But she's craving comfort food, and I can hardly blame her. You can only do so much soup and tea. She wants brownies, but no power means no oven--her gas one has electronic controls. So here's what I told her to do. Fire up the charcoal grill--in the backyard--and grab the Dutch oven out of the camping gear (mine lives in the regular cupboard since I use it even when not camping). Take some brownie mix, or mix up your favorite recipe if you're feeling ambitious, and dump the whole mess into the pot. You might want to butter your pan, but mine is so cured nothing would dare stick to it, especially not a buttery batch of brownies. Now, take the whole covered mess out to the grill, use nice long handled tongs to put 16 coals on top, leaving 8 coals below. Set the timer for 20 minutes, then come and pull the pot off the coals. Another five minutes and you can scrape the coals off the top and use them to roast weenies or whatever. You could cool the brownies and cut them into pieces, but I'm not inclined to do that. Grab a spoon instead. They should be nice and gooey and make you forget all about wind and trees and downed power lines.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Heat, no brownies
That's right, five days after the storm, and I've got a girlfriend still without power. Her genius husband (really, he is excruciatingly intelligent) finally figured that it would be more energy-efficient to hook up the generator to the blower motor on their gas furnace than to run electric space heaters. So they're warm.
But she's craving comfort food, and I can hardly blame her. You can only do so much soup and tea. She wants brownies, but no power means no oven--her gas one has electronic controls. So here's what I told her to do. Fire up the charcoal grill--in the backyard--and grab the Dutch oven out of the camping gear (mine lives in the regular cupboard since I use it even when not camping). Take some brownie mix, or mix up your favorite recipe if you're feeling ambitious, and dump the whole mess into the pot. You might want to butter your pan, but mine is so cured nothing would dare stick to it, especially not a buttery batch of brownies. Now, take the whole covered mess out to the grill, use nice long handled tongs to put 16 coals on top, leaving 8 coals below. Set the timer for 20 minutes, then come and pull the pot off the coals. Another five minutes and you can scrape the coals off the top and use them to roast weenies or whatever. You could cool the brownies and cut them into pieces, but I'm not inclined to do that. Grab a spoon instead. They should be nice and gooey and make you forget all about wind and trees and downed power lines.
But she's craving comfort food, and I can hardly blame her. You can only do so much soup and tea. She wants brownies, but no power means no oven--her gas one has electronic controls. So here's what I told her to do. Fire up the charcoal grill--in the backyard--and grab the Dutch oven out of the camping gear (mine lives in the regular cupboard since I use it even when not camping). Take some brownie mix, or mix up your favorite recipe if you're feeling ambitious, and dump the whole mess into the pot. You might want to butter your pan, but mine is so cured nothing would dare stick to it, especially not a buttery batch of brownies. Now, take the whole covered mess out to the grill, use nice long handled tongs to put 16 coals on top, leaving 8 coals below. Set the timer for 20 minutes, then come and pull the pot off the coals. Another five minutes and you can scrape the coals off the top and use them to roast weenies or whatever. You could cool the brownies and cut them into pieces, but I'm not inclined to do that. Grab a spoon instead. They should be nice and gooey and make you forget all about wind and trees and downed power lines.
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