Thought I'd posted this, but I don't see it, so here it is: I started with a recipe from a bed and breakfast that stealthcello and I stayed at on our honeymoon, but I do things differently...

When the blackberries are in season (and free) I sometimes use a little over a cup of fresh blackberries instead of dried fruit, but you need to turn up the oven up to 400, add 1/4 c extra milk, and add the berries at the very end to avoid making a real mess. If you try that, don't try to make nicely shaped wedge things either, just try to get it on the baking sheet in scone-sized blobs with a minimum of handling and cut up the results when it comes out.

Here's the recipe I use for Mongolian beef.
( The recipeCollapse )

The official site won't declare me a winner, because I still had 4700 words to go at the end of november. I've decided that since I didn't start until november 4, I should still be able to call myself a winner if I get to 50,000 words by December 3, so:
Current word count - 50443
Hooray!!
In real terms, based on the story so far, and the amount left, I can't be more than two thirds finished, so I need to keep pushing another couple of weeks at least, and in realer terms, that's more important than the word count after 30 days.

There's a bit of story about what I'm working on that I find that I don't mind sharing. I put it behind the cut tag because it's a bit long...

( about the projectCollapse )
Current count - 18111

New Evidence That Dark Chocolate Helps Ease Emotional Stress

a clinical trial published online in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed.

The article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091111123612.htm

Since I'm busy during the week, I only really started yesterday (I signed up Wednesday)
but I am now officially caught up to their daily progression : 12320 words.
Yah- Hoo. Celebrating by going to bed....

I made these to go with split pea soup.

1 1/2 C general purpose flour
1 C blue cornmeal
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
4 oz (1/2 Stick) butter
1 1/4 C milk
1 egg
1/2 C corn (thawed from a bag of frozen corn)
1/2 C diced ham

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees

Thaw the corn if frozen, and fry it with the ham in about a tablespoon of oil until it browns a bit.
then leave it out to cool a bit while you do the rest.
mix the flour, cornmeal, baking powder & baking soda
melt the butter and mix with the milk and egg
Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, fold in the corn and ham, spoon into greased muffin tins
bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes

What the people in my office found in thier inbox this morning...



It was from me, of course...

Beans and Mice Rice

Yellow came first

( YellowCollapse )

then Green came along

( GreenCollapse )
and Purple met its end in the bellies of the throng

( PurpleCollapse )

Yellow, green and purple, crimson to come!

( RedCollapse )

Extreme Geek warning. I wrote this up today, so I'd have it ready in case I needed to explain some code that I just checked in, but I wanted to post it somewhere. I warn you, if you don't use MS SQL it will probably make no sense...

( So. You want to get multiple statistics from a table, but, because of the costs associated, you don't really want to run a seperate query for each one...Collapse )

I did put it in a cut tag, you don't have to look at it.