Hanzipan, it's Official!

My darling lady-love Star and I have started a cooking/baking blog. I wanted everything to be ready before I shared it with ya'll and I'm thinking it's pretty darn close! So here it is... Cooking with Hanzipan!

That Northern Town

OoooliolioOooooO! I went to Olympia this weekend for a mini break. The trip was uneventful and after I'd set up my roost in that crazy room-that's-not-a-room room (it's essentially a way of connecting the sauna that was added later to the house... like a huge glorified hall with no insulation, that is separated from the rest of the house by a sliding door.) Star and I immediately started mixing this and that in bowls and eventually we created these!Butterfly cupcakes from that cupcake book we got together. They are a lemon-poppy seed cupcake, with lemon filling and a lemon sauce drawn down the middle. Even though they took zest from three lemons and the juice of two to make, they were wonderfully light and not too lemony. That book is definitely paying for itself.

I'm sorry these pictures are still so yellow even after I worked on them in the ol' Photoshop... we took them at night and whether we used flash or not they just wouldn't turn out beautiful. Trust me, they are wonderful and pretty in real-person life.After cupcakes we went to the re-opening of the library in town (apparently there was some sprucing up going on between the time I left and my visit) and listened to Kimya Dawson play. I say listen because there were so many people there that we couldn't actually see her, however Star did manage to gain about two feet by climbing on Ben for part of it. If you aren't immediately saying "Ohhhh Kimya Dawson... cool!" to yourself, it's because you don't realize that she's the one who is on the vast majority of the Juno movie soundtrack. Once you've heard the cd, I think you can imagine the gist of her style... there was an awfully cute children's song talking about poop and butts though. I'm always charmed by children's songs that don't try to avoid references to bodily functions because that's really all children talk about (ok, I'm going to qualify that, it's really all boy children talk about.)

After everyone woke up the next day we went to the Co-op down the street (I'd never been to that one and now I wish I had!) and got some tasties including some pretty purple carrots! Star had invited some people over for a little visit at 6 and in the mean-time we made cheese!Star had read about a cheese making kit either in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or Omnivore's Dilemma (sorry Star, I can't remember, but I'm sure that you'll correct me in the comments later). The idea intrigued her and she bought the makin's for hard and soft cheese. We made some mozzarella. Now, in hindsight, we probably should have used whole milk to do it (I think that's why we didn't have many curds, Starzy... just occurred to me... unless we did and then I don't know what happened), as it was we used a half gallon of milk, a tablet of some such thing that makes curds appear like magic, and a stove. When you make mozzie you have to knead it for a while until it looks like taffy which just so happens to be what I'm doing in these pictures. Unfortunately, you have to heat the cheese in the microwave until it's lava hot, so I was pathetically trying to do it with a spoon. It worked, more or less.

(p.s. If you ever wanted to create the illusion of cooking with yours truly, I bet you could print this last picture, blow it up real big, cut it out and then stick it on the wall of your kitchen. Cooking never seemed so cool! Just a thought.)

And then you have cheese! We made a lovely quiche for the party with the purple carrots, mozzie cheese and other tasty things. I decided to write about what we were doing in the pictures because Star has already done a lovely summery of what we did together on her own bloggerino and I'm going to be lazy and point you in her lovely direction. It was a fantabulous weekend, I even miss that little room I commandeer when I visit.

Le Sigh

It's the end of an era, Jessie is going back to school. yessss........ However, this means that I started to get the baking itch, I wanted to send her back with some cupcakes. Now, to back it up a little, Star and I were in Portland the other week and she took me to Powells to see The Book. The Book is the ultimate (in my world, that is) book of cupcake recipes, also appropriately called Cupcakes!. She'd gotten one a while before and now I had to get one so that we could bake the recipes together, even though she's two hours away. I'd already baked Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcakes (p. 64, Star) and something about their warm cinnamoniness plucked a few heart strings. Everyone loved them. Afterwards it was deemed that the Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcakes were not in fact cupcakes proper because they didn't have any frosting (a. This was said with a bit of an eye twinkle and b. I don't like frosting which made this recipe even appealing) so it was decreed by the less than silent masses that I make another batch of real cupcakes, complete with frosting. Thus the White Christmas Cupcakes were born (p. 128, also Star). I didn't use their frosting because I didn't have any of the ingredients. The Joy has plenty of sugar/butter/egg based frostings that are pretty easy. I think I blew the frosting anyway though because it came out on the liquid side of things. Ah well, I'm not going to be eating these, and they sure look purty.

Here are your cupcake pictures Star!

Pumpkeenies!

Star and Ben carved their pumpkins today! Yes, it is the 1st and yes, it is the day after Halloween but putting faces in vegetables should really be a thing for all seasons. Don't try to label me mister, I see you! Tryin' to put me down... with your ways.

So this is what murder looks like!

Ben, carving his pumpkin using saliva. I've heard mother's spit can work miracles, just imagine what a 20 year-old male's mouth secretions can solve. The possibilities are boundless.

Star's pumpkin fini.

And the sweet glowing emanations coming from it, the reason: a mystery.
I liked her glowing star-top.

Ben pumpkin: face #1.

Who? Who carved this pumpkin? Oh... that guy.

Ben pumpkin: face #2, giving me the googlie eyes.

Googlie-ooglie-doo...ooooo.

Hallow-Weenies

I spent Halloween at Star, Ben, Jame and Jenny's house in Olympia this year! I missed out on the sweet costumes last year but I'm sooo on the bandwagon this time around.

Star and Ben in their matching shirts Ben's aunt sent him.

Ohhh it's too good!
Ben made some wicked hand-cicles for the punch. If you fill up two rubber gloves with water and stick them in the freezer then remove the rubber you're left with these crazy ice hands! That's crafty that goes way above and beyond my brain skills.Hands in motion.
Star dressed up as a 12 year-old girl complete with flashing plastic jewelry and hello kitty backpack.Ben was working class complete with grease from black cocoa coated almonds I brought from Trader Joes.

Star and Ben.

Brian was all of the Beatles and Matt was The Dude.

Julian was a mouse...

Complete with cheese!

Evan was... himself but with a can of Dragon Joose. Dragon Joose, by the way, makes me die a little inside.

Jessie, Jon and Freddie came late tricked out with every piece of fluorescent colored 80's wear they could scrounge.

And then Harmony was a Crusader we assume. She made herself a SWEET beard out of spirit gum and either her own hair or her boyfriends'.

Dear Star-

I'm thinking that we'll have to make some of these soon. And I'm also thinking that this would be a great nickname "Hannah 'ginger skellies' Claire". I really just like sticking that in the middle of names.
Sincerely,

Hannah 'Ginger Skellies' Claire

p.s. I am soooo looking forward to sleeping on your couch, fishing for pennies in its' cushions and generally making a nuisance of myself.

What Star Missed Today...

1. Rain: it rained today. Not anywhere near epic conditions, but there was rain and I did walk in it for unusually long distances. Also, everything had big, fat, happy rain drops squatting on them.

2. These flowers: who also had happy rain on them.

Gorgeous. They were tucked away behind the Lab buildings on the way to the O-farm. A lovely little surprise in the beginning of what promises to be a very long day.
3. The Walk to the O-Farm: Here is the path, and here are the leaves that line the path (note the happy rain is here as well).
This is what happy rain looks like.

4. My Tea: Oh so pretty in its very own mug.

Ahhh.. blackberry tea.

So tastey.

So I went to beekeeping this morning and learned about...

bee disease!

(if you say this out loud it mostly rhymes).

Anyway, it turns out the bees are dying. Who knew? There are a variety of things causing this: Varroa mites, tracheal mites, American Foul Brood, and of course the Colony Collapse Disorder which is the main source of the bad news. About 32% of bee colonies failed last year, 29% of those were caused by CCD which at this point, remains a mystery. Everyone is panicking about it, including Haagen-Daz (the ice-cream company and also the main contributor of funds towards researching this epidemic. Our ice-cream is IN DANGER! Don't you people realize how frightening that is? Contribute dammit!).

Oh, and we also learned a little bit about the animal predators.

Skunks:Will walk up to a hive, scratch around on the side panels to get the bees nice and angry, and then saunter to the front. Here, they wave their luxuriantly rank tail in front of the hive entrance. The bees then attack the tail, get stuck and then the skunk just turns around and picks them out as if they were little popcorn kernel snackies. Crunch crunch crunch....

Bears: Don't really want your honey mr. bee, all they want are your babies. The bears like the brood (which are apparently quite edible, but a little tangy... I really wouldn't know).

Lizards: And other small critters can sometimes just hang out inside of the hives and pick bees off as they buzz on by. Jake (the bee-instructor) was telling us about a lizard he found in the bottom of a three story hive. He had popped off the first two supers (the boxes bees hang out in) and found a little, fat lizard on the floor of the bottom one. The lizard had been there SO LONG that the bees had covered him in a thick layer of wax with just his head free. He was calmly and quite contentedly snapping up bees the walked past his head and showed no desire to move in anyway. Jake popped him off of the floor, a change that the lizard wasn't too happy about, so he wound up just staying in the hive anyway. His little wax mummy casing was pretty nasty because of the months of dead skin sheddings that had accumulated. Gross.

I think that's all I'm going to tell you for now.

The O-Farm

I had another class about bees today which was amazing. We got to wear bee suits, have bees crawl their little bodies all over us and I got to watch some chickens lay eggs because I was early for class.

Chickens, not laying eggs. Chickens definitely laying eggs.
Star, not laying eggs but wearing an out-of-this-world hip bee suit. Right after this picture she pretended to be walking on the moon around the perimeter of the garage-turned-headquarters of the O-farm (as the Organic Farm shall henceforth be dubbed).

Fantastic.

Moooooovation!

Star moved today, and I helped! We picked up the Uhaul truck at 1 and then drove it back to the Glen to load up all her schmooze then drove it to her new house on Thomas street in west Oly.

Ben holding Lil' Hauler, one of Uhaul's two stuffed Uhaul trucks available for purchase at your nearest Uhaul establishment. The discovery of Lil' Hauler was a great start to a pretty good day of moving furniture.

The lawn gnomes in front of the Uhaul store on 4th Ave.
This one is special.
The Uhaul all packed up and in action with Star at the wheel. Don't worry, I was stopped when I took this so I'm not TOTALLY reckless when it comes to driving.
The front of Strizzles new house which is right across the street from a park and tennis courts. Way cool.
Maneuvering the Uhual into the parking area behind the house, a venture that really wasn't successful at all and ended in the mauling of a bush. Good times though.

Ok, so there's a story in all of this. It was just Ben, Star and I and we managed to wrangle everything into the Uhaul without incident. Star's new house, however, is a bit of an engineering conundrum. The staircase isn't to code, not in the least... and Star's new room is at the top of said stairs. Plus the door we'd been using to get furniture into the house opens up so that the door blocks the foot of the stairs so when you bring something in you have to squeeze in, turn around and close the door and then squeeze back onto the stairs which are super steep (see video below). Anyway, we had enough trouble trying to get her dresser up there when it became clear that the mattress was going to be an issue. In order to get it up these dubious stairs it was going to have to be bent double. Unfortunately this is a brand new mattress equipped with reasonably stiff springs, metal, etc. Ben took the door off it's hinges so that it would be a straight shot up the stairs.
Ben taking the hinges off.
And then we tried to get the mattress up.

And this is what happened.
And this is Ben's "puzzled, strained and stressed" face once it became clear that with our muscle power that mattress wasn't going anywhere. I think we got it to move about 3 inches in 30 minutes after lots of sweating, grunting and "Squeeze it Ben! PUSH!" It sounded like someone was going into labor, or a Lamaze class.

This is Star's "stressed, freaked out and tired" look. At one point she yelled up the stairs "What are we going to do Ben? This whole plan hinges on having the bed upstairs!"

Finally Johann (one of Star's new roommates) remembers that he has one of those cinching straps and got the idea that we could use it to help the mattress bend. After two tries we got it around and squeezed (it looked like it was wearing a corset and non too happy about it either) the mattress upstairs.
It sounded like a birth. "We did it!" "Oh you were so good Ben!" "Oh I'm so happy!" "I need a cigarette." It was almost a perfect Lifetime movie happy-ending script.

Here's a video of the house, the stuff and some of the pets (just some, not all).