Thursday, January 29, 2009

Oh, and catfish

I knew I forgot something. Anyone have a favorite catfish recipe? I don't have any catfish, but I've got some Hawaiian butterfish I thought could substitute. Catfish recipe anyone?

Not Random Facts at All

1) You know you have a no nonsense dentist when he chastises you for bleeding too much, making it hard for him to work.

2) It turns out that some students put off work and don't care about your class. Who knew?

3) I bought my first day calendar yesterday. The thing's already filled up for next week. I can see how these things become a crutch fast. One day later I'm acting like, "if it's not written in my calendar, it doesn't exist."

4) Here's randomness. N is a rampant sheet stealer. And so we actually keep two sheets on the bed. One is actually on the bed from when we made it up. The other stays next to it for me when she's stolen all the covers. I use it almost every night. Unfortunately for me, we only discovered this stunning solution last year.

5) B is a ring bearer in my sister's wedding in April. B calls himself "the ring burier." I hope he doesn't do any burying of the ring during the ceremony. Anyway, he's supposed to wear a kilt. That should be interesting.

6) Speaking of my sister, she's now finishing up her "externship" at Chocolat in Fredericksburg, Texas. I believe they've agreed for her to stay on permanently afterwards. The place specializes in a Swiss technique for making liquid center chocolates, where there's some spun sugar shell that holds the liquid inside. Unfortunately, she's not working in that part of the store and, even if she was, she has to sign some agreement to never tell anyone how it's done or they remove her head. So we may never know. We'll just have to ask her how to make lots of other non-head-removing chocolates. But sounds like a fun job regardless. Sorry, irregardless. I put that it for Precie's enjoyment.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Just an update

Well, yet again, I've done my best to kill this blog by disappearing for over a week. Therefore, despite the fact that it's 1:00 AM, here's a little update.

The semester started up 2.5 weeks ago. So far life is much better without the journal. I might have just as much to do, but it all actually involves linguistics, my actual field. As opposed to copying names and abstracts from one field to another field. I'm teaching my one class, which is going okay. I need to get better at organizing my lectures as I can be haphazard in the way I present stuff. I'm working on it.

The most interesting thing in the class is that I'm attempting to have them all do research projects with me. If they do the minimum, then they are my research assistants; if they actually get into it, then they could be collaborators/co-authors. This research is in lieu (for some reason, I hate that I knew how to spell "lieu") of homework. Research is the homework. Anyway, I've got 24 students, so they've been put into 6 groups. They then selected a project to work on out of 8 choices I gave them. Supposedly, this is what they will be doing. (Remember the class is "children's speech.")

1) Looking at the effect of mysterious characters in stories on memory in 6-8 year-olds who speak English.

2) Same as above except with speakers of ASL, American Sign Language. One of this group is bilingual in ASL and English, so we might be able to pull it off. The question is: how many native ASL-signing children are there on Oahu that we can get access to?

3) A recent study found some difference in how Japanese-speaking children and English-speaking children understand pronouns. So, I ask, what do bilingual Japanese AND English-speaking kids do?

4) In English, you can put focus on a word by stressing it and, for kids and adults, this affects how they interpret the sentence. Korean doesn't do stress like this. Instead, they put the focused word at the beginning of a phrase. With eye tracking, we will try to see if Korean kids know this yet and when.

5) As far as I'm aware, there aren't many diagnostic tests for language impairments until fairly late, like 5 or 6 years old. But there's one study I know of that hints we might be able to look for language difficulties as early as 18-months. I want to work with some of the speech pathology students to see if this can really go anywhere.

6) People group objects into categories such that tabbies and siamese and persians are types of cats; cats, dogs, and cows are furry things; and furry things, slithery things, and fishy things are moving animal things. There's a sort of hierarchy even for children. I am wondering if such a thing exists for actions. Do people think of strolling, moseying, and running as types of walking, while walking, swimming, and skipping are types of bodily motion? Gonna try to find out.

And that's the sort of thing I've been doing. And now it's getting close to 2:00 AM, so I'm going to sleep regardless of how I have ignored the blog. However, you can see me here singing Nat "King" Cole's Unforgettable on video!

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Eleven Hawaiians

For a couple of weeks now, B has been talking periodically about the 11 Hawaiians. It was never clear from his mention of them what exactly these 11 Hawaiians did, but they were clearly heroes of some sort. His elementary school has a kupuna (wise elder, but here is simply the teacher for Hawaiian stuff) who visits each class every week or two to teach Hawaiian language and culture. N and I assumed he'd learned a story of the fabled 11 Hawaiians at school, but we could never get much more out of him about it. Indeed, it wasn't clear that B remembered much more of the Eleven Hawaiians other than the fact that they were heroes. Because they cropped up in Star Wars comments as much as anything else, but right now for B Star Wars is incorporated into everything.

On Sunday, N and I were discussing the 11 Hawaiians again and what they may or may not have done. Did they fend off a god? a giant? Were they heroes in King Kamehameha's army? Maybe they somehow helped Pele in the creation of the islands? It was a great mystery and I resolved to at least Google the issue when I got home and, if that didn't work, ask at his school or go to a library's Hawaiian section and explore the folklore.

Then, later that day while driving in the car, B says, "Luke Skywalker joined the Eleven Hawaiians." And I thought and slowly asked, "Are the Eleven Hawaiians the Rebel Alliance?"

Apparently so. He knew neither the words 'rebel' or 'alliance' and so heard "eleven Hawaiians" which sounds a lot more like "rebel alliance" than it has any right to.

So there you go. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia: Leaders of the Eleven Hawaiians.

Friday, January 16, 2009

More Random - No Cleverish Number

We were out to dinner this evening, discussing various purchases, and walking around Circuit City, and I had a few realizations:

1) As an adult, I've never had cable TV.**
2) As an adult, I've never had a bed frame. (Dim memory suggests maybe I did around college or shortly after, so perhaps a bed frame over 10 years ago.)
3) I've never owned a gaming system. When I was about 9, my parents bought the Odyssey 2 system from Magnavox (Odyssey 1 might pre-date Atari), but I've never bought one myself.

I believe all three of these things are somewhat unusual for my age and social group.

4) I just read a rather cool article about the history of printing and the possible connections between Korean printing and European Printing a la Gutenberg. Apparently, the earliest printing using metal moveable type was in Korea. The article makes some speculative suggestions about the relationships between the European publishing industry, the technology, and the writing systems. Here's the article.

5) On a quiz, apparently, my font is Helvetica. Industry standard, reliable, but a bit boring.

**As a note, Hawaii was the first to dump analog broadcasting and move to the new digital signal. We made the switch on Thursday. We have the digital converter box but haven't tried it out yet. All the old analog stations just play videos about how to switch to digital now.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Random Facts NC-17D

I am aware that I've only used this blog in the last month or more to talk about linguistics or karaoke. I really think that's about it. Things are happening in my life, such as we started the new semester on Monday and I'm teaching away already. Child Speech is the class and I have 25 or so eager beavers. However, it always seems too tiring to talk about one's life and I never get around to it. The result is linguistics and karaoke. So here are some random facts about me.

1) This evening I captured 3rd place in the musicals contest. My last number was the lovely I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General song from Pirates of Penzance. I'm not sure how I managed to get higher than 2 other finalists with that, but it was fun to do. And you are thinking: This is just another karaoke post!!!

2) I'm currently 35, but my beard, when I let it grow, is pretty much gray all over now. It used to have gray bits; now it has brown bits. I don't keep a beard usually, but I'm rather poor at shaving regularly, so grayish scruff comes and goes.

3) I'm awfully fond of milk.

4) Crap, I better come up with some more random facts, or it'll be linguistics and karaoke all over again. (Monty Python Quote from their skit Novel Writing, "Oh, it looks like Tess of the d'Urbervilles all over again."**) As a teen, I was quite definitely one of those guys who quoted Monty Python all the time, such as reciting entire sketches and knowing every cheese mentioned in the cheese shop bit. When visiting various British locations (it's been a few years now), I'd even stop in cheese shops to compare. I don't do that very much now. Actually, I still like cheese shops.

5) B is completely into Star Wars right now. He's young enough that he actually thinks Episode I and II are good! This has involved lots of light saber duels unfortunately. I've fought duels in parks, on the beach under Diamond Head, on the sidewalks of Waikiki,.... I'm definitely not going to get asked out by some vixen if I continue this behavior. My exact character assignment changes a lot, but B seems to like being the apprentice a lot and calls me Master. It's good to be the Master. Now, if there were only a connection between his calling me Master and his behavior towards me.

6) I'll host a March Madness Yahoo tournament as it has been requested.

7) I'm completely, totally done with the journal now. Even turned my keys in. OK, I'm still answering questions some, but I'm basically done.

8) In theory I'm training now to run a 25 minute 5K, which is just under 8-minute miles. I've got a little Word table with my weekly running schedule and all. I'm only in week 2 now, which involved 15 minutes of walking and running one 10-minute mile. The theory is to increase the running and decrease the walking until I'm running 30 minutes at a slow pace. Then I will start adding in segments at faster paces until I get there. It's sort of farlek training for those in the know. And, crazy or not, I've even extended the Word table another page after the 5K to train for the Honolulu Marathon in December. As I've said, it's week 2, so we'll see how this goes. When I completed the Country Music Marathon in 2001 or so, N asked me if I wanted to do another one and gave a big hearty 'no'.

9) Linguistics.

That's all she wrote!

**The authors among us might actually enjoy the novel writing sketch. It imagines Thomas Hardy writing Return of the Native as a spectator sport with play-by-play. The first sentence only takes 3 hours.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Super Bowl Picks

Considering the way the NFL playoffs are going so far, I now pick the San Diego Chargers** versus the Arizona Cardinals to play in the Super Bowl with the Cardinals winning. Why? Because those were the two absolute worst teams to squeak into the playoffs and because it makes absolutely no sense -- just like the results of the games so far. That's why. I'd pick the 0 and 16 Detroit Lions to win it all if I could.

**Yes, perhaps I should wait until the Charger and Steelers game is over today to make this pick.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009


Since I got kicked out of the Elvis contest due to a miserable Can't Help Falling in Love with You, I joined a Musicals contest and I've now made it to round 3. If I remember correctly, I first sang Hello Dolly as the audition to get in. In round 1, I sang Too Darn Hot from Kiss Me Kate. Then in Round 2, I had to sing one song from Grease and one from Little Shop of Horrors and so I did Greased Lightning and the Dentist song, done by Steve Martin in the movie*. For round 3, I now have to sing one song from Chess, which will be "One Night in Bangkok", and one song from Fiddler on the Roof, where I will give "If I were a rich man" a whirl. I expect to lose in this round, because there are definitely better singers left than me.

I think the Dentist song was one of my better ones, so here's the link:


For those who are gluttons for punishment:

Greased Lightning
Too Darn Hot
Hello Dolly

I grew up with the Chess CD in the house due to my brother having it (no idea why; as far as I know, he's never been to a musical in his life), so I can spit out One night in Bangkok in a few takes. I might have bitten off more than I can chew with Fiddler though. I had to go find "If I were a rich man" on YouTube today to hear how much of it went.

I have an odd relationship with theater. In high school, I got involved in our high school theater stuff and worked on 20 to 30 productions, mostly building sets. I should say that I attended a prep school with a 900 seat proscenium theater, so these were pretty big affairs. I only appeared on stage like 3 times, always in bit parts like pirate number 5. I was hardcore enough though that I attended a theater camp at U Texas on summer as a junior, worked as a stagehand at the New Jersey June Opera Festival after graduation, and was Vice-President of the drama club, which had over 100 members at least. I moved into doing really bad lighting design in college and then repeated that many years later for our little local theater group in Spring Hill Tennessee, where I even ended up as President of the whole thing. After getting the Masters in '96, I even interviewed to teach drama at my old school**. Clearly I wasn't offered the position. Wow, would things have been different if I'd done that!

And yet, when I'm not actually working on a show, I basically never ever go to see any stage play. The number of plays or musicals I've seen that I wasn't a part of (or wasn't required for a class) could probably be counted on two hands, despite working on 40 or more over my time.

And so in this musicals contest, almost the only shows I really know are the ones that I actually worked on way back in high school, almost 20 years ago now.

*Random musical fact. The music for Little Shop of Horrors was written by Alan Menken, who very soon moved over to Disney to write music for Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and more. (I had to look this up.)

**Random fact. I sent out about 150 resumes for a teaching job at a private school after getting the M.A. and the only single place who contacted me at all was my alma mater where I'd spent hundreds of hours with the teachers now hiring. I don't know what this means. In other random job news, I've attempted to get jobs at places like Barnes & Noble several times in my life and also can't get an interview. I don't know what this means either. I sometimes ask questions when I'm there, and it's not like the people responding display stunning book knowledge....

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Curry Salmon Chowder

I've been working up to this recipe for at least 3 months.

Somewhere I got it in my head that I wanted to make a bowl of soup. And then I wanted to cover said soup with a pastry like thing. I bought some pie crusts; then I bought some puff pastry sheets. But I still had a problem. I didn't have any oven-safe soup bowls. It was devilishly hard to find any that we could afford. Williams Sonoma had something like what I wanted, but they wanted $22 a bowl. I like experimenting with food, but I'm not going to blow $70 on some bowls for the three of us. Eventually, this last weekend we found some $7 bowls and that seemed doable. And so -- finally -- I made a soup with a puff pastry on top. In fact, I made

Curry Salmon Chowder - P. Diddy Style (because, you see, it's puffy. um, ok, moving on)

I still need to work on the puff part, because it's really easy for the pastry to fall in the soup and just be dough sitting in soup, but the chowder itself is working out well enough to call it a recipe.


2 6 oz. cans of salmon cheap from Costco
A potato and a half or one big honking potato. honk honk. Goose breed. (Yes, I am playing word association today.)
1 medium onion
1 can of coconut milk
1 1/4 cup of heavy cream
2/3 white wine
1 1/2 cups water
some parsley or other italian seasonings
2 tsp Thai fish sauce
2 tsp red curry paste
4 Tb butter

Stuff to Do

Dice up the onions and potatoes. Melt the butter in a big pot and toss the onions in. Cook until transparent. Add the curry paste, stirring, and cook for 1 minute more. Add in the liquids -- water, coconut milk, cream, wine, fish sauce. Bring to low boil with occasional stirs. Add in potato. Cook for 15 minutes with pot covered. Add in the salmon and seasonings. Cook another 5 minutes.

Then supposedly, you are done. I, in fact, cooked it in the morning and we didn't eat it until dinner. Isn't that sort of the point of large pots of soup? If you want to do the puff pastry thing, follow the pastry box' directions for thawing and prepping the pastry. Preheat oven to 350. Cut a circle LARGER than the oven-safe bowl so that the pastry doesn't fall into the soup. Fill the bowl up pretty high with soup and set the pastry circle on top. Bake for 20 minutes or until the pastry is done. Remember your bowls will be 350 degrees, so warn the eaters not to touch.

It looked like this:

We had it with a good loaf of bread, but really, if you have the pastry on top, you don't need bread.

In case anyone thinks, wow, people eat yummy food over at Paca's all the time and I can just imagine his family gathering at the dinner table and enjoying what he's come up with, then you should see B's plate. There was only a 3% chance he'd actually eat this thing, so he got a 1/4 bowl of soup, which he indeed never even touched, and this little plate of random things I found:

I rolled up something inside the spare puff pastry pieces and baked it, a couple carrots, some almonds, a couple slices of cheese, and the bread. I also thought I'd be super fancy with the bread, so I poured some olive oil on a plate, sprinkled some pepper and seasonings on it. Awesome, yes?

N went and got the butter out of the fridge because she prefers butter and only eats the olive oil at restaurants when there's no other choice. Oh well. At least the soup was pretty good!

I've continued experimenting with the puff pastry thing which I am a complete novice about and so tonight I took the second pastry sheet that wasn't used in the soup and made

Bok Choy Goat Cheese Pufferoosies

Preheat oven to 350. I used bok choy, but spinach or baby bok choi would probably be better. Slice up 1 head of bok choy (2-3 heads baby bok choi or choi sum). Cook it for a few minutes in a covered skillet until soft. Place in a bowl with a hunk of goat cheese. Sprinkle some garlic powder and pepper in. Stir it all up good. Take your puff pastry sheet and cut it into 9 squares. Place a little lump of cheese and spinach/bok choy in the middle of each square. Take two opposing corners and pinch them together on top. Take the other two corners and pinch those together as well. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until the pastry looks done.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Brainstorming 2009

Three years in a row now I've come up with impossible half-assed goals for the coming year. It's almost entirely failed to motivate me in any practical manner and therefore it's clearly time to do it again. Here we go. In 2009, I may or may not:

1) Finish Dissertation. (Really should do this one. This also implies doing things like getting a job, but I'm going to ignore that for the rest of this list).
2) Submit 2nd paper with J-W. (This is further work on Korean and cross-cultural politeness).
3) 25 minute 5K (Repeat goal from last year.)
4) Average 7 hours of sleep per diem. At night. Falling asleep on the floor of an office doesn't count.
5) More recipes!
6) Read two fiction novels. (Moonbat has likely accomplished this already.)
7) Paca and N night once a month.
8) Attend 2 parties/dinners with classmates. No cafeterias can be involved in this.
9) Watch Titans win Superbowl. I have no control over this, but it would be very very nice. If they actually get to the superbowl, I'm planning a watching party already.)
10) Spit out that paper on poverty of the stimulus and causation finally. (I know this goal makes no sense to anyone but me.)
11) Pursue 2 of the most worthy research projects from the acquisition class' work.
12) Be organized for almost all classes I teach each day.
13) Get B enrolled in some sort of activity. (We always talk about it but never do it. Probably dance.)
14) Attend sister's wedding.
15) Work through first Korean language book.

Hey, good enough. I'm going to largely ignore them anyway. (OK, I really will show up to my sister's wedding.) 15 is so few, however, that these might actually be possible. Not sure I can handle that.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Goal number 1 for 2009?

I was thinking of boring goals like writing a dissertation or exercise. But instead I think I'll jump a motorcycle to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

Assessing 2008

Apparently, I came up with another big list of goals for 2008 on this blog, so that must mean it is time for me to assess how I did. I think it's worth noting that I write these lists up, don't really edit them for reasonableness, and then rarely look at them during the year. With that sort of serious approach, let's see how things went:

1) Pass Comprehensive Exams. I actually did this! Check.
2) Have Dissertation Proposal Approved. Holy crap, I actually did this, too. On like December 8, but a check is a check. Check.
3) Three Chapters of dissertation written. I guess not, but my proposal is actually around 60-70 pages, so if the research turns out, that's a couple chapters written that will be reused. Half check.
4) Run Honolulu Marathon in 4hours 20 minutes. Ahem. Uh, no. I maybe ran 4 hours and 20 minutes over the year's time. Maybe.
5) 25 minute 5K. This is looking worse and worse.
6) 34" waist. OK, I hate this list now.
7) Three minimally embarrassing songs recorded and shared with you folk. Well, I absolutely didn't have karaoke in mind when I wrote this one, but if karaoke counts, I've embarrassed myself at least minimally about 10 times now. Check?
8) B takes swimming lessons. No, but there was about a 2 month period where we were taking him to the pool every week. Halfcheck. No, quarter check.
9) I want to learn to go body boarding. I went body boarding once. I think what I did indeed counts as bodyboarding even though the nearby labrador was moving faster than me and he didn't have a board. Then I slice my foot open on some coral. Check!
10) Maybe I will start a recipe book! No, but I've continued adding recipes to this blog some. 1/2 check.
11) Korean apology paper published. No, but this totally isn't my fault. Submitted the damn thing in April and the journal still hasn't gotten a single review back to me. 9 months is f-ing ridiculous. But they say their reviewers are supposed to respond in the new year. Perhaps in December of the new year. I get a 3/4 check for that.
12) Korean apology paper 2 written and submitted. Half check. The research is under way and we've collected a bunch of data.
13) American apology paper started. This is actually the same as above, so complete check here.
14) One N and Paca only night a month. No, not really so much. That's not a good failure, is it?
15) Two short stories. Do the chapters of my dissertation proposal count as fiction? If not, then no check for me.
16) Four day vacation. Well, we went to Maui for a long weekend for the 10th anniversary. I'm checking this one.
17) Independent dissertation funding. Uh, no, but I have switched jobs, so that's a 3/4 check.
18) Do a good hike once a month. No.
19) Sleep regularly. Completely failed at this unless sleeping 4 hours a night regularly counts. Boo me.
20) Don't stress out. 1/4 check.
21) Don't actually do every idea you come up with, because that's insane. Hell, yeah. I definitely didn't do every idea I came up with, like half this list. That gives me a complete check.

OK, let's sum up. If each goal is worth a point, then 21 points are available for the taking. I seem to have earned 10.5 check points over 2008, which is exactly a 50% success percentage. I could beef it up by saying that the dissertation is more important than writing short stories, but then I'd have to say that the N and Me time is just as important, so my weighted successes would be canceled out by weighted failures.

I'll take it. Now to think of some goals for 2009....

What Hit the Actual Spot

It took me a little while to get any sort of act together for New Year's, so we were at the grocery store last night after NYEve dinner at the lovely Chili's (thanks muffytrue!) buying stuff. By the way, Whole Foods = Broke. Whole Foods is across the street from Chili's so we stopped there on the way out.

I spent, well, about 3 hours this morning creating New Year's Day Brunch for just the three of us. I still had Louisiana on the mind since finding the Creole Hawaiian menu yesterday, so my menu was:

Homemade Beignets
Andouille Sausage for me who like spicy; Sweet Italian Sausage for N and B
Broiled cheese grits
fresh berries with homemade whipped cream

Black eye peas were supposed to be in there, but I couldn't find them in the store last night. It would be cool to say I made the sausage from scratch, but I actually gave Whole Foods half a finger for them (should I just say that I gave them the finger?) Here's the plate:

And now, because I love you all, I am going to reveal the only recipe that more than one person has ever asked me for. Everything else I pretty much foist on people unasked for, but my family members actually ask me how to make my cheese grits, which are a Paca Family tradition. And I will now reveal the secret:

This recipe is based off of an old Soul Food (that was it's title) cookbook I had, but I've modified it since. The recipe is just for a big old pot of cheese grits; I can discuss the broiling and stuff at the end. As you will quickly see, this is not for the lactose-intolerant.


2 cups milk
2 cups water
1 stick butter
3 big spoonfuls of sour cream
1 large egg lightly beaten
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup velveeta
1 cup (and some more usually until it looks right) grits
garlic powder
black pepper


Prep the cheese first, so there's no hassle later. Shred the cheese; cut the velveeta into cubes. Preheat oven to 350. In a large oven-safe sauce pan. Combine water, milk, and half the butter in a sauce pan. When it just reaches boiling (don't let the milk burn on the bottom) slowly add in the grits. 3-4 batches usually. Turn heat to low / medium-low and stir frequently to keep the grits smooth. The should thicken until an air bubble makes the grits pop just a bit. On low heat, add the rest of the butter and some cheese. Stir to melt. Add the cheese in 2 or 3 more batches, stirring to melt each. Add in the sour cream, stir. Add in a nice bit of garlic powder, pepper, and paprika. There should be no evidence of boiling at this time. Add in the egg, stirring constantly. Sprinkle some more pepper and paprika on top for appearance sake. Cover and bake for about 30 minutes. Serve piping hot.

They can actually be somewhat light. It's possible to make a grits souffle though I have not with beaten egg whites. You can also make little grits wedges and then do things with them, just like you can with polenta. To do that, skip the baking stage and pour the grits onto a buttered cookie sheet with a lip or 9 x 13 baking dish so that the grits are about 1/2 inches thick. Stick in the fridge for 2-3 hours until they are firm. All I've done in the picture then is slice the chilled grits into rectangles and broiled them for about 7 minutes. You can also take a rectangle, dip it in flour, egg, and bread crumbs and then fry them up in oil, sorta kinda fritter like.

Obviously, these aren't particularly healthy. I've actually cut back on the dairy products, believe it or not, in the recipe above. The one thing you cannot do is reduce the milk further. It is cooking in milk which gives the critical creamy texture. If you cook in straight water, that's the way you normally get grits at a breakfast place, and is fine, but usually only appreciated by people who grew up with them. You also need a combination of processed American cheese like Velveeta and something else like cheddar. Either one by itself can come out gross.

As for the beignets, this was my first time making homemade beignets or donuts. I followed a recipe from a William-Sonoma cookbook, but the recipe is debatable. I was almost a cup short of the flour they wanted and my dough was firmer than they seemed to want. I need to explore beignet recipes more before I post one. Of course, they are expensive, because you have to spend all this money on cooking oil for the frying; therefore, I may not do them again until there's a special occasion. Now, if the Titans reach the Super Bowl, that might be time for a Paca Party.