Projects: Crafting with Coraline

You remember me, right? Coraline?


Sometimes, me and my peeps get bored.

Too bored to remove her hand, even.

If this has ever happened to you, YOU NEED THIS BLOG.

Presenting: Crafting with Coraline, COASTER EDITION!

Okay today we're going to make some coasters. These are what you put on your tables so you don't get those nasty condensation rings reasonable people don't like. Larry David and I are on the same page here, that's for darn sure.

Right. You're gonna need a few supplies before you get started.

• Simple ceramic tiles (Aunty Beccs picked some up for me at End of the Roll for super cheap, five for ten dollars or something, I don't actually use money so I'm not too clear on the details of the transaction)
• All-purpose glue that will stick to tile, paper, cork, etc.
• Cork
• Glaze
• Paintbrushes
• Wax paper or parchment baking paper
• Cookie sheets
• Pretty scrapbooking paper
• X-Acto knife or sharp scissors
• A ruler if you can't cut straight (AUNTY BECCS)
• A human helper comes in handy, but isn't necessary. I've enlisted my Aunty and my Mum to help me today.

So the first thing you do is cut the cork to fit the bottom of the tile. Sometimes you can only get cork that is already sticky on the back, and that's pretty good actually, but it won't be permanently sticky enough. Add extra glue, brushing it on evenly with a paintbrush, and attach your cut piece of cork to the bottom of the tile. (That's the rough side.)

Be careful not to use too much glue.

Go ahead and do the rest of your tiles. Set them cork-side-up on the cookie sheet to dry. To "protect your cookie sheet" (this is Mum-speak for to "avoid washing your cookie sheet") put a layer of wax paper down first. Now—

Wait! Aunty Beccs, don't be impatient!

I don't know what I'm going to do with her.


Be careful and ensure that your glue has dried enough to prevent your cork bottoms from sliding around before you flip them over to do the tops of your coasters. If the cork starts sliding around, you'll have two problems. One is that your cork has slid around. Two is that the sliding makes glue ooze out all over the place. And who's left cleaning that up?

That's right. It's me. And I don't have hands,
so I have to lick it up.

When it is safe to do so, cut your scrapbook paper to fit the top of the coasters, and glue it on the same way you did the cork. But try to use as little glue as you can get away with, or the paper will curl and slide around and just look stupid. Then you will have a hissy fit and might get into a fight with your Aunty.

This really was no one's fault.

The next part is the hardest of all. You have to set your pretty coasters aside and let them dry overnight.

I hate waiting!

But it's okay, because the next day, they will be nice and dry and ready for a coat of glaze. Using a fresh paintbrush, evenly brush glaze over the paper, sealing the edges, but avoiding the cork.

It is important that your brush is clean, has no loose bristles, and that there is nothing stuck in it.

Then put them aside again overnight and wait some more.


After a final inspection to ensure thorough dryness and an even glaze, your coasters are ready to use, or to give as a gift!

This one's good as long as no one flips it over
and sees that smudge.

You're welcome for curing your boredom.

CORALINE OUT

Cookies

Given this, I thought I would share with the world with the greatest chocolate chip cookie recipe known to god and man (women, children, and transgendered inclusive).


There's a problem with this recipe though.


It only works in Cold Lake, Alberta.

Granted, the only other place I've personally tested it is the Edmonton, Alberta, area, so I can't say if this is a latitude or humidity thing, or if it's a mixmaster thing, or what. But I can tell you that this recipe is a trickster. It's the coyote of cookie recipes. Chewy, confectionery, chocolaty coyote ...


The problem with the recipe is that when I make these cookies according to it, here, in Edmonton, they come out listless and, frankly, a little slimy. They're not perfect, the way the recipe has them built to be, the way they turn out in Cold Lake.


So I experimented.


The problem is this. The recipe calls for shortening. Cookies baked using all shortening have the aforementioned listless, slimy effect (you don't even want to know what happens if you forget you are not doubling the recipe but double the shortening anyway). The obvious substitution is margarine. But, use margarine in this recipe, and you get a solid, crumbly cookie. Blech. Dry and rather yellow.


Use half marg and half shortening, and you get the soft, chewy, vivacious cookie of my childhood, a cookie even my Mum would be proud to serve.


Thus, I present to you "Real Chocolate Chip Cookies, Caveat". Feel free to experiment yourself, depending on latitude and humidity.


1/2 cup shortening (CAVEAT! I use half shortening and half margarine. So a quarter cup of each. Unless you double the recipe, which I usually do.)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp each salt and baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips


Cream together shortening (and marg if you are using margarine), sugars, and vanilla.


Beat in the egg.


Combine flour, baking soda, and salt (apparently this means "in a separate bowl" but I just do all of this in one bowl in the mixmaster). Add to creamed mixture.


Add chocolate chips.


Lump onto cookie sheets.


Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 to 12 minutes. (But I'd watch this. In Hawk's oven, they're done in about 8).


EAT THEM. ALL. THEY ARE AMAZING.


If you take out all my notes, it's an incredibly simple recipe, and the cookies are mindblowing. As Magpie discovered, even with the wrong ingredients, even when you try to, you can't screw this one up. Hell, even with double shortening, they taste good. (And that makes 'em go down smooth. Not that I'd recommend it.)

Magpie Confessionals: Baking Cookies

You've met Magpie before. Here's her first knowing submission to 800 Thousand.

________________________________

Hi. My husband, Noolbenger, is out of town, so it's just me, the dog and the kid. I decided to quickly make cookies while Cobrastarshine had a nap (screamfest).


Red Panda's chocolate chip cookie recipe said to use half margine and half shortening. I don't have shortening and figured that since I don't really like my Grandmother's cookies (she uses all margarine) I would use half marg and half coconut oil.


Coconut oil is really hard and I don't have a cookie making machine. You know the thing that goes whhhrrr with the things that go into the batter (Baking beater? I know it has beaters. Doesn't matter, you know what I mean.). So I had to nuke my butters. Which STUNK (I hate melted marg smell) and made my batter look like mud. Also, how the hell are the chocolate chips supposed to stick to oily melty batter? They just slide right off. So after trying really really hard to get the chips mashed into the batter I gave up and grabbed fistfulls of the gunk and dropped them onto my parchment paper-covered cookie sheet.


No. I did not use parchment paper because I like to be fancy. I used it because I dislike doing dishes.


At any rate. They look okay. They are all different sizes because variety is the spice of life. Not because I am lazy and don't give a shit.

I know.  The oven is a mess.

I know this because it caught fire once.

 I was expecting this to be a disaster. But it looks like food.

So...

Verdict = really tasty.  However coconut oil doesn't really sit well with me, which means I can't eat four in one sitting.  Maybe that's a good thing?

Cobrastarshine is trying to eat a truck.

Too young for cookies? Eff that.

________________________________

Red Panda here, and I approve this anticlimax. I do not, however, approve of coconuts unless they are in macaroons. 

Guest Posts: Dick's Surgery Instalment Four

I know I've kept you waiting a long time for more from Mr Finchley, and that has been cruel of me. Well, wait no longer! Here's part four!

DICK’S SURGERY

Instalment Four, The First Night and Next Day

My hopes for a restful sleep were trashed. From the other side of the curtain: “Snark-k-k, brlf-f-f, grblrkrik, corfburble, some gentle murmuring, then suddenly HACK KAFF,” and many other original sounds totally breaking up the quiet night and all hope I might have had for rest.

“Ding ding ding,” sounded an alarm.

“He’s pulled it out,” someone shouted. “He won’t lie still enough to get it back in.” “Someone get the doctor from emerg.” “Hold him down!” More discussion, more flailing of arms and knocking over bedside articles, more snorting, snoring, hacking and shouting of orders through the night.

I managed to drop off to sleep around 06:00, awakening around 08:00 to hear the staff trundling my roomie’s bed, with him in it, to the next room. Things were looking up—I thought.

Shift change.

The reason for the constant tugging on little Dick I had felt the night before became clear as I pulled back the covers. Hanging from the end of my manhood was a tube that fed a bag attached to the bars on the bed. “Oh dear,” I thought, “this can’t be good.”

My despair was interrupted by nurse Nadia. “I see you’ve found your urinary assistant. With any kind of luck, you won’t need the catheter tomorrow. By the way, after I pull it out, I expect you to pee 200 mL within a few hours.”

“Or else?” I thought.

“Or else,” reading my mind, “I’ll have to re-insert the catheter and drain your bladder—and continue doing that until you can pee yourself.” Well, that’s all I needed to hear to drive me further into despair. “Also,” as she left the room, “I expect you to have a bowel movement soon.”

A tasteless breakfast was followed by more pills, more discomfort down south, a tasteless lunch and, to my relief, a visit from that angel of mercy, Mrs. Dick, with a thermos of real coffee. Just her tender presence was all I needed for support and to lessen my fears. More emptying of the wound drain and urine collectors before I got a break.

“I’m Vana from physio. Let’s get that leg moving.” This from a muscular young Ukrainian girl as she towered over the tiny Mrs. Dick. I flipped back the covers.

With surprising gentleness, she took me through the exercises I had to do over the next week or two. Such weakness; such pain. A short walk down the hall, my delicate flower on one side, Vana on the other with a firm grasp on my waist, and my walker in the middle, provided enough exercise to perk me up a bit. And so the day dragged on until evening. My dearest went tearily home and I was left alone, hopefully waiting for the relief of sleep, and mulling over in my mind the challenges still facing me.

More to come!

Two Good Words

Stupposed
"You're not stupposed to look directly at the sun."


Supposebly
"He cleaned the toilet last night, supposebly."

More Horror Stories

Oh. This is a good one. Here's a story from my days of living on my own.


One night (I'd make it a dark and stormy night, but it wasn't. Let's restart.)


One hot and sultry, muggy and listless night, I was trying to make tacos, but I had twice the meat I needed. Using a wooden spatula, I cut the ground beef in half and then used the same spatula to flip half the meat from the package into the frying pan. Or tried to: I missed. The meat flipped backward.


My leonine reflexes activated and I caught the meat before it could splatter the cheap linoleum with bits of beef and fat. However, like a 1940s pirate movie villain armed to the teeth, one hand held the meat package, and the other, a spatula. How, you wonder, did I catch the meat?


You need background. Because it felt like it was 50 degrees Celsius in my apartment, I wasn't wearing pants.


I caught the meat between my thigh and the front of the oven.


This horror story, as most low-budget flicks do, has a happy ending. Since the meat didn't hit the floor, I was able to extract it from between my leg and the oven door with my bare hands, dump it into the pan, make tacos, and disinfect the heck out of my kitchen and thighs.


Not every horror story from that kitchen has such a happy ending though. Like the cocoa incident.

See how the lid is balanced on the lip of the sink.

Comic Sans Accidents and Apologies

My friends, I checked out my blog at work one day mostly for egotistical reasons. And then I noticed that my heading font appeared to be Comic Sans.


I almost choked and died.


This is a browser problem. I did not choose Comic Sans. If you're seeing Comic Sans, please don't think less of me.


I thought I installed Google Web fonts in the CSS of the blog so the font I chose would always show up in your browser. But that didn't work.


I have recently purchased HTML and CSS for dummies and I'll be fixing this. If you are seeing Comic Sans, please don't barf. It's supposed to be Pacifico. I will fix this. Soon.

Random Emails

I was cleaning out my email the other day and discovered quite a few gems. Here are some conversations, set to lovely photographs for art's sake. Naturally, I swapped out real names for the code names you are by now familiar with. Enjoy.


Emails: An Artful Photoessay

Email: 04 November 2011.

Photo: Edmonton from my office window, 02 January 2011.

Email: 09 Dec 2011.

Photo: Zebra at the San Diego Zoo, 03 December 2011.

Email: 04 November 2011.

Photograph: Cold Lake, 09 October 2011.

Email: 10 November, 2011

Photograph: Tuna, 31 October 2011

Email: 09 November 2011

Photograph: Jurassic Forest, 13 August 2011

Email: 21 November, 2011

Photograph: Old Town, San Diego, 04 December 2011

FIN