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Opiliones

Yes.  This is a post about spiders.  Well, not really.  Well, yes, kind of.  Let’s just say that there are arachnids involved.  And yes, there will be pictures.  You have been warned.

The other day, we were having a short team meeting in our giant shared cube at Client B (Clib henceforth).  While my boss was explaining some stuff to us, I happened to notice a fairly large arachnid crawling across a colleague’s back.  Note that I said “arachnid” and not “spider.”  I’m really not sure if it was a spider.  But it did have eight legs, so I know it was an arachnid.

Anyway, it was large; the abdomen was maybe 10mm across.  It was predominately brown and it these weird, spindly, long legs.  I mean, spiders often have long, spindly legs, but the legs of this arachnid was just…strange.  And the other rather strange thing was that there was this weird striated pattern over the abdomen.  What it really looked like to me was an extra large, decently well-fed tick with over-long legs.

Of course, I couldn’t really quickly explain all this to my colleagues while I was watching this thing crawl across this guy’s back.  Actually, I probably could have.  I watched this thing saunter across his entire back and I only said something when it had gotten to his sleeve.  It looked like it was going to continue onto his arm and I was pretty sure that would cause him to start, which I didn’t want.  I was also waiting for someone else to point out this giant thing crawling across his back.  I seriously could not believe no one else saw it.

Anyhoo, I rather causally mentioned to my colleague that there was a giant spider-thing crawling on him.  He immediately stiffened in surprise and probably, a little fear.  My boss fairly calmly agreed with me that it was quite large.  My sometimes PM immediately freaked out.

To his credit, Mr. Arachnid didn’t panic at any time.  He rather urgently asked me where the spider-thing was.  I told him it was on his sleeve.  He asked me to get it off of him, so I asked around for a cup or container to catch the spider-thing in.  It wasn’t because I wanted it for a pet.  It’s because Clib has instructed all it’s employees, regular or otherwise, to catch all pests to be identified.  They have a really stringent pest control program.  So I needed to find some kind of container to catch the spider-thing.

My sometimes PM offered me his full cup of ice water.  Which is not very useful.  Because it’s a full cup of ice water.  He really wanted me to use it.  I tried to explain to him that I couldn’t use a full of cup of ice water.  Mr. Arachnid grabbed his coffee cup and chugged all the coffee and shoved the cup at me.

By this time, the spider-thing had made it off his sleeve and was comfortably resting on his chair.  I told Mr. Arachnid that he could move away from the chair (which he did with alacrity…ALACRITY!) and I tried to get the spider-thing into the cup.  My teammates did not offer to help.  (Actually, now that I think about it, my boss may have.  But I was already going for the spider-thing, so it didn’t really help.)

The spider-thing made a thump when it fell into the cup thing.  I had three guys yelling at me to quickly cap the cup.  It was pandemonium (not really).

So, the thing with me using the used coffee cup to catch the spider-thing is that the spider-thing got really wet with the bit of coffee that was left at the bottom.  That made it anxious on top of the anxiety of being shoved into a cup.  I couldn’t get a picture of it.  So I had to rely on memory to try and figure out what it was.

In the end, my guess is that it wasn’t a spider but an opilione.  There doesn’t seem to be very much information on them, but they are an order of arachnids.  They’re sometimes known as “daddy longlegs,” not to be confused with “daddy longlegs” or even “daddy longlegs.”  I actually only ever associated the name “daddy longlegs” with cellar spiders.

I couldn’t seem to find exactly the opilione that I saw, or even find a list of opiliones that are found in the Southern California area.  But it looked kind of like this.   There are pictures after this. You have been warned.

I bake! Apple cinnamon muffin edition

WP_20130331_005

Why the cupcake liners when these are muffins? Because I didn’t want to wash the muffin tin. And if you’re careful while filling, you don’t have to!

Ok.  Finally getting to the full post from that preview, two weeks ago.  Now you get the recipe and full backstory.  Huzzah!

The other day, I really wanted donuts.  Like really.  But the thing is, I have made a deal with myself due to the lingering effects of and inability to break the habit of stress eating.  I am allowed to eat snacks and desserts still, but I have to make them myself (there are a few exceptions).

Now, this both works and doesn’t work.  It works because I’m REALLY lazy.  More likely than not, I will be too lazy to actually make anything for myself and I’ll just go without.  It doesn’t work because I can bake moderately well, I have access to all kinds of things, and I’m used to making batches that are overly large as I often end up cooking/baking for a large number of people.  ANYWAY!

I really wanted donuts.  But I had to make them myself.  Sounds like an excuse to make a mess in the kitchen.  Actually, not that much of a mess.  Otherwise, I would have gone with the full deep fat frying method you normally use for donuts.  But I didn’t want to.  First of all, it uses a lot of oil.  Oil that can be used again for deep frying other stuff (at least a few times if you’re careful), but not really useful for anything else.  And then you have all this oil to get rid of.  Meh.

Second, I really like cake donuts.  Yeast donuts are all well and good, but I really like the texture and denseness of cake donuts.  So, I opted for baked donuts.

King Arthur’s Flour actually has several recipes for baked donuts.  They also sell the donut pan.  But I didn’t have a donut pan for my donut making excursion.  What do?  Make your own, of course.

Top with Cinnamon has a good tutorial on how to make your own donut pan…things…with foil (there’s also a recipe for donuts there).  I basically followed her instructions except that I used foil sheets, as I have a lot of food service foil sheets, and instead of cutting off the excess when forming the pan, I crinkled it under.  It makes for a more stable pan.

WP_20130225_002I tried making some donuts modifying this King Arthur’s Flour recipe for stuff I had on hand.  And I ended up with these.

WP_20130225_006Donutty in shape, but not in texture.  I had to sub out too many ingredients to get a good cake donut.  Not all was lost, however.  It actually makes a pretty good muffin.

Yield: 12 muffins

Time: 10 min prep + 20 min cook = 30 min

Materials:

  • 225 g whole wheat flour (about 2 c)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 150 g sugar (about 0.75 c)
  • 0.25 tsp nutmeg
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 0.5 tsp salt
  • 4 oz unsweetened applesauce
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 apple, peeled and chopped

Procedure:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Whisk all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
  3. Beat eggs in a separate bowl until foamy.
  4. Beat applesauce into eggs until combined.
  5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold until just combined.
  6. Fold in apples.
  7. Fill muffin pan to about 0.75 full.
  8. Bake for 15-20 min.

Notes:

  • You’ll remember that I’m adverse to using volumetric measurements for dry goods and that I like to use metric for weights.
  • I would highly recommend using whole wheat flour for this recipe because of the lower gluten content.  Actually, it’s not necessarily that there is less gluten in whole wheat flour but that it’s harder to form gluten.  If you do use white flour, you have to be VERY CAREFUL not to over mix.  Otherwise you’ll end up with a tight, tough texture that is not muffin-like at all.  If you have cake flour lying around, definitely use that over all purpose.  Definitely don’t use bread flour.
  • I used a food processor for the apple, in case you’re curious.  And I believe I’ve been using Fuji apples, because that’s what we’ve been eating.  If you want to use a tart apple or add some lemon juice to your apple, you may want to make those teaspoons of baking powder heaping (as opposed to level) to compensate for the extra acid.
  • If you wanted to make these as donuts, you’ll get about 12 of those.  You shouldn’t fill the donut pans much more than half full.  And baking will probably be toward the 15min side.  Muffins, since they don’t have a hole in the middle and are a big lump of batter, will take closer to the 20 min side.
  • I like to pour all the batter into a Ziploc bag and then cut a corner off and squeeze the batter into the pan.  It’s easier to control and cleaner.
  • You can totally beat the eggs to foamy by hand.  I’ve beat egg whites to hard peak by hand before (my arm was useless the day after).  Foamy is nothing.
  • If you don’t like muffins that are lopsided and your oven always produces lopsided muffins (or cupcakes, or cakes), your oven probably doesn’t heat evenly.  It’s not a big deal.  Just spin the muffin tin around halfway through baking.
  • Hey look, this recipe is relatively healthy!  No oil and whole wheat flour!  If you really wanted, you could sub the sugar for honey!  (If you do, you’ll have to cut down on other wet stuff).  This was actually not my intention.  I don’t believe in “healthy baking” because…you’re baking…probably pastries.  They are not and will never be “healthy.”  You can make them healthier than their full fat, sugar, processed white flour counterparts, but they still aren’t healthy.  Moderation guys.  Moderation.  Anyway, this recipe ended up being of the healthier variety because I had applesauce I wanted to get rid of, we were somehow out of all purpose flour and bread flour (which is saying something because we buy both in 50lb bags…and we were completely out of both) but I did have a small bag of whole wheat flour lying around, and we had all these apples that needed to be eaten.  Substitution to the rescue!  Or something.