IvyHootie

Cheddar Scallion Drop Biscuits

November 11th, 2009

These are really good with soup, and a lovely breakfast, IMO. Yes, the pictures are all sideways; I don’t know what is going on here but I’ll fix it later.

* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
* 2 teaspoons sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
* 8 oz extra sharp Cheddar, coarsely grated (~2 cups)
* 6 scallions, white and light green parts, thinly sliced
* 6 oz plain yogurt and 1/4 cup milk (or 1 cup buttermilk; I always have yogurt but rarely have buttermilk)

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, then blend in butter with a fork or your fingers until mixture resembles coarse meal (you could also give it a quick pulse in the food processor, but be gentle).

Stir in Cheddar and scallions. Add buttermilk and stir until just combined.

Drop dough from a spoon in small mounds about 2 inches apart on the lined baking sheets.

Bake in middle of oven until golden, 18 to 20 minutes. As noted, these burn pretty easily due to all of that butter and cheese, so keep an eye on them. I left one sheet in just a bit too long, and look what happened (I ate them anyway):

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Tags: baking food biscuits
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Uploaded - 9\8\09

September 8th, 2009

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Tags: photos, ShoZu
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Down, curls, down - Suave Double Dutch Apple Detangling Spray

September 8th, 2009

I tried some curl defining lotions and sprays to try to tame things down (the fine-ness leads to really big hair if you’re not careful) but found that they left things crunchier than I like and made it look like I had gotten a perm. Then a couple of weeks ago, while on vacation with my family on Cape Cod, I used some of my 4-year-old’s Suave Double Dutch Apple detangling spray after a post-beach shower, and it was perfect! It’s very light (believe me, I’ve tried her other sprays out of desperation to lank, greasy results). And it defines the curls without weighing them down or coating them with that crunchy shell that I hate.

It also cuts down on clutter since we’re using the same product, and it cost under $2.

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Jeans from Alloy.com - what took you so long?

September 8th, 2009

I have a terrible time finding clothes that fit me properly; I’m 5′10″, long in the limbs, and on the thinner side. Clothes sizes apply to dimensions all around; if I wear a medium top, for example, the sleeve length is going to be shorter than a large and therefore too short; the large, in turn, might have long enough sleeves but then the body would bag around me.

Truly long pants are particularly difficult to come by. There are a handful of clothing manufacturers who make long sizes or tall sizes, but even these are rarely long enough; some of them only start in waist sizes higher than mine, too, with their thinking being, I suppose, that if you’re tall you’re automatically bigger all around (and this may be true; just doesn’t work for me).

I’m still searching for a good source for shirts for tall women, but I have finally found a place to buy jeans! That are long enough! Some are even long enough for me to wear with heels!

It’s kind of a dirty little secret, though: it’s Alloy. Yes, http://alloy.com. The teen fashion and gossip website. Once I got over this, I ordered a pair of Paris Blues scoop pocket jeans in my size (well, they do odd-numbered teen sizes, but close enough) in….wait for it…a 37″ inseam!

See, teens like to wear their pants dragging on the ground, below their shoes; not a look I’d go for, but the concept works for me because the jeans designed for those slouchy kids are the perfect length for me. That pair works perfectly with heels; I promptly ordered another pair in a 35″ inseam and a pair of Truck Essentials (no, I’d never heard of that either) skinny jeans with a 35″ inseam. Perfect fits, both. The prices are amazing, too boot; $29.00 retail price but there was a 20% off sale on denim during the weeks I was ordering, so I paid about $60 total for 3 pairs of great-fitting, pretty fashionable jeans. Most of the styles seem to come in sizes 1-13 (I normally wear a 6-8, and a 9 worked for me).

And here I’d just been complaining about how annoying teenager

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Tags: fashion, jeans, review
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Twitter Followers/Blog Reader Correlation?: Measuring the influence of blogs

August 24th, 2009

Note: Please take the words “classic” and “traditional” and the like with a grain of new media salt.

Measuring the influence of blogs is a classic marketing dilemma. Even a few years ago, talking conversations about “getting through to these bloggers” translated roughly as “getting through to people who write in notebooks”. Our glorious glorious interweb makes it easier than pie for anybody motivated to make their message public to do so on a scale that I think we all need to constantly remind ourselves of.

Given the abundance of people shouting from the rooftops, the big question when one is identifying hubs and key influencers is “who is listening?”.

Traditionally, I’ve measured blog influence and relevance by trying to mash together a bunch of stats including Technorati rankings, Alexa stats if available, number of comments, frequency of posts….and I’ve been thinking about measuring the number of bit.ly hits, tweets, etc.

I’ll be taking some time over the next few days to try to put together a table of Twitter followers/blog subscribers/blog unique visitors for popular blogs over the next week or so, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear from all of you a) if you think there might be a correlation and b) if you have a blog, your stats (followers, subscribers, visitors - oh, and URL).

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