Sculpin

“Best pumpkins ever!” said some of our trick-or-treaters. Here’s the whole set of jack-o-lanterns.

I did the cat, skull, and big-mouth jack-o-lanterns, as well as the vaguely Balinese-ish one on the left. (It’s a self-portrait. Sorta.) Josh did the tiki, the rabbity one, the cyclops, and most of the gnawer/gnawee pair. (I figured out the gnawer’s eyes.)

My thanks to the artists, whoever they are, who did the original art on which the cat monster and sugar skull jack-o-lanterns are based. Those images had been kicking around in my files for a while and now I have no idea where they came from.

This sugar skull took me about six hours to carve.

Previous jack-o-lanternery: 2006, 2005, 2004.

These are my links for October 11th through October 26th:

• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – Make a Robotic Snap-O-Lantern! – It’s a jack-o-lantern with a toothy hinged jaw that slowly opens and then snaps shut menacingly. SNAP!
• SD10 – About Paper Grain – Finally I begin to get it.
• Gore Derangement Syndrome – New York Times – “What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?”
• blog.talkingphilosophy.com — The Little Red Hen – Putting the Little Red Hen into one context or another.
• Bennett Robot Works: Robot Index 1 – So neat! (Adrian, these made me think of you.)

I’ve been loopy these last couple of weeks. First I got a mild sinus infection. Then I threw out my lower back. Then I strained the bejeezus out of at least one intercostal muscle. (If you’ve never done this, the pain is weirdly knifelike.) Bah! So there I was, popping aspirin and going into sleep deprivation; couldn’t sleep on my back because of the back pain, couldn’t sleep on my side because of the rib pain, had my chest tied together with an Ace bandage. Couldn’t even yawn. Sure as heck didn’t get much done. Thank goodness that’s over. I’m still feeling a little squirrelly and off-kilter from it all.

But when I look back at this last lousy week, one memory comes shining through, redeeming the whole week: biscuits. If learning to make these biscuits is all I managed to accomplish this last week, it’s still plenty. I got this recipe from Melissa of Pix-y Sticks, and it is diabolically good. My old drop biscuit recipe is as nothing compared to this. All the notes are hers. Incidentally, she’s not kidding about it being sticky.

Melissa’s Cheddar Garlic Biscuits

Makes 10-14 biscuits, depending on the size.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 cup slightly softened butter [1]
• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic, minced very finely [2]
• 1 cup grated sharp cheddar [3]
• 1 cup milk

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Sift the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, cream of tartar & sugar) into a bowl [4].
3. Cut in the butter with a fork or pastry cutter until the bowl is full of coarse crumbs [5].
4. Mix in the minced garlic.
5. Stir in the cheese [6].
6. Make a well in the middle and pour in the cup of milk.
7. Stir quickly with a fork, just enough to moisten all the ingredients and have the dough follow the fork around the bowl.
8. Drop biscuits on to an ungreased cookie sheet [7]. Remember that they will increase half again in size and plan accordingly.
9. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Variations:

• Traditional Biscuits: Cut milk down to 3/4 cup, turn out the dough on a flour surface and knead it for 10 to 12 strokes. Roll dough out to 1/2 an inch thick and cut out rounds with a glass, biscuit cutter or cookie cutter. These will be more traditional biscuits.
• Adding More Flavor: Add half a cup of grated parmesan or green onions to the mix.

Notes:
[1] Shortening can be used instead, but I really recommend using real butter. It does a lot for the flavor. I usually leave it out of the fridge for half an hour before I make the biscuits or 15-30 seconds in the microwave will soften it up easily.
[2] This is a suggestion. The garlic should really be to taste. I often use more than this, but some people prefer less.
[3] Again, this is to taste. You may find that you prefer more or less cheese.
[4] Sifting will mix these better, but I also just toss them all in and mix well with a fork, which mixes them better than using a spoon.
[5] Simplest way to do this is to take a fork and push the butter against the sides of the bowl. Keep doing so, while mixing it in with the flour until the butter is in tiny pieces totally coated with the flour mix. A pastry knife is faster, but a fork will always work in a pinch. In general, the more you cut, the better the biscuits will turn out.
[6] The cheese and garlic are mixed separately because the cheese will stop the garlic from being mixed in well, if you add them at the same time or reverse the order.
[7] Since the mix is sticky, I find it’s easy to use two spoons to create batter balls and then drop them on to the cookie sheet.

Thanks, Melissa!

These are my links for October 2nd through October 8th:

• Boston Review — Slave Trade On Trial – Lessons of a great human-rights law success.
• jaylake: [fiction] “The Last Days of Yokohama Sid’s Used Ferris Wheel Lot” – A hallucination in ten voices.
• Organic, and Tastier: The Rat’s Nose Knows – New York Times – A chitosan solution markedly raised the production of aromatic compounds in basil. This sounds like something I’d like to try at home.
• Think Before You Pink – Introduces the term “pinkwashers”: companies that say they care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon campaign, but manufacture products that actually promote the disease. (Hint: feeling good about that pink PVC bottle of water? Think again.)
• Save Boeing Surplus! – Boeing Surplus is closing its doors? Nooooooo!

Something in today’s home fix-it column in the PI had me scratching my head.

For a small spackling job with easy cleanup, cut a tennis ball in half and fill it with spackling mixture. Dip the spackling tool into the half-ball and, when finished, toss the ball.

My spackling career has not been especially ambitious, so it is possible that I’m missing something here. But why on earth would you go through all the trouble of cutting a tennis ball in half — not as easy as it sounds — when you could just use an clean yogurt cup? Heck, you could probably use a ziplock bag. Or any other small disposable container, really. I’m flummoxed.