April 21, 2005
If you would like to email His Holiness you can shoot one off to him at
Make sure you tell him the Cake Eater sent you!
UPDATE: Please don't email/comment to tell me I'm just setting him up for spam by not spelling out the "at," etc. It makes sense to me that the "God's Rottweiler" already knows all about protecting stuff and has informed the priestly hackers in the Vatican's server room about what needs to be done in this respect. If not, well, he'll just have to deal with penis and breast enhancement spams like the rest of us.
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To summarize quickly: Robin and his partner---a former editor for the International Herald Tribune---are keeping an eye on the non-American/non-English-speaking press and are translating a wide range of articles from an even wider ranging selection of newspapers worldwide. They post their results on their site for those greedy English-only speakers like myself.
I had questions regarding the technical details of the translations and here's what Robin had to say about it:
{...}Most people don't know about this, but for many languages, esp. the romance languages, computer-based translations are over 95% accurate when it comes to meaning. The English they spit out is messy but a professional editor can turn it into the real thing. So we use technology to translate many languages, with the support of editors and a few native-speaking
volunteers who help out with the tricky parts.For some languages, such as Polish, we use only human native speakers. They support us voluntarily and on a part time basis. The total number of people who contribute to WA is about eight now.{...}
I would highly encourage you to check it out when you get the chance.
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Robbo seems to be one of those lost souls who has yet to discover the Expanded Universe.
And how about the other Imperial fleets? And all the legions and garrisons scattered all over the galaxy? And the bureaucracy? There must be dozens of regional governors left, even after Tarkin got whacked. Not to mention all their staff, civil servants, toadies, etc., all of whom are out of a job if the Empire collapses.
The link above goes directly to the Ultimate Timeline page on TheForce.net. If it's Star Wars related, you'll find it, or a link to it, on TFN (as we call it). (Note: there is a particular affinity in 'The Community" for initials and acronyms. Always be wary when speaking with true geeks, because EU could just as easily refer to the Star Wars Expanded Universe as it does European Union.) Outside of the films (now 6) written and produced by George Lucas (referred to as 'The Canon'), an entire universe concerning the universe inhabited by those beloved characters has taken shape. From comic books, to graphic novels, to childrens literature to works of serious adult fiction; the world of Star Wars grows year in and year out.
For a more direct answer to Rob, I will reccomend a couple of books that are decent reading for adults (some of the teen fiction is truly horrendous) and follow immediately in the timeline after RotJ (Return of the Jedi). (Another Note: The SW chronology all centers around Episode IV: A New Hope - specifically the Battle of Yavin - and as such, timeline entries are placed as occuring in years + or - ANH. i.e. RotJ is ANH +4.)
The first novel concerning the main characters and the state of the falling empire after RotJ is "Truce at Bakura" by Kathy Tyers. It is actually the last of the novels to take place in the Rebellion Era, as it begins just days after the destruction of the Emperor.
There is a series centered around the adventures of Rogue Squadron (Luke's old outfit) by Michael Stackpole (Xwing #1: Rogue Squadron, Xwing #2: Wedge's Gamble, Xwing #3: The Krytos Trap, #4: The Bacta War, #5: Wraith Squadron) that spawned a whole series of graphic novels from Dark Horse Comics. These books begin to really flesh out what's going on away from the central characters in the movies, and deal with a lot of the actual fighting going on as the Imperial Governors, Admirals and other parts of the government are dealt with militarily. These bridge the Rebellion and the New Republic Eras 5-7 years after the Battle of Yavin.
Then we have "The Courtship of Princess Leia" (ANH +7) by Dave Wolverton. Don't let the title fool you, there's action a-plenty for both boys and girls. We know who she ends up with, but the journey is at least amusing, if not all that interesting to everyone.
The revered Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn is next. Admiral Thrawn is a tactical alien genius, returning to the known galaxy after having been on a mission for the emperor that kept him away for most of the events known to now. These books are great reading and cover quite a lot of the struggles Leia and Mon Mothma experience while trying to establish the New Republic. Lukes struggles with his emerging Jedi powers and lack of a teacher are also explored and these novels set up many character and story lines that are explored in dozens of novels out there.
The New Republic era goes out to ANH +24 and really wraps up any remnants of the Empire and what can be known about the Jedi...from this galaxy anyway. After that, we begin the era of The New Jedi Order, and threats anew once again bring chaos to our heros and the New Republic that is just getting on its feet.
If you want to jump right in, and aren't so interested in some of the flotsam and jetsam concerning ancillary characters, just pick up the first of the Thrawn Books: "Heir to the Empire" and you'll be hooked. Start there, Robbo, and you'll be well on your way to "taking your first step into a larger world".
{Kath here again. To answer the question that's undoubtedly running through your mind right now: no, I most assuredly did not have any idea of the depth of the geek pool I was diving into when I married this man. I had an inkling the pool was deep, but this deep? Nope.}
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{Insert snorts of glee here}
Scott over at The Daily Ablution has been wandering around the country this week and has some interesting insights. You can find them here and here.
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April 20, 2005
We need QUESTIONS for our lovely Sassy Diva to answer on Friday. Clicket on the Demystifying Divas button on the right, and fill up the email prompt with a question.
Get them into the box by tomorrow, 6pm GMT, so our beyoooootiful English Diva can have a whack at answering them.
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Courtesy of Mike over at Tech Dirt, we have this lovely story that seems to have gotten lost in the Pope Shuffle.
File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that's slated to become the most Draconian expansion of online piracy penalties in years.The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.
If signed into law, as expected, the bill would dramatically lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law sanctions criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for "the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more." {...}
So, let's say that you've downloaded the newest, hottest Britney Spears song. You may have liked it, you may have not. You may have thought that this "prerelease" copy was crap as far as the technical aspects were concerned, but that's really quite irrelevant at this point. You may have forgotten all about it. You may be listening to it everyday, fully intending to buy the CD when it comes out. You, my dear friend, log onto Limewire or some other Peer To Peer network, blissful---or not---with your Britney.
This, my friend, is when you just committed a felony.
According to the MPAA, the RIAA and the federal government, you've just made this bit of prereleased, copyright protected bit of entertainment available for distribution by logging into a Peer-To-Peer network. Hence you're guilty of the same sort of piracy as a street vendor and you will be punished accordingly. Just by having the offending item in your shared folder, you're committing a felony. Never mind that if someone moved to download it and you quashed the download. You're still committing a felony. A felony that's punishable by three years worth of jail time and a fine of a quarter of a million dollars. As Mike at Tech Dirt so eloquently puts it:
The entertainment industry continues to insist that they're just looking for "balance" in trying to fight file sharing -- but the evidence suggests that they're just being purposely vindictive. They're not looking at ways to improve their business or how to better provide what people want. They just want to punish people.{...}
This is part of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act I was railing against the other day. This passed the House today and has already been approved by the Senate. It's on its way to the President we speak.
Lovely.
One can only imagine how smug Buddy is tonight, safe in his Beverly Hills mansion, where the Cristal and the beleuga flow freely. One wonders, however, if he realizes that his whole house of cards will come crashing down sooner rather than later because of his actions.
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April 19, 2005
Archimedes, if you remember from high school geometry, was the dude who came up with pi, among other things. He was a rare mathemetician for his day, and his life ended in 221 B.C. Now, in the way of things back then, some of his work was lost---and it was thought it had disappeared for the ages. Not so. In the library of a monastery in Constantinople a palimpsest was discovered. A palimpsest is a book where the pages are made of vellum, or animal skin parchment, where the text can be scraped off and used again for some other purpose. In this case, it was transformed into a prayer book. So, this palimpsest resides in Constantinople for near to a thousand years when a Danish philologist discovers it, photographs the entire thing, but cannot decipher all of the Archimedes text. The word is now out. About twenty years later, it's stolen from the monastery. It finds its way into the hands of a forger, who paints four of the pages with gold leaf, thinking it will make it more valuable, while not knowing what was underneath the prayers, until finally, it lands in the hands of a French collector who snatches it up and keeps it in the family for about seventy years, only selling it a few years ago.
As if that wasn't enough excitement for you, this is where it gets interesting. No one had the technology to see what exactly Archimedes had written entirely until recently. Of course it was big. Turns out that he'd pretty much invented Calculus...a full nineteen-hundred years before Newton and Leibniz---the generally credited inventors of that particularly horrible form of math---got their paws onto the problem.
During the NOVA episode, the scientists they consulted, while pleased about the document itself, lamented the fact it had been lost for so many years. They speculated about what it could have meant for society if Archimedes had not died when and how he did (he was killed by a soldier who stumbled into his house during a war) and the papers weren't lost, but instead published and disseminated for peer review. There are many things in our modern world that we would not have were it not for Calculus. It's not stretching it to say that these lost papers put Western Civilization back almost two thousand years.
With this in mind, try and wrap said mind around the possibilities that could flow forth from the Oxyrynchus Papyri. There could be equally huge discoveries lurking in those pieces of papyrus.
I, for one, cannot wait to see what is in there.
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I laughed. "Boxed wine is for my mother," I said. "She really digs her Franzia Chablis. I can't stand it."
He joked that he understood and then showed me the way to this. He said he sells a ton of the stuff and that, really, it wasn't that bad. And it was cheaper, too, the box holding the equivalent of four bottles of wine, retailing for about twenty bucks.
Skeptical, I blew him off in favor of a nice French chardonnay that was on sale. But yesterday, the husband remembered the guy's suggestion and thought I should give the boxed wine a try. And so I did.
Get this: it's not that bad. Hmmmph.
Now, if you're looking for a full-bodied Chardonnay, with lots of oak flavor, this isn't going to do it for you. It's pretty light on the whole. But if you like a lighter chard, with hints of apple and pears, it's pretty tasty. The only thing I would recommend is making sure you serve it when it's nice and cold. Otherwise, it's nasty. (The first glass didn't go down so well.)
Now, I don't think I'm going to switch over entirely, because a. I really love my Rabbit corkscrew and I have a great time using it and b. like I wrote above, I really do like to try new things, but I have to think that a lot of people, who buy the same Chardonnay over and over again, would like it. It'd be easier on their wallets, too. I also think that if you're having a party that this would be an excellent option for your guests that wouldn't burst your budget or, conversely, make you seem like a cheapskate for serving the cheaper, nastier boxed wine.
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I suppose it was only natural to have the Shadow Pope move into the job, but still... I had high hopes we'd finally get a pope who wanted to move the Church forward, and not back.
If you want a better handle on Pope Benedict XVI's teachings, go here . The Vatican server might be a little bogged down right now, so be patient.
If you thought John Paul II was conservative, you ain't seen nothing. The new Pope is positively reactionary.
I am just so disappointed.
For a different take go and read Doug, who's "pleasantly stunned."
UPDATE: The Llamas have a good roundup of links.
UPDATE II: Swiftee asks in the comments what I was hoping would happen.
Go here and be shocked at my radicalism!
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The topic we've chosen for ourselves this week is pretty basic: the differences between men and women when they get ready to go in the morning. Talk about taking the differences between the sexes right down to base level. Heh. Should be interesting, no?
As most of you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, will know, the husband and I have been married for ten years. We've lived together for a little bit longer than that. (Yeah, I know. Our bad.) During that time, we've lived in (counting on fingers) seven different apartments. Only two of which had big bathrooms, where we could both move around and get ready simultaneously. The apartment we live in now is most assuredly not one of these apartments. The bathroom here is the size of a postage stamp. If the bathroom door is shut, it's a crapshoot to open it: you might, quite literally, knock your spouse into unconsciousness. Whenever we see large bathrooms in our friends' houses or in a showcase, our envy erupts, like goosebumps on a Muscovite hooker in January. We both start lusting for a larger vanity, a huge bathtub, a bigger shower, and in the husband's case, a separate room for the toity. Some people have this response when it comes to kitchens, and we are not immune from that, either, but the bathroom is where it is at for us.
The reason for this envy is not only size-related, but also because I'm a slob and the husband is a neat freak who's constantly having to rein in the OCD. He wants a bigger bathroom so that he isn't forced to deal with my slovenly habits and somehow a double vanity will solve this problem, even though he hasn't listed out exactly how it will do so; he's just confident that it will. I want a bigger bathroom so I have more places to stash my excessive pile of appearance-related shit. In our current space, I have claimed the top of the counter, the space under the sink (the Q-tips reside there, so technically we're sharing), the bathroom cabinet (again, technically speaking, we're sharing because his shaving kit resides there), one side of the medicine cabinet and the top of the toity. The husband, God love him, gets one side of the medicine cabinet. But what's surprising is that's all he needs.
Now, given my need for extra space, you'd think I was someone who spent an excessive amount of time getting ready to go in the morning, wouldn't you? Well, I don't. Generally speaking, I can be in and out of the shower, hair done (well, it's a sopping wet mess, but I don't blow dry every day because it's bad for your hair, so it's as done as it's going to get unless I have a meeting and actually have to do it up), dressed, with minimal makeup in forty minutes or so. Pretty good for a chick, no? The husband, well, he does take less time to get ready, but that's because he doesn't wear makeup and never has to deal with a mascara wand that's bound and determined to spread black goo onto your face instead of your lashes. He just stands around in the shower, wondering about the world. I am seriously thankful we've never had to pay a water bill.
Fortunately for us, we do not have jobs that require us to leave the house every morning. We pretty much stay in our pajamas for as long as we can stand it. Then one of us will hop in the shower and the bathroom is our domain for that period of time. Working from home has saved us from many o' a fight about hogging the bathroom. The problems arise when we leave the house together, and I have to be fully made up with hair done.
The poor husband. It takes me a while to put on the full war paint. That means a couple of extra coats of mascara, eyeliner, and eyeshadow. That means full foundation and powder. That means the whole meal deal when it comes to lip liner and lipstick. And blush. We can't forget about the blush. Of course, while all of this is going on, I'm also running around trying to figure out what I'm going to wear and doing my hair. This takes, all told, about an hour and fifteen minutes. And I always think it's going to take less time than it does, hence the husband just stands there in the hallway, glowering, waiting for me to get my crap together, asking me every few minutes, "Are you ready to go yet?" To which I reply: "Yeah, just give me a second," because even if it's not going to take a just a second, and I know this, I have hope that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to pull it together so he won't be annoyed with me.
Then I'll remember I have to switch out my handbag, so it matches my shoes and the ensemble I've chosen to wear.
Or that I've forgotten my belt, which is something you just cannot forget when you switch over to boot cut pants, otherwise you'll be flashing your ass crack to the world.
Or that I've forgotten to spritz myself with perfume because, after all, the husband bought me the stuff. He likes for me to wear it, so I'd better get with the freakin' program here.
(I can feel the disapproval from the male section of the audience already}
By this point in my rushing around, the husband is generally ready to lose it. He doesn't see why this should be so hard. After all, all he had to do was change his shirt, throw on a sportcoat, brush his hair and teeth. Why shouldn't I be the same, for crying out loud? It's not like I didn't know we had to leave the house at a particular point to get to our destination on time. I should be better organized. A bigger bathroom would spare him. He's sure of it.
I'm not so sure. Women just have more stuff to do in the bathroom than men do. What exactly does the husband do in the morning? He shaves, he showers, he washes his face and puts moisturizer on (and he wouldn't do the last two if he wasn't married to me). He then throws gel into his hair, brushes his teeth and---presto chango!---he's done. I have other stuff to do, like battling with mascara, which as any woman can tell you, takes time.
And you boys wouldn't like for us to look like garbage, would you? Because we would look like something the cat dragged in if we were ready to go when you wanted us to be. I know this for a fact.
Ok, that's not really going to fly, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Now go and read what the other Delicious DemystifyingDivas have written on the subject. Make sure you go and welcome Kate from Katespot, who is subbing for Chrissy this week while the Feisty One takes some time off from blogging. The Marvelous Men's Club has their own take as well.
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Go. Eat ice cream. You'll be happier for it.
If free ice cream isn't enough to get you off your skinny butt (I can't imagine that if you have a wide ass you'd be hesitating, ya dig?) realize this is the way to make those hippies pay for all their support for liberal causes. Keep their profits from being donated to the DNC!
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April 18, 2005
Posted by: Kathy at
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To: Mamamontezz
From: Kathleen Nelson
Re: Criticism
A few points about your post wherein you slag The Demystifying Divas for having the gall to call ourselves divas.
1. If you choose to criticize our work, please link to it. You can also simply link to our blogs if searching for the individual posts is too much work. You might also want to use our names when criticizing us, just so your readers know whom you're referring to.
I have no issues with dissent. You're more than welcome to think our work is crap. But to never once refer to us by name or link to our work is intellectually dishonest. Furthermore, I suspect you know this.
2. The name "Demystifying Divas" is a joke. It always has been. It's a catchy title. That's all.
I suppose this means the joke is on you for not realizing this.
3. If you're going to criticize someone's writing, perhaps you should make sure your post is bulletproof when it comes to the grammar. Otherwise it comes off as a pot/kettle situation and I'm fairly sure that's not what you were shooting for.
Have a nice day.
See also: Pammy
UPDATE: Mamamontezz has deleted my trackback. Woooh. Classy behavior, that.
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Very, very cool.
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Anyway, the husband and I walked down to Walgreens last night to get a card to send off to her, conveying our wishes that she "Get Well Soon."
This shouldn't have been a problem. But it was. There were barely any get well cards in an aisle solely devoted to greeting cards. We finally found the section where they resided, but it was hard work to do so.
It pretty much seemed to me that as far as the greeting card companies were concerned, well, life should be a joyful process from birth to death. There were loads of birthday cards, graduation cards, mother's day cards, father's day cards, first communion cards, etc. They even had a whole section devoted to "sympathy" cards. You know, the ones you send when someone dies.
But as far as cards for the hard times in life? Well, those were far and few between. Sure they had "coping" cards---the kind you send when someone's going through a bad time instead of calling and perhaps having to hear all about it when you don't want to---but these were the most mealy-mouthed cards I've ever seen. One read, "I hope you're coping." Another read, "I'm thinking about you in your time of trouble." Bleh. Then we finally came across the "get well soon" section and it was measly. Measly. There were something like ten cards to choose from, thus guaranteeing that every person in the hospital probably has the same card as the husband's aunt.
What's the deal here? Is the bad stuff that happens in life not a worthy excuse to send the very best? Hmmm? Do the "artists" that come up with the greeting cards refuse to create something for these people because they can't handle the negative energy, maaaaaan? This makes absolutely no sense from a consumer's viewpoint: most people buy cards to express sentiments they cannot set down on paper themselves. This is doubly hard when it comes to difficult situations. Why are the greeting card companies seemingly ignoring the bad stuff? Hmmmm?
Life is not a Hallmark commercial. One would think that they, of all people, would know this.
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{...}a question I run into a lot when I talk about art with conservatives; what are music, literature, visual art, drama, dance and all the other kinds of art supposed to be?Because if it's supposed to be a recitation of people doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons and getting the right results, most of Western art - literature, visual art, film, opera, drama, and of course music from the classical to today - would be very different.
Let's review some of the classics of Western art through the lens of the "Do The Right Thing" school of criticism:
- Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" - "Criminy. Enough with the hubris! Brutus and Antony - hire a friggin' lawyer and settle your grievances like normal people! You're acting like MoveOn.org here!"
- On The Waterfront - "Jeez, Brando - have you ever heard of the F B Freaking I?"
- Anna Karenina - "You slut! You freakin' skeeze! You see how much trouble you'd have saved yourself if you'd have just followed your bleepity-blank wedding vows? And we're supposed to feel sorry for you?"
- Iron Chef - "What's with the frou-frou presentation? Just plop the stuff on a plate while it's still hot!"
- Huckleberry Finn - "Look, just get Jim the Slave to the north! Stay on the river, do what you have to do, and move on!"
- Don Giovanni - "Well, duh! Giovanni and Leporello, if they were rational people, would repent for murdering the Commandant before he drags them to hell. Duh!"
- Picasso's Guernica - "OK, the Spanish Civil War is over, and if the commies had won Picasso would have never painted it. Why do we care about this painting anymore?"
- Moby Dick - "So Ahab would risk everyone's life because he's pissed at a whale? Where are his priorities?..."
- Casablanca - "Jeez, Rick. You know that giving Lazlo the letters of transit is the right thing to do. Cut the dramatics and just do it!
- Crime And Punishment - "Why spend a whole novel on a snooty pretentious little artiste who thought he was so superior to the people arround him that he could justify hacking his landlady to death? String him up and be done with it! Fifty pages at the most!"
- War And Peace - "WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING WITH DOLOKHOV, you stupid IDIOT?"
- Rocky - "Jeez, he's working as a knee-buster for a loan shark! If he'd just gotten his crap together and taken a computer programming course and gotten a job and some stock options, he'd be rich right now, and his nose would still be straight!"
Art, in whatever form, among many other things is about places and times and situations that you aren't in, getting inside minds other than your own. Sometimes the place is somewhere you've never been; sometimes it's a different view of where you are now. Sometimes the mind is that of someone intriguingly, frustratingly, even horrifyingly different than your own. Sometimes the situation is mundane, or glorious, or wrenchingly horrific.{...}
Sheila throws in her own two cents:
{...}There's a strain of conservatism that gets impatient with human weakness. Half the blog-posts I read out there (and many of the blog posts I write myself!) link to some human-interest story, and the bloggers comment is: "GET OVER IT." or "STOP WHINING" or "GROW UP". "Pull yourself up by your boot straps." "Don't complain. Just suck it up, and do better next time." Etc. There is a lack of patience with indecision, frailty, weakness. Again: I understand where they're coming from, theoretically, and I feel that way myself at times - but NOT when it comes to the role of art in society. No.{...}
While I would disagree (barely) with Sheila that bloggers like myself do not possess a lack of of patience regarding human frailty, but rather are impatient with stupidity, the girl's (and Mitch) got a point when it comes to art: in art you need a struggle to produce anything worthwhile. You need drama. Drama produces good stuff. As all those actors who are in hock to TNT for their daily bread love to remind us, drama is conflict. Anything else is the equivalent of watching paint dry.
Further ruminations and one whopping leap of the imagination after the jump. more...
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{...}It turns out I actually have heard Led Zeppelin before, I just didn't know it. In all honesty, it brought to mind all of the Rush that my college roommate forced me to listen to.So, having taken this trip, I will say that it was okay. I can appreciate the real artistry of the musicians and the compositions. However...they will never be a favorite of mine. I just didn't love it.
I am undecided if I should send her off to exile in France, ala Charles II, or if I should just accept that it's not for everyone.
Thoughts?
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09:05 AM
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Curiously enough, if it had started a few days earlier, the Cake Eater Chronicles would have had its very own cub reporter. My sister ML, who celebrates her fiftieth birthday today, is on a celebratory trip to Italy as I write this. (Yep. Fifteen years separate us on the timeline that is our family. There's less of an age span between her kids and myself. Wacky Catholics!) If they'd started the conclave on Saturday, well, let's just say that I would have shot that girl over to Vatican City faster than you can lick a stamp. Even if she was jetlagged as all hell.
The Cake Eater Chronicles: There's absolutely no limit to the amount of discomfort I'll put my siblings through to entertain and inform you, my devoted Cake Eater readers.
Heh.
Alas, however, she and her fellow travelers have left Rome for the more enjoyable evirons of Tuscany. (Grrrr.) Too bad, so sad and all that jazz. I'm sure she's thankful I never even bothered to ask.
Anyway, I digress, as usual. The reason for this post was to show all you heretics the way to the latest odds. Paddypower, an Irish online betting house, has set up popebetting.com They'll be updating the odds regularly.
Enjoy!
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April 17, 2005
She did not use it today. After a glass of water and two or three cups of coffee.
And this after I got down on my hands and knees yesterday and scrubbed the floor for the better part of an hour, utilizing a bucket, loads of Clorox Clean-up, a scrub brush, an old Crest Spinbrush (household tip: these work wonders on hard to reach corners) and a rag .
I'm not bitter.
Really.
UPDATE: The husband tells me I need to get over this.
Pffft. I think not.
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11:26 PM
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I fed her today.
If you a. do not like hosting brunch because you think it takes a lot of work or b. you're too hungover to throw something together other than a hair-of-the-dog Bloody Mary, this recipe is for you. You make it the night before and it's quite a wonderful thing. This recipe is courtesy of my mom's friend, Mrs. Schultz, and it's become a family favorite.
Baked French Toast
This will put five adults and two children into comas.
The night before brunch:
One loaf of French or Italian bread, sliced into 1" slices
9"x13" casserole pan (glass works best)
Spray the pan with Pam and place the bread, the slices flat, in the pan. You will most likely have to double decker it to get all the bread to fit. This is fine.
In a separate bowl mix together:
3 eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups milk
Pour the mixture over the bread, cover and refridgerate overnight.
In the morning, bring the casserole out and allow it to come to room temperature. While this is happening, you get to make the topping.
1 cup flour
12 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 stick of butter
Mix this together with a fork, like you would a pie crust. When it's reached its crumbly-goodness potential, pour over the top of bread.
Bake it at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.
Use frozen raspberries or blueberries for topping. (Of course you defrost them beforehand, you dork. You don't just serve a slab of raspberries to your guests and say, here, throw these over your french toast. Enjoy! Doof.)
I should mention that these are really tasty when served with mimosas. If you're really rich and can afford peach nectar, make bellini's instead. I don't, however, think these would be good with Bloody Mary's. Bleech.
Posted by: Kathy at
10:11 PM
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