He was recently interviews by the local paper, the Valley News, and gave me a shout-out as the designer. Thanks, John!

The recipe is simple; it’s basically the filling for a rhubarb pie with the topping from an apple crisp, and it takes mere minutes to throw together. But be warned: both times I’ve made this so far this year, the entire dish has been emptied by the next day.

Creamy Rhubarb Crisp

Cut enough rhubarb into approximately half-inch pieces to fill a 9-by-13 casserole dish. In a bowl, mix the following:

• 1 cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon tapioca flour (or corn starch or arrowroot powder)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 well-beaten eggs

Stir the mixture into the rhubarb until all the rhubarb is coated. Then, in another bowl, mix these:

• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup rolled oats
• ½ cup flour
• 3 tablespoons butter

Spoon it over the top of the rhubarb, then bake (uncovered) at 350° F for an hour.

The first problem is that while I could make the OpenID login form appear above the comment box on a post, if I typed my OpenID URL and a comment and hit the submit button, it would log me in but bring me back to the (now empty) comment form, and my comment would be nowhere to be seen. If I’m given a login box and a comment box, it ought to perform both actions.

Second, once I had logged in with my OpenID identity, the “Logged in as” text that appeared above the comment form was ugly and I couldn’t easily figure out how to style it. It would be nice if the plugin options included text boxes that let me directly enter the styles for the various elements that it adds to my pages.

Third, and this is more a complaint about the WordPress architecture, I don’t like that my administrator login and a low-level commenter’s profile page both have the same URL and look nearly the same. I think the commenter’s profile page should be a totally separate file that I can lay out and style however I like.

I’d love to enable OpenID support on my blog, but these issues (especially the first) are deterring me.

This is a penguin holiday card picture I painted on my tablet PC in December, with the intent to make it into cards to send to friends and family. So, thinking that Staples was probably better-equipped to print decent holiday cards than I was, I put the image on CD to take to their print center. I handed it to the guy and said I wanted it made into cards, and here’s where I encountered the first problem.

I had saved the image as a Windows bitmap (.bmp) file, since that file format is ubiquitous and non-lossy, and I figured any halfwit competent enough to work in a print center would be able to convert it to another format if needed. The halfwit who was helping me, though, didn’t. He complained that it wasn’t a JPEG (hooray, compression!) but said he’d do what he could.

The next problem was that he took the CD and walked away without asking me even basic information about what type of card I wanted. I expected to be able to choose a card size, stock, whether I wanted a matte or glossy print, etc., but no.

A few minutes later, he returned, handing me a flimsy sheet of glossy paper with the image to the right printed on it. I was astonished. I had designed the image in such a format that it could easily be either 1) reduced to half-size, rotate, and printed on a half-page, or 2) reduced to quater size and printed twice on a page to make two cards per page. This imbecile had decided to squash it vertically into the top half of a page, and the printing program stupidly put the filename in big, black letters in the top corner.

Rolling my eyes, I told the guy never mind, and went and bought my own card stock and a new ink cartridge, took them home, and printed the cards the way I had wanted them, the way anyone with half a brain would choose to print them. And amazingly, they came out looking very nice, and the people we gave them to seemed genuinely pleased.

Twice now, we’ve made pasta with it, and it is by far the best pasta I’ve ever had. (Mind you, I haven’t been to Italy yet, so that statement may change in the future.) And as it turns out, making pasta is a relatively simple process. I was intimidated before we tried it, but now that we’ve done it a couple times I know just how straightforward it can be.

Here’s how we did it. First, you make the pasta dough. You can look up all sorts of recipes for this, but when it comes down to it, you crack a few eggs into a bowl and then you mix in enough flour to make a dry, but not crumbly, dough. The dough can’t be sticky, because pasta machines aren’t designed to be thoroughly washed at all; in fact, the directions say you should just wipe it down with a dry cloth, and occasionally add a little olive oil to the ends of the rollers to keep the machinery lubed. So if your dough is too sticky, it could get stuck inside the machine’s works, gumming it up and possibly causing it to rust, which you don’t want.

The first time we did this, we used two eggs and ended up with enough pasta for two servings. Last night, we used four eggs and ended up with enough pasta for about eight servings. Next time, we’ll use a dozen eggs and feed the entire state of Rhode Island.

We generally start with about one cup of semolina flour per egg, and then add a little more flour if the dough’s too sticky, or a little bit of water if it’s too crumbly. Then, you knead. Semolina is a flour with a very high gluten content, so the dough quickly becomes extemely solid and claylike, and takes serious effort to stretch and fold. At this point, it’s ready.

Tear off a small chunk, about the size of a golf ball, and flatten it with your hands. Then, with the rollers set to their thickest width, roll it through, flattening it and elongating it. If necessary, you can fold the edges or pinch together any holes. Ideally, your flattened dough will be oblong and less wide than the rollers. Keep rolling it through, adjusting the rollers one notch tighter each time. We usually stop at notch 3, which results in thick, hearty pasta, but you could easily go all the way to 1.

The flattening process is designed, it seems, for a person with three hands: one to hold the sheet of dough above the machine, one to catch it as it comes out the bottom, and one to crank the handle.

Once the flattened dough is as thin as you desire, you crank it through one of the cutter-rollers, and voila, a small handful of uncooked pasta. We tend to drape these over whatever’s handy, since we don’t have a pasta rack, and they get stuck together slightly. Don’t worry too much if this happens; as long as you get the rest of the dough done relatively quickly, it seems the uncooked noodles will come apart while cooking.

You noodles aren’t going to look like the ones that come in a box at the grocery store. They’ll be lumpier, and many will have ragged edges. Who cares? They’ll still taste great.

When you’ve finished flattening and cutting all your dough, just toss the pile of noodles into a big pot of boiling water, stir them a bit, and let them cook for three to four minutes. Then toss on plates with fresh marinara or (like we did last night) alfredo and sautéed vegetables, and you’re done! Buon apetito!

Sorry. Life, as always, is keeping me very busy so I haven’t had much time to think about this blog. I have, though, been keeping on top of Just What I Wanted!, my brand-new gift-idea blog. Check it out! Tell your friends! Send me gift ideas!

If you feel that a small amount of parking space isn’t worth destroying a beautiful wooded area, help spread the word and add your voice to theirs!

The state of Rhode Island leads the nation in driver cluelessness, according to the survey. The average test score there was 77, just eight points above a failing grade.

I’ve been saying since we moved here that I’ve never encountered worse drivers. Every time I drive I see numerous examples of blatant disregard for the rules of the road. Now, at last, my feelings are vindicated.