Gift-shopping is hard. I’m pretty well-stumped on good gift ideas for R— (hi, honey!) but I should know better than to look at “gift guides” from online stores. She told me she found Amazon’s “wife/girlfriend” guide particularly infuriating, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until I looked in more detail.

No, Amazon, I’m not getting her diamond jewelry, a “fashion watch,” or Wonder Woman lingerie.

Or a subscription to Marie Claire. The hell?

-Long profile about Scott Boras, the superagent, in the New Yorker. Since this was published, at least 2 of his bigger clients this year had to negotiate their own contracts with teams who didn’t want to deal with him.

-Sort of long article about place kickers by Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Blind Side) in the New York Times. Focuses on how a kicker can never win because he’s always supposed succeed.

-Not so long article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink) about criminal profilers. Basically, they give profiles filled with contradictory, half facts, so that regardless of who is caught, the profile rings true.

-Super long profile about David Simon, the creator of The Wire. It’s so long, I haven’t read it yet, but if it’s anything like the show, I’m sure it’s good.

-Not very long article about a guy making Hummers with engines that run on anything but gasoline. These converted Hummers have more horse power than regular Hummers.

We had our 10 year high school reunion on Friday and had some people over to catch up before going to catch up with the rest of the class.
I figured this was a good opportunity to make some more chocolate covered bacon. My first attempt at combining bacon and chocolate to make bacolate was a success of sorts, if only because the results were edible and appreciated. The result wasn’t going to be worth making again, though, so I had to try a different tact. Bacolate Truffles!
I read about 6,000 truffle recipes on Thursday night and then about 2,500 more articles about chocolate tempering before 2 trusted culinary advisers (thanks, Matt and Ben) let me know that I didn’t REALLY need to temper the chocolate. This will be a debate for another day, however, after all other aspects of this process are perfected.

Bacolate Truffles:
For the ganache, I used a composite recipe.
3/4 cups of heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups of chocolate
5 strips of bacon

Microwave the bacon until crisp (about 5-8 minutes depending on how much bacon) and break up into little pieces. Microwaving the bacon results in a uniform crispness, which is what I was going for. You might like your bacon less crispy, but I’m not sure how that would taste mixed with chocolate.

Heat cream and butter on medium, stirring continuously until melted. Put chocolate (chips or cut up into small pieces) in a bowl. When cream begins to boil, pour over chocolate and let sit for 5 minutes. Stir until smooth and pour into a brownie pan that has been prepared with plastic wrap on the bottom and sides. Put plastic wrap over the top of the mixture as well to prevent a film from forming. Let cool for 10 minutes and put into the refrigerator to chill out until it’s firm (probably about 60-90 minutes).

I dipped these truffles in chocolate after forming them into little balls, which is where the tempering was going to come in, but by melting the chocolate slowly and carefully in a double boiler, it wasn’t necessary. After the ganache was firm, I rolled them into balls, adding some small pieces of bacon to the middle, and dipped them in chocolate and put them onto a cookie sheet to chill out some more before serving. The forming and dipping process was a nightmare, and will need to be improved upon for next time. I’ll keep you updated as the process evolves. Like all truffles, these could be coated with cocoa powder, confectionery sugar, roasted nuts, more bacon, etc.

Mint Truffles:
Same recipe as above (minus the bacon). When boiling the cream and butter, add a few mint leaves and strain before pouring over the chocolate. This ganache will need a lot longer to chill in the fridge though, as it was impossible to form into a ball before melting in my hands.

Oreo Truffles:
1 pound package of Oreo Cookies (I cheekily used Double Stuffs, look out)
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
Chocolate for dipping

Mash Oreo Cookies in a bowl. Use a mixer to combine Oreos and cream cheese until well mixed. Form into little balls and put onto a cookie sheet to chill out in the refrigerator. After balls are firm, dip in chocolate. Personally, I always hate the idea of cream cheese as a dessert ingredient, but these really came out great. Delicious.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls:
Carrots
Cucumbers
Red Pepper
Lettuce
Cilantro
Mint
Rice Vermicelli
Spring Roll Skin

Not a dessert, but Matt’s always putting up fancy food posts, and I made these, too, so I wanted to tell you about’em. The ingredients are a little ambiguous because you can really put whatever you want in these things. I learned how to make them from my vegan sister-in-law, though, so there isn’t any shrimp, or say, bacon, in these rolls.

Cut veggies into this pieces about the width of a McDonald french fry and about as long as your index finger. Cook vermicelli, strain, and rinse with cold water. Fill a large bowl with hot water. Dip spring roll skin into hot water for about 3 seconds and put on a plate or cutting board. Fill with ingredients and wrap. Some people dry the skin off before wrapping, but that creates an extra step and makes it much easier to mess up the skin. I’ve made these 4 times now and just got the ingredient proportions down correctly so that my rolls don’t like giant vegan mistakes. It’s going to take some practice, but the best piece of advice I can offer would be to fill the roll and then take a quarter of the filling out.
Roll and serve with Hoisin sauce.

Great performance again from Cate Blanchett, and to a lesser extent Geoffry Rush, but lacking an engaging narrative. It’s possible that because I had to pee for the entire movie that I kept hoping it would end, but even the climax seemed anti-climactic. Always pee before period pieces.

This movie drew raves from the critics, but it’s possible we watched different movies. I saw a prisoner-of-war escape movie that I’ve seen with 10 different titles, they saw a revelation of story telling and directing. I saw Christian Bale smirk and whisper-shout his way through a professional performance, they saw a young actor’s boffo coming out party.

Rachel just painted our bedroom on her day off work. It looks quite nice; I imagine her Flickr stream will have before/after pictures before too long.

I’m sorry to say, however, that no matter how nice our bedroom looks (and it’s much better than it used to be!) it has nothing on this.

My last name is the 247th most common in the United States, while Rachel’s isn’t even in the top 1500. I never would have guessed that mine was so high, or hers so low. I even beat my illustrious cob-logger.

I got about three-quarters of the way through this book before realizing it wasn’t about what I thought it was about. That made me want to start over from the beginning to see if I missed anything. The story jumps around confusingly, but probably purposely, so pay attention.

Sigourney Weaver was good, but not great, as a middle-aged autistic mother, and one could watch Alan Rickman eat breakfast. I am adamantly ambivalent about this movie, though, because it wasn’t THAT powerful. I’m still wondering how Carrie-Anne Moss’ character earned a living.

John C. Reilly, Peter Sarsgard, Laura Dern, Brad Pitt (producer), and Molly Shannon are 5 of the talented (OK, not Molly Shannon) people associated with Year of the Dog. They should be ashamed of themselves for letting this rudderless pile of shit off the cutting room floor. Not a drama, not a comedy, I watched half this movie with my hands covering my eyes in embarrassment.