Another one from Pam:
Mix 3 cups sugar, butter, evaporated mik, and egg together in a saucepen; bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, brown the remaining 1/3 cup sugar in a heavy pan. Let the sugar melt in pan slowly – keep stirring so it does not burn.
Mix the browned sugar into the milk mixture and boil slowly for about 15 minutes. Cool and beat until ready to spread on cake.
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Tagged icing
From my colleague, Pam Cole:
Preheat oven to 325F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or 12 cups bundt pan. Beat butter and cream cheese together in mixing bowl until blended. Add sugar to mixture and cream until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Blend in vanilla. Sift flour and salt together. Blend into creamed mixture, spoon batter into prepared pan(s). Bake for one hour and 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted one inch from edge comes out clean. Cool in pan for five minutes, turn onto wire rack and completely cool.
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Tagged cake
I’ve been using blogs for my online classes for several years now, first using free WordPress.com blogs, then moving to a self-hosted wordpress installation with a certain currently unpopular hosting provider who shall remain nameless. In August, when my hosting contract, ran out I decided not to renew and to move my domains elsewhere. I used iwantmyname.com to manage my domains, and used free services (posterous and tumblr) to host my blogs. It worked OK (and was certainly cheaper than paying for hosting), and I was even able to set up subdomains for my different class blogs (blog.domain.com, not domain.com/blog), which my old provider didn’t allow.
After a semester of free hosting, however, I was ready to go back to hosting my own installation. I went with Bluehost on the recommendation of friends, and also because they allow subdomain WordPress installations. Their tech support was helpful in matters of basic setup, but weren’t very knowledgeable about how to set up a multiple subdomain sites within WordPress. In fairness, their support only extends to getting WordPress installed, which went flawlessly. The problem I had, though, was that even though the main blog was easy to set up, I couldn’t access any of the subdomains. I read several pages about using a wildcard domain in cPanel, but none of them were clear enough for someone with skills as rudimentary as mine (so now I’m going to spell it out).
Two sets of instructions finally got it through my thick skull: Joe at aboundmarketing sent me to the cPanel subdomain page, and the WordPress Codex finally allowed me to figure out where the wildcard needed to point (NOT the default “wildcard” folder that cPanel wants to setup).
Joe writes “For ‘Document Root,’ type in the folder where your WordPress installation is located,” and the Codex writes, “Make sure to point this at the same folder location where your wp-config.php file is located.” I should have figured it out then, but it took me a bit more poking around. Elsewhere, the Codex writes, “make sure that both the site address and the WordPress address are the same.” In other words, WordPress has to be in the public_html directory, and the wildcard domain has to point to public_html. (It’s a basic syllogism, right? WordPress must be in the public_html directory; the wildcard must point to the WordPress directory; therefore, the wildcard must point to the public_html directory.)
tl;dr: Point your wildcard subdomain to public_html, not a subdirectory of public_html
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
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Tagged YearInReview
Steak Oscar: I don’t know who Oscar was, but he was a culinary genius.
For the past few years, we’ve been making homemade vanilla extract for ourselves and for Christmas presents. We started with a basic recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, and scaled it up, because 3/4 cup of extract just isn’t enough. With a little experimentation, we also increased the amount of vanilla to reach our current ratio.
To make vanilla extract, you’re going to need to buy vanilla beans in bulk. Grocery store beans won’t cut it,for two critical reasons. First, they’re outrageously expensive–one or two beans in a jar. The first problem leads to the second: they’re so expensive that nobody buys them, so they sit on the shelf for a long time and as a result are dessicated and terribly stale.
We’ve had good luck buying from Arizona Vanilla Company (no affiliation, just happy customers). Since we’re making extract, we buy the grade B beans which aren’t as pretty, but work just fine. A half pound goes for a little over $20 the last time we bought some. It’s more than we need for extract, but they keep well in a glass jar in the freezer (even after a year, they’re fresher than what you get in the grocery store!). You can see from the photo how much oilier they are than those dried out things in the store.
To make a little under 750 mL of extract:
Pour out a little bit of vodka, then put in 40 beans. Top with the vodka you poured out, and then set aside in a dark, cool spot for at least 6 weeks. From time to time, turn the bottle over to mix. After a few weeks, the vodka will start to darken. Six weeks is the minimum to soak it, but longer is even better. We keep a fifth of vanilla extract steeping pretty much all the time, and use it to top off a smaller bottle we keep in the spice cabinet.
Heat skillet over medium heat. When hot, add coconut oil and then cook until browned, breaking up the sausage as it cooks. Add spinach and cook until wilted. Add eggs and stir together, then turn heat to medium-low. While it cooks, preheat broiler and grate Parmesan over the top. When the center starts to set, place under the broiler until the top is browned. Slide onto a cutting board and cut into 6 slices.
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