A Day of Decadence

Yesterday was a fantastic day of decadence that I can ill afford but felt justified in splurging for. After a nice long lay in, I shuffled around the house for a while then bundled up (the temperature is dropping, its snowing at the moment and is supposed to freeze tomorrow) and hoped on a bus downtown. I had avoided shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, but I was interested in seeing what it was like downtown. Turns out the crowds were not too crazy, but had I been on a serious shopping trip it would have driven me mad. Still, I love living in a city with a real downtown, where the sidewalks are full of people and you can pop into a variety of shops. I limited my downtown shopping to the KCTS store (the local PBS station) for a Christmas present for Dad. After that I headed to Belltown, a neighborhood just south of downtown.

Not having shared my bed with anyone for several years (the last being Tre, who was always welcome until the nose licking became intolerable) I hadn’t felt the need to impress with my bedding. After three years of neglecting the state of my bedsheets, I was finally convinced to buy a new set when the pillowcase seam came undone in my hands. It may not seem like such a decandant thing, but new sheets are luxurious in my mind. I chose a handsome deep red with directional striped, very classy.




Continuing the day of decadence, I strolled over to Le Pichet, the French café that I’ve mentioned in the past. I love Le Pichet, but I only go there on occasion, sometimes to meet a friend, occasionally alone. This time I had a book with me and found a seat at the counter. I had the Oeufs plats, jambon et fromage, with a glass of Cote du Rhone, and finished with a frothy cappuccino. Then I went across the street to browse in the architecture bookstore. What an enjoyable outing. Nothing on it’s own was remarkable, more the combination and intention. Eating lunch in a restaurant is not remarkable in itself, nor is buying sheets. The act of setting out on a weekend afternoon to stroll through the shops, pop into a charming bistro for lunch and a glass of wine while reading, then a bit more browsing, it makes for a charming day memorable not so much for its uniqueness but for its idyllic simplicity.

Hollandaise

For some reason I was inspired to try my hand at mking a Hollandaise. It started last night with an innocent trip to the grocery store. I picked up some english muffins, and then it hit me, its been a while since I've had Eggs Benedict. Since my Breakfast Club went defunct due to the other three members leaving Seattle (two out of the country, one to Philly which may as well be). During the heyday it was a safe bet that I would have a benedict at least once a month....

So I can report that I was pleasantly surprised by the results. The sauce didn't break, in fact the consistancy was near to perfect. The flavor left something to be desired. It didn't have the piquant edge I like, probably because I didn't use enough lemon juice and didn't have any papricka. So I cheated and tried to save it with a bit of chili pepper and tarragon (which technically makes it more of a bernaise) but I added them at the end,s o they didn't really have a chance to really meld with the sauce. Still, for a first attempt, I count it a success. Unfortuantely I can't say the same for the poached eggs, a technique I am far from mastering.

discalaimer: the image isn't from my attempt, just a picture to start your mouth watering.

Cocktail science

This weekend I went to a cocktail party (featuring Budweiser Select) at a friends house. It was meant to be fancy dress, but given the mix of classy beer (I would have chosen the champagne of beers) and cocktails, I chose to dress in a short sleeve button up with a little bowtie, classy.

But on to the point of this post. Some of you may be familiar with the hilarity involved in "capping" when you hit the top of a friends freshly opened beer with your empty bottle (to avoid having the fun back-fire on yourself). The beer in your friend's hand foams over onto their hand and floor, causing hilarity and sticky linoleum. Having witnessed just such an event, we began wondering why this actually happens, what makes the beer foam over like that. Fortunately the party was full of scientists, unfortunately most of them were geologists and proved fairly useless in answering our question. The only possible option was to run a a highly controlled test in the backyard.

The first part of the test was to recreate the trick for a girl who had never seen it, but was our best hope for an explanation. Not having seen it before she of course was foolish enough to hold the target bottle...Hilarity all over her hand. We were working on two hypothesis (like I said it was official sciency business) one that it was the pressure created by forcing air into the target bottle, the other that it is the vibrations moving through the target bottle. The pressure idea was put forward by the geologists, the vibration by and architect. To test the pressure theory we tapped the top of the bottle with an open palm, the idea being that the palm would actually create a tighter seal... hence more pressure, but would absorb more of the shock and create less vibration. Unfortunately we did not account for the loss of friction in the now beer covered hand, and the application of downward force resulted in a broken bottle and beer sacrificed to the gods of science and party. At that point, fearing the loss of additional beer, we switched to a non-alcoholic beer that had rightfully been left on the back porch after it was brought to a party two summers ago. The second attempt at the palm test did not result in foamy beer.

The next test was to place the bottle onto a table and hit it with another bottle. The reason it was on a table was to remove the up and down shaking effect caused by being hit downward. On this attempt the beer (if you can call it that) did foam over, proving that it was not caused by shaking. At this point we declared vibration the likely cause and went back into the house, because even when most of the guests are architecture and geology students, you can only run highly scientific experiments in the backyard for so long without risking your party cred.

So now I ask all of you, what do you think causes the foam effect?