Armageddon through a slinky, Around the World in 2000 Pictures, and a can of beans.

Today's amusement required wiring up a small transformer to turn a contact mic into a contact speaker. It's a little doohickey you buy at Radio Shack and then use backwards for something it was never intended to do as explained in the previously mentioned book that tells you how to do all of this fun stuff.

The connections on this one were a little tricky since there wasn't very much room. Also, soldering jacks is a pain.


Once that was all done and stylishly taped up, time to add the slinky, the book, the beans, a little pager motor that will make the slinky vibrate, a couple of more contact microphones, the tiny amp, a broken karaoke boom box, and a disembodied tape head and some bits of tape stuck to a notebook. Today's selections: some guy's country tape I got at a thrift store and Michael Bay's video classic Armageddon.



































































So what did it sound like? Kind of like Thor's really shitty Walkman. Pretty cool.

Baby's first contact mic.

My usual amusements are mostly fall and winter kinds of things. So what do bored ladies do in the summertime? Electronics projects, of course. For a while, at least, I'm going to be documenting my attempts at making interesting noises based on the projects in Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking.

So today's project: making a contact microphone out of a piezo disk. Considering that my soldering is pretty crappy and I have the steady hands of a woman three times my age, this was a little tricky.

Basically you stick the disk on one end of a piece of shielded cable and a jack on the other so you can plug it into an amp. Then you tape the hell out of everything in an attempt to keep your shitty soldering from shorting out and dip it in plastic paint.

Here's everything all soldered together before the taping and paint part:
















Dipped in the plastic goo and hanging up to dry:





















Look sharp, ambient hums.

Raspberry Cheesecake Brownies

These turned out pretty yummy. Brownie mix is maybe the biggest rip in the supermarket. You've probably got all the stuff you need already, and it really only takes like 3 mins longer. This is my standard cribbed-from-Mark-Bittman recipe, fancied up a little bit.

The Brownie Part:

• 1 stick butter
• 3 tbsp cocoa, plus a little more if you like it that way.
  
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
  
• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder if you want them cake-y. (I used this for the raspberry cheesecake version, but I don't just for regular brownies. If you leave the baking powder out, they're more like fudge that is cake.)
• 1/2 to 1 tsp (scant) cinnamon (optional, if you like it spicy.)
• pinch cayenne pepper (ditto)

Melt butter with cocoa, sugar, and vanilla over low heat. Stir until uniform, then turn off heat. You're really just melting the butter here, not cooking anything. Beat eggs slightly, then stir into mixture. Add flour and stir just until smooth. (At this point, if you want plain old brownies (and there's nothing wrong with that) scrape batter into pan and bake for about 20 mins at 350 degrees F.) Otherwise, forge on, dear reader.

Melt about 6 oz of raspberry preserves or all fruit or some such and drizzle over the brownie batter, reserving maybe two tablespoons or so.

The Cheesecake part:

• 8 oz Neufchatel or cream cheese, room temperature. (Here, I'm talking about the American kind, not the Frenchy kind. I didn't even know there was a Frenchy kind until I read this. I thought it was just some weird pseudo-French thing.
  
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 egg

Cream sugar and Neufchatel cheese. Add vanilla and slightly beaten egg and beat until uniform.
Spread over brownie/raspberry layer. Artfully blob the rest of the jam on top and swirl around with a toothpick. Bake for about 20-25 mins or until slightly puffy and just a touch brown. If you don't want these to fall apart when you cut them, you should let them cool completely.

Lovely Orange Mashed Potatoes

The other night I tried this variation on the usual garlic mashed potatoes I make. Turned out pretty good. If you're not used to the idea of savory sweet potatoes, this is a good intro. I likes 'em candied, but they're good for other things, too, and are really good for you.

• 2 med sweet potatoes, peeled and chunked up into pieces about 3/4 inch wide. (I say "chunked", because it's the best approximation of sliced our dull knives can do with such an unruly vegetable.)
• 2 baking potatoes (or, "ice" potatoes as my Mamaw would say. This confused us for years, until somebody realized that "ice", or "iche" was grandma for "Irish") Cut these to roughly the same size as the sweet potato chunks.
• about 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and trimmed. If you believe the recent stuff about how good the oxidized compounds in garlic are for you, chop them in big pieces and let them sit for about 10 mins.
• about 1/4 c. feta cheese or some other strong cheese you like (optional, if you're a sissy)
• 1/4 - 1/2 c. milk (cow or soy), fat free half and half (a wonderful mystery) or dairyish item of your choice)
• 4 tbsp butter

Using a large-ish pot, boil potatoes and garlic in just enough water to cover until tender enough to mash. Err on the side of more cooked rather than less. Drain and smash with a potato masher or ricer or fork or implement of your choice. Add butter and cheese, mash some more. Then add the milk until you get to the consistency you like. Add salt and pepper to taste, but remember the cheese is kinda salty so be sure to taste first.

Slightly Healthier Date Bars

Susan Richardson from Edna, MN is a date bar genius, an I mean her no slight, but since I don't take instruction well and I wanted something a little less butterific, I set to tinkering, resulting in this, my slightly better for you version of her fabulous date bar recipe. If you want straight up yummy and you just don't care, go with the original. But, if you want something you can rationalize as breakfast, try this one.

• 1 1/2 c. water
• 1 1/2 c. chopped pitted dates
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F'inheit. Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.

Simmer the dates in the water until very soft. Mush them up with a fork until it's just a kind of grody looking brown slurry. Don't think about it, just do it. Stir in the vanilla.

While the date goo is cooking, do this part.

• 1/2 c. white all purpose flour
• 1c. whole wheat flour
• 1 c. old fashioned oats (Not instant. Quick cooking might be ok, but I'm not promising anything because I use the slow kind).
• 1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 c. (4 tbsp) butter, slightly soft and chopped into smallish bits.
• 1/4 c. (plus maybe a little extra) olive oil (you could use some other kind of vegetable oil, but I use olive oil for everything, so there.)
• 3/4 c. walnuts

In a large-ish bowl, mix dry ingredients except walnuts. Use your fingers (or a pastry cutter if you're a freak or are hygenically impaired) to mush the butter into the flour-oat mixture. When it's mushed up to the point of being nearly undetectable, drizzle the olive oil on the flour mix and continue to smush. When it's all uniform and it holds its shape when you press it together, pour half of it in the prepared pan and press it down. Add the walnuts to the top and gently pat down. Spread the date goo over this layer and then evenly put the rest of the crumb mixture on top of that. Press down gently. You want to compact the stuff so that the top crust holds together, but you don't want to smush out the date goo. Bake for 40 mins. Let cool before cutting if you're the patient sort. If you're not, they just won't hold together as well. These are really good warm with a little vanilla ice cream on top.

Athens, GA Cupcake Alert

2 AM? Need a cupcake? No problem.

JB's by the 40 Watt will take care of you, and what a convenient location for apres-rock snacking. At $3 each, I was a little reluctant (not because that's an outrageous price for a really big homemade cupcake, but beause I'm really cheap), but they were sooo pretty I thought I'd splurge. It was totally worth it.

The one I got was strawberry cake with strawberry filling, cream cheese icing, all with a lovely strawberry on top. The baker also makes a key lime one that looked really good and a vanilla with blue icing and star sprinkles that I found sorely tempting. She said she also sometimes makes a chocolate peanut butter combo. Next time you're out late and feeling snacky but can't face the comeback sauce, you should give them a try.

Scrambled eggs with spinach, cheese, and potato chips.

Breakfast experiment for 12/10/07

I love eggs with stuff in them. I wanted something different this morning, and the cupboard was a little sparse. This is what resulted.

Scramble 4 eggs in a teensy bit of olive oil with (I do 2 whole eggs and 2 egg whites) a tablespoon or so of milk, some garlic powder, a little thyme, and a little sharp cheddar cheese. When about 3/4 done, add some torn up spinach (about a 1/2 c. or so) that's nearly-too-grody-for-salad-but-still-ok-for-cooking and continue cooking until eggs are as done as you like them and spinach is wilted. Add about 2 tbsp of crunched up potato chips (leftover from casserole topping, in my case) just as they finish cooking. Pretty good. We had these with pita toast made with a little olive oil, thyme, and sesame seeds.