Baking spree

Cold and snow always bring out the domestic side of me. If you follow me on Facebook or Pintrest, you're probably already well aware of this fact. In the summer, I turn heathen again and refuse to be indoors for any longer than absolutely necessary.

Cupcakes have been my running experiment for the past couple of months and I've learned some interesting things. One, altitude really does make a huge difference when baking things that require some sort of rising action. I've been able to counter this in most recipes by simply adding an additional bit of flour, anywhere from a tablespoon or so to a 1/4, depending on the size of the recipe. However, this apparently doesn't work with chocolate stuff. Both the Carbomb cupcakes I've made before and the Black Magic Cake I made last week have fallen like a drunken giraffe. I don't know if it's the oils in the cocoa or what. So, those are still works in progress.

However, the White Russian cupcakes and my Deconstructed Red Velvet have turned out just fine.

 

Anyhow. I also whipped up a new frosting to go with the Black Magic "Swimming Pool" cake I made for a friend's birthday last week. I even made the cake twice and while the second batch came out *slightly* better than the first, they both resembled swimming pools. I finally said screw it and hoped the frosting would amend for my failures.

" "Better than You Hoped" Mocha Bailey's Frosting" started off as a regular buttercream frosting with butter, powdered sugar and vanilla. Then came in a bit of coffee, Bailey's, cocoa powder and just because it was lacking a bit of that "oomph", I melted up about 2 oz of chocolate chips and mixed those in. The result is that I now have to get that damn chocolate cake figured out, because I'm getting requests for this again!

Tuesday will mark a week of me being at Subaru. I'm pretty sure my brain melted out of my ears that first day, what with the hundreds of pages of reading and cramming for my licensing test. I passed, so it was worth it. What brains I had left are being filled to the brim with product knowledge and general selling tips. Coming from a direct sales background, I don't have quite as far to go with learning how to "sell" and such, so mostly I'm learning the difference between the trim levels and what makes the CVT so different and all.

Eventually I'll get around to including pictures again.

Starting tomorrow

I will have a regular routine again.

The next morning after I wrote the previous post, I was awoken by Subaru calling to say all came back clean on the background check (I knew they wouldn't find those hookers for at least another two weeks!) and I needed to go take the requisite drug screening for the final step. Something about not wanting coke heads driving fast cars? Anyway, got that done after an episode of performance anxiety aka I hadn't drank enough coffee yet. Waiting in a screening clinic is an interesting experience to begin with, because there is such the wide variety of people coming in for screening. Some were like me and doing it for pre-employment. Some were doing it for workman's comp; one lady had just taken a bad spill on the ice and was jumping through WC hoops. Another guy probably had to come in as part of his probation terms. Interestingly enough though, with the exception of the one guy who left, it was all women sitting in the waiting area.

Ever had coffee so bad it made you dizzy? I have. Second worst cup of coffee in my life and that's saying something. First worst was in an airport in Glasgow, which can almost be forgiven because while the Scots know how to do a lot of things, coffee is not one of them. American waiting rooms make bad coffee out of sheer spite.

Still, it was nothing a massive dose of sugar couldn't help.

I've gotten so spoiled by my French press. Holy em gee spoiled.

The results of the screen came back today, so I got another phone call to tell me tomorrow was for sure my start date and where the HR office is to go get processed. The Real World sure has a lot more steps for getting a paycheck than just about anywhere else, sheesh. But it's all gravy from here, the glamorous world of people walking in for a BRAND NEW CAR! /priceisright

I also went to the Scentsy Spring Spring (spring product launch) today and have a lot to gush about, but that's going to wait until tomorrow.

Insomnia

Maybe not the traditional type; once I go to sleep I can usually stay asleep. However, my circadian clock, when left to it's own devices, gets all sorts of screwed up. Or on English time. Something. Did you know there's some really neat stuff on BBC at 2am? There's this new show called "The Fades" and incorporates zombies and higher beings and fantastic accents all into one show.

Soon though, I'm going to have to force myself into some sort of regular routine, seeing as how I've landed a Real Job. Or at least I'm 98% sure I have. I find myself simultaneously amused and saddened that I just can't take a good thing at face value anymore and keep waiting for something to happen, for some sort of cosmic "PSYCHE!" thing to come about. So you know how in my last post, I talked about my younger, taller and luckier other half coming to visit? A handful of months ago, she told me how she had talked her way into a sales job at a Mazda dealership. Like literally walked on to the lot, chatted with another sales guy and ended the day with a new job.

She also has an overwhelming desire to be awesome and move to Colorado, so her last day here, we skipped around to a handful of dealerships around here and attempted to repeat that experience. It didn't pan out that day and so she headed back home with the hopes she'd have some phone interviews and be back out soon.

Instead, she was head-hunted by Audi. She's awesome like that.

So early last week, gripped by a vague restlessness and an over-riding desire to be earning some sort of sustainable income,  I decided to hit up Dealership Row on my own. I started with Acura--honestly because it was the first lot I came to, not because I'm THAT OCD--and worked my way down to Subaru. At each one it was some variation of the same. "Fill out this application, our sales manager is busy. Go online and fill that out, we don't take paper applications. We're not looking currently, but feel free to leave your resumé." Being in direct sales for the years I've done, I'm not exactly a stranger to various forms of rejection.

It doesn't make it any nicer to hear, just that I can now make a game of how many tally marks I can get in one day and keep hunting for that YES.

So on down through Lexus, Honda, Toyota, one after the other, watching my handwriting alternately swing between improving with use (it's never been that great to start with and the countless hours of typing hasn't improved it any) and getting shaky because I was getting famished for dinner, I walked into Subaru, rattled off the same line I'd been using and sat down to fill out yet another generic application. I never thought I'd have my high school address memorized again 10 years after graduation, but there you have it.

I handed it in...and that's where things changed. A manager talked to me and didn't blow me off. In fact, I had an interview on the spot. Then another one.

And then they offered me a position.

I had pulled a Stefanie. 

Now I'm just left doing what I do worst--waiting patiently. They said they had to do the background check and that was going to take a handful of days and then the drug test and then the paperwork. I'm still waiting to hear back from the background check because of the weekend and this brings us back to the beginning of the post.

With every passing day--and the fact that I gave my two weeks notice at the boarding kennel and they just decided yesterday was going to be my last day--I keep waiting for that other shoe to drop. It just doesn't seem like things could finally coming together to the point that I will actually be gainfully employed at a Real Job with Real Money, Real Benefits and all that jazz on my 30th birthday after years of scraping by, making do, wondering why all of it just wasn't coming together like it should have been doing, yadda yadda yadda.

So in the meantime, I'm cramming brochure facts about features, horsepower and model differences so that when I do officially start, I can get off to a running start.

I have a puppy to buy!

Friends, Frosting and Fotos

Ah, alliteration, you have such an amusing...oh forget it. I'm too tired to be clever tonight but I figured I owe you good people some type of post since that cheater post about SOPA/PIPA. It's been a roller-coaster of a New Year already, what with getting completely and utterly addicted to Pintrest. What with the cooking and the crafts and the photo ideas, I feel like I'm becoming a  Real Adult. Then I look on Twitter and realize there is no such thing as a Real Adult anymore. You just get more stuff and less sleep. But at least I'm keeping busy.

  I do have some decent pics to share, so, allons-y!

My dear friend Stefanie from over at MX5 Insanity came to stay for a few (not enough) days and thus we embarked on a chaotic, flour- and shutter-filled adventure. We both love to cook and bake and I had stocked the supplies for just such an occasion! The first night started off with my honey-dijon-bacon and cheese on chicken concotion, to which we added french-cut green-beans cooked in bacon grease with crushed almonds and garlic and Stef whipped up a couple loaves of the easiest and most delicious beer bread EVER. The recipe can be found here. She made two batches and used the beer a friend of my brother had home-brewed. It was supposed to be an English Bitter, but for some reason it was more of an "English Flop". Worked fantastic in the bread though--proof you don't have to use the bestest beer out there. I get paid Friday and assuming I have anything left over, I'm getting more beer to make more bread. 

Waking me up in the morning is never a good idea if you value your life and limbs. However, waking me up in the morning with a cup of coffee and some of the aforementioned beer bread made into toast, now replete with boysenberry jam, will significantly improve your chances of me letting you live through the experience. Also, there's a very good reason Stef is my friend and doing things like this is why.

We spent the first couple of days just sort of hanging around, doing stuff. I had to work the day after she got in, so she entertained herself and took Sawyer out on some nice walks. Thursday is when the real fun started. Sawyer underwent a significant amount of torture in the form of a thorough bath in preparation for a photoshoot we were planning. He promptly undid everything by running through the river when we got to the location. It worked out anyway.

"Papillion Dress" by Anthropologie

The model

 

Sawyer's contribution

 

This winter has been unusually warm, which doesn't exactly bode well for the summer, since we're way down on snowfall both for here and in the mountains themselves. But, it does make it very easy to take shots like this!

 

 And while the water was still plenty cold, at least there wasn't a bit of ice to be seen:

There were a couple of guys doing some fly-fishing just downstream from us and apparently standing next to a highway wasn't enough to clue them into the fact that they weren't up in the High Country and there might possibly be other people around. Sawyer had on a long drag line and was having fun following me around the rocks and such and doing a few laps when he found a tennis ball. He was also barking a little bit at the fishermen, because he learned a few summers ago that fishing poles going back and forth means that at some point there will be fish attached and that means he gets a fish head snack. Hence, the barking.

Yes, this was taken less than 100 yards from a major highway

 

Apparently this was very offensive and they called the park ranger on us, because it's just too hard to come up and say something yourself.  Did you know that a dog in a down/stay with a long line attached is still considered to be a "Loose Dog at Large" and you have to be physically holding the leash for it to count? I very nearly snapped into Argumentative Mode when Stefanie said she'd hold the leash and the ranger realized that I was just standing around in a river with a camera in my hands for shits n' giggles. Suddenly he got a lot more polite and said that he would also accept the leash being tied around something. I'm guessing he thought we were doing Senior Pictures or something, but he left pretty quickly. Stefanie had had enough of the river and "WTF mosquitos" that were hanging about by that time anyway, so we just moved locations.

I had fun editing

Sawyer made another appearance

We originally had plans to go over to a friend's house that night and play with their indoor studio setup, but after that shoot, both of us were rather tired. So instead, we made cupcakes. Lots. Of. Cupcakes. 

Did I mention she's pretty handy with a camera?

 

I had tried out a recipe for White Russian cupcakes last week and they turned out SO BLOODY GOOD. I'm going to adapt a few mixing tricks I learned from this recipe into the next time I try the Carbomb Cupcakes and see if I can't make those any better. So for this week's Baking Blowout, we were going to mix up a double batch of White Russians and then I was experimenting with a version of Red Velvet. 

This recipe includes copious amounts of Kaluha, plus some vodka, hence the whole "White Russian" moniker. If you're like me, you like to improvise a little with the directions. My recipes usually include a line for "make as much of a mess as possible because you're a hopeless klutz."

Like so...

 

Mixing the batter

I do love spooning...

While those were merrily baking away, I started in with the next batch. The basic recipe can also be found on Baked Perfection (same blog as the White Russians) and is the Red Velvet Birthday Cake. About the only "red velvet" part about it is the red food coloring and velvet texture, but whereas traditional RVC is essentially a chocolate cake with red food coloring, this was more of your typical vanilla cake with red food coloring.

Or in our case, red and blue food coloring because we didn't have enough red

By itself, this batter was actually kind of bland. But once I mixed up some ganache with chocolate wine and used that as a filling, it was a great balance to the decadent ganache. We did use the cream cheese frosting recipe that came with the batter recipe, though we added some chocolate wine and a smidgen (maybe 1/4 tsp) of cocoa powder to tie the flavors to the cupcake.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the finished deliciousness because we were actually frosting these in a mad rush the next day because we were late to an event where these were highly expected. Suffice to say, the phrase "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL" would not be out of place in describing just how brilliantly these came out. The White Russians are still my favorite, but the cream cheese frosting on the red ones is amazing. I will definitely be making them again!

We did, however, find time to use the frosting for nefarious deeds:

 

Blacked Out

I know, I know, I'm a bastard. I don't post for two months and then when I do, it's to tell you that this post is short, depressing and pirated. This post is to help spread the word against the current SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA, which also stands for some overly pretentious, not well-thought-out piece of bullshit legistlation. That's a redundant phrase, right?

Anyway, here's The Oatmeal with today's Pirated Explanation. 

Back tomorrow for realsies!

Gratitude

I've got Sentimental Cider in the warmer tonight, so the house smells like mulled cider and it's making me feel the need to jump on the gratitude bandwagon. At least for this post. And mostly because I can feel gratitude again--I have wicked awful PMS to begin with and when you toss in the change of seasons to a colder, darker variety, it's compounded into something that makes me Hate All of the Things.

Basically, I have Daleks for hormones.

It also doesn't help that I'm going through riding withdrawl. It's hard to compare a weekend trail ride with my summer job of trail guiding, where I'm on a horse about 70 hours a week. But, this post is about good things, so here we go.

1) I have a part-time job again! I don't often like to have "real jobs" because I'm just not the type of person who can be happy sitting under fluorescent lighting all day. I've got ADD, sitting still is just Not A Good Thing. So, the magic fix is to get active jobs involving animals, such as the riding,l or, in this case, a doggy daycare/boarding resort. And as an even bigger bonus, it's one I would actually feel comfortable leaving Sawyer at if the need arose. I got spoiled by the last boarding resort I worked for and hadn't found one to measure up to those standards since I moved to Colorado.

"Why you put me in boarding? I'm part of your baggage!"

It's part-time, so I've still got the ability to networking and do shoots, edit, have a social life, all that jazz. And I can bring Sawyer. And they offer health insurance. WIN.

2) My photography. It helps take my mind of stuff and is pretty much on the same level as riding when it comes to Zen Therapy. Plus, photoshoots are fun! I had the opportunity to shoot a new friend I met through networking and her Mach5 of a chihuahua on Sunday.

One second she was standing still, posing and then right before we threw her toy for her, she decided the ducks looked like a better idea. At another point, she simply decided mere running was too slow and activated flight mode.

"Houston, we are go for launch."

And things that I'm not going to put up pictures for but am obscenely grateful to have in my life anyway, Ted and my friends. They help make a bad day better, they're there to cheer good news, give encouragement, offer constructive criticism and just plain make my life better for them being a part of it.

Ted gets extra bonus points for snogging. Lots...of bonus points.

Horsie horsie horsie!

But first, a quick YAHOO moment: I have my first team member with Scentsy! She's one of my former first level consultants from Passion Parties, so I already know and love her and she's going to be fantastic! Annie is an Army SAHM taking online vet tech courses while packing for their deployment to Texas, so this fits in perfectly with her busy schedule. Plus, hey, no flames in the products, so her little monkey, I mean daughter, is in no danger and it keeps diaper and doggie smell banished.

OK, so, a few months ago, right after my car accident ( see here) I went to one of the First Friday Art Walks on Santa Fe. It's this neat collection of galleries all in a row, so you can stroll up and down the streets, popping into places that catch your attention, grab some nibbles and a glass of something fermented (or just hot chocolate/cider). I went to go support another photographer I know who had a gallery show going and there was this other photographic artist there whose subject material was this herd of wild horses she'd gotten to know over a period of time. She was "friends" enough with the herd that even the stallion left her and her little clicky box alone after the first few times, which is pretty darn neat if you know anything about wild herds and stallions. Anyway, her pictures could give Robert Vavra a run for his money. Of course, I've been to sleep a few times since then and can't remember her name so you'll just have to trust me.

Somehow that ramble is supposed to lead into me posting my own horse pictures from the last few months. Insert your own segway.

Even I'm rolling my eyes at me. Punstastic, that is. I swear I'm sober.

That's probably the problem.

There's this amazing ranch not quite 10 miles from me that takes in all sorts of rescue horses. Some are rescued from auction, some from hoarders, abusers and some from well-intentioned people who just have no clue/business owning a horse and didn't realize that just because a little grass grows in their lot during the spring, it doesn't mean it's enough to sustain a 1200lb animal year round. Hay is now almost literally worth it's weight in gold, which is going to result in a lot more horses losing their homes. 

Horses. My Anti-Drug.

Zuma Rescue Ranch is one of the best set ups I've seen for any type of horse facility. And they have a program to help troubled kids/teens help troubled horses so everyone ends up bonding, growing, learning lessons that will stay with them through their life and eventually lead to a Hollywood "Feel Good" movie. I'm old enough to be this cynical, right? No? Moving on...it's a really awesome place/program. And they take really good care of their horses. The grey on the left has cancer and the chestnut is a former racing Thoroughbred, but they're just as happy as can be.

"I'll be happy when you get out of my paddock."

This mare wanted absolutely nothing to do with me and my clicky box. Thank God for zoom lenses! She's a color called "grulla"--pronounced "grew-ya" if you want to be proper about it--I still say "Gru-la" in my head because I can. It's really not a color you see around a tremendous amount. It's part of the dun coloration family (believed to be a "primitive color"), which you can read more about here because otherwise I will start rambling about modifers and base colors and I have precious few enough readers as is. And I spent waaaaay too much time clicking through pages to find that one, which wasn't the one I was looking for, but that page seems to have disappeared into the mists of the Internet and that makes me sad...

 "You were saying?"

Ok, so it's rather unusual to see two in the same place without it being part of a breeding program. As you can see in this picture, grullas have that back stripe characteristic of the dun modifers. You may hear some cowboys refer to their horses as "line back dun" which is sort of redundant.

See what I did there?

Maybe it was the chicken and dumplings I fixed tonight, in which case you can blame The Pioneer Woman, since it was her recipe I used.

"O hai."

This was probably my favorite shot of the day and definitely the most popular one on Facebook. Zuma is a haven for the "less common colored" it would seem. The foremost horse is a bright bay, the middle horse is an adorable little filly who is a dun of the "smutty" variety. She's the cutest little thing! The grey at the back is a bit trickier. He's most likely not a dun, but his patterning is hard to pin down between roan or something else entirely. His name is Dan, which doesn't sound very neat until I tell you that he is the *spitting* image of his mom, named Steely.

Pending an actual nice day on Saturday and clear ground (there's another foot of snow outside right now...), I *may* be getting to go for a ride on Steely. And I will have more pictures with which to bombard you with, gentle reader.

Continuing on with the "Nifty Horse Colors Tour", we come to Reagan, who was recently adopted by my friend, who is donating untold amounts of farrier services to ZRR.

Lookit the spots on her legs!!

Reagan is a buckskin paint, meaning she has more going on with her color genes than you can shake a stick at.

 "Love me because I am beautiful."

"Can you shake a stick at me?"

Sorry Havanah, you've got nearly as much going on. Well, not sorry. Because she is just as beautiful. 

I never really grew out of that horse-crazy stage nearly every girl goes through and I haven't quite decided if that's a blessing or a curse. It's probably a little bit of both. If you think dogs are an expensive hobby...at least this is a cost-effective way of getting to satisfy that craving and hey, bonus points for the philanthropy, yes?

And it will also give me a chance to break myself of this habit I seemed to have acquired of anchoring everything on the left...

 The end.