Accomplishment chart, 12/27 - 1/2

For the week of 12/27 - 1/2:

Writing
- worked on plot of 1920s musical
- worked on outline of 1920s musical
- started a scene between Mary and Nathaniel
- wrote 1 blog entry for mrshawking.com
- wrote 5 horde characters for Her Eternal Majesty's Privy Council
- wrote 4 Livejournal entries
- wrote 7 daily Hipster Feminist tweets

Theater
- had 1 rehearsal for GHOSTSHOW
- submitted Mrs. Loring for consideration for 2 performances and 1 reading
- submitted Believing in Heroes for consideration for performance

Website
- posted 1 blog entry

Media
- saw "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
- watched 1 episode of Breaking Bad
- listened to Electric Six's "Danger! High Voltage"
- watched episode 9 of Downtown Abbey series 4

Physical
- 1 hour-long circuit workout

Cooking
- made chuck roast with onions and carrots, mushroom duxelles, rustic pear tart, and crudités
- tested the mini food warmer by trying to boil water
- made pot roast with carrots, celery, and onions

Tiny not-crock test #1

Tested out my tiny not-crock pot. As several people suggested, I put water in it to see what it would do. When I first plugged it in (it has neither power switch nor temperature control) there was soon a worrying scent of burning plastic. I got nervous and unplugged it. Still, I didn't want to give up, so I tried it again. I guess all that plastic burned up the first time, because the smell didn't come back. :-) With the lid on and some time, it was not able to boil the water, but brought it up to a consistent point where steam rose up from the surface.

I also tried, rather clumsily, to melt some chocolate in it for the purposes of dipping fruit and marshmallows. I probably went about it totally wrong-- everyone says fondue-type things are much harder to execute than you'd first think --just putting some heavy cream and some chocolate morsels into the crock. They did melt eventually, and there was no burning or boiling or anything, but they didn't mix up smoothly. I probably should have heated the cream first on its own and then added the chips, or something. But I find this encouraging. I think it will be possible to make melty-things in this with a little process tweaking.