The server is getting hammered, but it didn't take me too long to get a connection:
http://www.datacraft.co.jp/takagism/index_e.html.
PS: I have not solved it yet....
This is sort of eye-opening. You can always support farmers and farm cooperatives north and south of the US border. And there are many many CSAs; with your zipcode you may find one near you!
What do you do when the Nooksack river is creeping toward your property?
I guess you fly away in your airplanes.
Well this is a bizarre marketing move (and of course a complete waste of time): Burger King has a "subservient chicken" that does what you tell it to do (sort of), apparently in order to promote the idea that you can have your unhealthy food your way, or something. I tried things like, "Oppose animal cruelty," and, "Stop overuse antibiotics in poult indust," and, "Fast food is crap," and "Burger King = poison." That last one elicits an in-your-face thumbs-up.
Sort of a counterpart to "the meatrix" I guess.
Caramel: good. Especially "salt-caramel." Especially salt-caramel from France. Particulièrement salt-caramel from France that someone apparently found reasonably priced at $18.99 for a box the size of a cassette tape. Must be something about the exchange rate and our strained relations with the French. Anyway, after thoughtlessly wolfing several of them, I noticed the price tag and tried to savor what I could remember of the flavors that had just cost me more than an oil-change. Then I became inspired, either to beat the caramel con-men (femmes?) at their own game by underselling them, or at least to make some pale replica that would tide me over until we could pawn some jewelry and locate another couple nineteen-dollar boxes.
After skimming a half-dozen internet recipes that called for evaporated milk and corn syrup, both of which seem sort of gross (and perhaps more importantly, neither of which we had on hand), I made up my own recipe based on what we did have on hand, namely sugar (yes, also sort of gross—we seldom use white sugar so the bag we had was probably from our Y2K stash), half-and-half, and butter.
The process I made up was, unsurprisingly, simple: step one dump it all in, step two stir it, step three wait forever, step four don't take it off the heat for even a second because it will crystallize into a freaky mess of what seems like wet sand, step five go back to step one and start over paying particular attention to step four, etc. So finally, after you do all that, you get this (astute readers may notice my secret adulterants arrayed on the stove—the French stuff included pineau des Charentes, after all), and then you pour it in a pan and let it cool.
The hot goop eventually cooled in its pan. It is very sticky and gooey and sort of self-heals if you scoop a blob out of it. Tastes pretty good with a little kosher salt. But the underlying milk/butterfat flavor is unappealing to me. And it is definitely not stiff enough. Anyway, I have now fulfilled my craving/interest for high-dollar caramel. I only ate a few "pieces" (spoonfuls), but I never want to eat any more of it again.