Daily Archives: April 13, 2009

The second loaf of challah baked up beautifully. While still far from perfect, it had a great crust and delicious and moist crumb. We shared about half of it with family, but then hoarded the rest away in order to make french toast with it this morning.

The basis for this recipe for french toast is the first recipe I ever wrote down while watching Thirty Minute Meals (caution – link has sound) with Rachel Ray – almost 6 years ago (before she took over the world) – and it is the bomb. But I’ve never used challah bread for french toast before today, and now it is the atom bomb of french toast. Serve with real maple syrup, preferably made by a friend‘s family, and you might as well wipe yourself off the face of the map. Crazy. Good.

French Toast
(adapted from Thirty Minute Meals)

2 eggs
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
3/4 Cup Heavy Cream
1/4 Cup Milk
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg (freshly grated if you have it)
6-8 slices thick (at least 1″ thick) french or challah bread
Butter for pan

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, cream, milk, and nutmeg. Start soaking several slices of bread in the mixture, flip over after a few minutes to soak other side. Heat large non-stick skillet/griddle to medium heat. When the pan is heated, melt a bit of butter in it, then add several pieces of soaked bread to it – only as many as can fit comfortably in the pan, don’t crowd it. While these are cooking, start soaking remaining slices in the egg mixture. Depending on your stovetop’s heat output, each slice should be flipped over after about 3 minutes, when the cooked side is golden brown. The other side usually takes a little bit less time, maybe about 2 minutes. Warning – I’ve never actually timed how long this takes. Maybe it was 4 minutes and 3 minutes? Just keep an eye on it. If the toast darkens after only a minute, turn down your heat a bit, or else you will have beautiful-looking french toast, but it will be nasty and gooey on the inside – blech. I like to preheat my oven to 300 degrees, set a wire rack on a cookie sheet, and have it ready in the warmed oven in order to put my finished slices of french toast on while I cook the whole batch of toast. The finished slices don’t get soggy or cold, and everything can be served together at the same time. And if, by chance, the center of the french toast didn’t get completely done in the pan, the heat from the oven will finish the cooking process.

This post has nothing to do with Easter, but I posted it on Easter, so I have to at least mention Easter. Here’s a picture of a deep-fried Cadbury Creme Egg:

Here’s a funny picture:

Julie and I went to church this morning, out to brunch with her mom, dad, and grandma, and then went up to Wausau to watch golf and hang out with my parents. While we were there, Sarah reached into a cookbook and pulled out this note (it had a recipe on the back), which we are assuming was written about 20 years ago, when I was 9 or 10. Click to get the full details

For those who don’t know, my mom passed away when I was 6, and my dad was left with 3 boys, ages 6, 4, and 2, and a fledgling business, so we were all expected to do stuff that most normal kids didn’t have to deal with. It’s kind of funny looking back at stuff that we just kind of assumed was normal at the time but very much wasn’t.

We also had a long discussion about Facebook

I am still on the fence about this whole thing. While I do enjoy a good bit of technology now and then, there are some things I just don’t see the value in, namely cell phones, instant messaging, and now Facebook. I don’t like cell phones (we only have 1 – prepaid -, and only for emergencies), or instant messaging, because I consider them to be “intrusive” technologies. I mostly like being left alone to focus on important tasks, and I feel that having a phone ringing wherever I was or having an IM window pop up all the time is distracting and I end up resenting either the phone or person IM’ing me. Facebook is scary to me because I haven’t always made the best decisions (actually hardly ever), and I don’t want people remembering me from grade school, middle school, high school, college, etc…, but it would actually be cool to stay in touch with my family, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, grandparents, parents, etc…, all of whom are starting to use Facebook. Let me know your thoughts. Either Facebook is a gift from the heavens, made from dreams, rainbows, and unicorn farts (Candy mountain! Candy mountain! You fill me with sweets, sugary goodness!!! ), or it is pure evil. I actually already have an account, but I haven’t used it all. If I actually start using the stupid thing, I will have to create a profile pic that uses one of my cats, as that seems to be the Gasper thing to do:

I have also been listening to new music lately, so I thought I would share my current list.

Trav clued me into this compilation, which has a ton of artists that I like on it, including an awesome song by Sufjan Stevens, Justin Vernon (from Bon Iver), YeaSayer, The National, and Beirut:

Pandora also recommended to me a song by Vetiver, and I am currently listening to both “Tight Knit”, and “To Find Me Gone”

A standby favorite of mine is Sufjan Stevens. Both the Illinois and Michigan albums are spectacular:

In the same vein is Welcome Wagon. Sufjan Stevens had an obvious influence in this album. I’m not sure how I feel about the album cover, but it’s good music.

For good up-tempo music, Fatboy Slim and OK Go are two of my many go-to choices. Doesn’t hurt that they know how to make a music video:

Fatboy Slim Video (for some reason can’t embed this one, but it’s probably the best video ever. Christopher Walken is a genius.)

That’s it for me. Random Easter post out — word.