Butternut Squash Dilema

We're starting one of our New Year's Resolutions for 2010 early.  It's one of the same ones we do every year and fail miserably, so we're doing it a little differently this time.  We're trying to lose weight and eat healthier, but this time we're going to concentrate on eating more vegetables, smaller amounts, and NOT worry about cutting all fat or flavor out (you know, the non-American diet). Right now I'm working on a weekly menu to keep me organized and help schedule the use of all the fresh veggies so they don't just sit and rot like they usually do.  After a $150 trip to the grocery store (for just the two of us), I came home with fresh ingredients and high hopes for this "diet".

I wanted to use the butternut squash tonight with the Christmas leftovers Mom packed for us, but while trying to find a good recipe, I've run into a small problem that I really didn't expect to have--there are too many recipes out that sound wonderful and I only have one squash.

Don't believe me? Here are several I found on Allrecipes.com:

Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut Squash Pizzas with Rosemary

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter (didn't Alton Brown do this one?)

I've decided to go with a roasted vegetable recipe that uses the squash because I also have all the other veggies AND it will leave me with enough leftover squash to make the pizza recipe later this week. 

Some of my instructors from culinary school would be disappointed if they knew that I had forgotten that they had taught me that good food should also be good for you - but it's never too late to slap yourself and start over. 

Update: If you try the roasted vegetable recipe, make sure you cut the Yukon (or whatever other white potato you use) smaller than the others.  They will take longer to cook.  Other than that - it was pretty awesome.

Christmas Eve

As expected, we were slammed on Christmas Eve.  What wasn't expected was that every customer was polite and thanked me at the end of the call.  Every single one, no matter how upset they were then the call started. 

I hope the day after Christmas is the same, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Christmas Cookies Photos

I make cranberry oatmeal cookies, divinity, and chocolate covered coconut balls every year, so I didn't bother with photos of them this time.  I did try a new recipe from Martha Stewart.  The recipe is here.  This recipe was even more difficult to work with than my regular sugar cookie recipe, but the color was gorgeous when decorated.

I found several snowflake cutters in my collection.

 

They made great snowflakes, stockings, and moose.

 

I used regular sugar cookie dough for the trees, more snowflakes, stars, and doves.

 

A finished cookie plate.

Call Center Roundup for 2009

This is the time of year where Snarkyboy gets to relax now that most of the large businesses and schools that use his department have either shut down or have minimal staffing levels for the holidays.  My department, on the other hand, has gotten out of control and we're now entering our mandatory overtime holiday cycle. Because of the holidays, we seem to be getting all billing issues instead of software.

How does my day go?  I've averaging 6 to 8 calls an hour with 7 seconds between calls.  Most of the customers are upset about something, which makes sense since no one ever calls support when everything's working wonderfully.

Here are some of my more interesting calls this year:

• Customer called in because we charged her twice.  She couldn't remember what it was we charged her twice for.  That's not unusual, but she was also drunk--and making the call while loudly using the toilet.
• I was told our software was sucking up all the information out of the customer's computer and then we were selling it to everyone in our stores.
• One customer wanted assistance pirating my company's content. (Me: "You realize that's illegal?"  Him: "You still have to help me, that's your job!")
• Customer calls up, pissed and yelling because our system won't accept her credit card so she can purchase our content.  After listening to a long tirade about how horrible we were to a working mother, I agreed to have her bring her bank on the the line so we could try to clear it up. They told her - while conferenced in with me - that her account was overdrawn and she'd have to fix that first before they would release funds.  There was a few seconds of silence before the line was disconnected.  This happens on a regular basis, but I still enjoy that stunned silence. 
• Customer wanted to use her new gift card to purchase computer accessories, but she kept getting an invalid code error.  I discovered the customer was trying to use her Walmart gift card on our online store.  She wasn't happy that she could only use it with Walmart.  Two days later it was someone with a Best Buy gift card trying to do the same thing.
• Customer calls to find out why we are billing him monthly for software, something we never do.  Turns out his son joined a video chat service... an adult video chat service.  I never did find out how old his son was.

The most entertaining thing happened a few weeks ago, away from work.  I ran into my old boss at the bakery and she asked if I was interested in coming back.  I had to explain, while trying to hold in my laughter, that I dealt with a lot less abuse working in a call center than I did in a grocery store bakery.

Christmas Cookies are Finally Finished!!!!

 

Here are two for now, I'll upload the rest tonight.  

My Attempt at a Cherry Blossom Tiered Cake

Several years ago I saw a cherry blossom wedding cake on the cover of a magazine while in line at the grocery store.  Since I couldn't afford to purchase the magazine, I tried to sketch it out before it was time to pay the cashier because it was the perfect thing for our annual Mother's Day/Birthday Celebration (Mother's Day, SIL birthday, Dad's birthday).

It looked something like the one from Diane's Cakes and More:

I ended up with something entirely different.

Obviously my sketch wasn't very good, and you can tell it's my first tiered cake.  While it's on my flickr set, I don't usually talk about it much because all I can see when I look at it are my mistakes.

That was until yesterday's Cake Wrecks post.

Now I don't think it looks so bad after all.

Christmas Shopping: Bon Appetit Christmas Tea Collection from Target

Two of these teas are not like the others,
Two of these teas just do not belong,
Can you tell which teas are not like the others
By the time I finish my song? 

Did you guess which teas are not like the others?
Did you guess which teas just do not belong?
If you guessed the teas with no artificial flavors,
Then you're absolutely...right! *


(*apologies to Joe Raposo and Jon Stone)

Sunday Annoyances

A group of us meet up on Sunday mornings for breakfast at the local bagel shop.  Actually, it's a chain, because the locally owned cafe we used to go to now sucks (after a while, you get tired of ordering one thing and getting something else).  There is another locally owned place that we like, but it's so tasty that you can't get a table without a very long wait, so we save that for special occasions.

On average, there are about nine or ten of us there each week.  There is only one large table in the cafe and we tend to take it up as well as adding one or two additional tables unless another large party beats us to it.  Sadly, it's usually not a large party that uses that table.  The cafe will be practically empty, but two or three people will sit at the large table leaving all the little ones for the large groups.  This is what happened last week.

This is us:

And this is the "large" group that used the only big table in the place:

Yep.  Shitterdoodles.

Optimum Primo

Mom called and asked for an Optimum Primo cake for my nephew's birthday a couple of weeks ago.  Now granted she may have been confused because Cannon just turned four and can't say Optimus Prime's name correctly, but she went through all the Transformers crap with my brother in the 80's and should have remembered something.

We tend to celebrate birthdays with a dinner and small party at my parents' home on a day that everyone's free.  With my brother's company going under and having to work retail while job hunting - he doesn't have many of those evenings, so we sometimes have to wait a few weeks before having the party.  Or in this case, we had to combine my birthday from September with my nephew's birthday from early November.  I got to pick dinner and Cannon got to pick the cake.    

We had a thick chicken noodle soup with my Dad's homemade noodles served over mashed potatoes... yes, it's a lovely, lovely starchy fest.  There were also veggies and a salad to round it out, but this is comfort food for my family.  The cake was a chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting inside and regular cream cheese frosting outside.  It was a Transformer's cake with small Optimus Prime and Sidewinder action figures that snarkyboy found for me. 

 I left off the action figures until we were ready for the cake so Cannon could put them on himself.

Thanksgiving Duck

My sister-in-law is an excellent photographer, but even she can't make a meal look good if it isn't plated properly.  Good thing she wasn't there because she'd have gone nuts trying to do it too.  While the meal was excellent, I just dumped it on the plate and collapsed on the couch to eat.  At least I was able to keep up with the  menu and I still had time to finish the Transformers cake for my nephew later Thursday night.

I still haven't figured out how to make rice pudding look appetizing.

Very tasty though.

Thanksgiving Day

I'm feeling better, but not up to 100% yet.  That makes me wonder if I'm being too ambitious with my menu for today and if I need to take some shortcuts.  And if my stomach isn't ready to handle duck today -- I'm going to be pretty pissed.  We can't afford duck very often and it's one of my favorite dishes.

Oh well, off to make Ventana's onion rolls.

Thanksgiving Dinner Menu 2009

Roast Duck with a Cranberry Gastrique
Corn Bread Stuffing with Apples, Cranberries, and Sausage
Sweet Potatoes Anna
Sauteed Asparagus
Sour Cream and Onion Rolls
A long nap while pretending to watch a movie, followed by
Rice Pudding with Cranberries, Apples, and Almonds served hot with a side of sweet cream

A Party Princess Cake

This year Ryanne wanted to be a Party Princess for her birthday.  I think her mom was happy that this was a fairly generic theme, instead of an all Disney theme like the Tinkerbell party she had last year.

I took a few photos of the Party Princess gear they had at Party City and decorated the cake to match.

It's a chocolate cake with a dark chocolate pastry cream filling.   The party itself was a swim party at the local YMCA, which sounded more fun than being a party princess.

Tired of being sick

It started last week with a sore throat and nausea--then blossomed into a full blown chest cold.  I went home early on Friday and slept through until Sunday.  By Sunday I was able to get the name of the medication from the doctor that worked last time so I'll be ready to go back to work by Tuesday (I normally have Sundays and Mondays off).  The meds are great for getting rid of the lodgy feeling and all the congestion, but the downside is that I can't get my brain to stop racing around in circles and it's difficult to sleep.  But I'd rather lay awake at night than drown in my own mucus.  It's not helping the headache or nausea either.

So I'm at home, not feeling well, and my house is a mess.  I'm starving, but after a few bites I feel like throwing up, and all I can think about is being behind in getting ready for both Thanksgiving and my nephew's birthday celebration on Black Friday. 

This sucks. 

This royally sucks big sweaty hobo balls of suckitude. 

I'll have a blue, blue, blue Christmas

Is he a frosty Elvis or an undead Elvis?  Is there even a difference?  

Personally, I'd like to see Batman up against a giant, evil, undead Elvis impersonator for an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  Or a giant undead Meatloaf, if the Elvis estate proves to be too litigious.

The Most Awesome Brake/Signal Lights Ever!

At first I thought the truck in front of me had large skull stickers on the back of the cab until I got close enough to see that they were large plastic skulls.  That was kinda cool, if a little late for Halloween, but then he started braking and they moved beyond cool and into the world of I want...

 

Apologies for the photo quality.  It was dusk and I have an older iPhone with a sucky camera.

A Review of "The Water of Mars"

This describes why I enjoyed "The Water of Mars" so much, and they do a better job saying it as well:  
http://io9.com/5405239/at-last-doctor-whos-lonely-god-goes-too-far

Dr. Who - The Water of Mars Party

When we arrived at the party, we discovered that originally everyone was supposed to dress up for this party, but that it had changed.  Unfortunately, some people weren't told.

The host's niece had the best costume and greeted us with "are you my mummy?"

And the cake no longer looked like a vibrator or penis, but more like a stubby sonic screwdriver.

The episode was pretty good, and the ending rocked.  It was a surprise to see this Doctor become so arrogant but it really made the emotional punch thrown at the end work.  Our host is now looking at throwing another party for the Christmas episode, but I don't think I'll make a cake.  Maybe I'll make cupcakes with no fondant instead.

Dr. Who Cake in Progress

Tonight's the premier of the new Dr. Who special "Water on Mars", which means a big party for us Dr. Who dorks.  And I'm bringing the cake! 

It's supposed to be a a sonic screwdriver and will hopefully look something like this:

or this:

or even this:

  
Here's what it looked like this morning... 

 
...and yes, I know exactly what it looks like here, AND I've heard all the possible jokes about it from Snarkyboy already.  Obviously, there's still a lot to do to it before it's finished.
 

Question that I may not want answered...

... is it ok to lie to a customer after you catch them lying to you?

What to do with a leftover prime rib dinner

Pookums was craving steak Sunday night and I was tired and cranky, which is why we ended up at Texas Roadhouse for a last minute dinner. Normally, when  we order a dinner where there is a choice of the size of meat, we always take the largest so we have leftovers. This time it was half of my prime rib.

 

So what do you do with leftover prime rib? Monday Night Beef Pot Pie! 

You can fill it with almost anything that's hiding in your veggie crisper in the fridge. My options were potatoes, carrots, peas, and green onions.  In fact, this is a good time to use up anything that's getting old, but not yet to the composting stage.  My green onions needed to be used first, so that was why I chose them instead of yellow onions.

I chopped up the meat, onions, and carrots.  If you prefer larger chunks of carrots, you can cook them with the potatoes instead of sauteing them with the meat. Throw them all into the skillet and saute. The meat had a good amount of fat, I didn't need much oil.

 The potatoes were diced and cooked in beef broth.  Actually, it was chicken broth with some beef bullion (forgot to stock up on beef broth again).

When the meat, carrots, and onions were cooked, I started adding flour and stirring it in until the meat and veggies looked dry - less than a 1/3 cup flour.  I let this cook a little longer and then strained the broth from the potatoes into the skillet while stirring.  This thickened up the gravy nicely, but I still had to add a bit of corn starch to get it where I wanted it.  Added the potatoes and it was ready to dump in a 8x8 baking dish.

This was why I didn't have a pie crust to put on top of the pot pie.  My grandmother just called them pie scraps and I looooooooove them... and make them anytime I have a pie crust sitting around.... just like today before deciding to make pot pie.  It was worth it too.

So, instead of pie crust, I took 2 cups bisquick, cut in 2 tbsp butter, and added just enough milk to make it stick together.  Kneaded it about 6 or 7 times and then rolled it out and plopped it on top of the filling.  Brushed with butter and baked for 30 minutes.  If I had wanted a pretty golden-brown crust, I would have brushed egg on it instead, but I like the butter flavor.

This was after our first trip to the beef pot pie, there was enough for seconds and then dinner tonight with a small salad.

October's Cakes

This is the post that originally pushed me away from Vox and back to Blogger.  If you can read this - it means it worked.

The beginning of October started with a cake for a 9th wedding anniversary.  Our friend's wedding cake was a giant white Lego brick from which they saved one of the six pegs on top for their anniversary.  Unfortunately, that was lost in a move, and so she wanted a copy of it to give to her husband.  The funny thing was that he was kinda disappointed because he wanted to do the same thing to celebrate their 10th anniversary next year, and she beat him to it.

There were also the annual Halloween cupcakes for work.  The wolfman cupcakes were a repeat from last year.  Two people asked me if they were Chewbacca, and someone else was calling them the "angry cupcakes".  I need to add wolf ears or something next year.

The mummies were also repeats from last year, but they're easy to make and I'll keep using them. The spiders were a last minute decision that I wasn't thrilled with. I did find the cutest skull design, but was missing one ingredient, so they will have to wait until next year. 

The eyeball cupcakes were new and fairly popular, but I won't use the same gummy eyeballs next year. They were almost impossible to remove from the container without mangling, they were expensive, and they didn't taste very good.

The final set of cakes for October was a wedding and groom's cake.  I was stressing all month over these because they needed to be transported 79 miles to Waco, and the last time I had to transport a wedding cake (also my first wedding cake) it was a complete disaster.

On this wedding cake, you can see where the long and bumpy travel time to the wedding was a little hard on the tiers, but at least they made it in one piece.  I keep saying that I won't do another wedding cake and end up doing it anyway, but I can promise that this is the final time I transport a cake that kind of distance for anyone else.

The groom wanted a cake with the Apple logo on it.  I think that's taking company pride just a bit too far, but we know way too many insane Apple people in Austin.

New beginnings

Welcome to Dork Chocolate.  This is where Dork Chocolate actually begins, and all the previous posts are being imported in from my old vox.com account.  For posts about culinary school or anything prior to 10/27/06, go to Cooking like a Snarkygurl.  In fact, here is a good place to start as it's the first post on Cooking like a Snarkygurl and right after I signed up for culinary school (now I wish I had posted more than I did).


As for today, I'm wondering if a baseball bat acceptable as a training tool for stupid agents?  Or if I should learn how to use a putter instead?  My work week is officially over and I can finally forget about drafting a new training program and start concentrating on the Dr. Who cake for mid-November.