resistance, as they say...

is futile. i gave myself over to mcdonald's for lunch and will be giving myself over to a massage after work and then takeout for dinner as we're going over to momma and poppa d's to decorate the xmas tree tonight and they're grabbing takeout for us.

we haven't seen them in forever, i hope i don't say anything weird in my post-massage haze.

then i have to come home and make labels and address a billion xmas cards and make the dotytron sign them and finish the individual tarts for the dinner at J & S's (my profs) house tomorrow. they're making indian food, which tends to be kind of warm and thick and round and heavy flavoured from long-simmering times so i decided to make something light and sweet and cloud-like. i found a recipe on tartelette's blog for a banana cream pie with chocolate and caramel but i made some alterations. in the original recipe there's a layer of bittersweet chocolate ganache on the bottom of the tart shell, then caramel, then pastry cream, then sliced bananas. i'm going to do the ganache, then i'm mixing the salted caramel WITH the pastry cream (and possibly lightening further with whipped cream folded in) and topping with bananas that i may brulee (i gotta test the torch tonight). it should be a sweet-salty combo that should provide a nice counterpoint to indian food (i hope!)

roll call of awesome (a new blog installment):

a roland 808 pillow. totally amazing, but not 99 EUROS amazing (how can you justify that when we're in the grips of a WORLDWIDE recession?

right now i'm totally crushing hard on paul volcker (i've been subsisting on a steady diet of financial blogs and volcker seems like THE MAN):

joseph stiglitz also deserves pride of place here (for now...i have to brush up on my keynes i guess - shudder).

this, this, and this from my favorite diversion from everyday life, the best week ever blog.

this comic:

and finally, this:



fin.