My recap of Thursday’s Eleventh Hour episode “Miracles” is up at Tor.com.

It has the best thing ever, in that the graphics department slapped a Flash Player pause-button logo in the only corner of the newspaper that was facing the camera. GREAT JOB WITH THE FILLER, GUYS.

No, seriously, go look. I screencapped that thing myself, that’s how much I am not joking. Plus there’s the clip where you get to watch Rufus google out of his own head pointing to the Flash Player embedded in his newspaper. SCIENCE!

Because it gives you a recipe for salted water:

When salting water for cooking, use 1 tablespoon of salt for every 4 quarts of water.

And the eight hundred reviews of the recipe.

* As a Canadian, I am on the metric system and have no idea what a quart is. Furthermore, I had to substitute beavers for the salt, and beer for water. The boiling process caused my igloo to melt, leaving me homeless. Two forks.

* I used iodized sea salt and added an extra 1/8 tsp. Definitely upped the ante. My guests were begging me for the recipe.

* I have been making something similar to this since it first appeared in Gourmet magazine in 1992. But I misplaced the recipe years ago and have had to improvise since, with out much luck. Thank you Epicurious for reacquainting me with this oldie but goody!

My own review: this website gave me my review for lemon icing. Proceed with caution.

It’s just as well that I never go into my kitchen. I have some kind of entropic field.

An old friend of mine came into town, and as part of the evening’s festivities we baked gingerbread, because that’s how we roll. And by “we baked,” I mean that I stood in the kitchen and handed her things, and she baked. It came out nicely! It smelled like a molasses factory, in a good way. It looked like normal gingerbread should look:

Disclaimer: this picture of gingerbread is a representative example, and not our actual gingerbread.

See, I asked for lemon icing, which sounded appropriately delicious. We banged around in the refrigerator for lemons, and pulled out sugar, and followed the recipe exactly. I stood and watched, helpfully, and imagined the gingerbread coming out with that slightly rum-soaked glaze that happens all the time in the food shows, where women pour things contentedly over cakes and the camera pushes in like it’s porn.

When the “lemon glaze” was finished, we poured it over the gingerbread in a very prosaic and you-missed-a-spot way that gives me new respect for anyone who can cook on camera, and let it cool.

Something went horribly wrong at some point (entropic fieeeeeld), and now the gingerbread looks like this:

Good news: if you can peel the lemon off, it’s delicious.

* Band name!

I saw Inkheart at midnight, so I could write it up for Tor.com in a timely fashion.

The only place in New York showing the movie at midnight was a tiny movie theatre between Kew Gardens and Flushing. It was a little bigger than the townhouses around the corner (and the shape of the basement looks just like a brownstone, no fooling).

I allowed way too much travel time, which was a good idea in theory, but meant that I was at the theatre ridiculously early. (It’s a theme with me.) While waiting, I realized I have become one of those people who cannot handle being in a place where businesses close early. Quiet streets freak me out.* It’s only eleven PM; you should not have to take a twenty-minute bus ride to find a cup of coffee! I need tall buildings and a diner RIGHT NOW. (You bet I took that bus ride. This movie is two hours long, and then I had my 90-minute commute back home. I had so much coffee that I think my blood is 7% caffeine.)

* To be fair, there was a small grocery store that was open until 1am, but wandering the aisles of a grocery store for an hour and a half sounds like something from Dateline.

Well, not heavy favorite The Other Boleyn Girl, which got a big two-assed snub from the Academy for costume design, that’s for sure! I can only hope that my railing about it helped contribute to this movie’s non-inclusion.

Suck it up, Portman. No chemise, no Oscar! Those are the RULES.