Author Archives: Mike Lesiuk

Banana Bread with Streusel Topping

The recipe is an amalgamation of two recipes. The banana bread recipe comes from here at Recipe Zaar. It uses sour cream. I already had another banana bread recipe, but I wanted to try something new. I adapted the recipe a bit to include chocolate chips. And because there were a lot of nuts in [...]
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Don’t change your printer’s toner when it tells you to

Two months ago my printer (an HP-2170W Laser Printer) told me it refused to print anymore pages. It told me I was out of toner and I had to replace the cartridge. But it was lying to me - there was plenty of toner left. In fact, since that time, I have printed hundreds and hundreds [...]
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Coconut Chip Cookies

These are adapted from a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe in The Colossal Cookie Cookbook. I was basically going for something kind of like my Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookie Mix Cookies without the oatmeal. I still like my cookie mix cookies better, I suppose because I’m a big fan of oatmeal, but these were [...]
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Soft and Chewy Oreo Cookie Cookies

A long time ago I came across this Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookie Recipe at Two Peas and Their Pod. The recipe was good, but it was mostly a chocolate chip cookie with a few chunks of Oreos in each cookie (which, indeed, is a perfectly fine idea for a cookie). But I wanted an entire [...]
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Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Cookies (thin and buttery)

It took me a surprisingly long time to find an oatmeal cookie recipe that I wanted to try (like, 10 minutes on Google). I just wanted plain, thin, and buttery oatmeal cookies. I finally adapted a Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies recipe from All Recipes, and in the end it worked pretty well. I ended up [...]
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Simple Blondies

I mentioned in my Simple Brownies post that I was more of a blondie man than a brownie man. And that made me want to bake blondies. This blondie recipe is simple and pretty much impossible to screw up. I don’t really try other blondie recipes (much), because this is all you need. It’s from Smitten [...]
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Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Real-Life Trial by Combat

I’m studying Ivanhoe right now, and I came across some interesting articles about the book and its connection to a real-life trial by combat. So I thought I would blog about the details, because though I think it is interesting it will probably never make it into a paper. And the advantage of the blog [...]
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Simple Brownies

I am more of a blondie man than a brownie man, myself, but my girlfriend likes brownies. So here are some brownies. I got this brownie recipe from Cookie Madness. My criteria when searching for this recipe was that it had to use an 8×8 or 9×9 pan, it had to be relatively simple or quick, [...]
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Banana Bread with Walnuts and Chocolate Chips

I still haven’t discovered anything worth putting on a good banana bread. Butter, peanut butter, Nutella–all of these fail to improve upon that which is perfect. Although I have found that Banana Bread is a good bread for French Toast, even if it is a quick bread without all that fancy yeast. I’ve seen others [...]
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Two Victorian gentlemen enjoy the effects of opium

GENTLEMAN 1: What! What! Eh – eh – oh, by God! By God! GENTLEMAN 2: Dear me, man, my face is positively melting! GENTLEMAN 1: By… God! GENTLEMAN 2: (pointing) So is yours! GENTLEMAN 1: By… God! (Outside, an over-dressed fop with a brightly coloured overcoat walks past the window.) GENTLEMAN 2: A peacock! Whoooaaaa!!! (He topples over on his expensive leather [...]
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