I have to admit it. I'm a little obsessed with this site. I regularly tweet about recipes that I find absolutely delicious sounding. I spend my free time, late at night, browsing the site by hitting the random button and then saving the ones that I will make.
In total, I've made nine different recipes. I probably would have made more but I go through the butter so quickly for some of these recipes, and my mom has ceased from buying any more unsalted butter at the moment. I'd like to give you a little roundup of five of my favorite recipes from those nine that I made.
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springy, fluffy marshmallows - I love this recipe. It was the first one I made and the marshmallows came out so well that I knew I was going to have to make them a second time. It was actually fun to make them because I got to watch the molten sugar get fluffy by putting my mixer on high. I actually have to make another batch tomorrow for my mom because she liked them so much (she doesn't really eat marshmallows). A fun little recipe to try that only requires eight ingredients, but needs a candy thermometer.
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italian bread - I made this bread at my grandmother's house. I made sure that we followed every step because she doesn't always do it the way that the book tells her to. It took about a day to make (including the time to make the biga), but it was worth the effort. The crust was so nice on the bread, one of my favorite parts!
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salted brown butter crispy treats - I will never eat a rise crispy treat from a box again. It would also take some convincing to get me to get a homemade one that didn't include a whole stick of butter with some added sea salt. These were the best thing I ate probably in the whole month of November. If you are willing to use a whole stick of butter for these, make them as soon as you finish reading this. If you aren't, convince yourself that you should and go make them. They were delicious. I made three batches.
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bourbon pumpkin cheesecake - Now, I make a really good New York style cheesecake. That's the only thing that people ask for when my family goes to a family event. "Can Vasili make cheesecake?" "Vasili made cheesecake?! WHERE IS IT?!?!" Personally, I love cheesecake and pumpkin pie equally. This recipe is like the child of both of them. If you're in the mood for either and you like both cheesecakes and pumpkin pie, get your springform pan out and start reading that recipe! FYI, I omitted the bourbon, and it still tasted amazing.
I was asked (shocker, right?) to make something for Christmas for my uncle's house when we go down there on Christmas Eve. They say to make this, but I'm still deciding over the pumpkin cheesecake, yummy caramel cheesecake, and heart attack on a plate cheesecake.
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mushroom strudel - I could eat sautéed mushrooms only, and still be as happy as ever. I could also eat buttery, flaky phyllo and love it. When I read this recipe that combined the two, I knew I had to make it. They take a little bit of time to make, but the work was well worth it. I will be making these again when mushrooms go on sale.
I don't know how many of you have ever heard of smitten kitchen, but I absolutely love it. The recipes I find on there almost always come out tasting perfectly delicious. Along with their amazing flavor, the process to make them really isn't that hard (except for the marshmallows, which you have to watch; otherwise the sugar would burn). What are some of your favorite recipes, whether they be online or something found in a cook book?
Comments Closed — Personal Life
Those "extra" fields developers add to forms, are they to annoy us or do they really have a purpose that ordinary people do not see? I have mixed feelings about this extra field.
I was surfing the web while on Thanksgiving break, and came across Lee Munrue's website. Now, I've been there before but I've never read his article on confirming passwords. It was interesting to me because about an hour before reading the article I was closing down Coda, after working on the users section to Articulate Articles, in which I include a confirm new password field.
Side One - The Negative
There's two sides to this story. I'll first focus on the negative. Lee points out that this field is just an extra field that causes a user to spend more time on your form than maybe they want.
For me, I don’t think you do need to confirm your password. It’s an extra field to fill in therefore it takes extra time to complete sign up, so the more fields there are to complete the more I’ll think twice about signing up.
Personally, I don't mind filling in an extra field for my password. I remember one time while signing up for Iconator (for the fourth time probably) that I misspelled my password. Even though they have a confirm password box, I just copied and pasted my password in. DO NOT DO THIS. I have learned my lesson and never copy and paste my passwords any longer.
I don't know about you guys, but the one time when I hate to fill in my password twice is when you chose a "username that is already taken". This bothers me to no end when a website makes you fill in your password four or more times because they didn't add a "check your username availability" option. This statement is a little hypocritical because I do the same thing. 
Another thing that doesn't really bother me, but takes another minute or so for a confirmation field, is the processing on the back-end. It usually doesn't take that long, but does add another two to three lines of coding. I did however finally pick up a trick for checking two passwords (or really anything). Instead of checking both passwords for every little thing (empty, valid format, right length, etc), you check one and then check if the two are identical.
I know, I know, you are probably thinking to yourself, "why wouldn't he think of that?!" To that, I have no answer besides I just never thought of it. Assuming you wanted to do this with two password fields in PHP, you could do this:
<?php
// Old, "bad" way.
if (empty($_POST['password']) || !valid_password($_POST['password']) || empty($_POST['password2']) || !valid_password($_POST['password2']) || $_POST['password'] != $_POST['password2']) exit('Passwords must be valid and identical.');
// New, "better" way.
if (empty($_POST['password']) || !valid_password($_POST['password']) || $_POST['password'] != $_POST['password2']) exit('Passwords must be valid and identical.');
?>
Side Two - The Positive
When I originally read the title of the post, I thought of exactly what Lee wrote:
A password field will be starred out i.e. you don’t see what you’re typing, which means you could easily make a mistake and submit the wrong password without knowing.
As you know, I've fallen victim to this and know that other people have. Now, let me tell you something. Before I started reading the article, I was dead set on having a confirmation field. Up to the above paragraph, I was still dead set on a confirmation field, but once Lee pointed out his next bit of information...
This is where the ‘Forget your password‘ function comes in handy, which is an inconvenience but will have you up and running again with your old/new password in a couple of minutes.
...I started to think of whether or not I should really have that second field? He did make a good point in that the "Forget Your Password?" option almost solves the problem of having a confirmation field. However, this now raises the question of what should the forget your password ask from a user to send them the new password? In most cases it's the email the user signed up with, but sometimes the developer wants the user to enter a security question and answer (WHICH I HATE DOING). That now adds two other fields.
As you can see, I have mixed feelings about the inclusive of the second password/email/whatever field. There are both good and bad points to each side of the argument. I guess it depends on the complexity of the program/application and the personal preference of the developer.
I would love to hear what your thoughts on the matter are. If you were developing, say a social media website for the Wii (like Raptr), would you make users enter their password twice when they register?
Comments Closed — Technology, Uncategorized
