A friend of Jen’s showed me this page, which lists the ten most expensive chocolates in the world. Jen has … good taste in chocolate, so I was familiar with some of the companies listed towards the bottom of the page. I was amused and alarmed to see that there are people selling chocolates for $250 a piece ($2,600 a pound). Even more surprising, the company is based in Norwalk, Connecticut.
What sort of chocolate will people pay $250 for?
A New York Times article published in October points out a major shift in the policy of frequent flyer programs; the inactivity timeout for many programs has been quietly shortened. If you don’t earn or spend miles for a certain period of time, airlines will close your account and take away all your miles. In times past, no airline would reclaim your miles until you’d gone at least three years without account activity. If you are a customer of several of the major US carriers, including US Airways, your miles will expire if you go 18 months without activity.
I found another recipe for buckwheat crepes at Chocolate and Zucchini, an excellent food blog. This recipe calls for four parts buckwheat flour for every one part all purpose flour. That seemed more promising, so I gave it a try over the course of two nights last week.
To make batter for six crepes, use:
I followed the below instructions to prepare the batter, substituting my blender for the author’s food processor. I made twice as much batter and used the first half three hours later and the second half the next day. The batter did hold together much better the second day.
The partial success of my attempt to reproduce the Sunflower Inn’s raised Belgian waffles prompted to me upgrade my four year old waffler. The Villaware waffler I’ve been using was a gift from Jen that I’ve been using with reasonable success for just about four years now. Jen and I both started lusting after a new waffle iron after staying at a Best Western that allows guests to make their own waffles using a commercial waffler that rotated the waffles 180 degrees. Gravity pushes the batter against all surfaces of the waffle iron and you end up with a crisper, more even waffle. On top of the rotation, I’ve read reviews that seem to indicate that the Villaware irons just don’t get as hot as higher quality waffle irons. When making waffles, heat is everything.
Want to really suffer on a domestic redeye? Pick the aisle seat. Don’t bring a blindfold. Get too little sleep the night before. Take Dramamine only to realize that sleep isn’t in the cards anyway.
Seriously, though. I’m on a flight from San Francisco to the Gartner show in Orlando and, out of habit, I chose the aisle seat on a plane that doesn’t have an adjustable headrest. In a window seat I would have been able to lean against the wall. If I’d managed to fall asleep there wouldn’t have been any need to get up during the flight. To make matters worse, this old plane has huge CRT screens in the aisle, and one of them is three feet in front of my face. I’d forgotten how bright those old sets could be with the cabin lights off. With a blindfold I might have been able to ignore it.
I’m on a quest to reproduce the Breton-style savory crepes they serve at Ti Couz in San Francisco and Beau Monde in Philly. The first time I tried this I made Alton Brown’s crepes and substituted half whole wheat flower, but I wasn’t too satisfied with the result. AB’s crepes are a great place to start because they handle really well and are easy to work with, but they definitely don’t stack up to what Ti Couz is serving.
