(no subject)

Toby's tabletop RPG group is gaming over at our house today, and Natalie's computer somehow got set to read her email out loud when it arrives. Only it does it sporadically, instead of all the time (and she doesn't know how to shut it off), so everyone forgets about it.

Until the GM is describing a tense situation, with rival ships (it's a Star Trek game) maneuvering around, and the plot is getting heavy, and then this mechanical voice says "Hello. Natalie. President's. Day. Is. Your. New. Favorite. Holiday."






And of course, cue the small flood of emails from other players with messages like "Help, I am trapped in Natalie's computer."

Mmmmmmm

Have finally managed to get off my feet today. I cooked for Toby's gaming group (because I like cooking for groups!), so have been on my feet all day. What I did:

--slow-roasted pork shoulder (the skin could have been crispier, but we got hungry so took it out XD)

--green beans with toasted garlic butter

--Alton Brown's mashers with uber-heavy cream that we found at Costco

--green salad with a creamy Italian dressing I found a recipe for

-- a chicken breast with lemon-rosemary sauce for one of the group with whom pork does not agree

For dessert, which we haven't eaten yet, we've got ice cream sandwiches made by following a recipe for cookies from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook called "Compost Cookies," in which you throw small amounts of several different snack foods of your choosing. The snack foods of my choosing were miniature peanut butter cups (they're just a hair bigger than chocolate chips!), white chocolate chips, candy-coated sunflower seeds, mini pretzels, and potato chips. And some elftover mini marshmallows we had.

The ice cream is inspired by the Milk Bar Ceareal Milk Ice Cream, but I made their ice cream and decided I hated the texture, so I made it again using a nice egg-based custard (and more of that uber-heavy cream!). The key thing is that you toast cornflakes and then steep them in the dairy for 20 minutes, then drain. It tastes just like the milk left over in the cereal bowl. :)

Anyway, I put scoops of ice cream in between two cookies, then froze them for a while, then cut the snadwiches in half because they were HUGE. We finished dinner a bit under an hour ago, and I'll pull the ice cream sandwiches out before too long and hand them 'round.

Now, I'm just sitting down and resting my feet and back, which are both extremely sore from standing for hours, and posting here to pass the time. Whee.