One step closer to a heart-attack

My housemates have been wanting to deep fry foods for quite some time now and I have been very resistant, partly because I don't really want to deep fry food and also because I am scared to heat that much oil up on the stove top, seeing as how our stove is an evil beast. But, to mark a milestone I finally broke down and purchased the DeLonghi Dual Zone 4-Liter Deep Fryer and we spent the next three days preparing a whole host of deep-fried delights.

The boys wanted to deep fry Twinkies, they even went as far as to purchase the supposedly-delicious snack cakes, but they did not end up in the fryer.

Mostly we made dinner-type foods: Fried Chicken, Fish & Chips and Catfish Nuggets. Then to round out our deep fryer experience I made doughnuts, or actually, beignets.


They turned out pretty good. I'm actually not a fan of doughnuts but these were far enough away from the cake doughnut variety that we got along great.

I used the Costas French Market Doughnuts recipe from Allrecipes.com.

Next time I will probably make the edges a bit more rounded. Those parts got extra crispy and were a bit pokey.

Sadly, all the deep-fried-fun made the house smelled greasy for about a week. It may be awhile before we have another frystravaganza.

In other news, this crazy house was just finished a few blocks from the house and put on the market for $912K.


Sort of an interesting project, though I'm not so sure about the price tag.

One thing that I don't like is that the front windows are opening onto a pretty busy arterial. (Yes, the same street that we live on now, but we are set up above the street and much further back.) This particular project would maybe work better in a location a bit more off the beaten path, by even 5 or 6 blocks.

That being said, it's interesting, and way better than some of the things that have been built over the past few years. I'm all for good design. I just wish it were more affordable.

Good for Babies

The countdown to Visitor 2.0 has begun. Another mother will be arriving approximately 4 days from now (in household preparation standard time). Our weekend is looking to be full of cleaning and maybe I'll make a final effort on the curtains project that was begun and that is now all but abandoned. Given the short time frame, I'm starting to lean toward Plan 2.0: cannibalizing the remaining off-white curtain from an unused set and doing something really simple.


ANY curtain HAS to be better than the faded rags hanging in the windows now. It doesn't look too bad in the picture but in real life it really really is.

Anyway - weekend, full, cleaning. On to more interesting-to-me things.

Because Theresa will be here shortly - I was screwing around on the internets looking for other stuff to do, in-city, while she is visiting. One thought that I had was "I've heard that Theatersports can be a ton of fun. I'll google that."

On google I found a link, referencing Theatersports, that directed me to family.go.com which seems to be some sort of subsidiary of Disney - at least, that is the assumption I make from seeing the big Disney Family Travel logo at the top of the page. There wasn't much information on Theatersports there, but like I said, I'm looking for destinations and activities in the city, so I took the time to check out the rest of the page, including the "Things to do nearby" section, where I happened upon this:



That sacred institution, Deja Vu, is being heralded by Disney (or some 3rd party) as Good for Babies. I know that there are all sorts of things that we can say they mean by "Good for Babies" but I also found this:



Deja Vu currently rates higher for kid suitability than Pike Place Market does! (on family.go.com)

I think it's very funny. Next time you have friends or family with young children in town visiting, don't forget to stop by The Vu for some entire-family-enjoyments.

In other news - I rode the Seattle Streetcar’s South Lake Union Line - which I will from here on out refer to by her real name, the SLUT (I know I'm acting like I'm 12 years old there but I can't help it. Given the details and ridiculousness of the project it's just terribly fitting). I rode that SLUT the entire way back to work (all 1.3 miles).



The train was mostly empty


and the payment is completely automated via a machine that closely resembles (and operates like) the new parking meters that have been going in the past few years.

A few more passengers hopped on at the next stop - I'd say 8 all told - and no one else payed to ride that SLUT. None of that "verifying payment of fare" like they do on the buses. I'm not sure if we're ever going to get the 50 million dollars back if we're using the honor system here.

All criticisms (and obvious issues) aside, it was an interesting little trip. The neighborhoods you pass through in that mile+ have really changed over the past 3 or so years.

I wound out my day making dinner. I haven't cooked any real food in about 2 weeks and it was starting to get to me. We had a variation of Curried Coconut Chicken courtesy of ROMA via AllRecipes.com.

It turned out OK.



Needed salt.