Fig II. Leaves, branches and bricks, vibrantly red.

Fig III. A greyscale study.

Fig IV. Stone and mortar

Fig V. Car-cicles. Pretty but not for eating.

Underneath the screencaps of my testing Android phone (stolen momentarily from the long-suffering Executive Director of the Open Forum Foundation), you can catch a glimpse of some of the dev sketches. They’re my favorite part – it’s no coincidence that the shape of my Wacom pen and favorite mechanical pencil are almost identical.

In hindsight, 2010 seems like quite a rollercoaster year with lots of highs and lows. Moments of supreme self-confidence and complete existence in the moment usually (and sometimes immediately) followed by moments of utter despair often accompanied the usual freaking out that I’ve convinced myself all entrepreneurs experience. Fortunately, the nature of a rollercoaster means that one doesn’t spend too much time in any one place very long. The only thing that’s constant is that you’ve got to keep moving or get out of the car.

In hindsight, 2009 felt very much the same as did 2008 and 2007. I’d like to say that life has really been throwing me curveballs for the past four years but it’s probably just me, seeking out the same old familiar drama. Despite, of course, fervently hoping for more calm and less reaction and ultimately AN END TO IT ALL.

Of course, what happens when the rollercoaster ends is you get off. Which might not mean that you die when you decide to get off the rollercoaster but you won’t be riding life anymore. You’ll just be wandering around the amusement park, watching the joy, the terror, and teacup vomit from the sidelines. And I can say with all confidence, that if anyone is going to throw up on me on the teacups, its going to be ME.

So, here’s to more of the same in 2011 – sheer terror, blinding joy, and a nice calm center from which to enjoy it all. Cheers!

Well, that sounds exciting, I thought. This year has been pretty boring – work, work, work, triathlon, work, work, triathlon, work, work, WORK – and total disaster cookies might just liven it up a little.

I made some modifications to the original recipe, mainly in the way the dough is mixed and then worked with. For the first batch, I used both Jolly Ranchers and Life Savers to get a broad range of colors. I abandoned the Life Savers in the second batch because they tended not to melt as evenly and, when they did melt, the colors were muddy and uneven. The Jolly Ranchers, while harder to smash, melted into lovely panes of brilliantly colored transparent candy “glass.” For the second batch, I also substituted Crisco for the butter and didn’t notice any change in the dough quality so if you want to make these without using any dairy products, you can!

Color Notes: A sack of “regular” Jolly Ranchers will give you green (apple), blue (blue raspberry), purple (grape), a pinky-red (watermelon), and red (cherry). If you get the “Passion Mix” Jolly Rancher bag, you’ll get two shades of pinky-red (fruit punch & strawberry), orange (orange), pinky-orange (peach) and a redder purple (raspberry).

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 3 tbsps unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup dark molasses
• 1/3 cup water
• 12 oz bag of Jolly Rancher candies

Preparation

1. To crush the Jolly Ranchers, segregate them first by color and then place each color group in a Ziploc bag. Close the bag and lay it on a dish towel with a cutting board underneath. Get a hammer and smash away until you have nice little crystals. In my experience, the Ziploc bag does end up tearing some so try not to completely pulverize the candy or you won’t be able to pour it out of the bag and into a little bowl. I generally got 2-3 rounds of pounding out of one small size freezer bag. Crush your candies and put them in little bowls separated by color.

2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter. Add the sugar and molasses and beat for 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients in thirds. After the first third, add the water. Beat on medium or knead with your hands until a dough forms. Divide the dough into three balls. Flatten into discs, wrap in wax paper, place in a plastic bag and refrigerate for several hours. In my experience, the dough was still good after 5 days in the refrigerator but too dried out after 2 weeks.

3. Break off a ball of dough about the size below.

4. Roll it out into a rope about 1/4″ thick. I rolled the dough out on wax paper with just my hands – I didn’t feel a need to use flour.

5. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper. The original recipe suggested creating a template that you could lay the cookies on but I just played around with the rope until I made shapes I liked. Pretend you’re back in art class in 2nd grade and your teacher had just given you carte blanche to make whatever you want with clay. You can create a loop to hang ornaments by pinching it off a tiny piece of dough and rolling it out and then attaching it in it a hoop. Or you can work the loop into the actual shape of the ornament (as you can see in the blue heart below). Lay your ornaments on the parchment paper.

6. Once you’ve filled up the cookie sheet with ornaments, fill in the outlines with candy pieces. Don’t be skimpy with the candy – put it enough to thoroughly fill in the outlines (Resist the urge to heap it high though – it will flow over the gingerbread and you’ll have to break the hardened overflow edges off the final cookie.) Place the cookie sheet in the center rack in the oven. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until all the candy has melted.

Candy-Melting Note: If you have created a small shape (say, one 1/2″ in diameter or less), there is a good chance that the candy will get too hot and bubble out/evaporate. I’m not sure why this is but it happened several times when I made small or narrow spaces.

6. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool on the cookie sheet until the candy has hardened enough to be moved easily, about 10 minutes. Transfer to racks or a cutting board to cool completely. Be sure the cool the cookies on a flat surface or they will cool curved.

7. Don’t eat them! Thread a ribbon or string through the cookies and hang them in a window or on the tree. Or from the nearest light fixture.

And if you happen to break any, they make swell ears:

It’s so good that we made it twice in one week and devoured it each time voraciously.

Ingredients

• a little cooking oil
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 jalapeños
• 1 good-sized eggplant*
• 8oz mushrooms
• 1/2 pd ground beef (optional)
• 1 32-oz can of diced tomatoes (or fresh equivalent)
• heaping 1/2 tsp of cumin
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

1. Chop the onion coarsely. Chop the eggplant in 1/2″ cubes – if you’re an engineer, you might have a tendency to really obsess about this but really you just want to make sure the eggplant is cut into cubes small enough to choose.
2. Slice the mushrooms. Chop the garlic and the jalapeños finely. If you desire a spicier chili, leave the seeds and the ribs on the jalapeños.
3. Put a little cooking oil into a sauté pan and heat over a medium flame. Sauté onions, garlic and jalapeños and sauté until onions are translucent. Add ground beef, cumin, and as much salt and pepper as you think you’ll like. (The idea here is to let the cook the salt, pepper, and cumin flavors into the ground beef.)
4. Add tomatoes, eggplant, and mushrooms. Simmer gently until eggplant is well-cooked and cumin have mixed well, about 1 hour. Taste and adjust seasonings to preference.

Postprandial Notes: Mwfwfffmmmmwwha.. oh, sorry, can’t talk now… eating the best chili I’ve had all year.

*”Good-sized” being such a relative term, I’ll attempt to qualify what a “good-sized” eggplant is: Imagine a regulation-size football and shrink it about 30%. Sort of kids’ size but about twice the size as one of those happy-fun squeezy footballs and about three times the size of the tiny stress relief squeezy footballs. Roughly the size of a mens’ size 9 running shoe or a small butternut squash or a Cornish game hen.

Photographer’s Note: Love the way the chocolate’s all melty at the edges.

Been pretty busy lately working on a top secret documentary project for the Capitol Area FoodBank’s Farm to School Week. Well, maybe not so top secret anymore but it’s my first Storiography project for the Foodbank. It involves 50 pics, 50 quotes, and some brilliant design. You’ll have to stay tuned for more but here’s a couple of teaser photos to keep you interested:

Delaware farmer David Marvel delivering watermelon, broccoli, cauliflower and apples to CentroNia in Mount Pleasant.

FoodBank volunteers slicing up apples for the apple taste test at the Cook-Off event.

A Savoy Elementary is emphatic about announcing his favorite vegetable to Sam Kass: “Broccoli!!!!”

Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan chatting with Cook-off Chef Lauren Von Der Pool.

Oliver Friendly of Eat and Smile Foods and his sous chef, chopping up ingredients for apple-cabbage slaw.

Taste-test winner Chef Tee (of U Street’s Creme Café) tossing fried apples.

Bill Yosses interviewing a TMA sous-chef.

Chef Will Artley’s sous-chef breaking eggs into a stand mixer.

A member of TMA’s Green Club planting new seedlings in the school garden.

Imagine for a moment, that my two cowhorn plants are a pair of pretty, young adult lovers. They stumble out of their shabby chic New York apartment in search of late brunch after softly lit and brilliantly filmed session of enthusiastic Sunday morning lovemaking. In a rustle of hastily thrown on jackets and tousled hair, they brush past an elderly, disapproving neighbor who glares at them over her +2 reading glasses. In return, they throw her a pair of happily sheepish grins as they turn down the stairwell.

In the movie of my life, however, the cowhorns just looked at me like, “What? This is what we do.” Or at least, I imagined they did. I also imagined that one of them looked at me, winked and said, “Just keeping the ‘horn’ in cowhorn.” before he spat a nice wad of ‘baccy on the ground.

Ahem.

My first thought was to make a ristra with all the peppers but it occurred to me that, despite the drought we’ve had this summer, DC’s weather may not be dry enough for them to fully dry out before mold sets in. Peppers don’t have to be dried outside – if I had a dehydrator, I could have used that. Or I could have built a custom drying screen for the hood of our white Jeep Cherokee and waited for a sunny day (or several). Or I could stick them in the oven.

Drying anything in the oven is pretty straightforward – just set the oven to 150° and walk away for some time. Depending on the size and variety of peppers, drying time will vary (for example, jalapeños will dry faster than cowhorns which will dry faster than larger cayenne varieties. In the case of cowhorns, I left the oven on for 12 hours, turned it off when I went to bed, and left the peppers in the oven overnight.

Preparation

1. Discard any peppers with bad spots or peppers that have started to go soft. Wash and dry the good ones.
2. Lay the peppers on the oven racks. Place them however you wish but try to keep them from overlapping or touching one another. You can also lay the peppers on a screen or cheesecloth but resist the urge to put them on a cookie sheet as this will prevent even airflow.
3. Set the oven at 150° and leave them in until dried, checking occasionally for brittleness. When done, turn off the oven and let them cool completely in the oven before removing. If you’re paranoid (as I tend to be), leave them in overnight just to be sure they are thoroughly dried.
4. The peppers are fully dried when they are hard and brittle to the touch. They should not be flexible at all – if they are, leave them in until they aren’t. Flexibility means water and water means mold, which means you’ll be throwing your peppers out in a few weeks when you go to crumble them over something and find they’ve turned into something from Where the Wild Things Are.
5. Remove from oven and use however you like. Crush into red pepper flakes and store in a bag or jar. Store whole peppers in a dry place and use for seasoning in chilies, soups, and stews.

PLEASE NOTE: During and for a period after drying, your house will be filled with the most wonderfully deep, smoky aroma of roasted peppers. It’s possible you might be the sort of person who doesn’t like this. It’s also possible you might also be the sort of person who doesn’t think kids slippers can make your cleaning life easier. Either way, I bet you clicked on that link.