Insane weather

The remnants of Tropical Storm Hermaine (What a lame name. I nominate it for David's fantasy team this year) passed through DFW today which created minor havoc. Massive amounts of rain made for really bad driving- I ended up holed out in a coffee shop for a couple hours- especially when people drive without their lights on.

On my way home the radio was buzzing with tornado warnings, watches, sightings and alarms. There was in fact one tornado which touched down pretty near downtown, and was headed near our apartment (but ended up going pretty far west, on it's way to Oklahoma instead).
(not my video)

Some more culinary exploits

First an update: That lasagna with pesto and such? Freakin' amazing. Like the best lasagna I've ever had. I've been rationing the leftovers because whenever I eat one piece I consider eating the rest of it.

But on to the next thing. We got a little more adventurous and made tamales last week. It was an interesting experience. First off, the corn husks had a weird vinegar smell to them, possibly so they don't mold? Then after spending a while researching (mostly watching Good Eats) we figured out (to my surprise) that fine cornmeal and maza (with which you traditionally make tameles) are not the same thing. But we trekked on. (It turns out that 'hot tamales', an actual food, not just a candy that no one eats, are made with cornmeal, so there is some precedent).

Here's the dough, which is blue cornmeal (cool color), water, shortening (usually lard), and spices- we used oregano, and lime zest.


We made the filling with fresh corn, black beans, jack cheese, cilantro, and lime juice.


The assembly line:

Here are the pretty packages cooking:

We don't have a steamer so I put an upside-down pie plate in the bottom of the pot (I think that's an Alton Brown trick but I can't remember) and put them around and on top of that. And it's here that we ran into the slight problem. Twice the water boiled all out and burned...well a lot- the bottom of the pot, the pie pan, the ends of the tamales. Lucky for us, tamales have their own protective shell. So the results were still very tasty, although the pot is now warped. At least it didn't get a hole burned through it.
Purple and delicious:

Getting on the soapbox

So my orchestra at UNT is playing a pretty cool event in the new Cowboys Stadium. It's sort of a hype up to the Super Bowl (you can check it out here) We're playing random "NFL Movies" music whatever that means. It's pretty cheesy but still fun. And we might possibly be accompanying Tim McGraw. There's going to be a bunch of old famous footballers- Emmitt Smith, and Roger Staubach, etc...

Anyway, I'm psyched to be doing this. Unfortunately the logistics of it are pretty annoying. On both Thursday and Friday I have to drive up to Denton (should be only 30 min, but has been longer recently) and then get on the bus to go to Arlington (probably an hour). Stupidly, the bus will almost drive past my apartment.

So to make it easier I looked into finding another way home- ie public transportation. And lo and behold there isn't any. How do they get 80,000 people into this stadium with no buses, trains, trolleys, nada. Not to mention all the Rangers games that happen next door. Arg...