Purple Rose

First of all, post titles are not my strength. Sorry. Maybe I'll get better at it. Today, since I am actually wearing a flower in my hair, I decided to put what kind. :)

I have done no baking this week. Tests took over. Also, Sam got me hooked on the new video game, Heavy Rain. Now you must understand that I am not a gamer. At all. My single attempt at Halo, if it had been recorded and put on YouTube, would be all over the internet with people laughing their heads off. I'm terrible. However, this game is more like an interactive movie. It's a serial killer mystery, and you play multiple characters. How the story ends depends on how you play the characters and what choices you make. Perhaps this game grabs my interest because of my theatre background. It is sort of like a play. It's a lot like the movie Saw, just a LOT less gory.

ANYWAY, Sam and I did make lemon-lime sorbet last night. It's...interesting. He had made lemon sorbet before, so we figured, do the same thing just use half lemon juice and half lime juice. Makes sense, right? We thought so. We of course wanted to use fresh-squeezed lemon and lime juice, so Sam bought a lot of lemons and limes. So he starts squeezing lemons and I'm getting some lemon and lime zest to add into the mix. When I finish, I decide to try to squeeze the limes. I thought, "Lemons: citrus. Limes: citrus. They should squeeze about the same. Sure, limes are smaller so it will take more, but it should work about the same." False. So false. If you have never squeezed a lime, you may not know this, but limes do not like to be squeezed. They are infinitely tougher than lemons and nearly impossible to get any considerable amount of juice out of. Sam tried too, but to not much avail. So, we developed an official stance on limes, which I will not disclose here. It is the third of four points that are the foundation of our relationship, the others being:

1. Red Robin (a burger place) is highly overrated. (Their jingle on their commercial should sing: Reeed Robin...ehhh...)
2. Pickles are vile, disgusting, and evil.
and
4. Get me a fox.

Hm..3 of the 4 points have to do with food. I guess that's fitting. We both love food.

Back to the sorbet! So yeah, freshly squeezed lime juice did not happen. Luckily Sam, being pretty much the smartest person in the world, bought lime juice. He didn't realize it was key lime juice, but it's lime juice nonetheless. If anyone knows the difference between lime and key lime, we would love to know. We realized we have no idea. So, fresh lemon juice, key lime juice, lemon zest, lime zest, simple syrup (water and sugar boiled together) go into the fridge to cool, into the ice cream maker, then get moved to a container and frozen overnight. We tried a little bit of it when it came out of the ice cream maker. It tastes, as I said, interesting. Not bad. Not as good as plain lemon sorbet. It has an intense tartness about 3/4 of the way through the tasting process. It's like, "Hmm...lemon, lime, sweet, OH MY GOSH SO TART, sweet lemony-limey." So I guess that would be called a little bit of a tart kick. It's kind of cool though. He and I haven't tasted it since it froze overnight, and we haven't had a whole bowl of it, which is the real test. The tart kick may be fine for a bite or two, but it may be too intense to eat a whole bowl of the stuff. (Much in the way that Pepsi tastes better to have sip of, but Coke is better to drink an entire bottle of...with the exception of Pepsi Throwback, which is liquid heaven.) So the jury is still out on the lemon-lime sorbet, but we will see. We still stand strong to our stance on limes though.

Up this weekend is QCLX - Queen City Lindy Exchange. If those words sound foreign to you, I will break it down. "Queen City" is a name for Charlotte, NC. Yeah I had no idea either. "Lindy" is short for "lindy hop" which is a type of swing dance (the best type, in my opinion). So a "Lindy Exchange" is a weekend-long event at which a bunch of swing dancers get together for a weekend full of dancing, getting to know people, dancing, and more dancing. I only started dancing in September, and this will be my first exchange, so I'm really excited. It's really neat because we don't have to get a hotel or anything- dancers in the area offer housing to people coming in from out of town. The last weekend of March is ATLX (Atlanta Lindy Exchange) and then in May we're going to CHEX (Charleston Exchange) and possibly DLX (Denver Lindy Exchange). So lots and lots of dancing. Not to mention I got invited to join Swung, the swing dance performance group of the UGA Swing Club. So there is a whole lot of dancing in my future, which is very exciting! (If you have never done any kind of partnered dance, you should. I highly recommend swing dancing, but any ballroom is fun as well. It's not as hard/scary as you would think, I promise!)

For QCLX this weekend, I'm going to make some sort of cupcake. The theme is sort of gold-rush-ish, so I'm still working on ideas. I mean, I could be super un-original and just make cupcakes and put those little chocolate coins on top. But come on...lame. I have grand ideas for ATLX, and I will probably make something for CHEX as well, which is Wizard of Oz themed, so that shouldn't be difficult, as I will have lots of options.

I'm really excited about going up to Charlotte. We're going to have a fun weekend. And then it's spring break!! Hooray!

Oh! So I found out today that Alton Brown is speaking at UGA's commencement this May. I am so upset that I am not graduating! I'm going to try and swing a ticket to go though. I just want to hear him speak. Also, he needs to do a book signing sometime soon. I've been reading his "I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking" and I've been learning a lot. I could probably tell you more about eggs than you would ever need to know! It's really good though, it helps you understand why things are baked the way they are and what each ingredient's real job is. Who needs culinary school when you've got Alton Brown?!

Still no word from either bakery...I may call Bee's Knees today.

'Till next time,
The Flower-Haired Girl