The Dough Also Rises

UPDATE: If you visit the site, and get to an all gray page, you have to manually pull the frame bar down from the top of the page. For some reason, the site is rendered differently based on your browser configuration. I'm going to try and fix it this weekend.

Good news, kids. The website is finally up and going. I still have a few tweaks to do, but you can shuffle on over and see what's there (i.e., everything that will be, just not perfected yet). Please to be letting me know what you think, so I can make it at least 14% better.

Woot.

Yes, dough rises. I should know, as I made myself some homemade pizza dough Wednesday night. It's a bit of work, but in the end, it's a lot of fun, and very satisfying knowing I did it all myself. And taste-wise, it blows any frozen pizza out of the water. It's also a lot cheaper (in the long run) than buying frozen or delivery. It's pretty adaptable stuff, too. I made it fairly thick, but it would easily stretch out for a thinner crust. Next week: homemade Wheat-Thins, yum.

See, father dear got me Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food for Christmas, and I finally got around to trying the recipes (applications, as he calls them). It's quite a book, too. Part cookbook, part science book, and written like an episode of Good Eats. In short, good stuff.

I even have my copy signed by AB. Seem's he's on a book tour at the moment and decided to stop at Left Bank Books last night for a presentation and book signing. JK and I missed the speech, as well over 200 people showed up (163 and 164 for us), and the store's capacity is only 120 or so. That said, the 2 hour or so wait wasn't all that bad. Once we got inside we ran into Kara and Karl, who I haven't seen in a few months, so we got to talk for a bit. And, much to my delight, Alton was as nice as I could have hoped for. He shook everyone's hand, introduced himself ("Hi, I'm Alton"), posed for many pictures, and was good-natured and pleasant the whole time. I shared my revelations about pizza with him. Our exchange, as best I can remember it:

Me: "I tried the pizza dough last night. Great stuff."
AB: "You know, I really like pizza."
Me: "Blows the forzen stuff away."
AB: "Oh yeah."
Me: "And it's cheaper, too."
AB: ""Oh yeah."

He sorta said it in a way that seemed to imply "I know. Isn't it cool?". He thanked us for coming out, and then gave me a pat on the back as we were leaving. So, good stuff.

I finally got cable installed, so I can get back in the habit of watching silly infomercials I've seen no fewer than 45 times each. Maybe some other stuff, too. For some reason, though, my VCR and TV don't want to work together, preventing me from taping anything above channel 12 (i.e. Good Eats). I should, um, fix that. The two guys from Charter were quite nice, and avid PC gamers. We had a brief chat about Diablo II (crack for the PC, really), and the way game boxes tend to pile up after awhile.

I've also decided that, while puking is very icky, at least it tends to be over after one night. It's a cruddy night, yes, but compared to, say, this cold, which is just lingering, I'd rather be done after one night. A few hours of nausea is, at least right now, far prefferable to an entire day of sitting around sniffing and blowing my nose. Bleah.

Right. I'm done.


"Good news, folks! I've made it up to #10!"
Dave