Sunday Things

– I made a taco salad for dinner, and it was delicious. To make the shell, I oiled (sprayed with Pam) and salted both sides of a high-protein tortilla, draped it over a metal bowl, and stuck it in a 350F oven until it was crunchy (5-10 minutes?). It’s not exactly restaurant style, but it’s a heck of a lot healthier, and I still enjoyed it. Of course, now I’m thinking about the taco salad that Little Angie’s in Duluth makes. It might be time for my annual trip up there.
– True to my word (well, eventually), I tried making my own Smacks today. Well, I used puffed brown rice instead of puffed wheat. In a saucepan, I melted a tablespoon of butter and added 1 tbsp brown sugar, 2 tbsp honey, and 3 tbsp maple syrup (I would’ve used all honey, but I was running low). Once it was bubbling, I added a splash of vanilla (maybe 1/4 tsp?), a dash of salt, and 1/4 tsp baking soda. I figured that Smacks are basically a wheat version of caramel corn, so I based my ingredients very loosely on caramel corn recipes I’ve used in the past. After mixing in the soda, I poured the syrup over the entire 10-cup bag of puffed rice (in a bowl, of course), tossed it to coat, and then spread the rice out on two baking sheets. Into the oven for ten minutes — the first five at 350F, the next five at 250F. It gets crisper once it starts to cool, which it should do completely before you put it in a storage container. If it’s still warm, I’m guessing it would form condensation and go manky quickly. The result is lightly sweetened cereal; if I would have used half the bag (or doubled the syrup), it would’ve been a bit more like Smacks.
– I added a few more Birdy photos to my pet set on flickr. She and Beany aren’t friends quite yet, but Beany’s slowly relaxing. In response to people who’ve asked where the name ‘Birdy’ came from: I decided a while after getting Beany (and thus forming a B-y theme with cat names) that my next cat, if it were a boy, would be called Bertie (as in Wooster). The obvious alternate for a female cat was ‘Birdy’, which is said the same way with an American accent.