Missed ya’all at Christmas

I hear everyone had a great time at Christmas at Angie’s.  Wish I could have been there with you.

Terry, thanks so much for the cookies and the cookie club certificate.   What WERE those cookies, by the way?  They had a really cool and subtle fruit taste to them.   I hope this doesn’t offend the purist baker in you, but those were fantastic coffee dunkers!  Perfect combination of flavors.

Hope to see you all soon.

DJ

Blog Gets Grouchy If Pictures Are Too Wide

I have discovered the source of the problem where the side bar is not visible when using Internet Exploder 6.

The problem is in the sizing of the images versus the space allowed on the page.

When uploading images, please restrict them to 600 pixels in width or less.

The blog layout allows for a little over 600 pixels of width for the main blog content, and then the sidebar gets put in whatever space remains on the right side. When an image that is wider than 600 pixels is embedded, the sidebar does not fit, and is moved to the bottom of the page, under everything else.

Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3 are smart enough to see this problem and resize the image. IE6 is not.

Here is an example. The first shows a picture that fits OK, and you see the sidebar. The second one shows a picture that is too wide, and you will notice that the sidebar is missing.

The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

It has been many years since I have read “The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” by Douglas Adams, and in the intervening years I have stopped reading paper books entirely.

However, thanks to DJ, I am once again enjoying this book. It helps to take my mind off of the ugly traffic in this area, and has brought a smile to my face, and even a few good laughs, at several points already.

1/2 book down, 20 or so more to go.

Thank you, DJ!

Tags: audio books, christmas presents

Blog Moved to Windows 2008

After much wrestling, the blog has been moved to a Windows 2008 server running IIS 7.

I had to disable the fancy admin menu plug-in, so when you log in, the menus will look different, being vertically down the left side of the screen instead of across the top.

It looks weird, and I don’t care for it much, but the cool menu appears to not like working with IIS 7  and/or FastCGI (it was on IIS 6 and ISAPI on the old server).

I have sent a request for assistance to the author of the plug-in, and we’ll see if he tells me how to fix it or releases a new version. Hopefully he’ll be interested in helping me, since I sent him a donation a few weeks ago when I first started using his awesome menu plug-in.

Anyway, a single menu plug-in wasn’t worth rolling back to the old server for, so there it is.

Please let me know if you experience any difficulties using the blog. Also please let me know if it seems faster to you, so I’ll know it was worth it.

Lost and found

Found:

Please reply here to claim your items

Angie

Snowmen with Browned Butter Myzithra

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1 cup Myzithra cheese

pasta of choice

Directions:

Browned Butter Procedure: Cut 2 sticks of butter into 8 pieces and place in a 2-quart sauce pan. Place the pan of butter on a burner on medium heat. Bring butter to a slow boil (about 5 minutes).

Once the butter begins to boil, stir constantly to prevent residue from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Cook about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. As the butter cooks, it will start to foam and rise. Continue stirring, otherwise the butter foam could overflow.

Once the butter stops foaming and rising, cook until amber in color (about 1 to 2 minutes). It will have a pleasant caramel aroma. (Note: it may foam again and you will need to use a spoon to check the color. Smell is a good indicator, but be careful not to overcook.)

Turn off the heat and remove pan from burner. Let the sediment settle to the bottom of the pan for a few minutes.

Pour the brown butter through a strainer/cheesecloth into a bowl. Do not disturb the residue at the bottom of the pan.

The brown butter can be stored in the refrigerator and reheated in a microwave as needed.

Boil the pasta of choice until Al Dente. Drain pasta and divide into four servings.

Spread 1/4 cup of Mizithra over each pasta serving. Top with 1/4 cup of hot brown butter.

Chocolate Harvest Nut Pie - just in case anyone was curious

Chocolate Harvest Nut Pie
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup light corn syrup
3 eggs
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1/4 cup silvered almonds

Unbaked 9-inch pie crust*
Whipped topping (optional)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together brown sugar, cocoa and salt. Add corn syrup, eggs, butter and vanilla; stir until well blended. Stir in pecans, walnuts and almonds. Pour into unbaked pie crust. To prevent overbrowning, cover edge of crust with foil.
Bake 30 minutes. Remove foil. Bake additional 25 to 30 minutes or until puffed across top. Remove from oven to wire rack. Cool completely.
Garnish with whipped topping, if desired. Refrigerate leftovers.
Makes 8 servings.

From The Herald (Everett) Sunday, November 22, 1998 page 1F

*I also tried this as small/mini pies. I used crust from Trader Joe’s freezer section and cut it into sections that fit into oiled muffin trays (regular and mini). I cooked this for approximately 35 to 45 minutes. I have a tendency to run ALL the nuts through my mini food chopper too.

Tags: recipe

Blog May Be Inaccessible Due To Server Upgrade

Over the next couple of days, I will be migrating my SBS 2003 server to SBS 2008. This may affect connectivity to the blogs.

If I get really amibitious, I may attempt to also replace the Windows 2003 server that the blog is running on with Windows 2008. If this happens, there will definitely be a blog outage, but probably not a terribly long one, because the new server would be built and data migrated offline, then the servers would be swapped.

Anyway, if you have trouble connecting today or tomorrow, don’t be surprised.

rawr

MERRY   HAPPY CHRISTMAS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 

Listen to my happy song!!

Son Screen

I was looking for an appropriate image for the login page, and ran across this one. It didn’t make the cut for the login page, but I had to share it anyway: