Chip's Spynotebook

After my success with the whole bagel endeavor, I decided to continue my culinary exploration with something I found online called a “sandwich”. It dates back to the 1st Century BC but is more popularly associated with John Mantagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, because one time he ate some bread and cheese. So, I got up early this morning and put together the ingredients.

Roast beef, cheese. Not pictured: bread, mustard

I chose roast beef and provolone for my first attempt.

Take two pieces of bread (this can be bought at most grocery stores) and spread your condiment of choice (be creative!).

I chose mustard and used a butter knife to spread it on the bread. I thought I might need a mustard knife but I googled it and they said it would be OK.

Next, I took the meat and the cheese and placed each on a piece of the bread.

Now, the next step can take some getting used to. It’s OK if you fail the first couple of times because it is hard to work outside your comfort zone.  You need to put one piece of bread on top of the other one. The trick is to not let the meat or cheese fall down. It’s hard to visualize so I made a quick video.

Link to video: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chipw/3746227154/

After that, it’s pretty much a sandwich.

If you don’t plan on eating it now, you can buy protective bags to protect your sandwich. These are called “sandwich bags” and are available from amazon.com.

This way, you can take your sandwich on the road, to school, or to work.

I took mine to work.

Remember a long time ago when some of us were in college and we were downtown and there was a sign up about some bagel store opening? I think it was near where Amici’s is now. That was the time that I was looking for a job and we saw a sign for “BAGEL MAKER WANTED” and the hours were something like 3AM-7AM every morning.

I thought it sounded like the best job ever, but then I remembered that I didn’t know how to make bagels and that I really probably didn’t want to get up that early and actually go anywhere.

Well, I still don’t want to get up that early, but I can add BAGEL MAKER to my growing list of accomplishments.

I got inspired this weekend when I was complaining on twitter about the lack of good bagels in Athens since Zim’s closed. One of my twitter friends, @bethoshea, posted that she tried making her own bagels and it was super easy. She sent me this link and I thought I would give it a shot.

You basically mix up 4 cups bread flour, 1 Tbls sugar, 1 1/2 tsps salt, 1 Tbls vegetable oil, 2 tsps instant yeast, and 1-1/2 cups of warm water and knead it for 10 minutes.

This gives you a giant ball of bagel which you then make into 8 smaller bagel balls.

Let these sit and mutate and grow for a while. I let them go for about 15-20 minutes before I started trying to make them bagel shaped.

I didn’t really get the next part down during my first bagel making experience. You are supposed to roll them out like a snake, then wrap it around your hand and knead it back into a bagel/donut shape.

I had limited success but for the most part, it was OK.

Scrappy asked why I couldn’t just poke a hole in the middle. I think I might test that next time on a few and see how it works.

Then, comes the part that everyone associates with it being a REAL bagel. The boiling.

Let the bagels sit for another 20 minutes and start boiling the water and pre-heating the oven to 425.

Then drop them in and let them go for about 2 minutes.

This is the point that I was fairly embarrassed about the look of my bagels. But, hey, they taste the same no matter how they look, right?

Then it is in the oven for 10 minutes, flip them, 10 more minutes.

If everything goes well (which it did), you should have shiny fresh bagels at the end.

I am going to attempt an everything bagel next time. And then will come the clouds and bunny cheerleader tables and the closing of Zim’s might hurt a little less.

So, I am trying out Google Voice and seeing how well it works. I would love to switch over and start using it as my main number because of the tricks you can do with voice mail and screening calls, etc.

Once of the cool features is that I can have a widget on my blog that connects you directly to my voice mail without giving the entire internet my number. This plus the voice transcription makes me think it would be fun to play a game. I just called and left myself a message. I said:

“Hey Chip, this is Chip. I’m testing out the voice comment, um, thing you set up on the Spynotebook and checking if it works. I’m pressing End Call now to see if it actually ends.”

What Google Voice transcribed this as was:

“hey jeff this is jeff i’m testing out the voice comment they need to set up on the spider book and checking if that works i’m president call now she’s actually in ”

As you can see, the Google transcription is FAR more interesting!

So, what I would like for you to do is to click the widget and leave me a voice mail. If you get this via a feed, my actual blog address is http://www.spynotebook.org/chip/. You will type in your phone number and Google will call your phone and then connect you to my voice mail. Let’s see how google does!