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Floods and Fat Tuesday Treats
Mar. 6th, 2011 08:57 pmNormally, we eat pączki after dinner on the Sunday before Lent begins. It's the thing to do up here in Michigan-- they're like jelly donuts, except the dough is really rich, and the traditional filling is prune jam. Which is actually really, really tasty. Anyway, normally we get about a dozen of these little sugar-coated fat bombs filled with everything from custard to black raspberry jam and chow down at Ukrainian Grandma's place.
This year, I decided to go all Scandinavian on everyone and made semla. I got hooked on them in high school, when my mother was "researching" a book on festival breads that never got written.My mother and I have a lot in common in that regard. We used allspice instead of cardamom and filled the buns with pure almond paste instead of the bread-milk-marzipan "pudding" of tradition, and they were delish.
I followed the recipe exactly this time, and they were also delish. I ended up with twenty-six buns (I guess I made them rather small). Ten of them got the full "marzipan pudding" treatment, some of them are getting plain almond paste and cream inside, and I filled two with a dollop of that pistachio cream I get from Zingerman's. That was every bit as good as it sounds.
Grandma really liked them. They're Old Country enough for her, even if the country in question isn't hers.
-x-
Tried to go for a walk in the local park and it was underwater. The River Rouge was expected to overflow its banks (snow melt + rain = flood), and it did. And how. I hope somebody chained down the picnic tables this time, because last year some of them ended up in trees. The gazebo washed away, too, which sucked because I like gazebos and enjoyed having one in the neighborhood.
-x-
Not bothering with the new Pokemon games. Haven't even done anything with HeartGold yet. :/
My most excellent spouse did have an amusing encounter with a Nintendo rep at a poorly-attended DQIX event yesterday. Apparently NoA makes their media reps actually play certain games before publicly flogging them, so this dude (who looked like Tom from Office Space) was plodding his way through Pokemon Black. (He'd been required to play DQIX up to the point where the Quester's Rest opens.) But from what this guy said, NoA is every bit as messed-up internally as one might imagine. The people at the top know what's going on, but not any of the middle or lower levels. Not good.
I wasn't there, or I would've asked about FE12.
This year, I decided to go all Scandinavian on everyone and made semla. I got hooked on them in high school, when my mother was "researching" a book on festival breads that never got written.
I followed the recipe exactly this time, and they were also delish. I ended up with twenty-six buns (I guess I made them rather small). Ten of them got the full "marzipan pudding" treatment, some of them are getting plain almond paste and cream inside, and I filled two with a dollop of that pistachio cream I get from Zingerman's. That was every bit as good as it sounds.
Grandma really liked them. They're Old Country enough for her, even if the country in question isn't hers.
-x-
Tried to go for a walk in the local park and it was underwater. The River Rouge was expected to overflow its banks (snow melt + rain = flood), and it did. And how. I hope somebody chained down the picnic tables this time, because last year some of them ended up in trees. The gazebo washed away, too, which sucked because I like gazebos and enjoyed having one in the neighborhood.
-x-
Not bothering with the new Pokemon games. Haven't even done anything with HeartGold yet. :/
My most excellent spouse did have an amusing encounter with a Nintendo rep at a poorly-attended DQIX event yesterday. Apparently NoA makes their media reps actually play certain games before publicly flogging them, so this dude (who looked like Tom from Office Space) was plodding his way through Pokemon Black. (He'd been required to play DQIX up to the point where the Quester's Rest opens.) But from what this guy said, NoA is every bit as messed-up internally as one might imagine. The people at the top know what's going on, but not any of the middle or lower levels. Not good.
I wasn't there, or I would've asked about FE12.
