HCl's Profile

Sorry I don't have a link, but there is a cheesecake brownie recipe in a Hummingbird Bakery cookbook that uses a LOT of powdered sugar (and butter, wow), and they are amazing. It's like making chocolate frosting, but then you add a tiny bit of flour and bake them.

This may not exactly be relevant, but I just wanted to mention that it might be a good idea to focus on smaller pieces of chicken (thighs and drumsticks) and have more of them, rather than having equal numbers of all the chicken parts. I was recently at a (large) family event where fried chicken was catered, and they ran out of dark meat and were left with full trays of breasts that no one wanted. I know some people prefer white meat, but unless you're working with very small chickens I think the breasts are just too big for easy eating in this type of situation.

I am also confused by the number of wedding-related posts. While they may be interesting for some people, I'm betting those people are already reading actual wedding sites. For those of us who are not planning a wedding (and might be a little touchy on the subject, for any number of reasons) it's getting to be a pretty big turn-off.

As a kid, the 2-day car ride to my grandparents' house meant a stash of Pringles and miniature Twix, and usually a cooler full of sliced cheese and either homemade beef jerky or a sliced summer sausage. As an adult, I don't really take snacks with me. I don't get hungry or miss them, and I find it's nice to stop every 2 or 3 hours, get out of the car and walk around, and maybe get a pop or something (which is a treat because I don't normally have it at home.)

I used to have a TV that would randomly turn itself on. It was something to do with a faulty power switch. We got it fixed, and it never had that problem again. Do people still fix TVs, or are you just expected to buy another one?

I grew up in the suburbs, and I couldn't wait to get out. Spent a year living in an apartment in a city, and it was fine, but we ended up buying a house and settling in a VERY small rural town. The nearest grocery store is about 20 miles away, there is practically no crime, we can see the stars at night, and the birds are louder than any traffic noise. We don't have kids yet, but I love the idea that when we do, we will be living in a place where they can run around outside and walk to the county grade school. Even in the suburbs where I grew up, that kind of freedom didn't exist because there were so many people there that everyone was a potential creepy stranger. Plus, the nearest town of any size has a fairly large university and international population, so while we might be in the middle of nowhere, there's still access to multi-cultural food and events.

More veggies? I find that I can have either 2 tacos (not very filling) or the contents of those tacos on an enormous bowl of lettuce and other random veggies (very filling).
Have you tried subbing vegetables for all the carby filler foods? Like spaghetti squash or shredded summer squash instead of pasta, grated (or food processed) cauliflower instead of rice or couscous? Cabbage is usually pretty inexpensive, and can add a lot of bulk to various foods.
Coconut flour has a lot of fiber in it and can be very filling. It seems a bit expensive, but a little bit of it goes a LONG way as it soaks up more liquid than you would think. paleomg.com has several pancake recipes that are basically a bunch of eggs with fruit and a tiny bit of coconut flour. They're pretty good for low-carb pancakes.

I used to have a kitchen that was about that size. I had a small rolling cart (with basket drawers for storage) that I could roll in and out of the kitchen as needed. I also kept all my dishes, pots, pans, and most small appliances on a bookshelf in the living room. Most of my prep work (chopping, mixing, etc.) happened on a large cutting board that fitted over the sink, since there was about 2 inches of counter around the sink and nothing more. Having a kitchen that small turned out to be a lot less of a problem than I'd thought when I moved in, although it got SUPER hot in there during the summer if I cooked anything at all.

feet, not fee. Goodness.

Some people have to live with it, whether they want to or not. I bet living with some honest "Bohemian romance" doesn't usually involve being comfortable in any sense of the word. While I can appreciate the history behind some of these walls, and I can definitely find the beauty in peeling wallpaper in an abandoned building, I'm pretty sure I'd never want to live there. Most people wouldn't. And I have trouble identifying with people who are wealthy enough to think that adopting random symbols of poverty in order to be fashionable is acceptable. Living in a centuries-old farmhouse because it's your family home, I get that. Building a new house and installing pre-aged MDF cabinets in the kitchen, because you want your suburban middle-American mcmansion to "feel like Tuscany," is just gross.