Kitchen Green Thumb and Liz Biscuits

While preparing some stir-fry and baking red velvet cupcakes

last Wednesday, my friends and I decided to try out a nifty Martha Stewart-ish trick I had overheard on the FoodNetwork. We only used the green sections of the green onions for our main course and put the remaining white bulbs in some water. After a week I was pleasantly surprised to find over 4 inches of healthy green leaves sprouted from each bulb! YAY! I wonder what other greens I can grow in water as simply as these...

After making the red velvet cupcakes I wanted to find a quick and easy way to use up my nearly full pint of buttermilk, without having to use another stick of butter to accompany it. This was quite hard to find... so I came up with my own biscuit recipe. These biscuits are soft, fluffy and flavorful, but not as flaky as the typical buttermilk biscuit with the added butter. (They are quite a bit healthier too... even though baking, health and deliciousness don't usually go hand in hand). Given how easy and quick these were to make, I'll definitely be using this recipe again.

Liz Biscuits

Prep time 10 minutes

Baking time 10 minutes

10 biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour (and more for dusting the board and your hands)
3/4 cup buttermilk (approx)

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 T olive oil (any kind you like)

1/4 c grated parmesean cheese (optional to your tastes)

1/8 c crumbled feta cheese (optional to your tastes)

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Combine all the dry ingredients and add the olive oil. Add the buttermilk until the mixture is just combined. Flip the mixture out onto a floured surface. With floured hands, pat the dough until about half inch thick and cut out biscuits with a cutter (I used a small tumbler). Place them on a floured or greased cookie sheet. If you don't plan on eating or baking the entire batch, just place the extra biscuits on their own baking sheet and put the entire thing into the freezer. Once they harden, transfer them into a ziploc for storage. I think this will prevent them from sticking together.

This is great

funny asian baby burger
Originally uploaded by feed scott

Baked Goodies

Rather than write, here are some pictures of some cinnamon buns I baked semi-recently:

The Fun Begins...

Let's dive right in... First, a major disclaimer: I have never been one to keep steady written entries of anything.  I've always been too easily distracted, bored/boring, busy/lazy... let the excuses roll on, to keep up with blogs or diaries.

That said, WELCOME!

So, what spurred me to start this blog, given my aforementioned defects? I felt strangely compelled to respond to this posting, regarding the associations between the display of body language and level of acquaintance-ship while passing by collegemates on campus.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the post and the analysis, I couldn't but help to go "liz" on it... sorry Pablo.

Disclaimer number 2... should be implicit of most if not all following blog entries and liz.  Sarcasm rules me.

1) In this highly scientific and objective analysis... Should body language be independent of oratorical recognition?

While Hi, Heys, What's ups and How's it goings could be grouped under "Facial Acknowledgment", doing so would take out subtle but implicit factor of time in all such interactions. This does not mean that someone saying "How's it going?" (HIG) expects a full account of your day, mood and feelings, but it does mean that there was sufficient time in passing that allowed them to pull off the phrase, whereas a "Hi" would've left empty space and potential awkwardness.

Therefore, a troublesome problem arises, is the HIG a reflection of a friend-type taking the time to throw out a HIG, or someone trying to portray friend-type but really trying to swallow up passing time by filling it with a content-less greeting? Hmmm. Something to think about.

2) Zombie Walkers

This topic is particularly dear to me because I am neither an iPod wearer, cell-phone fiend, or shoe starer.  I tend to walk, staring forward at my destination, to point where everything else blurs.  In attempt to include others like me (if there are any out there), here are some words.  

Zombie Walkers don't mean to be mean or purposely ignore others.  They need someone to snap them out of the "zone", be it a close face to face eye contact smile, wave or straight up shove.  Because such a "zone" exists, the reaction of a zombie walker to the potential acquaintance is particularly valuable for the friendship evaluation.  Getting snapped out of the zone doesn't give the zombie walker enough time to fake a reaction or genuine emotion. 

Smile: I like you, thank you for saying HI, friend.  Frown/twisted eyebrow face eventually fading into a smile: I don't like you/I don't know you, why did you wake me from my zone, but I don't want to offend you so I'll throw you a smile. Expressionless: I am still in the zone, wake me!

Despite the ease of reading Zombie Walker (ZW) - regular person passing interactions, one could never evaluate Zombie Walker - Zombie Walker interactions... for obvious reasons. 

Despite the weirdness factor, and potential walking-into-things hazards, there are advantages to being a ZW. Unlike regular people, you are only stopped/awakened by people who genuinely like you, who else would expend so much energy to distract you? Time flies when you're zoning out. Potentially awkward encounters are avoided because no encounter is made.

The end.