Categories
General

Brownies

Brownies

Every time I make ice cream I wonder what to do with the egg whites. I sometimes make macaroons, but usually I put them in a bowl in the fridge and them dump them down the sink a few days later, feeling guilty. Usually I use whole eggs to make brownies, but this time I decided to try it with egg whites. I took notes on the ingredients…which you can assume are very approximate.

Ingredients

  • 9 egg whites
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 1/2 stick butter (salted because that’s what was in the fridge)
  • 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1 teaspoon or so vanilla

Butter some pans and set the oven at 350 F. I microwaved the butter and chopped chocolate for about 30 seconds to melt, then mixed them until smooth. I don’t know if that’s the best way to melt chocolate, but it works for me. Meanwhile, I whisked the egg whites, cocoa, honey, and vanilla. This was dumb because the cocoa powder ended up getting all over the place. Maybe mix the cocoa and honey together first? Anyway, get it all well beaten together, add the chocolate and beat some more, and pour it into the pans. My batter came about 2/3 the way up the pans and that’s about as high as I’d go to avoid overflowing. I baked them for 25 minutes total, then let them cool very slowly in the still-warm oven. The centers were still a little jiggly after 25 minutes. The only downside of the egg whites was cosmetic – there was a thin layer of unmixed cooked egg white at the bottom of each pan. I think the lack of yolk keeps the egg from staying completely mixed with the fatty chocolate and butter. Great with ice cream though, and way better than dumping those egg whites down the drain!

Categories
General

Photopress 1.5.2

This little update adds an option to choose from a couple of different sorting options for the categories on the main album page (requested by Ron). I put the option on the Settings:Photopress page, but might move it to the Tools page later. This version also fixes a bug where changing the category dropdown on the Mass Edit page wasn’t doing anything. Finally, I changed the version number of the widget to match the plugin itself, fixing the “upgrade” problem that Steven Alm noticed.

Download: photopress_1.5.2.zip

Categories
General

Subscribe to Comments plugin hack

Mark Jaquith’s Subscribe to Comments works very well for keeping group blog users aware of comments between visits to the site. However, with comment threading enabled, the links to comments in the emails it sends out are a bit inconvenient – they don’t lead to the comment that’s quoted in the email, which means you must scroll around looking for the comment if you want to reply to it. This hack just adds a link straight to the comment. I submitted a ticket too, so maybe this will be added to the next version.

Insert this at about line 602, just after the code for the regular comment link:

$message .= __("Jump straight to this comment:n",'subscribe-to-comments');
$message .= get_comment_link($comment->comment_ID) . "nn";

Categories
General

flickrpress 0.4

The flickrpress template function was broken because I didn’t update it to work with the updated phpFlickr class. Since I just figured out how to write a widget for Photopress, I decided to write a flickrpress widget while I still know how to do it. Using the widget or the template function your sidebar can have a column of your recent flickr photos like this:

flickrpress widget screen

Download flickrpress 0.4: flickrpress_0.4.zip

Categories
General

Slow-roasted pork ribs

Slow-roasted pork ribs

It’s winter, so while firing up the grill may sound fun, I’d rather fire up the oven. There are a lot of ways to cook pork ribs in the oven. I like the method in James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking of roasting until they’re just cooked or still a little pink, but sometimes I want a more crispy on the outside and falling apart on the inside rib. Spare ribs are probably the best choice for this because they’re usually cheaper than baby back ribs – since I’m cooking them a long time tenderness doesn’t matter and the extra connective tissue will dissolve and get tasty. Country-style ribs, which usually appear to be strips of pork shoulder, also work great, as do…strips of pork shoulder.

To get started, set the oven to around 400 F. Leave your ribs together as much as possible to maintain juiciness, cutting them up just enough to fit into your roasting pan. Rub them down with a mixture of any or all of the following:

  • salt
  • pepper
  • cumin
  • coriander
  • grains of paradise
  • chili powder or flakes
  • allspice
  • thyme
  • oregano

Obviously, what you choose to use in your rub depends on how you want your ribs to taste. Just salt and pepper are a good place to start. Rub on your spices to fully coat both all sides of the ribs. Throw them in the roasting pan and into the preheated oven. After about 30 minutes at 400 F turn the heat down to about 250 F and roast for another hour. Towards the end you can baste them with balsamic vinegar, mustard, or hot sauce for a tasty glaze.