Copycat Oreos Recipe

It’s stuffmas time. That means baking time – especially since we’re on a super strict budget this year and have decided to send out baked goods instead of more material gifts. We had some family coming over to visit recently and decided that they would be the perfect test subjects for some baking experiments. I had bookmarked this recipe probably years ago. It was time to make them. If they turned out terribly, we could just dump them on our guests. If they were fantastic, we could still dump them on our guests so we wouldn’t be overly tempted to eat them ourselves.

Oreos are one of those cookies that I always have a hard time passing up. They’re a little bit expensive and they’re not exactly healthy, but they’re so damned good that I just don’t care sometimes. But hey, if I can make something reasonably similar without all the crap that is normally in them? I’m down with that.

It turned out that we already had almost everything the recipe called for. We were just missing a little bit of vanilla extract. A quick trip to the grocery fixed that.

We already had just about everything we needed.

The first part of the Oreo is, of course, the cookie itself. Oreos have that hard, crispy cookie. You can snap it in half. The taste of it is just a little bit salty. The recipe mentioned that it was a very sweet version of the cookie – and that you can just scale back the sugar if you want something closer to the actual Oreo recipe. That’s what I wanted – so that’s what I did. I’m not sure using the dough hook was the best choice here – but I was essentially making a dough ball, so it made sense to me at the time.

Everyone into the pool. Err. Mixing bowl.

After a few minutes in the Kitchenaid, the cookie dough is ready. A quick taste test of the dough was amazing. The flavor is pretty much dead on to the flavor of Oreo cookies.

Time to scoop these things out onto a couple of baking sheets. The instructions say to scoop out a “rounded teaspoon” for each cookie half. I tried to do my best, but some of them came out sized different from each other. Oh well. When I took them out at the 9 minute mark, they were all still very soft. They also didn’t look quite right; they’re puffier than real Oreos. Reading the comments on the recipe, it sounds like the fact that I used the Dutch Processed Cocoa (as instructed) may be the cause for the difference.

They’re puffier than I expected.

While the cookies cool, it’s time to make the frosting. This is pretty similar to most frostings: butter, shortening/lard, some flavoring and sugar – lots of sugar.

The filling is the sweet part of the cookie, of course.

Get it all mixed together with the butter, shortening and vanilla. I almost used the whisk attachment to the Kitchenaid and then realized that the beater attachment was better suited to the task. It took a lot longer than I had expected it to take, but eventually it all came together. Another quick taste test and we’ve pretty much exactly duplicated the original frosting.

You’re supposed to use a pastry bag – but I don’t have one. I’ve just got freezer bags. I’ve read plenty of times that a freezer bag makes a perfect substitute; just snip off the corner. Except our freezer bags are weird and fancy. They’re meant to be able to stand up on their own. Clipping the corner makes a much wider than expected opening.

Use normal – non-fancy bags if you don’t have a pastry bag.

The messed up bag situation made it hard to squeeze out the frosting easily. Whatever. It doesn’t need to be pretty – it’s getting covered with another cookie and smooshed down anyways.

You don’t really need a pastry bag OR freezer bag. Just smear some frosting on.

Finally, start assembling those bad boys. I did my best to match the sizes of the two cookie halves. Despite my inaccuracy when spooning out the cookies, I managed to somehow get everything pretty well matched up.

Match up the sizes the best you can.

Smitten Kitchen’s Oreo Cookies:Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

As these came out, they’re not going to fool anyone. They’re puffier and softer. But the flavors are exactly right. To call this test ‘successful’ would be an understatement. I’ll be making a couple more batches of these to ship out for the holidays – but we’re going to do half of them with vanilla and half with peppermint flavoring. I may also try to do a mint flavoring in the future. At some point, I’ll probably try switching out the Dutch Process Cocoa for regular Hershey’s or something to see if I get a more “standard” Oreo texture, but I’m totally happy with these as-is.

We’re moved in. We live in Rockville, MD now. And what a long, strange trip pain in the ass it’s been getting here.

Besides the pain, anguish, and general drama of actually finding a place to live, there was a lot of drama during the actual move itself.

We don’t move often, but when we do, we use one certain moving company, who I don’t want to name so that I do not inadvertently link to a negative review. Unfortunately, they don’t handle interstate moves. They recommended that we call up Piggyback Moving & Storage, and that they could take care of us.

In case you haven’t been following along on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or generally stalking me, let me clarify things. For the past ten or so weeks, I’ve been living in DC with a friend from high school and her husband. My wife, Emily, has been dealing with all the issues and such back in Orlando. That included getting us set up with a moving company. I’ll further clarify here that none of this is her fault. We received a recommendation from a company we trust – and it didn’t work out well. At all.

The short version: Piggyback Moving & Storage needs to move themselves into oncoming traffic.

I’ll go ahead and say it right now: Piggyback Moving, based out of Largo, FL sucks. We will never use them again. Ever. They could comp us a coupon for a free interstate move after this experience, and I’d still tear it up and piss on it right in front of them.

So, why are we so displeased with Piggyback? Let’s start at the beginning. Well, after they were recommended to us.

Piggyback Moving seems to be a family owned/run business. Chrissy and Nikki seem to be in charge of the day-to-day operations. One of them (Nikki, I believe – but I had no dealings with either of them directly until this week) came over to our home in Orlando and looked around to get an estimate of how big of a truck they would need. She pointed out to my wife what would need to be specially wrapped/packed, what could go without too much packing, and most importantly: which items would be best packed by their own crew. It wouldn’t cost us any extra; they’d just bring packing materials or whatever, and pack them themselves. This was mostly stuff like our glass lounge table, the TV and some artwork.

On the day before the move, the office manager was supposed to call to let us know when the movers would be arriving at our home in Orlando. At that point, we were told “after noon”. This worked for us as we still had some packing and general errands to take care of on Sunday morning. We were also told that we would receive a call on Sunday morning to lock in an actual time that they would be arriving.

We had still not heard anything by about 11am on Sunday, so Emily called the movers. It turned out that they were on their way and would be arriving shortly. No, this wasn’t OK. We still had some packing and general personal issues to take care of. We had been told “after noon”, and had arranged our own schedules appropriately. We were told that they would arrive at about 1pm. That was fine by us.

Three men showed up at a little past 1pm: an African-American named Roger, and two white guys named Joe and Chris. It was obvious that Roger was in charge of the crew. Joe and Chris seemed generally inexperienced, but still acted professional enough. Here is when the big problems really started showing up.

When Roger and his crew walked in, they asked about various items which had not yet been packed. We explained that their manager had promised that they would be taking care of the packing of these items. The problem? They hadn’t been told about any of these items; they didn’t have the materials to pack them to begin with.

And so begins the he-said/she-said stories.

“You suck.” “No, YOU suck.”

At about 3:30pm, they decided it was time to head to the local U-Haul and pick up the necessary supplies. Now, to be fair: the U-Haul near our Orlando home is very inconvenient to get in or out of. Emily had dealings with them just the day before, and didn’t have much of anything positive to say about her experience with them – but that’s a story for another day. They were gone for about an hour and a half. That was an hour and a half of time and daylight completely wasted.

Later that evening, I was sent out for a dinner run. When I returned, one of the crew was apologizing to Emily regarding an argument that they had had. Not a big deal, but there was apparently a lot of yelling between the crew.

The three seven hour tour

It took roughly seven hours for a crew of three to load our house onto a truck. Now, I’ll admit that we’re generally packrats, but we got rid of a lot of stuff or put it into storage. In either case, we had a relatively large amount of boxes and such, but it still didn’t feel like seven (or six if you don’t account for the materials run) hours worth of work. We moved from one end of Orlando to the other a few years ago. We used our normal moving company who sent three workers. Granted, we’ve accumulated some more items and more furniture, but not double the original amount. That other company had us loaded up in a little over three hours – and they were being paid hourly. Piggyback Moving was being paid by the job.

We’ll show up when we feel like it

The plan was for us to drive up on Monday – arriving that night. We were told the movers would take “two or three days” to get up to Maryland. That was fine by us. Obviously, sooner would be better than later, but their timeline was acceptable to us; in reality, there were issues with the house that made us really anxious for the movers to come, but we understood that it was going to take a long time to drive up to Maryland. We were told that the movers who packed our home would be the same crew who would be traveling to Maryland and unloading the truck. That worked out fine for us as we could just tip them for a job well done after they completed the unload.

Again, we were told that the movers would call to notify us of their general schedule. Monday: no call and no plan. Tuesday: still no call. Emily called the company to find out what was going on. They didn’t know. They were going to try calling the crew on the road and get an estimated time. We didn’t receive a call back. Emily called again and was told that they couldn’t get a hold of the crew, but would keep trying.

By 5:00pm, we had given up on them showing up on Tuesday night. Even with a team of three, they would be racing against daylight if they tried to unload the truck that night. Surely, they would just stop at a hotel overnight and knock on our door on Wednesday morning.

Well, we were wrong.

Superman works for Piggyback Moving & Storage

The truck pulled up at just past 7pm. Their truck, by the way, was a Penske rental truck. No, this moving company did not even own their own truck. They rent trucks from their local U-Haul and drive those for jobs.

So, I speak to Roger, and get the animals locked away and all that sort of stuff. He starts bringing boxes in and I start wondering where the rest of his crew are. That’s when he tells us that he’s the only mover that they sent to drive and unload the truck.

We were confused. Nikki had specifically told my wife that “the same crew” would be loading and unloading our truck. To us, “the same crew” means… oh, I don’t know… the same three people.

He explained that this was not completely abnormal and that he could get the truck unloaded by himself in just a few hours. We told him that that was crazy; get the bird cage off, and maybe the bed and call it a night. Come back tomorrow and finish. He swore that he could get everything unloaded in about 3 or 4 hours total – even by himself. But the sun was quickly setting. Just get the essential items off the truck (thankfully, we asked them to pack them last), and go get some rest.

While I was off doing something, he was speaking to Emily regarding the whole single-mover issue. He related a story about how he had bitched to his manager about the situation. He was (supposedly) told, “well, she’s married, right? Her husband can help you unload.” Wow. Where do I begin with comments on that? Pick one of your own and let your mind wander. We paid a lot of money – for THEM to load, move and unload our truck. Besides, I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules of any company for me to be unloading their (rented) truck. That would saddle them with extra liability.

The TL;DR of this next portion of the story is that hotels in the area were either booked solid or too expensive, so he decided he would sleep in the bed of his truck. He would only need about 2-3 hours in the morning, and he would be done.

I had to work on Wednesday, but I am told he started at just after 9am.

Let me tell you a story.

Roger explains that he had just started with Piggyback Moving & Storage. In fact, this was his first actual job with them. He liked the company well enough, but had a lot of issues with management.

Other stories Roger related to me included stuff about his manager telling him to blow through weigh-stations and inspection points and his pre-paid gas card emptying out halfway through his drive. The DOT pulled him over for skipping too many inspections and something about being forced off the road for a while for driving too long per day. Some of it sounded rather incredulous, but this man holds power over all of our material possessions. I’m not about to get into that sort of conversation with him.

I’m telling my mom!

I believe it was Tuesday night when I posted some of the drama on Facebook – along with the quote about me helping unload the truck. Apparently, my mother saw the post and called Emily to ask for the phone number of the company. She called and bitched at the office manager. It was probably warranted, but it felt premature to me at the time.

The office manager (Nikki, I believe) called me a short while later. She had been unable to reach Emily, so she was calling to ask about my unhappiness with the whole situation. I explained that I was not at the house. While we were not thrilled with how things had been going with the move, that not all of it was their fault. By this point, most of our concern was a matter of head scratching, “why the hell are you doing it like this?” moments.

She acknowledged, but didn’t really apologize for the fact that there was a breakdown in communication somewhere which led to the movers showing up unprepared.

I also mentioned the whole “Her husband can help you unload” story.  She said that that was what my mother had been the most furious about. Interestingly, Nikki never actually denied this conversation.

Piggyback Moving & Storage either employs liars, or is run by them. Maybe both.

My first and primary concern was that our belongings had been loaded by three men, but only one man had been sent for transport and unpacking. Straight away, she tries telling me how two of the three gentlemen sent to load the truck were new or generally inexperienced. The African-American man, for example, was a trainee. It was his first day.

I stopped her there. But she kept trying to tell me that he was brand new and was not ready for a long distance move or unpacking. I asked why then, he was at our new house unloading the truck. We went back and forth a few times before she “realized” that she had confused who had been sent for loading the truck – believing it was some OTHER African-American employee of theirs.

She continued on to say that Roger always prefers to work by himself. But wait a second – Roger claimed that this was his first job with the company. She denied this, saying that Roger had been working for them for quite a while.

The topic of Roger sleeping in his cab overnight came up. She explains this away saying that that was part of why he doesn’t like working with other people. Other crew members demand they stay in a hotel; Roger hates hotels as he once got bedbugs at one.

I didn’t even bother going into the stories about being told to bypass inspection stations or the gas card not being enough to get him all the way up to Maryland.

Who was telling the truth? I don’t know. I also don’t care. At least one person was lying. Maybe both. Probably both.

Nikki told me she would be calling Roger straight away to clear things up.

As I was told by Emily, she basically just called and told him to hurry his ass up.

2-3 more hours by yourself, eh?

I kept in touch with Emily throughout the day. At some point, one of our new neighbors from down the street started helping Roger unload the truck. Actually, he and a few of his small kids were helping (granted, they were just kid-helping). I don’t know exactly how long they were helping, but in either case, Roger did not have the truck unloaded in 2 to 3 hours. Not in the least.

I arrived home at about 6:30pm. He had just recently finished.  This brings his total unloading time up to 11 hours – a far cry from the 4 that he estimated. He and Emily were signing the paperwork and Emily was on the phone with the manager expressing some of the dissatisfaction with the whole experience.

We can fix that. I just don’t know how.

Part of this was going over some of the damage Roger and his crew had done to our belongings. The most readily obvious was the chipped glass dinner table. We would later find that if any of our items could be warped, they warped it. The latch-hinge for our bar was broken. The back of our entertainment center (granted, just cardboard) had been ripped off in parts – and warped. Scuffs, scratches… we haven’t even unwrapped all of the art yet.

The manager assured Emily that they would take care of fixing the glass table.

“How? I don’t know anything about repairing glass. Can you even do that?”

“Oh, I don’t actually know. I just figured it could be done.”

“If you say so.”

“Or you could just buy a new one and invoice us.”

Because after all this, I’m sure we can trust them to pay us back for a new tabletop.

Remember when I told you he was lying? That was a lie. Or was it?

OK, so by now Nikki had told Emily that “the same crew” would be loading and unloading our truck.

Then Roger shows up by himself and says the company only sent him – and that he had protested it.

Then Nikki tells me that Roger was lying and that Roger requested to work by himself.

But then Nikki tells my wife that “it is standard for us to only send one person to move/unload”.

So, who were you lying to, Nikki? Me or my wife?

They’re being unreasonable.

Emily explained to Nikki that we will never use them again. Ever. Roger seemed half-smug about it and proceeded to show me the job sheet as though it vindicated him somehow.

“What does it say in that section there?”

“Estimated time: 1-5 days.”

“So why were they rushing me so much?”

Oh, I don’t know – because spending 3 days unloading a truck seems excessive? Shut up and get out of my house already.

The 90′s called. They want their website back.

Here is the website for Piggyback Moving & Storage. Check out their awesome use of Comic-Sans, cropped text in the banner (even in the original image) AND their broken English. “Combing Your Furniture With Others Headed In The Same Direction To Save You Money” Please, stop combing my furniture, you worthless hacks.

Wait, Do They Actually Piggyback Shipments?

If I had known about Piggyback shipping practices (in general, not just this company), I would have likely steered Emily away from them. Neither of us knew though, and I didn’t even know the name of the company until I drove down for the actual move.

Our cargo was not piggybacked with any other shipment. Our truck was full. That was just our experience though and their website implies that they DO normally piggyback shipments. I don’t like that idea. No, sir. Not one bit.

Summarize all this crap.

Do not waste your time or money with Piggyback Moving & Storage. They are slow. They are inefficient. They are liars.

Piggyback Moving & Storage Rating: Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

OK, neither of those are really true, but the statements are close enough. Here’s why:

I lost my job at the beginning of the year. After some searching, the best, most stable and non-shady job I found was working for a company in DC. Unfortunately, it meant no more working from home. Even more unfortunate, it meant having to move. Now, Emily and I have been talking about moving out of Orlando for a long time now, but now it was one of those, “Oh, shit. We have to actually do this. And we have to do it now!” sort of things.

Emily is from the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, so it’s not a completely foreign area unlike some of the other places we had discussed possibly moving to (Austin or San Francisco, for example). I’m from New York originally, but I’ve been living in Florida for almost 16 years now. This was going to take some serious adjusting. And a lot of headaches to deal with to make this move happen.

Two primary issues arose: finding a home in the DC area, and figuring out what to do with our home in Orlando. We bought our home before the market skyrocketed, but due to the economy and housing market in Orlando, we’re still underwater. That means it’s impractical to sell. But that also means not having money to buy a house in the DC area. Did we even really want to buy one? DC is not where we want to live. It makes little sense to lock ourselves into the area for the lifetime of a mortgage or the volatility of the market. All of that means renting out our house and finding a house to rent in the DC area.

So those bring up new issues: getting our home ready for renters, actually renting it out and finding a new place to live – made more difficult by the fact that we were five states away. Oh, and my new company needed me to start as soon as possible, of course.

Thankfully, we’ve got friends and Emily’s family in the area. Even though I hadn’t seen her in almost 16 years, a friend from high school and her husband offered me a place to live while I search for our new home. Emily, meanwhile, is staying in Orlando – getting the house ready for rental, packing up everything for moving and working a full time job of her own. I feel terrible leaving so much of the burden on her, but there was no other way.

The plan is for me to find a place to live – searching at night and on the weekends. At the end of April, I will drive back down to Florida to pack up the cars with dogs, birds and some essentials and we’ll drive up to the new place, followed by the movers. It’s a great plan in theory. Really, it’s our only feasible plan. But of course, plans never go as smoothly as one would like.

Finding a new home has proven to be… difficult. The market here is very different from Orlando. The prices are much higher – especially when we search for a place that meets all of our criteria and is still in a nice enough neighborhood. We need a detached, pet friendly home, with some sort of ground level workspace area (garage/shed) – and we don’t want to live within the Beltway if we can avoid it. Searching and finding time to view homes is difficult with a full time job and not really being familiar with the area myself. We were already turned down for one home. With any luck, we should know very shortly, whether or not our most recent application was accepted.

Technically, I could drive to work from where I am staying. But parking in downtown DC is ridiculous. Most of the lots near my office charge around $18/day or $280/month. Thankfully, my friend’s home is a 35 minute walk to/from work. Of course, the comfort of my walk is at the mercy of the weather. While I grew up in New York, my body has acclimated itself to the Florida environment. I’m no longer used to the cold and I have to wear my hood or earmuffs on many days. I have, however, found myself adjusting already. The mid-40′s are now brisk to me whereas in Florida it would have meant not leaving the house if there was no reason to.

I have no TV in my room and the only gaming I do is what I can do on my iMac, laptop, iPhone or the few 3/DS games I brought with me. Whatever time is not spent searching for a home is used working on learning more programming subjects. Python has been my primary focus and I’m really enjoying it. I plan to also do some work in Unity3D and iOS. You can probably put 2 + 2 + 2 together and realize that I’m trying to learn to put together a mobile game. I have no particular ideas for one; I just want to learn how.

I barely cook now. Nothing is done or said to make me feel uncomfortable, but I feel uncomfortable. To me, cooking in someone else’s kitchen feels like wearing their clothes. Compound in the fact that I’m on a super tight budget and don’t really have the money to pick up the sort of ingredients I’d want to experiment with for cooking. Or maybe I’m just lazy and trying to rationalize it all away.

This week is week six of being separated from Emily. By the end of the week, it will be the longest we’ve been apart. My time on Pirates of the Caribbean was just under six weeks.  I’ve got a nice support system here and communication with Emily is much easier than it was from the Bahamas. Back then, we had to Skype as phone calls were prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, the Internet connection where we were was terrible and Skype didn’t work half the time. Even still, I’ve found this separation infinitely more difficult than the last one. I’ll admit that after the first week up here, I almost said, “fuck this” and just packed the car back up and drove home. I’m flying back to Orlando for the weekend though and am chomping at the bit to get back home if only for a few short days.

Next up: some observations regarding the DC area and the sort of culture shock I’m experiencing.

I’ve read about making pickles at home before and there tends to be two standard ways of doing it.

The cheat way: Find a bottle of pickles you like. Eat them all and save the jar and pickling liquid. Chop up your cucumbers, dump them in and store for at least a week.

The homemade way: Whip up a batch of your own pickling liquid. Chop up your cucumbers, dump them in and store for at least a week.

As you can tell, neither one is difficult. The homemade method, however, provides you better opportunity to tweak the flavors to your perfection. And of course, it’s always better to know exactly what it is that’s in your food (or pickling liquid).

You probably already have most of the things you need.

The hardest part about this whole process was finding pickling spices. Our local grocery just doesn’t seem to carry it. We ended up going to a nearby spice store and getting a small jar of it for just a few dollars. Beyond that, we already had everything we needed except for the cucumbers themselves.

Of course, the most important part of any pickle is what the pickle will look like. Bread and butter pickles are traditionally small, thin rounds. I’ve done these a few times now and while it doesn’t technically change the taste – everyone knows that pickles with ridge-cuts are just inherently better. I just wish I could figure out why no matter how I use my mandolin slicer, I can never get a straight even cut every time. Most of my pickles have a thick edge and a thin edge. Oh well.

Pickles with ridges > pickles without ridges.

For our pickles, we reuse old pickle jars. The recipe says to use spring-top containers. These work just fine. Dump the cucumbers and the onion into the jar. I usually put the onion on the bottom and then the cucumbers on top. It doesn’t matter though – over time, they’ll all mix together. I also use about half of the onion called for in the recipe. That’s just a rule in our house: half the onion, double the garlic. It’s almost universal. Depending on the size of your jar (we use two different sized ones), you may run out of room for the cucumbers. It’s OK. Just hold on to those ones that don’t fit.

Don't worry if you can't fit them all in right now.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a pot and bring them all to a boil. This is where I ran into a little “uh-oh” the first time. The recipe calls for pickling spice plus a handful of other spices/ingredients. The pickling spice I used, however, says that you should just combine it directly with the liquid – no other spices needed. In fact, examining the ingredient list (or just looking at the pickling spice) reveals that it already includes most of the additional spices. I decided to just treat the pickling spice as though it didn’t have all those extra ingredients mixed in. Yours may or may not.

Alternately, you could just cheat and use the liquid from storebought pickles. Where's the fun in that?

Once the liquid comes to a boil, you simmer it for a few minutes and then pour it over the cucumbers and onions. At this point, you’re supposed to let the whole jar cool down to room temperature and then top off with any remaining liquid. I almost never have any extra liquid, but I do still sometimes have leftover cucumbers. As the whole jar cools down, you’ll start seeing that the cucumbers start absorbing the liquid and compressing – leaving more room for more cucumbers. Go ahead and throw whatever you have left in. Feel free to use your hand (or a wooden spoon) to just push the cucumbers down if necessary.

Pour the liquid over the cucumbers/onions.

As they cool, the pickles absorb the liquid, leaving room for more cucumbers if you have any left over from before.

It’ll take about an hour and a half for the jar to cool down completely. Throw the cap on, wipe the outside down (you’ve probably spilled some pickling liquid) and put it in the fridge for about a week. Since it takes a week for these to finish and we go through them in about a week, I’ve started just doing two jars of pickles – staggered out by a week or so. By the time one jar is finished being eaten, the other jar is done pickling.

AB’s B&B’sRating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is a great base recipe for bread & butter pickles. The method is easy and active work time is about 20 minutes. We found that the original recipe was a little too sweet and needed more salt. It calls for “a pinch” of kosher salt. I use three or four pinches and they’re perfect for us. Since I’ve started making these, Emily no longer asks for half of my pickle when I get one with a burger at a restaurant. No other pickle compares.

In the end, the price of a buying a jar of pickles versus making one comes out to be pretty much a wash – and it can be difficult for that week while the pickles are pickling, but it’s totally worth it. At least, once you tweak the recipe to your liking. Me? I’m thinking of throwing in some red pepper flakes into the next batch.

After a week, you've got delicious homemade pickles.

I’ve even seen restaurants call their tables “hibachi tables”. It’s not OK.

They mean two totally different things.

They look like and taste pretty close to Cheez-Its

I have a serious addiction to Cheez-Its. I try not to buy them too often as they’re a little expensive when they’re not on sale – and more importantly, they’re pretty bad for you. They’ve got tons of salt and various preservatives. I found a recipe for Cheddar Crackers a while back that purported to be really close to Goldfish crackers. I love those too, so I decided to give it a try.

I’ve experimented with it a few times, and I’m still perfecting the procedure to get them exactly how I like them, but I’ve found that they’re a lot closer to Cheez-Its than Goldfish. I’m OK with that.

I split it into two batches to fit into our food processor

The recipe itself is very simple and requires very few ingredients. When I feel like making a batch, usually the only thing I need to go get is a block of cheese. It requires the following:

• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper (optional, but tastes great)
• 4 tbsp cold unsalted butter
• 8 oz grated cheese – a sharp yellow cheddar is a great place to start.

That’s it. Processed cheese already has a fair bit of salt in it, so you don’t need to add a whole lot depending on the cheese you select. The pepper really adds a lot of flavor despite there not being a whole lot.

Our food processor is kind of small, so I make the dough in two batches. All of the amounts divide into two halves very easily (the 3/4 tsp salt breaks into 1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp).

The first step is to pulse the dry ingredients together until it looks like a coarse meal. Once that’s set, add the butter and pulse again – until it looks like coarse meal. Honestly, half the time I do this, I forget and add the butter in with the flour and seasonings right away. If it makes a difference, I haven’t been able to notice one.

The flour and seasonings pulsed together.

Next add the grated cheese a little at a time and pulse it all together to combine. Eventually, it will form big granule looking bits.

We've finally added cheese to these cheese crackers.

Now, add 1 tbsp of water and pulse. You’re looking for everything to start coming together as a dough. Add additional tablespoons of water if necessary – but only one at a time. I’ve never once needed more than 1 tbsp of water for each of my two batches (so, 2 tbsp of water total).

Once everything comes together, pull out the dough and wrap it in cling wrap. Stash in the fridge for about 20 minutes – chilling it will make it a bit easier to roll out and work with. If you had to split your ingredients into batches like me, you can combine the two dough balls now. I don’t – for a reason.

I find it better to keep everything split into smaller amounts.

Take out the chilled dough ball(s). I now split those into halves – giving me four small balls. I find it much easier to work with the smaller balls.

I split each ball (half of the ingredients) into halves again (now one quarter of the ingredients).

If you’ve got parchment paper, go ahead and put your dough ball on some of that. We’ve been out for a while and keep forgetting to get more.

Flatten one of the balls with your palms and throw on a bit of flour – just a light sprinkling. This is to keep the rolling pin from sticking too much. Roll out the dough to roughly 9 to 10 inches in diameter. On my fancy mat, I notice that I can start seeing through the dough just a bit – enough to see barely make out the dark lines underneath. Ideally, the dough should be between 1/16-1/8″ thick. Thinner means crispier, but too thin means you’ll have a hell of a time getting them off the mat and onto the sheet without tearing later. Get it as uniform as you can, but don’t drive yourself nuts. If you didn’t split your dough balls into smaller amounts, this can be tough. Keep the balls small – it just makes your life easier.

I use a pizza cutter to cut mine into roughly 1″ squares. I’ve also found that docking the dough helps keep them from puffing up as much. I just use a fork and tap each square twice, making 6 tiny holes in each. If you prefer puffy crackers, skip this.

If you used parchment paper, you can bake directly on that. If you want, you can go ahead and put the whole thing on a baking sheet now. As mentioned, I never have any and peel each cracker up one at a time and put it on the baking sheet. It takes longer, but I can make sure each cracker has plenty of room around it by doing it this way. So long as you cut the crackers, you should be OK with just putting the whole un-separated piece in the oven. Feel free to correct me if you’ve tried.

Roll it out to roughly 8-9 inches in diameter or 1/16"-1/8" thick.

Here is where I differ from the original recipe. The recipe calls for baking at 350 for 15-20 minutes (until nicely browned). I’ve tried that and I can just never get the browning and crispness that I want. Baking at 375 for 11 minutes, however, gives me almost exactly what I want. You might try 375 for 10 minutes, check it and throw them back in for 30 seconds or a minute to get them perfect.

When they come out, they should be darker and crispy to the touch. They’ll be pretty hot, so let them cool down a minute or two before you start shoveling them in your mouth.

Next up, I’m going to try putting some hot sauce in – along with some paprika or cayenne pepper.

Baked at 375 for 10 minutes, they went back in for another minute to get them perfect.

Updated tips!

I’ve made this a bunch of times now and have experimented with lots of slight changes in things. Here are a few tips to get the perfect crackers:

-Preheat your baking sheet while the oven comes up to temperature. A hot baking sheet helps provide a better crisp to the chip.

-Even though we now have a larger food processor which can accommodate a full batch in one go versus having to do it in two smaller batches, I still find it best to quarter the dough after forming it all up. Make the dough in one batch, but split it up into four small balls. It makes it easier to roll out and get a nice thin cracker.

-For each ball of dough (you should have four), use two sheets of parchment paper. Lay the ball in between them and roll out the dough. I roll it out roughly into a circle shape with the widest side being just shorter than the width of the paper. If you get it stretched out to that distance, you’ve got them at just about the right thickness.

-It’s easy to leave the middle of the rolled out dough just a little thicker than the rest. Do your best not to.

-When you’re done rolling out the batch of dough, just peel off the parchment paper. I can usually re-use this piece for the next batch.

-After cutting the uncooked dough (I use a ravioli cutter with the wavy edge), I slide the dough AND the parchment paper right onto the baking sheet. I don’t separate the crackers at all at this point. When the crackers are done (about 12 minutes), they’re crisp enough that they snap apart easily after a brief cool down – usually just by flexing the parchment paper.

-I replace some of the water with hot sauce. I’ve had mixed results based on the different sauces I’ve tried so far, but plain Tabasco and Chulota hot sauce have been my favorites so far. I plan to try sriracha next.

I was building a little waterfront house in Minecraft when the sun set. While I was waiting it out, I decided to pop in a couple quick little windows and spotted a creeper heading straight for me. I got the glass in before he exploded, but he just sat there jumping up and down right outside the window.

Hide yo kids, hide yo wife!

Names have been obscured to protect the guilty. You know who you are.

If you’re like me, you use Facebook. A lot. I work from home, so there are some days that it’s the closest thing to real socialization I get to do. Even still, there are things about Facebook which drive me nuts. The newest of these annoyances is the new polls or “Ask Friends” posts that keep showing up in my news feed. “Do you like Coke or Pepsi?” “PC or Mac?” “Should I dye my hair?” “Kelly Kapowski, Jessie Spano or Lisa Turtle?”. If any one of your friends votes in these polls, it gets reposted to their walls, and in turn, your feed. I really just don’t care.

And for the record, there is no question about Coke or Pepsi. Pepsi is nasty. Coke is sweet nectar of the gods.

With many posts, you click on the little X in the top right of the post and it brings up a little menu to hide the single post, hide all posts by that person, or if it’s a post from an application, an option to hide all posts from that application. These new poll posts are labeled at the bottom as being from “Ask Friends”, but the flyout menu does not give you an option to hide all posts from “Ask Friends”. What now?

Salvation comes from a combination of two sources – or more specifically, Firefox plugins. Yup, this means that this particular fix is meant for Firefox users. I believe Chrome has similar abilities as well, but I don’t use it enough to know off hand. Feel free to chime in if you do.

*UPDATED* – now with super short, cut to the chase version instructions. Click here to skip to them, or read on to understand what you’re doing.

The first one is Greasemonkey. This plugin allows you to install and run custom JavaScript files which can do lots of great and magical things to enhance your web experience. You can find lots of great scripts at Userscripts.org.  You can get simple things like scripts to always force YouTube to play the HD versions of videos when you’re viewing them on the YouTube website or to unshrink shortened URLs in webpages. Then there are crazier scripts like ones that automate playing Facebook games for you. The script we want is called FFixer.

FFixer is amazing by itself. Many of the built in functions are small and barely noticeable. Stuff like removing “Facebook” from the title of every page. Others are much more useful, like an option to hide all stories of a single type. Tired of reading about every time your friends change their profile photo or maybe you don’t care about links they share, or you’re just sick of every application, not just Farmville. FFixer has you covered, well, mostly. Check the appropriate boxes and you’re almost there.

Once installd, you'll want to configure FFixer

You can turn it all off, but then, why are you on Facebook to begin with?

Unfortunately, turning off all the applications still doesn’t work to get rid of those pesky Ask Friends polls. Apparently, since it’s a first-party application, it doesn’t count. But all is not lost. We can still get rid of them. It just takes a little bit more work.

At this point, if you want to take the short way, you can click here to skip this next section on Firebug and just go to the part where we come back to FFixer. Using Firebug, however, enables us to find the values we need later in this tutorial and possibly at later dates should there be more we want to hide or block from our Facebook feeds.

We need another Firefox plugin: Firebug. If you’re involved in any sort of web development, you’re probably already familiar with Firebug and already have it installed. If you’re not involved with web development, there are still some really useful features like being able to disable javascript or cookies on the fly. Today, we need to use its ability to Inspect elements.

Once you’ve got it installed, you’ll bring up Firebug by clicking the little bug icon in the bottom right of your browser. Once it opens, you’ll want to click the Inspect tool which looks like an arrow hovering over a box. It’s located in the top left of the Firebug window. With the Inspect tool activated, you can hover your mouse over items on the page. Watch the Firebug window as you do. It displays the HTML that generates whatever it is you’re inspecting. Click on an item on the page and it will lock that item to be inspected.

Click the highlighted icons to open and inspect with Firebug

Scroll through your Facebook news feed and find one of those Ask Friends polls. It’s a little tricky, but you want to inspect the whole story and not just the poll itself. Keep an eye on the Firebug window to help guide you. The  whole item is an “li” element that should start with <li  id=”streamstory… Once you’ve highlighted the whole story, click it and lock in the inspector. In the highlighted code in Firebug, you should find  a block that looks like {“src”:xxx, “sty”:yyy,… where xxx and yyy are number values. We need the yyy value. Write it down.

Use Firebug's Inspect tool to grab the story value for an Ask Friends update. (Hint: it's 338)

You can repeat this process with any other annoying application stories that FFixer can’t seem to get rid of – like Places. Do you really need to know that your friend is at the bar again? Scroll through your feed and find a Places check-in story. Inspect it with firebug and get that STY value again.

Use Firebug's Inspect tool to grab the story value for a Places update. (Hint: it's 285)

OK, all done with Firebug.

Bring up the FFixer configuration menu and head into the Advanced tab. Here, you’ll find a section called “Custom Feed Modification”.  We want to blacklist these applications, so we use a -STY value. The values we found were 338 and 285, so on separate lines, enter -338 and -285. Click the button to “Save Custom Feed Modification” and close the FFixer configuration. Refresh your page and the Places and Ask Friends polls should all be gone. Notice that I say that they should. It turns out that Ask Friends has at least two possible STY values: 285 and 280. Places also has a second value of 278. Go ahead and add -280and -278 to the configuration as well. There may be other values as well, but those two values have done me well so far. In the event I find Ask Friends polls are still sneaking through, I can just use Firebug to find those STY values I need to block.

Now add the negative values to the Custom Feed Modifications of the Advanced Panel in FFixer

So there you have it. It’s not an easy, pretty solution like just clicking those fly out menus in Facebook, but it works. Enjoy your Ask Friends and Places free Facebook experience!

The super short version of the instructions

1. Install Greasemonkey.
2. Install FFixer
3. Under FFixer’s settings, go to Advanced and then add the following values to “Custom Feed Modification”: -338, -278, -285, -280. The first two get rid of Facebook Places. The second two get rid of Ask Friends.

You can optionally install Firebug to dig up any other values you may need to blacklist in FFixer.

*UPDATE*
As of 7/9/2011, this is my blacklisted ID list. I do not have any Ask Friends or Places posts showing up in my feed.

-278
-280
-281
-285
-286
-338

Despite having grown up on Long Island, I don’t think I actually ever had duck until I moved to Florida. Go figure. It’s one of my favorite meats. Every time I eat it, I’m always left amazed at just how different the taste is from chicken. To me, it seems like it would be similar. Maybe it’s just me. It’s OK; it usually is.

It looks like chicken, but it tastes so much better.

When I saw that the book had a recipe for duck, I was really excited to try it. Unfortunately, duck is apparently really hard to come by in Orlando, FL. Our local grocery didn’t have it. I checked one of the places that offers a lot of different meats (they’re not really a true butcher, but close) – they didn’t have it. Not even Whole Foods had it – that really surprised me. I was wondering if I was going to have to break down and go to the Asian district of town. I don’t have a problem going there, but we (and everyone we know) is a little skittish about buying fresh foods there.

Then one day, while walking through the local grocery, I just happened to look down at the pile of frozen chickens and turkeys – and there happened to be a few ducks. I think it must have been because it was the holiday season. Whatever the reason – I snapped it up and threw it into our freezer. It wasn’t until just recently that I’ve had time AND inclination to sit down and make Alton Brown’s Mighty Duck (the book just calls it “Duck”)

The brine is pretty standard: juice, salt, garlic and some seasoning

After a few hours in a brine, the recipe calls for a two stage cooking process. The liquid for the brine is a pineapple/orange juice. I’ve never totally understood why orange is the standard flavoring for duck (the duck I bought even included an orange sauce packet), but it works. First, you steam the duck for 45 minutes. Between the brine and the steaming, you’re left with a mostly cooked and still very moist/juicy duck. Steaming it also means that the excess fat is drained away so it’s not sitting and cooking in its juices.

Everyone loves a good steam bath.

While it steams, you prep a cast iron pan for the searing portion. Moist duck is great – but anyone who has ever eaten duck will tell you that the best part is the skin. Hell, you can keep the meat and just give me the skin and I’d probably be happy. Of course, the skin MUST be crispy. It’s just a rule.

Duck without a crisp skin can't really be called "Duck"

Since I’ve had better luck following the videos/episodes a little closer than the book, I decided to do that here. The book says to put the duck pieces skin side down in the heated skillet and bake for about 15-17 minutes flipping once. The episode and website instruct to cook the legs and thighs first for about 10 minutes, flip them and add the breasts and cook for another 7 minutes.

You need something more than just meat, even if it's duck.

After removing the duck to cool, you use the fat in the skillet to cook some greens to go with the duck. The book calls for chard or kale. Unfortunately, there was no chard available at the grocery, so I went with kale. I hadn’t eaten kale since I was a teenager, and I wasn’t a big fan of it back then. Hopefully, the duck fat would change that. Add the kale and some shallots to the skillet and let it all wilt down – finishing it off with some balsamic vinegar.

So, how did it all turn out?

The duck was delicious. Seriously – if I can find duck again, I’m making this again. I would change one thing though – I’d flip the 7 and 10 minute measurements. The skin on the legs and thighs was perfectly crisp and the meat was cooked perfectly, but the skin on the breasts just wasn’t crispy enough. The breast meat itself was perfect, but the skin just wasn’t quite there. I thought about cooking it longer to crisp the skin further, but I feared overcooking the meat. So, to recap: legs and thighs in, skin side down, cook for 7 minutes; add the breasts skin side down, flip the legs and thighs, cook for 10 minutes.

The kale was better than I expected it to be, but it just didn’t wilt enough for my taste. I suspect chard would work a lot better.

Alton Brown Mighty Duck Rating:Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This duck is almost perfect. It's more perfect once it's in my belly.