Mom always said I’m a bread eater.  Julie’s mom says the same thing.  But Julie isn’t a bread eater.

French baguettes are delicious, and I believe also low in fat. For this reason, they are only good for one day.  And for all the above reasons,  we tend to accumulate a lot of half-finished stale bread loaves.

Yes, I know you can order a demi-pain but don’t talk back.  This isn’t about good planning, it’s about making lemonade.  Or rather, croutons.

It’s not hard to find a good crouton recipe, but I find it rather tricky to make good croutons.  Too much oil, too much heat, too little this-or-that, and you’ll just have soggy, burnt, yet stale, chunks of bleh.  In fact, I can’t really describe my process for crouton making, as it seems always to be different each time.  Nichtdestotrotz, here goes anyway.

I prefer baguettes from a good bakery.  The ones from the supermarket will work too.  But even while the ones from the supermarket look pretty good, you’ll notice the texture of  the mie is very homogenous and when dried much like styrofoam.

The loaves are best really good and stale.  Like, several days sitting out stale.

Rubbing a clove of garlic on the outside of the load before cutting it up is easier than afterwards.  And should any of this garlic juice survive the heat of the pan later, you’ll get that nice radishy hotness long for the ride.

Make cubes out of your loaf with a serrated breadknife.  Take your time and saw, not too much pressure.

Cubes that fall on the floor go to the floor god.  What, you wanna get a tapeworm?

I don’t use the oven method.  Too easy to burn em.

Some diced garlic is gently heated with some butter, and this is tossed with the cubes.

The cubes are heated in the same pan on medium heat.  A little more butter is added when  no one is looking.  This takes a while, depending on how much bread you have and how small your pan.

When are they sauteed enough?  Hell if I know.  Some of them get a little brown on one side — the cubes will resist turning over — and some will look exactly the same.

Somewhere along the way everything gets a little salt.

The cubes are stored in an airtight container.  I suspect they are better the second day.  They keep a long time. 

You’ll know if it worked out because you’ll notice serving them with everything.  I mean, everything.  Also, the roof of the mouth tends to suffer a bit.

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Coraline Mystery Box Roundup

Coraline opens in theaters today, so it’s time to do a roundup of all the known Coraline Mystery Boxes. Click through to discover amazing treasures. “The braver you are, the more you’ll see.”

Already quite a few months back, the creators of the film Coraline sent out a slew of mystery boxes to various “blogs”. Each box was unique and contained neat swag for the film. Altogether a very nice, personal touch.

Above is a complete list of said boxes.

This considered, it is rather puzzling that (from what I’ve read) people all about were quite nonplussed by the Coraline “Visual Companion”, the accompanying artbook to the film. By all accounts, it appears to be quite shoddy, put together by yahoos, and otherwise shitty.

Recently I tried out 2pad, an online service that plucks all your webmail attachments and catalogs them for you in a somewhat overseeable manner.

Pretty dandy, is my reaction.  Although it appears you can’t have multiple addresses for a single login ID — you have to register each one separately.  There is also a feature where you can arrange your attachments into albums and have them viewable for a list of invitees.  This is one feature that is certainly not for me.

Good thing you asked, tubby.

Yogurt for Lower Fat Baking

Yogurt not only is a tangy dairy treat but it also serves as a great substitute for high-fat ingredients in baking. Low-fat or fat-free yogurt can be used to reduce or replace shortening, oil, butter or sour cream in baked goods. It cuts the fat and adds a creamy texture and tenderness to your recipes. Plus, it’s packed with protein and calcium.

I personally like to use yogurt in making chipatis, the Indian flatbread made in heaven.  Just some flour and yogurt, a pinch of salt.  You mix and knead it, make balls and roll them flat.  Then you heat them in an ungreased pan for about a minute.  Making them puff up is a bit tricky, but not required. Video

It’s 1 degree and raining.  Underfoot it’s crunchy and frozen.  A cold snap seems on its way.  It’s cold, wet, and disgusting outside.  And there are no shadows to see anywhere.

This is good news.

French private health insurance co Groupama  (grooooooupama/ toujour toujour là/ pour moi) has pulled it’s third advertising coup in 3 years.

Just a year ago, they reinvented their brand heroine, Cerise, (fr. Cherry, not a “real” name) from a frantic Amelie-esque thiry-ish girl…

To a graceful blonde in a green polka dot dress.  She pops up when you least expect it.

It’s not hard to see that the newest Cerise has a certain something that the second one lacked, namely, she’s way hotter. But seriously, ladies, do you really want your insurance company sending her to your home when you least expect it? No. I think Doc agrees with me on this one: we liked the second one better.

And was it ever about time at that. On two counts: the first being that I’ve needed to get a new wallet since at least a year ago (Julie gave me my last one as a present shortly after we met 3 years ago).
And the second being that I have been dying to try my hand at making something out of fused plastic since I first heard about it about two years ago.  Killing two boids in a single shot, I made a wallet out of fuse plastic. 

Fusing plastic bags in concept is simple enough: you cut and flatten out about five layers of plastic bags, either the thin produce kind, or trash bags or whatever.  You heat them with a hot iron, keeping baking paper between plastic and iron.  Crack a window, Space Ghost.  More at Etsy.

From my fused plastic I cut a piece a bit larger than A4 and followed the instructions for a paper wallet.  With the following changes: in step four, I only cut out the diamond.  Also after folding the tabs on the ends I fused them shut with the iron.

Hackszine.com: Evaporation fridge

This solar refrigerator, invented by Emily Cummins, is a brilliantly simple solution for keeping food cool in a hot, dry environment. It’s basically a metal cylinder surrounded by wet material, surrounded by a mesh sleeve to hold it all together.

Cookin’ With Google

Cookin’ With Google allows you to provide a list of ingredients (what’s in the fridge?) and get back a list of recipes that Google finds for you.

Results may vary. Putting in “Jack and Shit (and we’re fresh out of Jack)” might not be helpful, although it seemed funny at the time at least.

I am trying out 2Pad. You give it your email login info and it downloads all the attachments, which you can then browse as an online gallery. How ’bout that.