Danny Does The View

Does this remind anyone of Farrah Fawcett's guest appearance on Letterman?

I'm a red dragon. Found this quiz courtesy of Ghostposts.

A RED Dragon Lies Beneath!

My inner dragon is the most vile and crafty of all dragons. Remember Smaug? He was a red dragon, just like me! And just in case that's not cool enough for you, reds are Fire Elemental dragons, too. Click the image to try the Inner Dragon Online Quiz for yourself.

Turkey Pot Pie

I've never before made turkey pot pie, nor any other pot pie. When it comes to sauces, if the "mother sauce" is hollandaise (think bearnaise, sauce aurore, etc.), I let SJ make it, but if it starts with bechamel, it's my realm. Come to think of it, any sauce that starts with a roux is my realm. Bechamel uses a light roux, then the milk, salt and pepper. Gravy uses whatever roux you get from the pan drippings, which could be light or dark. Start with a bechamel for any cream or cheese sauce, and you have the idea.

The personal-sized pies came out just fine. If I do it again, I would make the bechamel a bit on the runny side, because a lot of the liquid steams out in the oven. I would have preferred the filling to have stayed as creamy luscious as it was when it went into the oven. That's my personal preference. SJ thought it tasted better than the one he got at the Black Horse Pub a few months ago. He watched me make the bechamel, just to learn how it was done. Trust a chemist to want to learn the proportions (1:1, fat to flour), milk as needed for the consistency you want, and salt and pepper to taste, if not any actual stove burner/pot temperatures, which can be unpredictable, even from burner to burner, unless you know you own (gas) stove really well.

My pie crust is supposedly superb. I hate the stuff myself, so whether I make it for a quiche, a fruit pie, or a pot pie, I pick out the filling and leave the crust. Call me weird. I don't care. I just don't like pie crust, no matter how perfectly flaky and "good" it is.

There are only a few things I won't eat, and pie crust is among them. I've only recently learned to eat brussels sprouts after being fed them (boiled) for lunch daily from the age of three to five by the Catholic school my parents had me attend in London. I still don't really like them, but I can eat them if sauteed in bacon grease with minced garlic, in the absence of real bacon.

I think of cooking similarly to writing. If I'm attempting something I've never before done, I sort of have a clue, but treat it as an experiment. Even if it turns out alright, I can think of six things I can do next time around to fix it, and make it much better. An editor is invaluable for writing. A taste-tester other than myself is invaluable for kitchen feats.

Tomorrow, the online Christmas shopping begins. SJ wants cushy warm hunting socks, as he does every year, but also a box-set of Star Trek:TNG. Cabela's it is for the socks. Amazon for the DVDs. He's so easy to shop for: he asks for what he wants. No nasty surprises that way. I just want . . . um, I'll have to think about that . . .I can't think of anything. Maybe a case of votive candles for SJ to burn?

Thanksgiving dinner was a success. I'm sure my parents appreciated us carting the whole meal over in a large cooler and a milk crate. No doubt we looked like a couple of meshuggenahs showing up on their back porch, ready to camp out, minus a tent, Coleman stove, and Coleman lantern. Sort of like "Meals on Wheels" meets Borat.

Mom was jazzed enough to set the dining room table, complete with her monogrammed solid sterling silverware and crystal goblets. They sport just the first initial of my family's surname, but it's the "special" stuff brought out only for grand occasions. When I was a kid in the '60s and early '70s, she used it for dinner parties. Now it's only used for holidays.

Dad never cooked. Mom's too ill to even go out for dinner at the golf club the way we used to for perhaps the past 10 years. Her MS started to get a lot worse a couple of years ago. We catered Thanksgiving dinner for them last year as well, but just brought it over to drop off. This year, we brought it all over in containers wrapped with lots of dish towels, and lined it all up on the counter in the breakfast nook. Grab a plate, zip down the buffet line, take it into the dining room, and tuck in.

We really didn't have much in the way of leftovers, except for the wild rice & mushroom dressing and turkey . . . which brings me to the balloon of Kermit. I hadn't eaten anything all day, then filled my plate with a little bit of everything for dinner. That was quite a big meal for me to eat in a single sitting, but probably no more than I would eat in a single day anyway, spread out over two or three smaller meals. Why Kermit? Only because he goes with the Froggie theme. I think Kermit last flew in the Macy's parade sometime in the '80s.

When we got home, Emma the kitty was all over us like a bad rash. But she happily tucked into a meal of cut-up pieces of turkey thigh, then left us alone to go sleep it off. Good girl.

The turkey carcass is already in a large stockpot simmering away. We may make turkey soup, freeze some of the stock, and make turkey chili or turkey curry out of the leftovers--particularly the dark meat. I'm convinced that a good mouth-numbing chili or curry could be made with rodent, and nobody would ever know what they're eating, sort of like a road-kill burgoo.

I don't know about you, but it's time to start my Christmas shopping. I pretty much have ordered everything online for the past decade, so there's no reason to tackle the Mall at Short Hills, with all the cars from New York jockeying for space so they don't have to pay sales tax on their clothing or gourmet food purchases (or lower taxes on everything else). It's too much of a zoo for me. I can order from Eddie Bauer or Cabela's online, and have no interest in Godiva, Fendi, Gucci, Nordstrom, Jaeger, Bloomingdales, etc.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

The menu for tomorrow is set. Work is underway. The pumpkin gingerbread just came out of the oven, and the cranberry/orange sauce is cooling. I want to let it cool before I add the actual cut up slices of mandarin orange. They probably add more to visual appeal than taste, because I cooked the berries in orange juice anyway. I'll do the pumpkin pie this afternoon.

• 11 lb. turkey
• mashed potatoes
• mashed yellow turnip
• cran/orange sauce
• waldorf salad
• steamed peas & carrots
• wild rice & mushroom dressing
• gravy
• pumpkin pie
• pumpkin bread

I completely made up the recipe for the pumpkin gingerbread. Had pumpkin bread at an office function last week that tasted like gingerbread instead of having the usual pumpkin pie blend of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and allspice. Couldn't find a recipe for it, so I cobbled together bits and pieces from a recipe for pumpkin bread from foodnetwork.com and the gingerbread one from Beard on Bread, which is my bread bible, leaving out the molassas. It rose just fine, and smells fantastic.

SJ was very skeptical about my using baking soda instead of baking powder. Oh, he of little faith. I usually know what I'm doing in the kitchen, even if I make it up as I go along. I omitted the salt because there's enough sodium in it with the baking soda. No loss as far as I can tell. The batter tasted really yummy when I licked the spoon. He's a pretty darn good cook himself, but he does know when to stay out of my way.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Epinions Book Review

When you simply go to www.epinions.com, and search on "Wuesthoff" under books, one review pops up--mine. When you click on her name in the grid, two appear--mine and the one from the horrible horror author.

If you have a few free minutes and any interest in writing to go read and compare the two book reviews, and the comments from the leads and advisors, as well as the other random commenters, I'd appreciate it. Nobody there's rating my writing per se (thank god), but they are rating my book review. I just don't understand why some people think book reviews should be all about themselves, and follow up with comments on someone else's review that are also all about themselves. This guy's a classic in that regard. People did point out as much.

I've no ego. As such, I took constructive criticism from my first attempt and parlayed it into a revision that passed muster. The other reviewer did not.

Okay--rant over.

I'll post our Thanksgiving menu items tomorrow, but I do have to work from home until 1pm, so I may not get to it until mid-afternoon.

Emma in the Bag

This picture was too cute to pass up. She's hiding in a grocery bag in the front hall, curled up with her catnip pillow, staring at a wilted Christmas cactus flower I tossed at her to get her attention.

Epidendrum porpax var. alba

This is a species orchid of mine that just started blooming a few days ago. Only one flower has opened so far, but there are a good five more buds on it. The non-alba variety's similar but has a burgundy colored lip. The flowers are only about half an inch tall from the top of the dorsal sepal to the bottom of the lip. Enjoy.

Yes, folks, it's deer rutting season. Let me introduce you to robot deer. We could use a few of these around here, but not to catch poachers . . . more to make traffic slow down a bit. Here's an article from last January that is still germane, and explains a bit more about the robot deer.

Where I live, we have lots of deer, and lots of road kill deer. There is a deer hunting season, but it only lasts about a week, and permits are limited. Nobody around here hunts them, anyway. But I have had to hit the brakes many a time with a honking big two-plus ton SUV up my rear bumper to avoid hitting a deer that decided to dash across the road in front of me around dusk. I'm more worried about getting rear-ended than hitting the deer, to be perfectly honest, but I sure wouldn't want one of them sliding up over my hood, and through my windshield!

That having been said, no robot deer that stands by the roadside and merely turns its head from side to side, and wags its tail a bit would fool me. I'm not a hunter. I don't have a gun license. There's just something about a real deer's whole body language and movement that these robots can't replicate. Leg and foot movement has something to do with it. Unless the geniuses who crank out these babies can figure out how to make them prance around a little while they do the head and tail thing, I'm not buying it. But you'd be amazed at how many people get jailed for shooting them over in the Midwest.

Ordered these babies today. Luccheses on major sale--$383 lizard/calf boots for $134. Zappos didn't have them in a wide width, so I ordered them in a 6.5. The interesting thing is that this pair didn't show up on the Lucchese sale items page, but I found them by scrolling backward through the picture/description pages from the following pair.

I lusted after the tan and teal ones, and never would have bought them had they not been on sale as well. No way would I have spent $900 for a pair of boots even with the two-tone inlay and fancy stitching, regardless of whether they're goatskin, skate skin, lizard skin, snakeskin, or beelzebub-skin. But for $200 off, yes, I caved. I've never forked over so much money for a pair of cowboy boots before. These are goatskin.

The good news is that I still have a couple of pairs of cowboy boots in my collection that are almost 20 years old and still going strong. Haven't even had to get the heels redone, but I have had to get half-sole repairs. Those are Justins, but I have no reason to think that Luccheses won't wear just as well.

Yes, I do wear cowboy boots to the office fairly often. They're incredibly comfortable, and are perfectly acceptable for my mostly back room work. I just wouldn't wear them to a client meeting.

I ordered them before 3pm Pacific today, which meant that they shipped today as well. Zappos shipping is always free, as is return shipping if necessary, but that's for the usual 4-5 business day delivery. These sale items qualified for a free 2-day shipping upgrade, but then I got an email saying they were going to overnight air-express them to me. They should arrive tomorrow.

I love cowboy boots!

We saw Borat this afternoon. It really was pretty funny. There's what SJ calls "the cringe factor." A number of the gags depended on making the audience cringe. Here's just a sampler:

• taking an etiquette lesson for a dinner party, then grossing out the guests by holding up a white plastic bag after he emerges from the bathroom, and asking where he can dispose of it
• Showing the etiquette coach "family" photos of his naked son, saying how "strong he is" and that he's grown 3 cm. recently . . .
• The naked wrestling with his obese producer in the hotel room followed by racing naked through a room full of conventioneers

And those are just the physical gags. There are the anti-semitic rants, the buying an old ice cream truck because he couldn't afford a Hummer to make the cross country trip, the gay pride parade in D.C., the jokes about retards, and the footage of the boorish drunken frat guys in their RV.

Here's how we know the movie is a hit: Sacha Baron Cohen is getting hit with lawsuits. The tv news producer who got fired by her station for booking Borat is suing him. The boorish frat guys are suing him--despite the fact that Borat didn't catch them doing anything they wouldn't have done without his being there, and they signed releases. Now the villagers from Glod ("Mud") in Romania, where Borat's "hometown" was filmed are no longer happy with the $5 they each got paid for their bit-part roles in the "documentary." They were fine with it for several months, until the movie became a hit--now they want a piece of the action, if they can scrape together enough to hire a lawyer.

I'm looking forward to his next movie featuring "Bruno," the gay Austrian fashion journalist.

The polls in NJ are open now.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

This somewhat confirms my contention over the years that I have a fairly generic northern U.S. accent, although it's not really Midwest. It's actually very easy for me to fake a Chicago or 'Sconsin accent. Minnesota's pretty easy to fake as well, accent-wise, but I haven't yet nailed my phrases correctly to fake out the true natives. New England accents are trickier--nobody from New England would ever believe it, but people from the South or Midwest would. Philly's pretty easy to fake as long as I remember to say "warsh" for "wash" and "wooder" for "water." High Plains states people and Michiganders sound perfectly normal to me, and I to them. Same with the entire West Coast, but not western non-coastal states. Where I lose biggest is in the South/Southwest. I couldn't fake a 'Bama, Texas, Okie, nor Utah accent to save my life!

For that matter, I suck at faking any sort of accent from the British Isles, but I can peel off a pretty good Zimbabwe one.

Canadian's pretty easy to fake, too. Not French Canadian, nor Newfie, but "generic" Canadian.

Can anybody fake a Newfie accent?

Oh happy day! My tiny department of three people got invited to the Project Zeus party for the Operations Group. We're analytics, not Quality Assurance, Database, nor Programming. But the Sales and Support Group had its own party last week. Free beer, open bar, and munchies, and I'm there, baby! Same with Gary. Meilin had to be enticed with food, because she wouldn't go if it was just booze. I suspect her cranberry juice had seltzer instead of vodka in it, but so what? She showed up and dove into the finger food with the rest of us. The days of the three-hour martini rep lunch are long gone in advertising, but the days of the occasional after-hours company party live.

A few out-of-towners were in NY for a few days worth of meetings, so when Paul walked in rather late, I grabbed a glass, poured the pub crawling Londoner a pint, and handed it to him. There was no point asking him if he wanted anything else. He always orders beer at our Leadership dinners, if he's in town for those meetings, one of which is next week. A few of us were joking about sending Darren, our Mormon programmer who was in town from SLC, up to the bar for another pitcher, knowing that he wouldn't consume any of it on the way back to the table. It pays to sit with the Irish contingent when the beer is free-flowing. They know how to get refills.

With that, folks I'll leave you with the lovely reminder that tomorrow's FRIDAY! Chant it with me: Friday, Friday, Friday!

Hmm. Emma got locked out in the garage Monday night after I got the car back. I was wondering where she was after dinner and her insulin shot, but figured she was snoozing on the back of the sofa. Later that evening, snuggling into bed, I called her name a few times. No cat. She normally comes when called and hops up on the bed. Again, I figured she was sleeping off dinner, and I'd find her on top of me in the morning when the alarm went off. No cat. Went down and shook the food, calling her name. Surely that would arouse her. No dice. Maybe she was locked in the basement. She loves forbidden territory. Nope. Once again, I called her name, and heard some muffled meowing. Aha--the garage! Bingo.

Boy was she perturbed when I let her inside the house! "How could you do that to me, mommy? It was chilly out there. Can't you feel how cold my fur is?" Hopefully, she'll never pull a stunt like that again, but she's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

I didn't really notice anything after that, driving to the train station. It was mostly cloudy, so there really wasn't any sun glare. But this morning, there was sun glare galore. Sure enough, there were kitty paw prints all over my windshield. She'd probably walked all over the hood and roof as well. I had to laugh. Even when your pet is rather on the dumb side, you've got to love him or her. She's my third cat, and my previous two blew her away on the Kitty IQ scale. For a 16-year-old fart, she's pretty darn active, and very sweet, but what an idiot!