I'm not a music fan after all

My iPod + iTunes keeps track of every song I listen to. So with the help of iScrobbler I was able to find out what I've listened to for the past 2 years. The results in continuous 24 hour days of listening

• Beatles - 3 days
• David Bowie - 2 days
• Sonic youth, Animal Collective, Califone, TV on the Radio, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, the Microphones, Beck, and Hayden - 1 day
• Pixies, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, The Flaming Lips, Tortoise, Genesis, Fridge, Tom Waits, The Arcade Fire, The Strokes, Bloc Party, Neutral Milk Hotel, Panda Bear, Interpol, Mastodon - > 1/2 day

And then everything else falls in to the long tail of occasional listens. Frighteningly, I listen to an average of 18.1 Beatles songs per week! I must make an effort to listen to the rest of my collection.

Risotto onno and the great boneless skinless chicken breast scam

I'm not a huge fan of Italian cooking. But for some reason I thought I'd once again try out a risotto. Stir stir. Stir stir stir. Stir stir. Stir stir stir. I haven't had fingers that cramped since I last knit a sweater. It was also a good 45 minutes of me cursing and complaining before the roommates suggested that I might enjoy myself better with a glass of wine. Excellent thinking.

I was underwhelmed by the wild mushroom sage risotto, but as usual the roomies seemed to enjoy it. The chicken on the other hand was outstanding.

• Season bone-in skin-on chicken breasts with salt and pepper
• Dredge in flour, shake off excess
• Brown in a hot cast iron skillet with peanut oil
• Place skillet in 400 degree oven and bake for 25 minutes

At my local IGA, boneless skinless chicken breast is $17 a kilogram. Beside it, there's the breast with bone and skin for $11 a kilogram. Under the saran wrap, there is a tacky red label that declares "frying chicken". I suppose it's meant to resemble the "stewing meat" label, with the implication that if you had any dignity at all, you'd buy the nice boneless skinless chicken breast. I'd always assumed that deboning chicken breast would be challenging. Not so, peeling back the ribs from the 2 cooked chicken breasts took about 20 seconds. I imagine it must be the best part of the butcher's day, taking 10 seconds a breast to create "boneless" chicken and increasing the price by %54.

Of course my Dad told me about the great boneless skinless chicken breast scam back when I was 8. But at some point during my life I decided that my parents didn't know anything and ignored all of their advice. Besides, the skinless chicken looks so smooth and shiny. But it's nowhere near as tasty.

The Warm Ginger Cake Adventure

Lately I've been making a lot of food from the Bishop's cookbook. The recipes are incredible. The ingredient lists look straightforward, the instructions are simple, and yet magically the food turns out to be exquisitely tasty. Last weekend I made a warm ginger cake with caramel and cherries jubilee ice-cream. I didn't make my own ice cream but I did make my own caramel.

I thought I had succeeded on my first caramel making first attempt. Everything seemed right until I tasted it. Who would have thought that a food made with only sugar and cream could be so puckeringly bitter. Clearly I had underestimated the difficulty of making caramel. I went to Google for advice. Step #1, learn how to remove an inch of scorched caramel from a stainless steel pot. Baking soda and boiling water works like a charm. Hurray for chemistry. Step #2, learn how to make caramel.

I tried Delia Child's technique but it didn't work well with the gas stove. I couldn't simmer my flame low enough and a portion of the sugar burned well before the top layer had melted. Though the caramel had a nice appearance in the end, my taste test noted a clearly burned bitter flavour. I waited for the pan to cool so that I could throw away my failed experiment and try again. Christine was lured in by the silky smooth appearance of the caramel and couldn't believe I was going to throw it all away. She was so certain that it would taste as good as it looked that she dipped her finger directly into the pan of caramel. Note, loyal legions of blog readers, that this is a bad idea. Not only is molten sugar a lot hotter than boiling water, it has a habit of gluing to your finger. Luckily the pan had been cooling for a while and the burn was relatively minor.

I finally went to YouTube for help and followed these directions. This time I was so frightened of burning my caramel that I didn't quite let the sugar completely caramelize. The resulting texture was a bit crystally, but the taste was outstanding.

"This is the best cake I've ever had", raved one taster.

All this playing around with caramel makes me want to try a creme brulee again. What else can one do with half a litre of left over whipping cream? I recommend against putting mountainous globs on your waffles. Tasty, but sickening.