every guy I ever fucked, while I was fucking him.” This is the guy that is joining S and I as the third queer on the team of eight (soon to be seven so we’re almost at 50%) working for the openly anti-gay manager.

The interview with M went well and he clued in to S & I right away. I just feel slightly guilty about the fact that we didn’t disclose to him that our manager is anti-gay when we know he’s queer and we also didn’t disclose the fact that the company is up for sale and we all are probably on the chopping block, so this might be a short term position. S and I discussed what we felt we were “allowed” to say based on HR rules and decided that we shouldn’t say anything unless he asked directly. That’s not to say that we didn’t give him every opportunity… We asked several times if he “had any questions about the direction of the company”, if he “had any questions about the future of the company”, if he “had any questions about the corporate culture in our office” or if he “had any questions about what working for B is like”. Well you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!

Regardless, I think he’ll make a good addition to the team, the only detracting factor is that he doesn’t like sushi… Guess we can live with that just so we can freak B out even more. Monday’s going to be interesting!

Szmania’s - a restaurant review

The annual Dine Out for Life event was held in Seattle a few weeks ago. Local restaurants donate 30% of the check to the Life Long Aids Alliance and there’s of course the opportunity to donate more cash at the table. This is a charity event we’ve done almost every year that we’ve lived in Seattle. We went last year with the girls, T-bone & Trixie, and had a great dinner at Veil. Now for those of you who actually read my blog on a semi-regular basis, you might remember that I swore off any LLAA charity events last fall because of their treatment of a local drag queen. I was talked back into supporting LLAA because I do like supporting AIDS charities and of course I’ll use just about any excuse to try out a new restaurant. Reservations were made and we were off for our maiden visit to Szmania’s Restaurant, a German place, in the Magnolia neighborhood.

We had reservations at 7:30, early I know but it was a work night after all, we got there about 10 minutes early and I expected to wait. In years past the restaurants have been packed with hungry diners and a wait is fairly typical. Color me surprised when we were taken directly to a table, a six top for the four of us, but whatever works. Unfortunately, that was the end of anything remotely swift for the rest of the evening. We sat for 20 minutes with our menus and nothing to drink or nibble on waiting for our waiter to arrive. Finally the hostess came to our table and took our drink orders claiming that the waiter would be by in a minute for our food orders. Slow service I can understand and even tolerate, if the place is busy, but honestly I’d say that the restaurant wasn’t even 75% full when we first arrived. By the time the cocktails arrived the waiter still hadn’t taken our orders so the hostess took those and got them in for us. We actually didn’t even see the waiter until he brought over the check at the end of the night.

Our food finally started to arrive and honestly I can forgive just about anything if there is good food involved, unfortunately there was nothing redeeming about this meal. For appetizers we had a cheese fondue that was tasty, but nothing spectacular. The cocktails were great, but I can get a good drink a lot of places. We moved on the the main course and the wine. First, let me say that the wine was freaking amazing, but that has less to do with the restaurant and more to do with the fact that I chose a Pinot Noir from King Estate Winery, a winery in Oregon. I ordered the Jager Schnitzel, Bryan had a rabbit and pasta dish, T-Bone had the beef tenderloin and Trixie had the fish special. Trixie’s fish was overcooked and the scallop that accompanied it was quite undercooked. T-Bone’s tenderloin was unremarkable and Bryan’s dish was actually pretty good, probably the best at the table. My Jager Schnitzel was overcooked and dry, the best thing on my plate was the red cabbage side. On the whole the meal was uninspiring, unremarkable and forgetable.

Plates were cleared and dessert menus were presented. We hemmed and hawed about dessert and finally decided that as unremarkable as dinner had been, the desserts were unlikely to be much better. We however, did decide to have either an after dinner drink or a coffee before we called it a night. We waited and waited and waited and still the waiter never came back. At this point we look around and we are one of 4 tables left in the restaurant - absolutely no excuse for such poor service. In the 20 minutes it took the waiter to come back we decided to skip the after dinner drink and just get the check. This took another 15 minutes to process before we were able to leave. Blast my Seattle sensibilities because I still left a generous tip though the wait staff certainly didn’t deserve it.

Out of 5 stars I give Szmania’s Restaurant 2.5 and that’s because I’m feeling generous. I love German food, but was disappointed from start to finish.

Horde those condoms while you can man!

First the freedom of choice, next the pill… then what? Join the delusional insanity of Protest the Pill Day ‘08.

June 7 marks the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut. This was the first of many decisions that led to the culture of death we live in today.

On that day in 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Griswold v. Connecticut case, it set a legal precedent for claiming that the Constitution grants women the right to privacy in matters of sexual practice. This meant that Connecticut and the rest of the United States could not stop a married woman from obtaining birth control pills. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano has pointed out, the constitutional right to privacy has nothing to do with birth control.

In 1965 this country went to hell when women were granted the right to make decisions about their reproductive options. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as a right to privacy for women. Women were created by jeebus for one purpose only, and that purpose is to be a brood mare. Choice in the number of children and when those children will be conceived is up to men only. Sexual activity is only for procreation and if you are not ready for the blessing of a child in your life, you must abstain. If abstinence doesn’t work for you too bad, do things my way or burn in hell!

If you fuck and use birth control or you fuck and you’re not married, you make the baby jeebus weep. Yes, YOU! You don’t even want to imagine what he’s doing when you fuck someone of the same sex.

13 Ways to Know You’re a TRUE Seattleite

The only good thing about today is that it’s Thursday, which means that I work at home tomorrow, that it’s Friday tomorrow and of course that today is the return of the infamous Thursday 13.  This week we’ll be taking a look at how to tell that you’re a true Seattleite.  Want to join in on the fun and frolic?  Head over to the Thursday 13 site and create your own post!  (this idea stolen & adapted from Citizen Rain)

A true Seattleite:

1. is irritated when a tourist asks to see the original Starbucks, Kurt Cobain’s house, the Space Needle or the Monorail. True Seattleites do not care for these things.
2. considers Seattle to be the very best city on Earth, but will tell you how it rains every single day to keep you from moving here.
3. is a pretentious coffee snob due to the thousands of delicious coffee houses and roastaries that surround them.
4. knows not to visit Pike Place Market on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday and is irritated by the crowds when they do visit.
5. is disgusted by the EMP.
6. knows that “eating dicks” means eating burgers.
7. hates it when Californians visit Washington and whine about the rain and the cold.
8. doesn’t look twice when they see a same-sex couple holding hands in public, regardless of the neighborhood they’re in.
9. answers with their neighborhood name when asked where they live, not with Seattle.
10. owns multiple umbrellas, but doesn’t know where any of them are.
11. recycles everything and will nag those who don’t.
12. knows all the ways to get from Ballard to downtown without using I-5 or Hwy 99.
13. supports locally owned, independent restaurants and shops over chains and corporate stores.

10 of the things Chris wants to do before dropping dead

The indescribable pain that is known only as the 100 Things Meme continues with this post for your enjoyment, your titillation or most likely your pity. In past weeks we have learned the following things:

• 10 Things About Chris
• 10 Things About Chris & Bryan
• 10 Things About Chris & His Family
• 10 Things that Piss Chris Off
• 10 Things that Chris Enjoys

Unfortunately we’ve also learned that 10 multiplied by 5 is still only 50 which, if my grade school math skills don’t elude me, means that I’ve still got 50 damn things to write in this never ending experiment in torture. This week we’ll be taking a look at 10 of the things I’d like to do before I drop dead. Considering how accident prone I am the dropping dead part is much more likely than anyone might possibly imagine.

This unfortunately will only get us up to 60 of the requisite 100 things, so I’m going to need input from the masses. Shirley Heezay has suggested 10 Life Altering Moments, 10 Most Embarrassing Moments and 10 Celebrities I’d Do. I’m not too sure about Life Altering Moments and I’m not sure I could limit myself to 10 on Embarrassing Moments so those two are being taken under advisement, for the time being. 10 Celebrities I’d Do is definitely up for being one of the last posts if nothing brilliant comes to me before then. I’m also considering doing 10 of my favorite books and 10 of my favorite movies, but both of those feel like cop outs for some reason. So here’s your chance dear reader, I’m throwing myself upon your mercy and will consider all suggestions for the continuation of this horror ride that are left in the comments of this post. Now that I’m done begging, on to the actual list.

1. Write a great novel that inspires as well as entertains
2. Do a photographic safari of Africa
3. Tour through Europe with no time restrictions
4. Visit Nantes, France and see where some of my ancestors emigrated from
5. Visit Thailand, Hong Kong and a few other Asian destinations
6. Visit Australia & New Zealand
7. Walk on another planet
8. Know once and for all if “they are out there” or not
9. Experience true democracy as the founding fathers intended, not the bullshit we have now
10. Experience a period of time where people are no longer judged by their gender, sexual orientation or the color of their skin

I admit it, I’m addicted

One of my favorite things to do is curl up with a good book, I think I may have mentioned that a few hundred times. I don’t just love to read, I love books, I like the way they look, I like the way they smell, I like the way they feel in my hands. I don’t just go to the library like a normal person, I buy my books because I keep them. I have bookshelves all over the house that are stuffed full of books. Remember that I worked in a library for several years so you can rest assured that my books are on the shelf alphabetically by author and then title. I’m just geeky enough that I also created an Access database that has all my books in it. I can find what books I own that I haven’t read, very few, what books I have by a specific author and best of all, what books I’ve loaned out. When I loan a book to someone two things happen - first my name goes on the inside of the cover in ink and second the book gets checked out of my database with the person’s name and the date they took the book. Sounds pretty geeky, I agree, but I don’t lose many books because I know exactly who has them. Whenever I see my Mom I bring a bag of books that I’ve read for her to borrow and she returns a bag of books that she’s read, at any given time she has somewhere around thirty or so of my books. Some of my friends call it the P**** lending library, I just smile and nod.

Over the years I’ve read a lot of books, I enjoy the books I’ve read, life’s way too short to read a bad book so I just don’t. There are however a few books that stick out as different from the norm. These books have characters that engross me, they envelop me, they become my friends and I’m sad when the book ends. These are the books that I have to read the next in the series immediately, do not pass go, do not wait, gotta have it like crack. I’ve stayed up all night to finish some of these books because I have to know what happens, no it’s more like a need, a deep yearning that prevents me from stopping until all is resolved with the story at hand. Of all the books I’ve read this has happened exactly three times with Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and with Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.

Tales of the City begins the story of Mary Ann Singleton, her abrupt move to San Francisco and the eccentric folks she finds herself surrounded by. She settles in an apartment building on Russian Hill owned by the eccentric, pot smoking Anna Madrigal. This is a fun look at San Francisco in the 70s and an engrossing, interwoven tale of many real characters. I’ve read the seven books that make up this series many times and anticipate reading through my well worn copies many times in the future.

What with one thing or another, they all run rampant through enough mood rings, gay beaches, opera societies, macrame, free sex, and Quaaludes to choke a mule.

If you’ve been living under a rock, you may not have heard of the Harry Potter sensation. I am freely admitting that I was, still am, caught up firmly in this madness. I wait with a high degree of anticipation for the next movie and will be there within the first week of it’s release. I’ve read all the books multiple times, as each new volume came out I had to reread the previous volumes so that I didn’t forget any of the back story. Teenage wizards, the ultimate fight between good and evil, what’s not to enjoy? I was one of the many who were sad to see the series end with the seventh book, but Rowling did justice to the franchise and ended it well. I became so immersed in these stories that I sometimes forgot I couldn’t just wave my wand and turn on a light.

My latest literary find, aka obsession, is the Twilight Saga. The story centers on Bella Swan who leaves sunny Phoenix and her mother and moves to rainy, gray Forks, Washington to live with her father. Shortly after arriving in Forks, Bella finds that she’s obsessed with a boy in her class who could be one of the worst people in the entire town for her to fall for. Through the twists and turns of high school life and angst the story follows Bella and sucks you in so completely that you’re amazed when the book is finished. I found myself in the rain forest of the Washington peninsula and so engrossed in the first book that I didn’t realize that I was just pages from the end and that several hours had flown by. I’m eagerly anticipating the release of the movie this winter and hope that the translation from page to screen will be as successful as it has been for the Harry Potter books. The final book in the series is being released in August and I’m pre-ordering it from Amazon so that it will be delivered right to my door.

I have to admit though, I came late to both the Twilight Saga and the Harry Potter series. My Mom encouraged me to read Harry Potter having become hooked herself and my friend Nettie told me about Twilight. I held back on both series because I doubted that they could be as good and addictive as promised, I was wrong. If you haven’t read these three series you need to, go get them and read them, then let me know how much you love them.

I’ll wait…

How was your weekend?

It’s another Monday and here I sit in the office.  Surprisingly the sun is shining in Seattle, but fret not, the gray and drizzle is supposed to return tomorrow.  Can’t go too long without our rain, we wouldn’t know what to do.  My sushi buddy is working different days this week so we’re off to sushi lunch today instead of Thursday which has been our ritual for the last few months.  That at least will help drive away the pain of having to actually work.  The weekend was good, quite eventful (for us) in fact…

Friday - nothing happened.  Bryan caught the cold from me so he spent the evening on the couch.  I read my book for a while and went to bed.  How exciting and urbane of us.

Saturday - Bryan spent most of the day on the couch or in bed trying to recover from the stupid cold he caught from me.  He also needed to conserve his energy because we were off to the Three Dollar Bill Cinema’s Some Like It Hot Auction, Saturday night.  Three Dollar Bill Cinema does the Queer Film Festival in October and this was a fund raiser dinner and auction.  We went with T-Bone & Trixie to Pier 66 on the waterfront and had a great time.  The evening began with a silent auction, there were so many great things to bid on, so we did.  Luckily we only won one of the items - a new coffee maker (which we needed) along with some Starbucks’ swag.  Normally I’m not a huge fan of Starbucks but charity is charity and we did need that coffee maker.  Once the silent auctions closed it was time for dinner and the live auction.  Dinner was actually pretty good, it wasn’t haute cuisine, but for a catered dinner such as this it was good.  After dinner the live auction was carried out, everything was way out of our price range, but it was great to see people bidding in the thousands of dollars for a good charity.  Dinner was capped off with the “dessert dash”.  The members of the table had to bid on how much they would pay for dessert and the table with the highest total got to choose first from a table of desserts by “dashing” over to grab their favorite.  The dash part came into play when you had about 1 second before the next table was announced and they were off to grab their favorite dessert.  Our table wasn’t the highest, but we weren’t the lowest either which was good and we ended up with some tasty individual cheesecakes.  All told with the auction win and the cost of admission and dessert dash and the donations we made at the table we spent more than anticipated, but we had a great time.  It was nice to get out, dress up and hang around with a bunch of well heeled queers.  Then I got to have the first night of my latest insomnia attack, that was not fun by any stretch of the imagination.  I was finally able to sleep around 5:30am and got up about 9:30am the next day.

Sunday - Bryan again spent most of the day in bed.  I did some laundry, ran some errands, bought the rest of Bryan’s birthday present, ordered my Mom’s Mother’s Day present and read my book.  I whipped up a batch of my world-famous turkey noodle soup, made with homemade turkey stock, for dinner which seemed to help Bryan’s cold.  Being that I had only about four hours of sleep the night before you’d think I would have drifted right off last night.  You’d be wrong, I was awake until 2:30 this morning and then the alarm went off at the disgustingly early hour of 6:00am.  I’m stopping on my way home and getting some Tylenol PM, I’m gonna sleep tonight if it kills someone!

So how was your weekend?

Stolen thoughts…

Are you reading Voenix Rising?  Why on earth not, the man has a rapier wit and an ability to get his thoughts down onto paper that I truly envy.  I find myself agreeing with him more often than not, laughing at his posts and “borrowing” his better ideas.  Today, I fear, is no different.  His post on the Presidential Candidates really hit home and for those of you who don’t read his blog (again, why not?) I’m posting the relevant quotes.

Why do we need outside enemies when we can destroy ourselves from within so much more effectively?

George Bush, Dick Cheney and their minions have accomplished in eight short years what Al Queda couldn’t even dream of doing in fifty: completely eradicating over 200 years of Democracy and Constitutional law in the United States and turning our country from the shining beacon of freedom in the world to a leader in state sponsored terrorism. Bin Laden (if he’s even alive) is surely sitting in a cave somewhere laughing his ass off. “Thanks for all the help, George! You’ve been great! Kisses!”

And while that monkey-faced-fuck-knob (thanks, Donnie!) in the White House has the lowest approval rating of any president as long as they’ve been polling (lower than even Nixon before he resigned), the Democrats still do nothing to remove him from office—or even attempt to reign him in. What the fuck are they afraid of? By refusing to exercise their Constitutional responsibility, they are giving tacit approval to everything he has done over the past eight years. Nice.

I may not see eye to eye with him on the Hillary Clinton issue, but his point is well taken.  IF her actual strategy is to ensure a McCain victory for her benefit in 2012 we all need to kiss our asses goodbye right now.

Hillary Clinton will not win the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency.

Because of her refusal to accept defeat and an almost pathological desire to destroy Barack Obama, she is all but guaranteeing a Republican win in November. Is this what she wants? Is it because she thinks that by subjecting the country to four more years of neocon rule she’ll get the Oval Office in 2012? I’ve got news for the bitch: if we end up with McCain as president this year, there won’t be an election in 2012, because the first thing that raving lunatic will do is nuke Iran, setting off World War III, killing us all.

McCain’s legendary temper scares the bejeebus out of me, he will cause the end of the world as we currently know it, of this I have no doubt.  The religious right should be thrilled, McCain will be the continuation of a presidency with the ultimate goal of ensuring the end game of a poorly written fiction epic.  Too bad we’ll all be dead and unable to celebrate their “victory”.

Alphabet Meme

Tagged by that sexy man Gooster for this meme. You know me, I’ll do anything a hot guy tells me to do, so here we go with yet another meme.

• A - ADVOCATE FOR: queer rights, gender equality, freedom of choice
• B - BEST FEATURE: ass / legs
• C - COULD DO WITHOUT: religion, war & famine, hate, bigots, etc
• D - DREAMS & DESIRES: world peace, a global sense of satisfaction
• E - ESSENTIAL ITEMS: books
• F - FAVORITE PASTIME: reading a good book, watching a good movie
• G - GOOD AT: too many things to list
• H - HAVE NEVER TRIED: drugs other than marijuana
• I - IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS: pay off bills, help friends and family, invest invest invest
• J - JUNKIE FOR: a good book
• K - KINDRED SPIRIT: none that I know of, but they would be in therapy if they were
• L - LITTLE KNOWN FACT: I am so not a people person (ok I cheated, everyone knows that)
• M - MEMORABLE MOMENT: not sure it’s happened yet
• N - NEVER AGAIN WILL I: too many to list
• O - OCCASIONAL INDULGENCE: ice cream
• Q - QUOTE: You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
• R - REASON TO SMILE: President Hillary Clinton (or President Barack Obama)
• S - SORRY ABOUT: more things than I care to list or admit to here
• T - TAG SOME FRIENDS: JT, Jen, T-bone, NW
• U - UNINTERESTED IN: religion, bigots, haters, war mongers
• V - VERY SCARED OF: heights, enclosed spaces, 4 more years of the status quo
• W - WORST HABIT: interrupting someone who is talking
• X - X MARKS MY IDEAL VACATION SPOT: don’t have one yet, still looking
• Y - YUMMIEST DESSERT: homemade ice cream
• Z - ZODIAC SIGN: Gemini, this explains the duality of my personality