LAX - not as cool as it sounds

Wrote this up yesterday on my travel day from Los Angeles - Albany.

Disclaimer - I was thoroughly tired and some what delirious for most of this.

6:46am - airport

Sitting in the Los Angeles airport at quarter to seven in the morning - today already feels long. My boyfriend, being the awesome person that he is, brought me here early so we wouldn't hit traffic/have to wait through the long security line. Along with that though, it only took me about 10 minutes tops, so I have some time to kill before my 8:30am flight. Woke up about 5:30 this morning, didn't want to leave.. still don't actually. I know that my life is in New York, not in California, in fact, I really do miss the Northeast chilly weather right about now, but still, it's hard to leave. Oh, and while we're on the topic of relationships, it annoys the crap out of me when people have constant FB updates about missing their significant other (SO MUCH) after not seeing them for maybe.. a day. WTF. You don't know what missing someone is, butt head. Anyway - just had to get that out.

So I have a rule about morning flights. If I'm tired and unhappy (usually the case), I find a Starbucks. If the Starbucks line is short, I go in, I get a hot beverage, preferably hot chocolate or chai, and a muffin. The muffin is crucial. So is the non coffee beverage. Here's why: muffins make people happy. I never eat muffins unless I need a serious pick me up breakfast. Also, since muffins are pretty much cake (i.e. simple sugars) they make you sleepy, which brings me to the importance on the non coffee beverage. If I'm about to get on a flight, I'm going to want to sleep. If I'm hopped up on caffeine and that baby three rows back starts screaming, you can bet I'm going to be ready to punch someone up to jupiter - and I'm not a violent person. Give me some warm milk and chocolate/spicy tea though, and I'll be your best friend. I'll be sleeping mind you, but it's better than me punching you in the face.

I've come to a realization about people in airports. They always want your seat. That perfect seat at the end of the row by your gate. They want it. Even if it's a bad seat - they want that too. Usually it's the seat with the least people around it, my personal favorite. Because in reality, I'm not a people person. You know those people that always want to chat it up on flights? I'm not one of them. I like sleep more than I like talking to you, deal with it. In fact, I don't think I ever talked to someone sitting next to me on my flight until my flight from O'hare to LAX on my way here. He taught me how to play sudoku.

Also, I like strangers that are surprisingly nice. Especially old black men because then they could be my cool grandpa. I encountered two this morning at LAX - one of them called me princess (in a cute old man sort of way), and the other let me go ahead of him in line. Gotta love those non creepy old men.

9:57am - somewhere in Utah, USA (headed to Newark, NJ)

You know that feeling of embarrassment after sleeping upright in a chair for the good portion of an hour constantly nodding your head up and down? I'm a constant offender of that, but I also find it mildly amusing because even though you know you're doing it, it's not enough for you to consciously wake up and stop. My thinking process at least is - sleep, I need it, other people can laugh if they want. Anyway, one thing (and probably the only thing) I love about continental is that they give you free meals during meal times. Why don't all airlines do that? From my experience they're usually not super gross either. I mean, if you have any type of dietary restrictions you could wave those pretty packaged meals goodbye, but lucky for me I'll eat pretty much anything except for a few select things (sashimi, squash (except for pureed in soup), fast food in general unless it's the last thing on the planet (or the last thing at a rest stop for 100 miles and I'm starving)). So yeah, rock on Continental, you suck otherwise, but I guess you're kind of ok. Oh dude! Free movies! Ok Continental, you win this time. Finding Nemo it is.

5:11pm - Newark airport

Long flight from Los Angeles to Newark. Pretty tired, but also glad to be back in my regular time zone. Not super looking forward to eating gross airport food for dinner, but I guess it's better than nothing. I wish we had Red Mango/Pinkberry in the Northeast. I had some yesterday but it's so freaking good. I could really go for some about now. One thing noted about airports of the east coast - not all the women are wearing super high heels. We're sensible here, we wear flats.

Tales from the Albany Airport....

Today, it is Wednesday. Had Banquet Management this morning and got out early (score), and decided I'm burning my bow tie after this semester. After class I went home, had some lunch, took a shower, and made some dinner to avoid potential overpriced yucky airport food. Drove to pick up my Dad at work so he could take me to the airport. Got questioned my the security guard, but at least he was nice about it.

Ended up getting here kind of super early, but nice to avoid the lines of check in and security. Oh, but just a heads up - it's not a fun experience getting your bag searched, even if there's nothing questionable in it. I actually don't want some dude looking at my underwear, thanks.

Anyway, I'm sitting at Starbucks enjoying the free wifi and an overpriced iced chai. I guess that's what I should expect when combining Starbucks/Airport. Overpriced meets overpriced, they get married and have delicious chai flavored babies. Ok, that was a little weird, but you know what I mean.

Get into LAX around 11 tonight. It's going to be a long day. Kind of wish I had a girl here to tighten my bra strap, but I guess you can't have it all.

Later, cookies.

What the hell is wrong with me, edition # 2

Had to take a break from the brownie excursions to get situated with school, but now I'm back.

I tried miss Perry's recipe a couple weeks ago, and while they were delicious, not quite exactly what I want, but definitely a step in the right direction.

I was watching food network today, and saw Ina Garten making some delicious looking brownies, and usually her recipes are pretty quality. I don't know if I'd say the same thing about her dinner parties, where everyone seems to have a script and all they talk about is how awesome her food is, but whatever floats your canary.

Wish me luck.

Update - I found it. :-D

What the hell is wrong with me?

Enough about this life bull crap for a second - why can't a make a good batch of motherfreaking brownies?

I have tried, for the past say, all my life, to make homemade brownies that

kick those no good, preservative laden, from a bag/box brownies to the curb, once and for all. Have I succeeded? No.... well, sort of.

I used to have a pretty epic recipe for brownies that I thought I had lost forever, re-found it, tried to make them again and they tasted like non chocolatey bullshit. Have I just learned to suck at making brownies or did I have no sense of a good brownie when I was fourteen? Apparently this is what two years of culinary school will do to you, kids. And funny enough, I don't think we ever had to make brownies.

This subject is even tougher because everyone has their different preference of what a "perfect" brownie is. Your perfect recipe may not be mine, and that's why my usual friend google is failing to meet me for coffee on this one.

I've tried a lot of recipes, all resulting in "good" brownies, but not what I want. They all seem to turn out too thin, and almost like flourless chocolate cake (with usually a minimal flour content of 3/4-1 c.), more than the dense, thick, super chocolatey, chewy brownie that I so desire. Plus they never seem to be chocolatey enough, which is a major category for me in the brownie olympics.

I've been trying to wait a couple days after my last failed brownie excursion before trying out a recipe that my good friend and fellow baker miss Breanna Perry has been so kind to part with. From the pictures alone in her recipe it looks promising, so I find my fingers crossed and myself waiting to say, " Yeah, those boxed brownies got nothing on me." But no pressure, Breanna, I'm confident that I'll soon be tasting the chocolatey goodness of sweet brownie victory.

Plus if all else fails, I'll just have to rename this blog "Following a Brownie". :P

Decisions, decisions...

Busy month, this August. Just got back from Seattle/Eastern Washington/Portland on Tuesday, and had a gig at RPI with Chris, Mike & Jesse on Wednesday. Now it's resting/birthday time in Ellie land.

I may have mentioned earlier that one of my reasons to check out Portland again was to further consider it for a future place to reside long term. Which brings me to my next topic - I need to find a place to move come January. In my current state of mind, I have two choices.

Portland, OR - Good - The weather is beautiful, even when rainy season is in action, everything is alive and green, and when it's not raining, it's sunny and gorgeous. My brother is there, and he could probably find me some housing connections, and since it's an actual city, finding work probably wouldn't be too difficult. Oh, and I wouldn't have to buy a car - a bike would suffice me just fine. They have a dance scene. I'd be closer to the boyfriend.

- Bad - It's really far away from home and most of my family, so it might be too far for my first move away from home. I wouldn't have a car, and even though I wouldn't "need" one, it's comforting having a car. A large portion of the dance scene is blues oriented, and I'm by no means a blues dancer.

Rochester, NY - Good - The sis is there, a large portion of my friends are there, they have a dance scene (with possible teaching opportunities), I would get to keep my four seasons, and there are plenty of people with my same views on dancing there. I don't think I would ever feel lonely. I could probably find housing pretty easy. I'd be closer to home.

- Bad - Work wouldn't be as easy to find, I'd have to buy a car, I'd be just as far away from the boyfriend. I don't know that it's far away enough from home.

There is a third option, which is to stay in Albany for longer, but that is by no means a long term solution to the dilemma. And after December, I have no real reason to stay here, other than my students at RPI, and I'm working on passing on that torch pretty soon anyway.

Big decision, but a necessary one.

Sometimes I bake when I'm not at work

Today I was bored and since I have pretty much unlimited free time with no job and still being sick, that meant doing some baking.

I wanted to do something mildly time consuming without taking up my entire day, so I decided to go with some fake out danish. I say fake out because making actual danish dough is a rather long process, so I just made a batch of sweet dough and used that in it's place. Works fine, you just don't get the flakiness that you normally would with danish dough.

Anywho, I was trying to decide what kind of danish to make and I tried to recall some of the ten thousand kinds I used to make at Bread Basket every day when I worked there. In the end I decided to whip up a batch of frangipane and put that into the dough with a sprinkle of chocolate chips. Kind of resembling a Bread Basket chocolate croissant, except I made mine into pockets instead of just folding and cutting the dough.

I have to say, I was kind of disappointed with the end result. They looked great, but most of the frangipane oozed out during the baking process, so they mostly just ended up being sweet dough pockets with a few chocolate chips. I covered them in powdered sugar after they were cool and that made them definitely more worth eating. I think if I were to make them again I might have to chill the frangipane more and seal the pockets completely as to avoid leakage. So yeah, you win some, you lose some. I actually prefer things go wrong sometimes, but maybe I'm weird like that.

I failed to get a picture after they were done, but I at least managed to snap a shot before they went in the oven.

Updates

So yes, I'm aware that I've been on a blogging hiatus for pretty much the whole summer, but if you read my last post, you'd know that I didn't have much to blog about.. until now.

This has been an eventful past few weeks. Some good, some bad, some really bad, but it's been interesting to say the least.

Firstly, my Mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This was made extra weird since I have little to no relationship with my Mom, but she's been through surgery and going to start chemo soon. I've done all I can for the time being and now it's just waiting to see how things go. That was the "really bad", if you hadn't already noticed.

Second, I made a trip out to Los Angeles to see my boyfriend Greg. For those of you wondering he's a non dancer, and I met him through my future brother in law Erick when he came to visit. Yeah, that's how I found a non dancer in LA. :P Anyway, super fun trip. We didn't get to do a whole lot while I was there, but we did accomplish one of my dreams since I was five and we went to Disneyland. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty epic, and dare I say, one of the happiest places on earth. Well you know, except for the whole almost passing out thing... but minor details. Greg also got major points by cooking me steak for dinner - I really hate grilling, but I love eating grilled foods. That was a good.

And finally, things with my job at Bountiful Bread didn't work out so good, so I'm not working there anymore. There's a very long story to why that's the case, but I'll hold off on telling it. Thinking about finding another job, but for now I'm just going to rest and recover from this tonsillitis/possibly mono that I have going now, and then see how school/teaching at RPI goes. Last semester, kids. Can you handle it?! I know I can. So yeah, I guess that whole situation was considered a bad.. but also kind of a good.

Plans for the rest of August are rather undecided, actually. Since I'm not sure about having mono vs. not having mono, I need to wait and see what my doctor says and then make a final decision on my trip to Seattle/NE Washington/Portland. Also thinking about ILHC? It's kind of about a million dollars, but I can at least think about it, right? Right. And oh yeah, that little small detail called my birthday on the 30th. Keep forgetting about it, actually, will have to make some plans for that.

-E