This is what I served Tina for dinner last night -- I grilled a porterhouse steak. She had both a cut of the filet and strip served with a side salad of hand torn hearts of romaine with buttermilk ranch dressing and capellini in an garlic and olive oil sauce (aglio e olio). She's hooked.

- posted by Michael Chu @ 11:48 PM (0) comments

 
Well, I just got married so I haven't had time to update my Cooking For Engineers website. I did do a bit of cooking on Wednesday night - made another lasagna and played around with sugar.

I used the Krups spice grinder that Braden gave me and made fine sugar out of raw sugar. I was surprised just how fine the grinder made the sugar - like flour!

Then I dunked some banana halves into sugar and caramelized the coating with a butane torch. It formed a nice crisp shell - but after a few minutes lost the hard layer (became soft) and then liquified. So, do the caramelization just before you serve.

Then I melted sugar in a small pot and formed sugar candies. I used the remainder to make caramel, but ended up with a bit too much smokey flavor in the caramel. I then licked the spoons for half and hour and then threw away the rest of the caramel, sugar candies, etc. I brushed my teeth real good that night.
- posted by Michael Chu @ 3:19 PM (0) comments

 
Stuff I'm trying to sell on ebay

- posted by Michael Chu @ 10:56 PM (0) comments

 
Interesting article on how to make a flaky pie crust.Vinegar makes pie crust flaky
- posted by Michael Chu @ 4:45 PM (0) comments

 
So I've been working on my cooking blog which is hosted on blogspot.com and now it won't let me publish. Hitting the publish button gives me: There were errors. Asking for details gives me:
001 java.net.NoRouteToHostException: No route to host

Argh. Maybe I should just go home and make my chicken pot pie.
- posted by Michael Chu @ 5:14 PM (0) comments

 
I didn't know this was a problem, but apparently Virginia needed to start an ad campaign to stop men from having sex with underage girls. Bizarre.
Va. Tells Men: No Sex With Young Girls (washingtonpost.com)
- posted by Michael Chu @ 10:17 AM (0) comments

 
Some food substitutions
Ingredient Substitutions
https://www.oznet.ksu.edu/humannutrition/INGSUB.HTM
foodnetwork
- posted by Michael Chu @ 6:36 PM (0) comments

 
Spam, spam, Secually-Explicit Spam!
So now that all sexually-explicit spam is supposed to come with the words "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT" in the subject line (according to FTC regulations), it's time to act as responsible citizens and report sex spam that violates the law. If you do receive sexually explicit spam that is not marked in the subject, you can forward the message including complete message headers to utc@ftc.gov or use SpamCop.
- posted by Michael Chu @ 4:34 PM (0) comments