Travel Observations

Airports are strange places, people interacting with people that most likely they will never come across again. Through my experience as a creepster people watcher I've divided travelers up into three groups. The chatters, the fake polite, and the group of mismatched individuals- the silent travelers.

The chatters are people who fascinate me. They share details of their lives with people that they will most likely never come across again. And not details of trivial things like favorite tv shows, but of things like birthdays, memories, life plans. It completely baffles me that people are willing to share these intimate details with someone that they have 1) a 1 in I don't know how many chance that they will ever come across again, and 2) let alone remember. Not to mention that I have this complete skepticism of the chatting traveler, who's to know if the business man sitting in the row behind me really flew in from china this morning or if he is a middle school teacher, tired of the day to day and wanting to spice up his boring trip to a teacher conference.

The fake polite people are the ones that will answer questions politely with one word answers then politely put their head down in their book, or slide their headphones into their ears as to say please let me be. But the fake polite people that have taken to the skies as of recently are the flight attendants -now maybe it was just the last flight that I was on, and these woman had been having a rough day... But to me their job is to be helpful, respectful of the passenger, polite (even if it is just a nice considerate fake polite), and other traits of people who work in the service industry. They should not be rude, condescending, and short with the passengers. For example when a mother of two young restless children gets up to take them to the bathroom in the midst of some light turbulence, instead of saying "you're really going to get up now?!" Should say were having some turbulence, do you think they can hold it for a little bit? Or when a passenger holds his hand up to stop a flight attendant to ask a question and starts to say excuse me-they interrupt and say "I'm going to go make an announcement" how did she know what his question was going to be? Now granted she's been up in the sky a lot longer and a lot more than I have but if that gives you the ability to read minds... Sign me up! Now this has not been my experience with all flight attendants- on my short hop over to phoenix we had two characters as our flight attendants- comedians would better describe them. Which is fine by me! Talking to each other over the loud speaker, telling jokes to which passengers would yell out the punch lines making the already short 45 minute flight feel like 5. But once again, maybe this is just their routine to keep them entertained from their numerous flights throughout the day, but to me they encompass the fake polite characteristics, entertaining themselves with the passengers being entertained as an added bonus.

Now the mismatch group contains people like me. The silent travelers. Their either silent because a) they are keeping to them selves and have no interest in what's going on around them- only in their final destination (where ever that may be). They keep their heads down and involve them selves with no one. Choosing rather to bury themselves in their book or magazine, ear phones in, isolating themselves from their fellow travelers. Now to the b's) the people like me, also a silent traveler, but an observer. Watching everything and everyone around us. The traveling world had evolved tremendously in the past years. I've heard the romantic stories of air travel, people dressing up traveling with trunks and fancy luggage. And I know that things have had to change with world events, checking luggage is now not only a convenience but a necessity since air travel has become over priced, but the clothes that people wear while traveling now are ridiculous! I'm the biggest supporter of fuzzy slippers there is, even rocking them to the supermarket- but to the airport? That's overboard, and the sponge bob pajama bottoms? really sir? You're approximately mid 40's, it may be time to get rid of the cartoon character clothing. My favorite thing about airports however, is when something is so captivating- like the woman with the "Rachel" hairdo is discussing her relationship with a man named Jim on her phone, telling him quite loudly that he knew she loved him, that she misses him, that the past few months have been really hard with out him by her side - and that perhaps they can come up with a code when she calls, like call hang up call and hang up again then wait for him to call her back. And in the midst of this situation- you look up and see a fellow creepster people watcher observing the same situation that you are- you catch eyes, and smile a smile that says... Hello fellow watcher, you're watching this situation, I'm watching this situation- let's not judge each other or this situation that's happening before us, have a good trip.

And that's it. Air travel observation from a creepster people watcher.

(please excuse my horrible bb pics, hopefully I'll get better soon at taking non-intrusive creepster observation pics)

Bagel Shop Observations

Bagel shop observations of the day: aka observations from a creepster people watcher:

¨ familiar table of senior citizens sitting and chatting away the morning hours- all with free refill cups of coffee
¨father sitting with his three kids- taking them into school later after special breakfast
¨older gent sitting by himself with a HUGE college sort of ring that has a massive diamond in the center of it daintily tapping at an iphone
¨fashionista high school aged girl dressed in short short shorts with the only redeemable part of her outfit being her purple american apparel sweat shirt
¨kid that I went to high school with that back in the day had a massive white boy fro, taking payment for bagels
¨ super gwaky man in his mid to late 30's driving up in a mazda sports car breakfasting with wife daughter and perhaps mother (and in law)
¨group of moms and preschool aged kids eating breakfast of champs (fruit cups for them bagels for the kids)

attack of the orange and chocolate craving.

So i woke up saturday morning with a craving for some orange and chunks of chocolate concoctions, and after going through my food network magazine and wanting to make the orange and chocolate bread pudding... and consulting with mama callimanis- and her shooting down the idea (she's not the biggest fan of bread pudding- and i had to take her word for it since i have never had the stuff myself) i went on an googling extravaganza. I ended up with four tabs open on my browser when i declared times up for recipe searching (mainly because the office dvd i was watching had ended and i had to get up anyway to put on a new disk... but that's another post all together.) One was Ina Garten's mini orange and chocolate chunk cake- which satisfied my need for orange and chocolate chunks, but didn't include the nifty new (really old school) way of infusing orange into deserts when i came across a fellow bloggers orange and olive oil cake- which i would have loved to add chocolate into but the crumby texture that olive oil adds to cakes was not going to satisfy the craving. And a tasty kitchen recipe for double chocolate and orange cookies which would allow me to use my nifty new cookie dough scoop which i got for making truffles... but after some internal debate the mini orange and chocolate chunk cake won over... with a slight change to the original recipe- I used the old school way of boiling and orange for around an hour- then letting it cool in the water that it was cooked in and then pureeing it in the mini Cuisinart. The dough used about half the orange mixture, and tasted a little bitter, so i added a bit more sugar- Ina's original recipe called for a orange syrup to be poured over the cakes then a ganache. The cakes turned out delicious - slightly dense, but satisfied the orange and chocolate chunk craving wonderfully.
Now what to do with the left over pureed orange? After going through my yia-yia's joy of cooking book, it hit me- marmalade. its so surprisingly easy! soaking the pureed orange in the water it was cooked in for an hour, the boiling it for an hour. After the boiling the book recipe wanted around 4 cups of sugar- I cut it down to 3/4 of a cup to make it equal proportions of orange puree and water, it was a little runny when it was still hot, but thickened up quite nicely as it cooled. However when tasting it on toast this morning- a bit more sugar probably would have made it even better. But the good news in all of this- i've been bitten by the jam/jelly/marmalade bug! eek.

WooHOO

I just figured out how to bring back posts that I thought I lost and blogger deleted, but really they were just in a draft folder! YES! Things just got a little more exciting around here!

Truffles the good the bad and the ugly.

I just wrote a long long post about my adventures in making truffles, how I went to William Senoma got offended by the prices but then realized one day perhaps I'll be able to purchase nice things, then went to Crate and Barrel and fell in love with about 50 thousand kitchen gadgets, so on and so on, then it went on to describe the process, my current obsession with Good Eats, and some more things- but then it got deleted. It was very sad, so now all I'm going to write is that I made truffles they were delicious and surprisingly easy to make all thanks to alton brown.

The End.

adventures of truffles

I finally made truffles this afternoon. They was something that I had been wanting to make for a while after seeing an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats where he focused on anything and everything chocolate... it was 30 minutes of drooling. Anyway, he made them look so easy to make, and since recently I've been craving coconut and chocolate for months now (and mini mounds bars just aren't cutting it anymore) I decided to take the plunge into candy confection making.
First came the hunt for the proper tools, since a melon baller is the one thing mama callimanis doesn't have in her drawers filled with kitchen gadgets, the quest was on. Alton recommended using either a melon baller or one of the mini ice cream scoops with the swishing swingy thing to loosen up the deliciousness in the scoop also known as a cookie dough scooper, off we went on a adventure to William Senoma... and after lusting after all the gadgets, and recovering from the fainting attack that I felt coming on from the prices (30 some-odd dollars for a cookie dough scooper)... we decided to hit up Crate and Barrel where once again I lusted after kitchen gadget after kitchen gadget, with much more realistic prices (12ish dollars for a cookie dough scoop), my truffle making dreams were becoming more and more tangible.
Saturday was going to be the day... but the comforting familiar rain made it difficult to do anything other than playing around with the newly installed internet on my blackberry. Waking up this Sunday I was committed to the cause, I was going to make truffles. And so I did.

The first part put me at ease, melting chocolate adding heavy cream and brandy or in my case metaxa ( you know me always have to throw some greek into the mix), the closest thing to brandy that we had in the liquor cabinet, then put in the fridge for an hour... the next part was a little more labor intensive, having to use the new scooper and put them back into the fridge to get nice and hard. After a hotdog lunch break, back to truffle making I went. Alton's strict instructions not to let the coating chocolate to get above 94 degrees got me a little overwhelmed but then I was what eva alton its chocolate if it goes above 104 degrees its still going to be delicious and tasty! Then I got to coating, leaving the tray of uncoated truffles in the fridge so they stayed cold, and taking them out as needed, which meant that I had to wash my hands quite frequently because I gave up on his instructions of using a spoon to lightly coat the trufs and used my fingers instead, then rolled the coated truffs in the truffle toppings of toasted walnuts, coco powder and cinnamon, and toasted coconut. Rolling the truffles in the toppings proved to be the most difficult part since my hands were coated in chocolate then the toppings got stuck to my fingers which made it hard to open the fridge to get out the remaining truffles but was a tasty treat indeed!
Finally the coating process was finished and back into the fridge they went.
Then came the dishes, the worst part of the truffle making experience, and since I don't want to disturb you with the amount of dishes that are required to make and then are disturbingly dirty after you finish making them, I'll leave you with a picture of them all nice and clean and drying.

first blog from blackberry

So I've been spending most of my time away from the house-thus-away from my computer and email... So as the data charges on the phone have continued to rise... I've decided to remedy this situation by adding data to my blackberry-i mean that's what blackberry's are made for right??!!
So nothing new has been happening lately other than my boss becoming more and more annoying and new daily encounters with stange individuals at the gym, totally have to write a whole other post on gym encounters of zoe.... Its gotten quite ridiculous and therefore quite entertaining!!
Today has been a relatively full day for a saturday which used to be siting around the red house recovering from friday nights... This morning included pancakes with the rents, a walk with the mom and pup, a quick decision to get a haircut and surprise and delight to get fit in later this morning (and with my new fav gay hairdresser... We bonded over discussing the duggars, my big fat greek wedding and the weird things hair-cutters tell their hairdressers. I got lots of stories!) Lunch with the mom, truffle recipe hunting on food network (its my other current obcession) and an outing to at&t, sprouts, and safeway. The day is coming to a close with me investigating all the new gagets that come once you get the internet added to your phone and friends dvds. Fun fun fun!! Missing washington lots but enjoying this early spring weather we've been having here (70-75 degrees and sunny) and today has been a nice reminder or wa with its pouring drizzles I loved ever minute of it!