Shameless self-promotion

I know I haven't written anything in about..two years.

I'm doing a project for a CS class. Basically, we're trying to get an image of a cute otter to be first on Google image search for the search term "Rankmaniac 2012" (without the quotes).

I'm going to post the link here and hope that this bumps us up a little higher.

Otters are so cute.
RankManiac 2012
RankManiac 2012

Totoro cream puffs

Made from the ever-amazing Anna the Red's recipe here.

It was the reunion of Awkward Hawk, Flailing Quail, and our fellow ornery fowl Duck.

I shall let the pictures speak for themselves.

Truffles, Asparagus Gruyere tart, Watermelon lime punch

I haven't posted for too long, but I have been making food, in addition to getting my act together. Roundup of the week:

Truffles, which ended up much soupier than expected, so they had to be served frozen and were more like frozen balls of extremely rich chocolate ice cream (no complaints here)


Watermelon lime mint punch, which was pretty pulpy but quite delicious! The watermelon wasn't as flavorful as I would have liked, but it was still good with sparkling water mixed in.


Asparagus Swiss tart (there was no gruyere at the grocery store, unfortunately)
The puff pastry made this quite delicious and also quite oily. It was all worth it, though.

In other news, I may start a daily sketch portion of the blog for the foreseeable future. Stay tuned!

Triumph and Fruit Tart

While in France this summer (a story that will be elaborated upon later), I had to provide my own lunches every day. This meant food on a budget, which meant lots of home cooking (no complaints here). Now, I'm not a cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know enough to be able to feed myself, even if it is mostly a diet of fried eggs and toast. Many of my fellow kitchen-dwellers this summer have opened my eyes up to the wonders of food knowledge and preparation, even in the simplest of dishes. The kitchen would be filled with the aroma of onions being fried to perfection, the faint waft of pasta, a sharp tang of spicy sausage, and the thick green scent of chopped vegetables.
And so, in that too-small kitchen with too many cooks, I told myself I would learn to cook and I would learn about cooking. My palate is not the most refined; fast food is still delicious to me, at least for the first two bites, and one of my favorite foods is mac and cheese. But still, by learning about ingredients and how they can recombine and complement each other, I hoped to be able to depart from following recipes to creating my own.

To that end, the first thing I decided to make upon my arrival back home was a fruit tart. Berries hold a special place in my heart, even though they're almost never as good as I think they are, and I have a soft spot for custard, so I often crave fruit tarts though I never buy them.
I followed the recipe here to make this, with some slight modifications. There was a small crisis near the middle of the process when I realized that my custard was nothing like the smooth, thick consistency custard is supposed to be. Instead, it was...bouncy. My mixing bowl contained a semi-solid rubbery lump, and I unsuccessfully fought urges to poke it and watch it jiggle. Luckily, in a last-ditch effort to save my custard abomination, I added in some extra milk and whisked it furiously. It revived itself and began resembling normal, creamy, delicious custard as I pretended my arm was a jet engine. With that fiasco miraculously avoided, the rest of the tart came together beautifully in a delectable collision of buttery crust, custard, and fresh fruit.

The number 32 is stuck in my head

In other news, the blog has been defunct for close to a year courtesy of school, laziness, and severe mental inertia. I, Flailing Quail, resolve to remedy this problem by posing another challenge to myself in a similar vein as last year's 30 day t-shirt challenge.

Though the rules of this challenge haven't been worked out in full detail, expect new posts with content soon. This week is experimental week to see what I can do with my time.

Challenge topics include:
Food (both delicious and delicious looking)
Functional objects constructed from cardboard/paper/string
Paintings and drawings
Graphic Design

What I hope to achieve:
Mental dexterity
Manual dexterity
Learning how to use my camera to make things look better than they are
Self-discipline
Blogging skills
Fame and recognition

Maybe not so much the last one, but we shall see what the future holds.

Watch out, because there's going to be a lot of flailing from here on out.

Back at school!

Been back at school for nearly a month, and it's been crazy times the whole way through. What with room decorating, biking to Massachusetts, classes, fixing computers, and other things life has been pretty hectic.

I will perhaps post pictures of my room once it becomes well decorated :D

Airport Boredom

Oh hai guys.

I'm sure Quail has kept you sufficiently amused or awed by her array of awesome shirts. :D I know I definitely want some of those.

But an update..I'm currently sitting in the airport...waiting for my flight. Me being the super experienced traveler I am (insert eyeroll), I thought getting to the airport and standing in line to check baggage and getting through security would take at least an hour and a half.

Shows what I know.

Hurhur so here I sit..and watching ANTM is getting boring...so I decided I might as well flex my linguistic muscles, which have been sitting latent for the past six months or so.

The hawk has been roosting uncomfortably in a three-story lab for the past ten weeks. And when I say roosting, I mean standing up for 9ish hours a day, playing with dangerous chemicals and getting liquid nitrogen thrown at me (one of my labmates seems to find that funny). But finally, FINALLY, I'm migrating back home. Not that hawks migrate. Do they? Gawd I need to take a ornithology class if I'm going to keep the name of this blog respectable.

In other news, it'll be good to go home and be able to wake up AFTER 9 AM. Though I've still got a crapton of data to analyze...but that can wait. Expect some exciting stories from the reunion of your two favorite birds. :)