Wet Ingredients:

3/4 cup Shortening
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups AP Flour
2 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp ground Ginger
3/4 tsp ground Cloves
1 tsp ground Cinnamom

Sugar for rolling.

Directions

Standard cookie procedure. Mix wet ingredients, slowly combine dry ingredients just until mixed. Form into walnut-sized balls, roll in sugar, and bake 10-12 minutes at 375 degrees. Err toward taking them out too soon, they burn quickly and it's hard to tell since they're so dark.

Makes 4-5 dozen. Approximately 45 calories each.

Dumplings

These need to dry for at least eight hours, so make them the night before or get up early.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
2 teaspoons aluminum free baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup vegetable shortening, at room temperature
1/2 cup skim milk, chilled

Directions

Sift together the dry ingredients. With your fingers, work the shortening into the flour like a crumble. Be careful to not overwork the dough, or the dumplings will be tough. Add the milk a few spoonfuls at a time until you can form a rough ball. Divide into two pieces and roll each out as thin as you can. Alton's recipe said 1/16", but mine were closer to 1/8" and worked fine. Work on a piece of floured parchment or wax paper to make it easier to handle the rolled-out dumplings. When the dumplings have dried out, cut them into 1/2" strips, then cut those about 2-3" long. A pizza wheel works great for this.

Chicken

If you use a whole chicken, you can make stock from the carcass. I guess you could buy one already cut up and forgo the stock, or use leg quarters. But seriously, this is a get-your-hands-dirty dish, and carving a chicken into pieces is fun.

4-6 lb. Chicken, cut into eight pieces
5 ribs celery, sliced thin
1 large onion, chopped
3 teaspoons kosher salt
Several grinds of black pepper
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 vegetable bullion cube
Water

Directions

Put everything in a dutch oven or big pot. Add enough water to cover, maybe an inch more. Bring it to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

When the time is up, turn off the heat and remove the chicken pieces so they can cool down. Strain the broth from the veggies -- keep the veggies in a large bowl, and return the broth to the pot. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and bones and tear the meat in bite-size pieces. Put the meat in the bowl with the veggies. If you're making a stock, (you are, right?) add the bones & skin to it.

Put It All Together

Bring the broth to a boil and drop the dumplings in. Don't stir, though you can use the back of a spoon to push the dumplings down into the water to make sure they're covered. Let them cook for 10 minutes, then add the veggies and chicken back in and stir everything together. If you want to thicken the soup up, add a little cornstarch (I used about 1 tablespoon) at this point.

Enjoy!

Wet ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/2 Cups sugar
2 eggs

Dry ingredients:
2 3/4 Cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 teaspoon Chai Spice blend*

Sugar Coating
2 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons Chai Spice Blend*

Directions

This recipe works best if you let the butter and eggs come to room temperature before you start. If you don't have time, no worries -- it'll just be a bit harder to mix the wet ingredients. (And messier, as the butter tends to clump up and fly out of the bowl.)

Using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar (mix until smooth). Add one egg at a time, mixing each just until combined.

Grab another bowl for the dry ingredients. Sift the flour into the bowl and add the salt, cream or tartar, baking soda, and Chai Spice blend. Stir to combine.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in 3-4 batches, mixing in between. This should come to a thick dough. Dump the dough out onto a sheet of wax paper and form it into a big ball. Squish it into a fat pancake, wrap it in the wax paper, and stick it in the fridge. Ideally, it should cool for 2 hours, but I've been able to shape it after 1-1/2.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the sugar and Chai spice blend in a small bowl. Break off pieces of the dough and roll into balls. I think the ideal size is roughly the size of cherry, or a littler smaller than a big marble. At this size, you'll get 5 batches of 18 cookies. You can, of course, make them bigger if you prefer a larger, flatter snickerdoodle.

Roll each ball in the sugar/spice mixture to coat and set on the cookie sheet. Allow about 2 inches between cookies. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the cookies just start to turn golden. There is a fine line between just right and overdone, and it is better to take the cookies out a little sooner than later. Make sure you let the cookie sheet cool between batches or the cookies will start to melt as you place them and the edges will be weird. I use three cookie sheets and rotate them -- one in the over, one cooling, and one receiving the next batch.

*Chai Spice Blend

When I first made these, I used a McCormick Chai Spice blend I found in the grocery store. If you can find it, it works great. Alternatively, you can make your own. Just combine these:

1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

If you use ground nutmeg, you may need to use a little more. I highly recommend getting whole nutmeg and a microplane grater though -- the flavor and aroma can't be matched. Also, I'm guessing on the ground cardamom, since I've been using whole cardamom. I don't recommend that though, the process of separating the grains from the seed pod and grinding them is a bit of a hassle (though it smells imcredible -- It's not hard to imagine you're walking through a Persian bazaar.)

Adapted from this Snickerdoodle recipe.

My Makerbot came in and I got it built. The first three prints I attempted came out perfect, then it was nothing but trouble for a week. Last Sunday I got it working again.

I posted a bunch of pictures on Flickr and uploaded one design to Thingiverse.

You'll notice the filename on the light bracket I uploaded to Thingiverse has the number three in it. If you browse through the Flickr set, you can see the two failed design attempts.

(BTW: I'm sitting in a room with three making Makerbots, one idle one with a Frostruder, and one kit being built, none of them mine. That's what happens on craft night at NYC Resistor.)

I attended a class on Bioelectricty tonight and got to make a do-it-yourself ECK circuit on a breadboard. This screenshot is the bioelectric signals my circuit detected when I stuck three electrodes on my chest.

Very cool, no?

I'm thinking I'll head over to NYC Resistor tomorrow for craft night. I'll probably take my Arduino and see what I come up with.

Give me a month or so -- I will very likely be space-constrained in my new location, but I'll definitely set up so I can keep working with Arduino in preparation for the arrival of my CupCake (Hmmm, I should probably call Makerbot and tell them not to ship that to Texas...)

In the meantime, I'm about halfway through putting together the robot arm I bought with the intention of wiring it to the Arduino. While I've been poking along, a friends son put it together in a few hours. Check out Abe's blog here and here

This sure beats the extension-cord-and-power-strip solution I had earlier. Plus, the overhead lights with CFLs are much better (and more effiicient) than the halogen worklight I had hanging on the wall.

Here's some pics, I've got two from Before and several After. If the PictoBrowser widget isn't working, you can view the set on Flickr

The computer under the workbench is a Shuttle case with a Celeron and 1GB Ram, running CentOS. I need to get a wireless router I can use as a gateway for it and any other ethernet-aware devices I bring in.

I'm excited to have a good place to work. For my first project, I'm going to assemble a Robot Arm and hook it up to my Arduino controler.

I debated building the shelves and bench -- that would certainly be more in line with "maker philosophy," but the deciding factor was I'm not sure how much longer I'll be living in this location and have access to this storage building. It'll be easier to move the bought shelves, and they would work just as well in an apartment spare bedroom or garage.

I got a deal on a workbench on clearance at Sears. After looking at Home Depot and the current stock at sears, I was dissapointed. Most of the workbench offerings were way overkill - tons of drawers and shelves. The clearance item I found has three drawers, a big flat top, and a backwall with pegboard and an fluorescent light fixture. Best part, it was 40% off.

I hope to finish putting the workbench together tonight, then I'll post some before and after pictures of my workshop conversion.

I used aluminum angle beams and hollow tubes with threaded rods and was able to build something that works. The only tools I needed were a standard drill and a hacksaw. I used 3/8" x 1/8" adhesive rubber weatherstripping to provide a no-slip surface that also protects the bottom of the laptop from being scratches by the bars. It keeps my laptop monitor in line with my other monitors, and clears up all the desk space under it.

If I recall correctly, I spent about $30 on parts - I bought some aluminum I didn't need. It took a couple hours to design and put together.

Here are some pictures:

It's going to be a challenge to get any real work done over the next few weeks if I'm stopping every few minutes to sketch out an idea for a quiz game controller or electronic big-screen Etch-a-Sketch.