The direction we’re headed

Well hey, it’s been almost a year. Wow. Well, I think I owe the people who were starting to pay a little attention to me an explanation.

So here’s what happened and where we are going:

When Spring hit last year I was trying to figure out my Internship for the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. A pretty life-altering decision and one that I didn’t have much choice about. I can’t graduate without an internship. I applied for and got my internship over at The Washington Post Politics site.

I spent the summer in D.C. working for them with Ryan Lytle, another OU Journalism student, and getting an incredible amount of experience in the field. After my brother, my housemate Josh and my girlfriend Devin (We’re dating. It is very cute.) came out to visit I developed a major infection in my back and spent the day in the hospital; don’t worry, I got better. I have been dealing with pilonidal cysts (fair warning, it is a bit graphic) for several years now, but more on that later.

At the same time I was getting ready to head off to D.C. I took over as the editor-in-chief of Speakeasy Magazine. I developed the new site their and have been working on it since then. In fact, Speakeasy has become my inspiration for my long-term project for this site.

I got back to Ohio just in time to start my senior year of college and with continuing back problems. That said, I am incredibly happy to be back in my home state. Fall quarter went by quickly with much of my time being devoted to Speakeasy and class. Over winter break I had surgery for the second time to get two cysts removed from my lower back. I ended up being put on a Wound Vacuum (also graphic). I was more-or-less homebound for the month of December. My mother and Devin ended up helping me immensely.

I’m now eight weeks deep into Winter quarter and I am trying to get everything together. This site is back on my radar, and I am beginning work on the redesign during my very limited free time. I am still cooking, but now I have Devin cooking with me, so our recipe book is expanding quickly. There are a lot of back posts that need to get finished.

I can’t promise that I am going to be updating three times a week yet or that the site will be finished by a certain date, but I can at least let people know I am alive and still working. Look for some updates and a major overhaul on the way this site works.

With apologies.

All right, I am (sort of) back. I know that dropping off of the face of the Internet for that long was completely unfair, but I didn’t have much choice. I’m working on a new Web site for a publication I work for as well as reorganizing the entire organization. I simply have not had the time. Luckily the work on the other site should be winding down soon, so I’ll be updating BeanHat again

Time suck

I am aware that letting this site just flutter in the wind like this is unacceptable, but the last week has been more busy than maybe any other week of my college career. Most of it good stuff, but still. This is the first I’ve been in my apartment today.

On a related note I don’t have anything to post right now because I didn’t actually have any food until today. Surviving on hot dogs and peanut butter for three days is not fun. Anyway, this quarter is going to be very busy. I am working out my schedule, so once again I have not forgotten you. I am just bogged down. More to come.

Problems abound

Well, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. I had my update ready fro today but my card reader doesn’t seem to be working, meaning my pictures are trapped on my camera. I’ve been fiddling with it for a few hours with no luck. I’ll keep working on it. Today’s post will go up whenever I can get the pictures off, be that later today or tomorrow.

Last week was spring break. I did get some work done on the site, but I also focused mostly on visiting family and friends. I got to see my grandpa for the first time in a few months, which was nice. I still can’t quite find what I’m looking for to replace the food page, but I’m close. Ideally I will be able to update the front page and have every other page update automatically. More to come on that, so please just bear with me while I try to get this all figured out.

Today was the first day of fall quarter as well, so I need to determine when I can actually post updates during the day.

Quick Fix: Peanut butter smoothie

It tasted like peanut butter and bananas

All right. Images are working again, the food page is almost finished, and I’m going to be reformatting old updates retroactively over the next couple of weeks. The way things will work is pretty simple. Instead of having two separate articles for each thing I make (a post on the front page and a food page) there will just be a link at the bottom of each post. Clicking on that will send you over to the fill post, which will contain all of the extra content that would otherwise appear on the food page. That would include the ingredients list and the recipe, more or less.

About this peanut butter smoothie. So far not one person I have described it to seems to think that it is a good idea, which I can understand. Mixing orange juice, peanut butter, strawberries and bananas sounds a little strange. It tastes a little strange too, but in a good way. I think.

The story behind it is pretty simple; I was hungry and thirsty and didn’t have anything frozen to thicken up a smoothie. The next logical choice was peanut butter. The only problem was that I had all of my fruit in the blender already and it was soaking in orange juice. There is no going back once there is orange juice in the blender.

As soon as the peanut butter was in the blender I was fairly positive that this was going to be a tragedy. Well, I probably wouldn’t be blogging about it if it was. The smoothie turned out extremely thick due to the peanut butter. It also ended up tasting like bananas dipped in peanut butter, which was actually very good. In fact, if you’ve never had bananas dipped in peanut butter I highly recommend it.

If in the future you find yourself with a bowl of fruit and nothing frozen to thicken up a smoothie, consider the stranger things in your pantry. Like peanut butter.

› Continue reading

Finals week and onward

Well, pictures are still more or less broken. I know what’s wrong, I just haven’t had the time to fix it.

I’m going to just wait it out until after finals week is over. That means no update today or Friday. However, by the end of Spring Break I will have the site completely fixed up, including the food tab.

Updates lined up:

• Latkes (potato pancakes).
• Pudding injected, glazed banana muffins.
• Biscuits.

I promise I haven’t forgotten you Internet, it’s just that I accidentally broke the site during maybe the worst possible week.

Web issues

Well, I had posts lined up for Friday and today, but I seem to have messed something up a bit. Posts aren’t working correctly and pictures in posts are simply not working at all. I’ll keep the site up-to-date with what’s going on.

Unfortunately it’s finals week, so my time is strained. If I can figure this thing out by the end of the week I’ll have it all wrapped up over Spring break.

Quick fix: Hard-boiled egg bagel

Hard-boiled eggs on a bagel. With cheese.

Hard-boiled eggs are delightfully simple. All you really need to hard-boil an egg is about 15 minutes, some boiling water and an egg. They are also fairly filling and can be utilized in a number of dishes such as deviled eggs and egg salad.

If you happen to be pressed for time or don’t have/like mayonnaise, just slice the egg thin and put it on some sort of bread. Maybe something like…leftover bagels. The egg bagels (Eggels?) to the right are simple; a cut and toasted bagel with a piece of cheese, one sliced, hard-boiled egg and some salt and pepper.

They make for a fairly substantial lunch and are easy. Plus you can add just about anything you want. A slice of tomato, light mayonnaise and some spinach would be good. Add a piece of goetta or bacon and you have a breakfast sandwich. Some chipotle ranch dressing and leftover chicken breast, maybe. The world is your oyster. Make a seafood bagel.

If you have never made a hard-boiled egg, fear not. I have. A hard-boiled egg will keep for a while, so you might as well make a few. Set your egg(s), shell intact, in a pot with at least enough water to cover them. Turn the stove on and get the pot up to a nice rolling boil. Depending on how fast your stove is it should take about 10 minutes (or a little less) of boiling to cook the egg through. They will be very, very hot.

The egg is less likely to crack due to sudden temperature change if you have it in the pot as it starts to boil. Adding an egg to a pot of boiling water can result in cracking and an annoying mess.

Set the eggs aside until they cool and put them back in the fridge until you need them. If you’re into instant gratification and want your egg now, put it in a bowl of cold water in the freezer for a few minutes.

There are a few ways to approach cracking a hard-boiled egg. If you don’t care whether or not it stays intact, just crack and peel. My personal favorite is to grip the egg in one hand to make a fist, then punching my open palm. The egg will crack (or squash if you use too much force) and you’ll probably feel a little cooler. Assuming you do care about the look of the egg, a little more care would be wise.  There will be a space of air at the bottom of the egg called an air cell. That is a good place to start if you’re not used to peeling an egg. Crack that and do your best to peel the entire shell away with the thin white skin that will be attached to the shell.

Slicing an egg is fairly simple. I find it’s best to take a very sharp paring knife and just press it through the egg. Be careful not to press it through your finger as well. A cutting board would be ideal. The yoke will provide some resistance, but that shouldn’t cause too much trouble.

Edit:

(The Real) Chris is right. Adding a little salt to the water as you boil it will make peeling the egg easier. Also older eggs are apparently easier to peel (as opposed to farm-fresh).

Devin’s Red Velvet Cake Bites

A couple of weeks ago Devin went home. She promised that she would have some sort of surprise when she got back. The next day she was telling me that her hands were all red. I was, understandably, confused as to what in the world she could be making.

When she got back I was given a ball of chocolate and told to just eat it. Not one to turn down food, I of course did. It turns out she made chocolate truffles, or “cake bites” filled with red velvet cake. I love red velvet cake.

She had a few of the same problems I did when I made my Oreo truffles a few weeks back. Specifically, keeping the center cold and the chocolate hot. I made a second batch of Oreo truffles a week after I made my first batch. I took them out of the freezer five at a time instead of all at once, which kept the centers nice and solid. Devin and I both had to deal with horrible melting balls our first time around.

“My first batch that I started dipping was a small disaster and turned out pretty ugly looking. I had problems with the temperature of the cake; they weren’t cold enough. So even before half-way through the batch was dipped the cake started to get room temperature and began crumbling a little bit in the chocolate…”

Double boilers are a wonderful way to melt chocolate, sure. The problem is keeping the chocolate molten enough that it coats evenly but not so hot that it burns and double boilers use indirect heat. The chocolate (or cheese) sit about a pot of boiling water, meaning that the steam does all the work. It takes a bit of time for the water to get up to a high enough temperature to create steam. At the same time it is difficult to get the chocolate away from the heat, as the steam is going to keep rising for a while after the stove is turned off.

If the chocolate starts to burn your best bet is to just start over. Devin has more experience with chocolate than I do, so her chocolate came out much nicer than mine. The trick I learned is to just watch the chocolate. If it starts to get a bit lumpy as it dries or doesn’t stir smooth in the double boiler, get some heat back under it until it does. At the same time though the chocolate should not be so hot that it scalds you if you dip your finger in it.

Go take a look at Devin’s blog and give her cake bites a try. Devin has a better grasp of sweet treats than I do, so I’m thinking about outsourcing the chocolate making to her.

Gallery Update: Garlic and onion Bagels

Poppy seeds get everywhere, by the way.

You know, for this being a bread that was originally based on making bread there is not a lot of bread here. In fact, this is only the second gallery update dealing with bread, the first being Focaccia Pizza. Bagels are, in case you’ve never had one, delicious. They are my favorite ring-shaped food. Why I have waited this long to make them is a mystery to me.

Anyway, about the bagels. They’re easy to make. If you can make yeast bread you can make bagels. All you have to do is send them through some boiling water before you bake them. Simple work.

It should be clear to anyone who reads regularly (and apparently about 30 of you do) that I can’t be satisfied with simple things. Clearly I had to make garlic and onion bagels, not just plain white bread bagels. That’s boring and easy. I would recommend starting with the boring and easy, because I think I just get lucky most of the time. Adding the garlic is simple enough; just add garlic. The onion is a different story though.

I basically pulped the onion by sending it through a fine grater. The nice thing is that the onion doesn’t grate into strips. It just sort of turns to pulp. (That’s good. We want that.) To get rid of the excess juice I put the pulp in some paper towels and gave it a good squeeze until all I had was onion bits.

If you have never made bagels and are looking for some sort of bread to make, I would suggest it. The recipe posted over in the Food tab is just a basic recipe. Feel free to send me pictures of variations you make.