I haven’t talked about how much I like the latest issue of Chow magazine so, you know, I like the latest issue of Chow magazine. They have a section called Almost Cooking on things to do with rotisserie chicken from the grocery store (something I admit I surrender to and buy about once a week) and tonight we made the Neo-Enchiladas Suizas. Yummy, especially for something I made that quickly. Chow has something of a weblog – Chow For Now, a continuing, between-issue column.

Yesterday I successfully poached some eggs, I’m exceedingly proud of myself. Last week I tried the egg-in-clingfilm method which, erm, didn’t work out for me. Since I am prone to forgetting things I put my own instructions here at Flickr. You may or may not find them helpful.

There is a little shop in Ballard that I adore but always forget to mention here. It is simply called Cookies and they have hundreds of cutters and all sorts of bakeware and sprinkles and colorings and cookbooks. It’s worth a pop in if you’re in the area.

Yay! A burger from our very local Red Mill made it on the 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die list. via Kottke.

I finally broke down and got the latest Harry Potter book and I am not surprised to find I can knit it it’s own accessory — the Harry Potter Bookscarf. It might seem twee but I really like it. via Jejune.

Sprinkles or Jimmies? What do you call them? I grew up knowing them as sprinkles, and I hadn’t even heard of Jimmies until last year. I’ve even found long rants about Jimmies being the correct and only thing to call them. Is this like the pop-soda divide?

Despite the warm weather I’ve found myself fond of Minette’s line of wool accessories.

Homemade Violet Crumble, at Baking Sheet.

How to poach an egg, includes the unhappy results of various methods. via Lifehacker.

Yesterday a stroke of luck had me attending the Amazon.com 10th Anniversary Concert, a favorite part of the evening was seeing Daniel Handler, standing in for Lemony Snicket, perform a song about Count Olaf on the accordian. The stream of the show is avaible for today (Sunday) and the song starts near 1:31:00.

For dinner I made breakfast using the french toast recipe from Orangette. Almost each day at my local market I pass a rack of Shoku Pan thick sliced Japanese bread with a cheerful handmade sign saying “think French toast!”, how could I resist? I also made some with a crusty French bread to, you know, compare. They were both delicious and had that nice custardy middle. Mmm.

I spotted a box of homemade graham crackers at the local market and decided it was reason enough to make the fancy s’mores dessert from The Domestic Goddess and use my kitchen torch for the first time. (I’m sorry to say I was too lazy to make my own graham crackers, though that link has the recipe for them.) I used the marshmallow recipe at Cooking For Engineers for the marshmallows:

I think I prefer milk chocolate for s’mores so I used some Fran’s deep milk chocolate — I melted a bit and put some under the marshmallow as well as on top.

They were best when you torch them slowly and let the marshmallow puff up, and if you don’t burn them as much as in this picture. The torch? Very much fun.

Lavender week 6:

Kevin Smokler is in town on his book tour for Bookmark Now. Tonight we went out to the BN at U Village and surreptitiously found that the book was there, face out, on the shelves. They were very gracious and now there are signed copies on the shelves. Come out and see Kevin, and buy the book, Tuesday at Third Place Books and Wednesday at University Bookstore. I’ll be tagging along, so exciting.

Last weekend we trekked out to find a Geocache, however for the record I do prefer the treasure hunt aspect of Letterboxing. The Geocache we found was a microcache, just a small paper log curled up inside of a capsule keychain and tucked into a small space in a fence. I was charmed.