How did I live in Kona for 6 months and never hear about this?

The tour is new, but why are the "well-known Kona cacao farm" and Big Island Chocolate Festival news to me? Next time  (if/when) I find myself on the island, this is at the top of my to-do list.

What a coincidence

Just made pizza yesterday, and this pops up on Facebook today. Just might have to give it a try.

How to reheat pizza. Because it's true, the microwave does ruin it.

Update: Gave it a try and it heated really well, although it took a while to get the toppings nice and hot, so I'm not sure it's any faster than reheating it in the oven. But it did heat and the crust stayed nice and crispy.

Proof that Twitter has a sense of humor

Got this recommendation from Twitter and thought it was hilarious.

I love people who can make me laugh and anyone who puts Hilary Clinton in the same category as Frank Underwood (you sly fox you) has made that list.

Bonus points for it being at least partially based on my following Dept. of Internet, a recently created account for a satirical website spoofing the potential takeover of the internet via Net Neutrality.

Well played, Twitter. Hopefully the government will keep its dirty mitts off the internet and we can have a few more of these.

Ten books that have never left you

This popped up in my email a while back. Here are mine (in no particular order):

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
The best thing I've ever read about the audacity of hypocrisy and the cult of personality. Gantry's gift of gab is exceeded only by his hubris and shamelessness. Lewis took a lot of grief for setting his story in the world of evangelism, but it could have been set pretty much anywhere.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Witnessing Lily Bart's long, humiliating decline in the society world she inhabits is heartwrenching. A smart beauty who aspires to more than just a suitable, loveless marriage - but equally unwilling to give up the good life by marrying solely for love - Lily turns out to be a little too smart for her own good, but not smart enough to understand that she can't buck the system in which she resides.

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
The crown jewel of Ellroy's first L.A. Quartet and the basis for one my favorite movies ever. An epic story of corruption and redemption in 1950's-era LAPD in which no one escapes unscathed.

Queenpin by Megan Abbott
A brutal, take-no-prisoners tale of a ruthless female mobster and her unexpectedly quick learning protogee.

The Shining by Stephen King 
I can still remember finishing this book and being blown away by how I couldn't shake the tragic fate that befell the Torrance family. The loss of husband/father Jack Torrance, to me, was as disturbing as any horror the Overlook Hotel could throw at its unfortunate guests.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
"Gregor Samsa awoke to discover he had turned into a giant cockroach." Not sure which of Gregor's fates were worse - turning into a giant bug, or finding out how inconvenient and disposable he is to his own family once he is no longer able to financially support them.

Black Gold by Marguerite Henry
One of the many equine books I devoured as a horse-crazy girl, Black Gold is the fact-based tale of the ill-fated 1924 Kentucky Derby winner. Even as a child I can remember being surprised that a kid's book would end with the untimely death of such a beautiful animal, and being saddened by his decline after winning one of the most famous races in the world despite his humble background.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Famous for its startling twist ending, this was my introduction to Christie's famous, fussy Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot has retired to the small village of King's Abbott to do nothing more taxing than tending to his garden, but the mysterious death of a prominent local pulls him into a murder investigation.

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King
One of King's collections of short stories from the 80's, along with Graveyard Shift. Probably the most famous story to come out of Skeleton Crew was The Mist, which became a feature film in 2007, but there were three lesser-vaunted stories in particular that really got their hooks into me: time traveling tale The Jaunt, Word Processor of the Gods, in which a writer with a miserable family life receives a supernatural gift from beyond the grave and in his office, and the horrific Survivor Type, featuring a shipwrecked doctor who will do anything to survive. And I mean anything.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
The book that unleashed Dexter Morgan on an unsuspecting world. Dexter is the darkly humorous story of a sociopathic serial killer who was trained (by his adopted father, a cop) to target only individuals who have slipped through the cracks of the law enforcement and legal systems in order to elude capture. It spawned several follow-up novels (including the upcoming Dexter is Dead) and the hit Showtime series.

Alternative culinary school: Salted TV

This popped up as a sponsored post on Facebook today, and after poking around I decided to give it a try: Salted Video Cooking School.

It doesn't look like a traditional, linear program, but having covered some things in culinary school that I probably won't do again due to personal preference, I don't mind being able to pick and choose what to work on. They also have some less traditional courses, including cocktails, game days, date nights and holidays.

A real upside is the cost: $9.99 per month after a free 30-day trial. Obviously I'll need to buy my own ingredients, but that's still a really low financial gamble, especially since you can quit at any time.

Here are a few of their offerings:

I have never heard of this, but it is beyond awesome and hilarious

Behold, the very aptly named Shame-Faced Crab:

He's so ashamed, he doesn't want you to even look at him.

I gotta get over to the Natural History Museum.

Goodies for The Brother's office

Made Dried Cherry Shortbread (from The Art of the Cookie) and Raspberry Palmiers. For next time: cut the amount of raspberry jam in half. Used way too much.

Apparently the office loved the goodies and pretty much devoured them by the end of the day. And it wasn't exactly early when I made the delivery.

It's crazy how well See's knows me

Then again, who doesn't need a Rocky Road Football?

Such a deal

Last summer I started piecing together my All-Clad collection, thanks to tons of the stuff turning up at places like Home Goods and Marshall's. It's still expensive, but it would be even more expensive if I was buying it full price.

My Mom has also been keeping an eye out for pieces when she's out shopping and found this 8-quart stockpot right before Christmas, so it was one of my gifts:

Actually, it compares at about $300 on Amazon, but still, good deal.

I'm going to break it in tomorrow with a batch of my Grandma's Beef Vegetable Stew. I haven't made it in ages and we're having soup weather, so I think it's about time.

Something I just realized about the cat's Christmas gift...

...is that I pretty much paid ten bucks for an empty box.

So spoiled.

More cooking school drama

The hits just keep coming.

This week is when I should have started my full-time baking and pastry program. I had decided to switch to what is referred to as the "Pro" program (once a week for five months) but when I woke up yesterday (the first day), I just wasn't feeling it. This isn't what I signed up for and I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it. I started out looking at 30 hours per week, then down to 13-1/2, now down to four hours per week. And some of the Pro classes repeat stuff I already covered in culinary school.

So I made another decision. This isn't what I was sold. It isn't what I signed up for. I had no desire to get out of bed.

I've decided I'm not going to do this program. I'll look around for some other programs. Maybe I can find something that's really full-time that doesn't require two years out of my life, but if not I can just take recreational classes to cover baking and pastry stuff we didn't cover in culinary.

I'm so bummed about the way this turned out.

Do the right thing

One of the things on my Mom's Christmas list was the Season 13 DVD of Poirot. We're both big fans and these are the final Poirot episodes, as the series has just ended.

I ordered the DVD from Amazon along with a couple other items. And as Christmas approached, the other items, which shipped separately, arrived but Poirot did not. A few days before Christmas, I checked to see the status of the order and was horrified to find that per Amazon, it had been delivered a week earlier. We've had some packages go missing at my apartment complex, but the DVD by itself would have fit in my mail box and wouldn't have been left out where it could be snatched. To make things worse, there was no longer enough time to reorder it in time for Christmas.

I reported this to Amazon and to my amazement, they replied that they would assume the item had been lost in the mail and would process a refund immediately, which they did. Even better, my local Barnes & Noble had the DVD in stock (albeit a bit more expensive), so Mom got her Christmas gift.

Then on the Monday following Christmas the DVD shows up in my mailbox. For some reason I hadn't ordered a copy for myself, so I decided to keep it. I reported this to Amazon - asking that they reverse the refund - and received this response:

They appreciate my honesty. There's something sad about that.

Always a pleasure doing business with Amazon.