I baked a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but they came out too sweet. I'll give most of them away, but meanwhile, how to salvage what's left... Mmm cheesecake... cheesecake with chocolate chip oatmeal cookie crust... The filling was based off of this recipe, cut in half. The cheesecake was a little less dense, more custard-like than I'm used to, and I had overcompensated when I cut the sugar. Next time I'll try 1/2 cup.
Cookie Crust Cheesecake
1-1/2 cups oatmeal chocolate chip cookie crumbs
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
3/8 1/2 cup white sugar
3/8 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoons maraschino liquor
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Press crumbs into 9 inch pie plate. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Blend in milk, and then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate. Mix in sour cream, vanilla, maraschino, and flour until smooth. Pour filling into prepared crust. Bake for 45 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Cookie Crust Cheesecake
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Dirty Rice (and Meat and Beans)
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 pound ground turkey
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoons vegetable bouillon
2.25 cups water
1 cup uncooked brown rice
1 can pinto beans
Sear peppers in skillet with a bit of oil. Set aside. Sear onions until browning. Add garlic, and continue to cook for a minute. Add turkey and spices. Cook until turkey is done. Add water, rice, bouillon and beans. Cook ~40 min, stirring occasionally, until rice is almost done. Add seared peppers and finish cooking.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Quinoa Tabbouleh
I adapted this recipe from the Wheat Berry Tabbouleh recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I made a couple substitutions and changed the proportions to my liking.
Cook:
2/3 c quinoa
1 T olive oil
1 cloves garlic, minced
I rinse my quinoa and then heat it with olive oil and garlic until the garlic is starting to brown, then I add the 1 c water and simmer it like rice until it's done. Let it cool to room temperature.
---
Mix in:
1 cucumber, peeled and diced
1 large bunch parsley, washed and chopped
1/4 c diced sweet onion
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/4 c olive oil
1/8 c capers (optional)
salt, pepper to taste
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When you're ready to serve, add:
2 cherry tomatoes, quartered, per 1 c serving
I don't like to refrigerate my tomatoes - they lose all of their flavor, so I just add tomato as I eat it. You might want to adjust the dressing. I didn't measure this, but I think it made around 6 cups. With these proportions, it's about half veggie, half grain.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Cream Cheese Brownies
This recipe is based off of Fudgy Brownies from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I've made a few changes to reduce sugar increase yumminess.
-
1 cup butter
- Melt butter and 6 oz. chips in large bowl in microwave. (Don't let the chips burn. Stir once butter melts.)
- Meanwhile, grease a 9 x 13 inch pan, and preheat oven to 350.
- Stir chocolate butter mixture. Add eggs, one at a time, beating with a wooden spoon until just combined. Stir in vanilla and remaining chips.
- In a small bowl, sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder and baking soda. Combine wet and dry mixtures, mixing until just combined.
- Spread half of batter into pan. Slice cream cheese onto batter, distributing evenly over the entire area. Spread rest of batter over the layer of cream cheese.
- Bake at 350 for ~35 minutes.
12 oz. semi sweet chocolate chips (divided)
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup flour
1 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
8 oz. low fat cream cheese
Friday, March 18, 2011
My Atheist Deconversion
The original intent of this blog was to foment philosophical discussion, not to talk about my personal life. I guess that's why I never posted about my own deconversion on a blog that is largely about atheism and the irrationality of religious belief. I've talked about it before in various places in various levels of detail, but I never put it out there for the general public, and never in a venue where I would be expected to answer for it. Here, perhaps overdue, is my deconversion story.
My mother brought us up in a pseudo-Christian new age belief system, but my father was agnostic, so the idea that my mom could be wrong was present from early on. Still, I generally believed in her spirituality until about the time I hit high school. By then, I was too keenly aware of the suffering around the world to be able believe in an all knowing, all loving god, all powerful god. It was the problem of evil - evidence weighted with emotion - that first shook my faith. If genocide, famine and torture in far off countries could way so heavily on my own happiness, then a god of infinite compassion and capacity would not stand idly by and allow it to continue. But I still believed in some sort of afterlife, a soul, a different plane of existence. I just didn’t know what it was.
I continued more or less as an agnostic with spiritual leanings until age 25, when personal trauma began to erode at my faith. The problem of evil was no longer abstract and distant, but personal and omnipresent. It was no longer possible to ignore the dissonance between what I wanted to believe and what I witnessed and experienced. I could no longer support any belief in compassionate force that interacted with the world. I spent the next couple of months desperately searching for conclusive evidence, one way or the other, for any god and any form of continued existence after death. I could find neither, and I eventually sunk in a life-consuming funk.
Several months into my funk, I was listening to Terry Gross interview some British guy about religion and non-belief. He pointed out that it isn’t reasonable to assume that something exists by default, and that it doesn’t default to a 50/50 chance of existence, either. In most of our lives and in science in general, we don’t believe in something until we find positive evidence. And there’s absolutely no reason to give the supernatural a special exemption from this rule. I gave it a couple hours to sink in and let my mind stew over what he had said, and by the end of the day, I realized he was right: in the absence of solid positive evidence, there was no reason to believe in any kind of god or life after death. I gave up my search and accepted atheism.
Since then, my time spent with the online atheist community has lead me to the realization that I have never been presented with a coherently defined god concept. The very idea of a disembodied intelligence, a mind without a physical brain, is nonsensical, and omnipotence is in itself self-contradictory. Atheists are sometimes asked what it would take for them to change their minds. For me, this would be positive, empirical evidence for a god. But until I am presented with a god concept that is logically coherent and consistent with our knowledge of the nature of the universe, it doesn’t make sense to talk about what the evidence for a poorly-defined, physically impossible entity would look like.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Gender Identity and Sexuality
I'm turning 30 this spring and I'm still trying to figure out my sexual orientation. I'm like Ted Haggard, in that my sexuality doesn't fit in a little box. And I'm a mega church pastor who smokes meth with prostitutes. No, wait, only the first part.
I grew up on a small town in rural PA. I thought I might be bi, but no one was out in my school of ~500 students. I didn't date in high school anyway; I was unpopular, and the guys that I liked didn't like me.
Twelve years later, I've only had two serious relationships. Both involved men, and I'm still with the second one. Am I straight? I don't know. I've only ever had actual, heart-throbbing crushes on men, but as far as porn goes, I'm mainly interested in pictures of women. I think I would enjoy sex with a woman, and I don't see why I couldn't fall in love with one, especially if she were kind of androgynous or butch acting. The men I'm most attracted to also have a certain amount of androgyny to them: gays, bis, transvestites. I guess I'm attracted to gender benders. Is there a word for that?
As far as gender identity, I align myself with Team Woman, but I don't really identify too strongly as one. I feel more androgynous. I hate shopping - malls are obnoxious, and I can never find what I want. I'm more intellectual than intuitive. As far as clothing goes, comfort and functionality almost always trump style. When I put on makeup, it's like a costume. I have a very feminine body: small hands and feet, slight build, small waist-to-hip ratio, delicate facial features. I can pull off "woman" far easier than I could ever pull off "man," and sometimes it's fun to dress up like an attractive woman. I like the attention, sometimes. But just because I'm wearing a dress, that doesn't mean I want you to carry my bags or hold doors for me. That doesn't give me a sudden appreciation for musical theater or romance novels. It doesn't make me prefer a spa over a climbing wall. I am what I am.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Drawing Mohammad
I drew Mohammed. I posted the picture to FaceBook on the appropriate day (May 21). I'm posting it here, too, because I want a link that is publicly accessible. Stand back in shock... and awe.
