Last minute Halloween

• Dark Chocolate Martini at The Spirit World. (Such a pretty photo of it too.)
• Matt recommends Zombie Pumpkins for your pumpkin stencil needs.
• Cute pumpkin cupcakes with white chocolate chunks and cream cheese frosting, yum. At Cupcake Bakeshop.
• Alton Brown spooky edible eyes and acid jellies.
• Toasted Pumpkin Seeds: Three Ways, at 101 Cookbooks.
• Kay made a snack cake spider and I am proud. Jessamyn has another shot and mentions that on the East Coast Ding Dongs are called Ring Dings. When I was buying them I couldn’t shake the feeling that Ding Dongs was the wrong name and now I know why.

Do you live in Seattle? Do you like the Rat City Roller Girls? It’s time to give them some help, their home at Hangar 27 is being threatened. Read about it here, go to the meeting tonight at City Hall at 5:30 p.m. (details here at Metrobloggig Seattle), and write or call to let the powers that be know how you feel, contact information including email addresses is here.

How to keep a Halloween Jack O’ Lantern from Rotting? According to this experiment at My Science Project, do nothing. They tried a variety of methods – bleach, Pumpkin Fresh, white glue, Vaseline, acrylic spray and a control – and found that the untreated pumpkin was almost the best bet. I wonder how the WD-40 that Extreme Pumpkins recommends using would stand up?

Halloween link dump:

• Halloween Monster List
• Cylon Jack-o-lantern at Evil Mad Scientist
• how to make cheap hair extensions at May 5th
• flickering light fixture at Ask Metafilter
• ghost cupcake on Flickr, so cute
• Halloween cupcakes from The Cupcake Queen
• brining pumpkin seeds, good tip at The Kitchen

  old but still good stuff from Martha Stewart:

• creepcakes
• boonilla shakes
• ladies fingers
• pumpkin seed candy
• halloween candies

  other round ups

• treats at The Kitchen
• drinks and such at The Spirit World
• my own collection of food too disgusting to eat at Readymade

  and Thimble has a great bunch of Halloween posts on lots of stuff:

• projects
• knit and crochet patterns
• knitted wig patterns
• last minute costume
• ornaments
• wreaths

This morning I found a way to make hard boiled eggs which was completely new to me – steaming. Simply, put a vegetable steamer in a pot and a little water, add eggs and a lid and let the water boil for 11 or 12 minutes. Transfer the eggs to ice water for a few minutes, and find that they are quite easy to peel. The eggs were well done, no green bits and nothing was too rubbery. While the method of bringing eggs to an almost boil and letting them sit for 15 minutes seems to be the most popular, I never caught them before the boiling, and then I would inevitably leave them too long despite my frantic use of a kitchen timer. The steaming method means I don’t have to watch them as closely. I found it in Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For the Food, and a few cooking forums I Googled gave the method thumbs up.

p.s. Craft magazine has officially hit the stands. It’s small like Make, and delightfully heavy.

I like to add lemon to my water but I’m fickle about it, resulting in too many tightly wrapped lemon halves lurking in the back of the fridge. So I tried True Lemon and I’m surprised to report that I like it. I’m not so sure about all the recipes on the True Lemon site, and Cook’s Illustrated recently gave thumbs down to using it in baked goods. But for adding to drinks it’s better than, you know, digging suspicious produce out of the crisper drawer.

They’re here – last weekend I made crawly things for Halloween, I used snack cakes for the bodies and Pocky for the legs. They were really fun to make, and now I have a whole lot of junk food in the house. Details here.

They’re coming. Soonish.

One more post about clothes – I like this shirt from Old Navy so well I went back and got a couple more colors. In the store this is called the Perfect Fit V-Neck. It’s made of a soft lightweight cotton, it stretches and hugs in all the right ways, and when paired with a tank top it has a neckline that Susannah would approve of.

I was finally unpacking my offce things and looked up to discover this little accidental drama playing out on my shelf:

The pear is from Loobylu and the Monster Tooth is from the Sew Dorky School of Dentistry. Stuart was commissioned by Cupcake Royale to make these awesome plush cupcakes, they are limited edition and that means super special.

I read this article about a locally (to Seattle) made pizza dough you can purchase at grocery stores ages ago, and I finally got around to picking some up last weekend. It was good. And look, it comes in whole wheat as well. The dough is frozen and takes 4 hours to thaw, after which you simply roll it out. The package comes with tips and cooking instructions. I made two smaller pizzas and the crust bubbled up nicely, it was chewy and crunchy in all the right spots. Even though making your own dough might be faster this creates fewer dishes to wash, so it’s a toss up for me.

I stopped by REI today looking for something else entirely, but discovered a new entry for the Non-Animal Fiber But Still Soft and Warm sweater collection. This one is a zip up hoodie made up of an acryic and nylon mix with a little bit of spandex, I got it in brown. It passed the just dried off from the shower tender skin test, and I am looking forward to wearing it on strolls through the trees at the arboretum. REI had a good selection of synthetic fiber sweaters, including that spongy Muppet chenille which I like to feel of but cannot see myself wearing out of the house.

While I was out I discovered some very cute patterned file folders on sale at Old Navy for 25 cents, there were also notebooks and gift boxes in the same line marked down to under 2 dollars.

I managed to burn the bejeezus out of my thumb yesterday. The oven was set to 500 degrees to make (delicious broccoli, sausage and ricotta*) calzones and a wardrobe malfunction of the pot holder occurred while I was moving the oven rack, causing me to touch my thumb to the very hot metal. Owwwuch. So, here is what I’ve learned about what to do when you are the unfortunate recipient of a second degree burn: run under cool water for at least five minutes, after that keep a cool, wet compress on it until the pain, oh the pain, subsides. In my case I soaked a washcloth in cold water, put it in a bowl and kept my thumb on it through a few hours of Tivo. If you burn yourself and there is no pain you need to seek medical help right away, but you’ll probably be aware of that.

If this second degree burning thing happens to you, and I hope it does not, know that every time you remove the affected area from the cool water it will hurt like it’s burning from the inside, but this feeling goes away. This was verified by a third-party anecdote involving gray ashes concealing red hot coals!! In my case the pain slowly went away and I was able to fall asleep without having my thumb submerged in ice water (not a good idea, I’m sure). When I woke up it was just a red and sort of blistery spot.

My thumb is wrapped up like a 3M mummy and I have doctors orders to avoid putting the digit to unnecessary use, which puts a dent in my Halloween baking plans. I’ve been putting a lot of “error” baking sessions in and I’m close to being able to reveal my plans, but since I’m being careful with my thumb I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish them. But I did have a few no-bake variations so perhaps I can just make those fabulous?

Silver lining: I have discovered that really smart people who make those silicone oven mitts have started offering them in petite versions for shorter fingers like mine. See petite versions of: OXO fabric and silicone mitt and the iSi Orka silicone mitt.

Were the calzones worth it? Yes, nearly.

* from Baking Illustrated.

Mmm, pumpkin sage cream sauce, via Posie Gets Cozy.

A stacked ring to make a BLT, I kinda want this. at Cool Hunting.

Recommendations on where to get the best dessert in Seattle, I can second that recommendation for the El Diablo at Tango.

Good buffing pads for your feet, at Awesome!