Anger Burger

In the tradition of this horrible universe, you often get good news with bad news. And vice-versa. So it goes.

Today we announce the long-anticipated, public, available on AMAZON, kindle publication of Sunday’s novel, e galactic mu.

The author.

That’s right, this is a thing. And you can read it. And goddamn it, you should. Our lovely captain put untold hours into crafting a lovely and hilarious story with memorable characters. And I put in no small effort myself, editing and winnowing and replacing dumb quote marks and fixing italic tags all that. And you helped!

Here is a quote from the book:

Now, everyone knows that the bloatshark towers had never failed around Birch Bay, and that even the pier itself had electro-static wire thatching, but no one wanted to be at the end of that pier. No one wants to be the one that sits at the very front of the plane, either: out of some optimistic fantasy that if the plane were to crash, the tail end would remain intact. The Captain Reverend seemed to think that it was all a part of his lot in life, even though he could move his boat at any time. Anyone who had been on the pier longer than a few days knew the Captain’s motto: “Better to be eaten by bloatsharks than have to socialize with you goddamn Mongoloid assholes.”

That is now my motto. I mean, my old motto was pretty similar, but I like this one better. The book is full of wisdom like this, suitable for personal enrichment and/or epitaphs. Also, flying sharks! Hello!

All that is to say, go buy the book. If you don’t have a kindle, get the app for your mammy-rammin’ iphone or itab or idesk or itampon or whatever. And/or buy it as a gift. It is not overly sexual, but does contain scenes of humping. For just $3, it’s a gift that says you’re thoughtful AND frugal AND like humping. Happy Valentines!

Part B of your mission (after you buy the book), is to write a review on Amazon. It does not have to be a long review. It does not have to be a five-star review (though, if you actually read the book, it probably will be). It does not even have to be a positive review. Reviews are gold, and our hope is that people beyond our precious circle of loyal Burgerians will get to enjoy this book. Drop us a comment here after you post a review (so we can high-five you). If you do that, you will be eligible for a possibly immoral special payola-like tribute that will confer IMMORTALITY* and/or FAME. What could be better than that?

That reminds me. I disabled DRM on the thing, so you can share it up. More than anything, we want people reading it. If they like it, maybe they’ll feel guilty and pay for a copy later (I mean, sooner is better, obviously, but later is okay). Or they’ll write a review. Either way, we’re cool like that.

And as long as I’m giving stuff away, here’s a special deal for you non-Kindleers: if you buy the Kindle version, and you require a different format, leave a comment here and I will personally email you a version for your device, in your preferred format** (almost 100% guaranteed to work). It won’t be instant, but it will provide gratification. And it will retain almost all of the typos I missed in the Kindle version. What can I say? I’m a giver.

So, in summary: buy book, write review, buy as gift, tweet, facebook, put it on your blog, tell all your friends, and most importantly, enjoy.

More updates throughout Spamuary. Thank you for your support.

MIKE the VIKING

*Of a very limited sort. Fame not guaranteed. But still, highly awesome. Come on, it’s an oblique bribe! Do I have to spell it out for you? Yes? I will, I promise.

**Not paper or audio, for Fenris’ sake. 

Starr Wall passed away on January 24th after 8 years of very bothersome chemotherapy. She does not recommend it as a way to go. But she stuck around because she loved the following: snow storms, graphic novels, Kalaloch, Cannon Beach, hobbits, overfeeding the fauna, pho, sushi, fish and chips, coffee, quiche, pork chops, madeleines, soft serve with hot fudge and peanuts, and other foodstuffs. She is sorely missed by her husband Virgil, father Vern, secret lover Legolas, daughters Layla and Sunday, daughterly niece Tina, grand-daughter Allyson, grand-niece Heather, ex-husband Jay, son-out-law Mike, and a whole train car of relatives that you would grow tired of reading the names of. She will be missed most of all by her army of fat, insolent squirrels.

As a co-founder of Babette’s Bakery of downtown Olympia, Starr was known for her world-class granola, irreproducible pear bread, and the mysterious Scottish Oat Cake, neither Scottish nor Cake, but definitely Oat. Prior to baking, Starr was a Registered Nurse. Her advice for any ailment – from heartbreak to head cold – was to take a nice hot shower. It works most of the time.

By Starr’s adamant request, there will be no service. In remembrance, please bake yourself some cookies (any kind but gingersnap), eat them warm with coffee, read a comic book and take a shower.

Feast your eyes on the new cover art for E Galactic Mu, coming soon to Amazon Kindle. How soon? Days. The last hurdle is the cover image for the store and it is 99.94% done. Exciting times, Burgerians! The next step is final sign-off from the lady herself and we will be putting it up. Normally I’d say keep your pants on, but you might want to start taking them off now, in anticipation.

Excelsior!

MIKE the VIKING

The captain and I have been secretly working on a tabletop card-game OF OUR OWN INVENTION for the past few months. It is called “Bad Neighbors” and is thematically centered around murderating your neighbors before they do the same to you.* It’s fun to play and easy to learn- we designed it with the idea that you should be able to pick it up and play after already having consumed adult beverages. A game between two people takes about 10 minutes; up to 5 people can play at once.

Yesterday we got the first real print of it (beta version 1.o) in the mail and it looks boss (see above: photo by the CAPTAIN).

Having already tested it in the rough stage (with the help of some enthusiastic friends), we’re moving on to test phase 2, where we answer the question: can people figure this out without us coaching them, using only the included instructions?

In the meantime, we’ll be moving forward with cleaning up some errors and finalizing the art. Did I mention there are more than 69 unique pieces of art in the game, hand-drawn by SUNDAY and myself (MIKE the VIKING)? Pret-ty awe-some. The actual art is less blurry than the above photo.

Like so.

The game will be up for sale once we solve the instructions issue and decide exactly how to print it. We will either be using THE GAMECRAFTER (a kickass indie-game print-on-demand service; this is where we made the beta deck) or traditional printing (supported by a kickstarter, most likely). There are pluses and minuses to each.

We’re taking volunteers for beta testers (local is best). Drop a comment if interested. Or if you want to be on the “I will totally buy this thing as soon as you start taking moneys” list. Otherwise, stay tuned.

Until Ragnarok, I remain:

MIKE the VIKING

*using vampires, zombies, aliens, and demons. we like to keep our murderizing clean and classylike. 

T’were the busy season at Fig Manor, what with the apocalypse and the other thing. Anyway, the captain has not been making any “new” recipes lately, and she has this thing about not repeating herself. At least, not rehashing old recipes, OLD STANDBYS, much to your chagrin, and mine.

I have been eating the traditional pre-Ragnorak diet of lefse (this looks like a decent recipe, based entirely on the look of that grandmother- report back if you try it)  and fudge. You can get the ol’ fudge bog standby here. Oh, and don’t use stainless cookware, because apparently it will “break” the fudge. The one pictured above is the second batch. SCIENCE!

What else? Well, there’s this thing:

GAZE on this work, ye mighty, and DESPAIR. Created by Spidermonkey’s own Wizard Garrett for the annual cthulhumas secret santa. We could not be more tickled.

In bookish news, the publishing of Sunday’s secret not-so-secret novel is 99 &44/100% complete, which is to say: it will be complete once I take one more pass through for proofing’s sake and come up with a cover that is adequate for our purposes. Anyway, SOON.

This is (probably) not the cover of the book:

And! As if that were not enough, there is another GRAND PROJECT in the works. It does not involve much reading at all, but it does involve vampires (both kinds), as well as zombies, aliens, and demons. And, most importantly, VENGEANCE.

Happy whateversday to you all. Try not to get eaten by ice giants.

-MIKE the VIKING

I am going to say up front that I am not 100% sure this is a thing worth the trouble.  Wait, let’s go back a little.

Nearly three years ago my mom told me that she saw a TV show wherein Ruth Reichl, ex-NYT-food-reviewer and writer extraordinaire, makes sweet and sour pork with the exquisitely exotic-sounding osmanthus flower.  My mom was captivated, because what fool wouldn’t be?  The thing is, the recipe is otherwise unremarkable.  Or rather: remarkably bland-sounding; it consists of nothing more than sliced pork, black fungus (which tastes like is sounds) and a tangy-sweet syrup.  The longer I mused on it the less appetizing it sounded.

Except for the single star of the show, osmanthus.

I let it percolate in my brain for a few years, until a few months ago when I was in Seattle and wondered past a little Chinatown tea shop that sold bulk osmanthus, and then it all came drifting into place.  The smell is what got me: it smells like apricots.  Like fruity, warm, orange-yellow light, summery and evanescent.

Instead of Reichl’s recipe, I added it to my solid many-years-tested sweet and sour recipe.  Instead of making a syrup, I steeped it straight into the pineapple juice I use as the primary liquid.

I love my sweet and sour, but Mike the Viking does not and therefore I rarely cook it.  He claims it is all vinegar, I claim he is a buttface.  We are at a standstill.

But the addition of osmanthus?  A fleeting, minuscule whiff of it survives cooking.  It is lost amongst the strong flavors, and though I still won’t make the recipe from Reichl’s TV show, I understand now why there are essentially no other ingredients involved.  Meanwhile, my standard sweet-and-sour recipe remains a paragon of whitey-Chinese, and I implore you to try it.  It is, admittedly, very tangy and not very sweet, but as it should be.  If it is a little too sharp for you, add a little more sugar and ketchup to balance it out, but as I make it, it is refreshing, nutritious and light, not the sugary loogie you get from cheap Chinese take-out¹.

Don’t skip the tomatoes stirred in at the end, either.  It is one of my favorite parts of the recipe, the way they remain intact and uncooked, but just warmed through.  The usual caveats apply to the rest of the ingredients: chicken breast will be dry and sad, but whatever, I’m not the boss of you.  I prefer chicken over pork, but even tofu is good (though I vote for the fried stuff).  Any vegetable works, but I have never beat the combination of green bell pepper, onions and carrots.  It is what it is, and for me, it is perfect.

Whitey Sweet and Sour
in the scheme of things it really isn’t that whitey of a recipe.  i mean, it isn’t neon pink and made almost entirely from high fructose corn syrup, but it is made from pineapple juice and ketchup.  for the pineapple juice, i usually buy a large can of pineapple chunks and use the juice from the whole can, but only about half of the actual pineapple pieces. and then i eat the rest of the can of pineapple while i am cooking, but that is a side story.  if you don’t want actual pineapple pieces in your food, buy a can of pineapple juice, because the recipe still needs that tangy fruity flavor. lastly, osmanthus can be found online and at Chinese teashops, if you are lucky enough to live near one. Reichl advises using chamomile if you can’t get osmanthus, which is an interesting suggestion, but part of me just wants to tell you to use some apricot nectar instead of pineapple juice. TOO MANY IDEAS.  i will shut up now.

2 Lbs. cubed boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 green bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 onion, sliced into 1/4-inch slices
1 carrot, sliced thin, diagonal if you’re fancy
1 tomato cubed
1/2 cup pineapple chunks

sauce:
1 scant cup pineapple juice **see note
2 – 3 heaping Tablespoons of osmanthus flowers
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons brown sugar or more to taste
1 Tablespoon finely diced fresh ginger
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons corn starch

rice for serving

**Note: if you use a can of pineapple chunks for the juice, it will not produce a full cup.  It will be a little shy of a cup.  That is okay, keep going as planned.

• Heat the pineapple juice to a simmer (microwave is easiest, unless you’re against mutant pineapple juice, in which case on the stovetop in a small saucepan is the way to go) and steep the osmanthus flowers in it until the pineapple juice has cooled, about 10 minutes.  Squeeze the remaining juice from the filter/teabag and discard the flowers. TEABAG!  Haha!

• In a medium saucepan, over high heat briefly sauté the chicken pieces until they are browned on a few sides, but still have visible pink flesh.  This will take 3-5 minutes.  Add the green pepper, onion and carrot, and lower the heat to medium and allow it all to cook together for an additional 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

• In a small bowl, mix the soy sauce and cornstarch together and set it aside.

• In the pot with the chicken and vegetables, add the remaining ingredients of the sauce: osmanthus pineapple juice, vinegar, ketchup, salt, brown sugar, and ginger.  Let everything bubble over medium heat until it is as cooked as you like.  I prefer my veggies pretty crisp, which means they are done cooking in 3 or 4 minutes.  If you like yours soft, let them continue to cook a few minutes longer.  When you’re happy with it, add the soy sauce and corn starch mixture, stirring rapidly as you pour to incorporate.  Let it bubble and brap until thickened, about 2 minutes.

• Turn off the heat, add the diced tomato and pineapple pieces and stir to combine.  Eat it.

¹ I have a friend that called cheap Chinese sweet and sour “neon abortion”. This turn of phrase has stuck with me over the years, though I cannot now remember who said it. I now pass it along to you, friend. Enjoy.

I have heard every major city argue that they have a heinous population of hipsters, and that their hipsters are unique and awful.  Brooklyn, San Francisco, Austin; I have lived alongside Los Angeles hipsters, who are a magnificently infuriating sub-species that cannot be reproduced elsewhere, but are nevertheless still just hipsters.  Seattle doesn’t quite show up to the Department of Hipsters Faculty Meeting the way others do, they are stuck in a charming and dated spiral of a post-grunge, lingering goth thing.  But then there is Portland, Oregon.

There is actually a reason for the TV series Portlandia.  It is not inaccurate.  There is a well-educated smugness laying over the city like a vintage Pendleton blanket.  There is a joke/not-joke here about “when Olympia moved to Portland” and indeed, I know a lot of people in Portland whom I knew here, in Olympia, back in the day.  And the one thing they do, in all their vintage boutiquing, chicken cooping, streetside composting, gourmet food trucking bumptiousness that drives me insane is that they never stop talking about how fucking perfect Portland is.

“All I ask for is a decent goddamn donut shop,” I wrote on my Facebook page one day (my private one, not the Anger Burger one – don’t go fact-checking, you’ll be disappointed).  MOVE TO PORTLAND my friend in Portland writes, as though that were helpful¹.  And after complaining about healthier energy drinks, my friend Jason tells me: DRINK VISO.  IT IS MADE IN PORTLAND AND YOU CAN ONLY GET IT IN PORTLAND.  WOE IS THE FOOL THAT CANNOT DRINK VISO.  I may be putting some words in Jason’s mouth, but that is the gist of it.

This last summer I was at a local store and did a double-take at a beverage cooler case.  There on the shelf were three cans of Viso.  I had never seen them before, only heard of them.  And here we were, 120 miles from Portland.  It must be some kind of mistake – surely Portland wouldn’t allow one of its precious products outside the fortress walls?  I bought one, and a few hours later drank it.  And then went back and bought the other two at the store because it was fucking delicious, and asked them when they would be getting more.  Never, they said.  The distributor wasn’t answering their phone calls.  I write Viso and asked them if they were distrubuting to anywhere in Olympia.  They didn’t answer.  I wrote again.  They didn’t answer. Their Facebook page is a sea of crazed Viso fans asking questions, complaining about availability of favorite products, and all without answer from Viso.  As near as I could tell, Viso didn’t really exist.

And then a few days ago it shows up at my local Co-Op.  The label is different, the flavors different.  The flavor I tried before was “Will” a sour cherry and grapefruit flavor, now it is cranberry and grapefruit.  The sugar-free flavors are now stevia instead of sucralose.  So it would appear that Viso has quietly reinvented itself in preparation for — I assume — national distribution, with preliminary accounts in Wholefoods in the Pacific Northwest (in addition to my local Olympia Co-Op).  I certainly don’t recommend ordering from their website, as a case costs $21 with SEVENTEEN DOLLARS SHIPPING.  You are fucking kidding me, you guys.

Speaking of caffeine, each bottle contains 300mg, which is the equivalent of three and a half small cans of Redbull, or between four and five shots of espresso.  So, basically it’s a fucking disaster in a bottle.  And I love it.  The flavors are truly well-balanced: faintly sweet-sour, and bitter and mineral from the caffeine and vitamins.  It’s a poor description, but they taste, well, real.  Like fruit juice and vitamins. And 300mg of caffeine?  Holy shit.  I basically live in an eternal state of sleepiness, like some nodding junky without any of the fun heroin parts.  The last few days of having a Viso around for quick drinks here and there have left me productive and alert.  My god, the possibilities.  I may now have the energy to shower every day!

So, I am sorry if you can’t find it, but I have a hunch that you will be able to within the next year.  Keep a lookout for them and remember after drinking one to take a couple laps around the block just to keep from tearing your own eyelids off.

¹ As an aside, Voodoo Donuts? Total bullshit. I’d rather have a Krispy Kreme served to me by a pleasantly bored teenager after I have stood in line for zero minutes.

The great secret not-so-secret novel-editing project is proceeding more or less as planned. Thank you all. With your help, we may get this out just in time for the Mayan Apocalypse. I’m as excited as a little Mayan boy with a bowl full of human hearts. Which is to say: very!

A strange formatting error has been unearthed however. One of the ANGRY BOOKERS violated instructions and checked the formatting on an iPhone. While that is upsetting enough, what is worse is that the formatting is apparently IMPERFECT on the loathsome device. I have a hypothesis, though, so if you are cursed with one of those things and would like to help make some science, speak up.

Otherwise, keep your fingernails shorn and your seax sharp.

MIKE the VIKING

Picture Unrelated

As I mentioned last week, Mike the Viking turned 40, which is alarming to anyone who knows him.  He looks and acts like a drunken, rage-filled toddler, and the number 40 lends him an unearned air of respect.  I made him pie.

My first and most important tip to you: for a graham crust, replace one third of your graham crumbs with nuts.  Almonds and walnuts seem to work best, I haven’t tried hazelnuts yet but I think they’d be great – maybe with chocolate grahams?  Nutella crust?

Just place whole nuts and grahams in a food processor and whiz them together into a fine meal.  If you don’t have a food processor, I’m not sure how you grind nuts.  I suppose the alternative is to use graham crumbs from the store (or smash them in a bag, which in my experience leads to graham shards getting smashed clean out of the plastic baggie due to plastics tension failure, but I digress) and pre-ground almond flour.  It will work.

The crust ends up never getting as rock-hard as cold graham crusts typically get, and the flavor is infinitely more interesting.

The pie filling was the result of a existential argument some years ago over whether I should make a coconut cream pie or a banana cream pie for some event now long-forgotten.  Mike asked “Why can’t you make a coconut-banana cream pie?” and we never looked back.

If you don’t like bananas and just want the coconut part, that works too.  Just skip the fresh bananas part.  I once debated the efficacy of making a pineapple filling for the pie as well, but fresh or canned pineapple would weep too much in the hours the filling took to set, so you’d have to make a cooked pineapple jam-style filling, which would end up very sweet.  It’s a theoretical project I still want to tackle, but for now I am busy watching ST:DS9 and wondering what the fuck I should make myself for dinner tonight.

Either way, when the pie is assembled it is imperative to press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the custard, or else it forms a rubbery skin that will delight children and terrify everyone else.

If you have never made a cream pie before, this is the one.  It uses both egg folks (for flavor) and corn starch (for reliability and stability) to make the custard, and comes together quickly and with little skill required.  Oh, and I almost forgot: coconut milk.  You get to basically eat an entire can of coconut milk.  So there’s that.

Coconut Banana Cream Pie
traditional American shredded coconut comes in very long, thick, sugary strings, and if you don’t like the texture of it in your pie you can actually skip that part; the flavor or the coconut milk will shine through.  another alternative is to try and find finely shredded dessicated coconut, sometimes found in the Indian section of bigger supermarkets. also, we used to have a bottle of natural banana flavor that i would add a single drop of to enhance the banana, and that was nice, but when the bottle started to smell off i threw it away and never got any more. that was a boring story, i’m sorry.

for the crust:
5 whole grahams (the entire conjoined piece), or about 3/4 cup crumbs
1/2 cup nuts
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup butter, melted

for the custard:
1 14oz. can coconut milk (not the sweetened kind)
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup plus 1 Tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 egg yolks
1/4 cup cornstarch **(see note)
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into two pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 or 2 bananas sliced, depending on taste

**note: to measure the cornstarch, fluff it and level it with a knife and try to avoid packing it into the scoop.

• To make the crust, blend the crackers and the nuts together until a sandy texture (if using preground, just put them in a bowl).  Dump into a bowl, add the sugar and salt, stir briefly, then add the melted butter and stir until combined and sort of loose and sticky-sandy.  Press into a pie pan and bake at 375° for 10 minutes, or until the edges are starting to brown.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool before adding filling.

• In a medium bowl, whisk yolks, cornstarch, and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar until thoroughly combined.

• In a medium sauce pan, bring coconut milk, whole milk, shredded coconut, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt to just barely a simmer over medium high heat, watching carefully to make sure the milk doesn’t boil over. When it starts to bubble around the edges of the sauce pan, turn it down a little to make sure it doesn’t boil while we are doing the next step.

• Whisking constantly, gradually add about two ladles of hot milk mixture over yolks; whisk well to combine. Whisking constantly, gradually add the yolk and milk mixture to the sauce pan in a steady, slow stream; it will almost immediately begin to thicken. Stirring constantly, cook until thickened and mixture “braps” like lava bubbling, about 1 or 2 minutes more.  Turn off the heat.

• Off heat, stir in butter and vanilla until butter is fully incorporated. Pour hot filling into cooled pie shell, layering in sliced bananas as you go.  Smooth surface with rubber spatula; press plastic wrap directly against surface of filling and refrigerate until firm, at least 3 hours and up to 12 hours.  Really, don’t try to cut it before the three hours are up.

We all know that Mike the Viking is typically wrong about things.

He is wrong about soup (that it is an abomination) and about beans (that they are poison).  He is wrong in believing that I am a shrew of a woman (I am not).  And he is wrong about Welsh cakes, and not in the way that Ann Romney is empirically wrong about them.

And here is where I have to tread very carefully.  He has brought home great baggies of his family’s Welsh cakes before, and I am historically not a fan of them.  Perhaps because he lets them - and likes them – to get quite stale, I find them to be dry and a little bland.  I mean his family no disrespect — I am certain that I make plenty of foods that fail to blow their skirts up.

So, Mike turned 40 this week.  In Viking years, that’s like 200.  I decided to make him Welsh cakes, and knowing no better place to start, I used the recipe off the Wales tourism website.

They are mixed together like a pie dough, a very buttery short dough made soft by the addition of egg, milk and baking powder.  I asked Mike if I might substitute dried blueberries for currants (since that is what the magical cupboard of unknown dried fruits yielded) and he gave me an emphatic “NO.”  I went and got some currants.

The dough itself is an easy and pleasant texture, and did not require a rolling pin.  I just patted the loose dough between two sheets of plastic wrap and a light dusting of flour until it was the right thickness.

The strange thing about Welsh cakes is that they are fried.  Or griddled, rather.  It is recommended that one use an electric griddle since the temperature is more easily controlled, but I decided to use my non-stick stovetop griddle, which is actually what I use for almost everything I fry.  I like that it has no sides.  This is shitty when trying to saute a large pile of something since 30% ends up somewhere on the stovetop, but que sera.

You cook them medium-low until they brown nicely on one side, and then flip them.  The balance is in getting the thickness of the cakes right so that they cook through and brown at just the correct rate.  It’s not really complicated.  You keep the flame lowish and watch them.  A lot of recipes call for tossing the finished cakes in a bit of granulated sugar, which I love the look of, but Mike frowned at for the sandy texture, and I later admitted was leaving a trail of sugar all over the house as we walked around munching on them.  Not that the dog minded.

When cooked they are similar to a scone, soft and buttery, with a soft but toothsome crust. I love these.  They are simple and tasty.  Mike agrees: excellent, though not like his family’s.  He could tell from looking at my dough and from the flavor that this recipe contains more butter, and no one is arguing that is a bad thing.  It surprises me not at all to learn that the secret to a Welsh cake I like is butter, but there it is.

Welsh Cakes
i weighed everything in this recipe, since the one i was working from offered no volumes.  i am sorry if you don’t have a scale.  the holidays are coming up, maybe you should ask for one. also don’t balk at the pumpkin pie spice, i swear it will not make these taste like something that fell in your mouth at Starbucks.  it lends just the faintest whiff of interest and nothing more.

225g/8oz plain flour
100g/4oz/1 stick cold butter
75g/3oz sugar
50g/2oz currants
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 Tablespoons milk

• Dump the flour, spice, salt and baking powder into a bowl.  Cut the butter into small pieces and dump them in, and using your hands, smash the pieces into the flour by pressing the cubes between your thumb and forefinger.  Keep doing this until the butter has broken down into small bits, which will probably take about 3 – 5 minutes.  Think about things, like what you’d like to have for dinner, or if it is worthwhile to get a gun permit.

• Add the sugar and currants and mix together briefly with your hands.  Make a well in the center of the bowl and dump in the lightly beaten egg and the milk.  Still using your hands, quickly mix.  It will not come together completely, and that is okay.  Don’t overwork it, treat it like pie dough.

• Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured piece of plastic wrap, and using the wrap, mash the dough together just barely until it holds.  Pat it flat into a disk that is 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick.  Cut out rounds with a cookie or biscuit cutter.

• Heat a non-stick skillet or griddle to medium low heat.  Do one test cake first to make sure the heat is correct – it should be golden brown on one side in about 4-5 minutes.  Flip and cook the other side to the same color.  When you’re sure the temperature is correct, then do as many as 6 at once.  Transfer to a rack to cool.  Traditionally (I guess?) they are tossed in a little granulated sugar while still warm, and this is really pretty and Christmassy, but it also make a damn mess, so my suggestion is to skip it.