frumiousb

Christmas had gotten busy so quickly that I hadn't had a chance to post pictures of our fabulous cookie baking day. Thanks to bezigebij, nikkyb, coco_keesses, and T.

( more pictures )

For those of you who are Sunday Salon readers and looking for something literary, I can only direct you to my unwise thoughts and citations from A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis. Alas for the rules, I made that post yesterday. And as there is no such thing as a Saturday Salon, I fear that it does not count.

Today, I had every intention of continuing to read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I have been sipping through it for several days now, and had imagined that there would be pithy things to say. I could have related it to the kinds of memories that I have left from my own family. I could have commented on the generation differences that are studied and even highlighted. I could have talked about the disabled and (slighly) unreliable narrator. I could have mused about what the book has to say about marriage and couples. Instead, I will confess to you that the my thoughts were rather less lofty today. Although I did make it through several pages of the novel, I was busier with domestic things than is usual for me.

Meatloaf was the result. I can't claim all the credit. I can't actually claim most of the credit, since I mostly helped B. do the cooking. But when it was done, it was good. And I have to confess that I didn't really miss books at all.



So goodnight, dear reader. I'm going to grapple with a few pages of the Stegner in silence in bed. Unobserved and unnarrated, and the public none the wiser.

We're pretending that it is summer, even if the weather doesn't agree.

( recipes in dutch )

I tried a traditional US salad recipe today, using garlic salt from the Dutch supermarket. Lesson learned-- Dutch garlic salt is much more salty than US garlic salt. Means my wonderful perfect macaroni 4th of July salad, is now nearly fatally salty.

Irritating.

Attended Proef Amsersfoort with bezigebij and husband. I was a little bit hampered by the fact that I had to fly to London the next day. And, as you can see from the photo-- it was *very* busy. Still, the food and the company were both good.

Personally, if I were going to go again, I would go for lunch and try to avoid the crowds!

( more pictures )

This list will be updated as more lessons are learned.

• Temperature of ingredients and dough is everything.
  
• Spritz cookies are infuriating, difficult, and generally not worth the effort. I've tried two different recipes and finally tossed out the spritzer today. Now I know why my mother refused to make them.
  
• Bake a trial sheet with three cookies before you cook the whole batch.
  
• With the convection oven, set the temperature on older recipes a little bit lower, but then cook them for the middle of the time range published. (i.e., If is says 10-12 minutes, cook it 11 minutes.)
  
• Molasses in a bottle is easier than treacle from a can, which makes me wish I had a more reliable US source of baking goods.
  
• Silicon implements rule.
  
• Not snacking on broken cookies is practically impossible.
  

I've so far been able to make three different kinds of cookies in significant enough quantities to give away-- gingerbread men, chocolate crinkles, and almond lace cookies. I lost two full days trying to make the goddamn spritzer cookies. I realize that in a country with as many good bakeries as this country has, Christmas cookies are kind of an exercise in futility. But it makes me feel like I'm nesting without requiring huge amounts of effort.

Also, just wanted to say that yesterday I made the Delia Smith macaroni pie with leeks and bacon, which may become our ultimate comfort food. Not even remotely good for a person, but oh so yummy. High end mac & cheese.

Dream that in an ultrasound, they revealed that my baby was actually a cat. I was shocked, but the nurse assured me that sometimes it just happened that way.

One of my very favorite comic artists, Julie Doucet, apparently has the same dream. I wonder if I got it from her.



Dancing Chicken Recipe

For archival purposes, last night B. made this recipe from the Delicious Christmas issue. Chicken with lemon and capers. It was easy, and great. As usual, scanned recipe is in Dutch, but I've translated it.

( recipe )

( translation )

My last post was about a good day, and the last few days have been not so good. I was going to write about it, but then figured you knew the drill nearly as well as I did. Blah blah blah contractions, blah blah blah bleeding, blah blah blah pain.

But today was a good day. I have to start focusing more on the positive things. I realized yesterday how easy it would be to fall into a major depression.

So. Blah blah blah. All better today.

I have been cooking. It's the only way that I have found to feel remotely productive in house arrest. I thought about knitting, and looked at some web sites about how to teach yourself to knit. If I had been a cartoon character then you would have seem me start to grow thumbs in place of all the fingers. Pop pop pop-- do what with the yarn? Remind me sometime to tell you all the story of 4H and how poor Mrs. LeTeusel tried valiently to teach me both sewing and cake decorating.

So. I cook. I dug out my Molly Katzen cookbooks (The Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest) so make an attempt to be healthier. I made tofu salad and pesto lasagna. And then I got cocky and tried to make one of her apple cakes. Suddenly I remembered that I'd had one big consistent problem with all of her baking recipes-- they never seemed to rise as they were supposed to. The apple cake was meant to be a light airy angel food like cake; instead it turned out as something that could have been used to inflict blunt force trauma. I've been a fan of her cookbooks since I was in college, but I now recollect why the only bakery recipes I used regularly from The Moosewood Cookbook are the ones for making nice dense bread.

Ah well. I'll turn back to less healthy cookbooks for my baking adventures.

This was the tofu salad:



Even B. had to admit that it was very tasty, and he's opposed to tofu on a nearly religious basis.

Today, we went to the park, and B. took lots of pictures of me and my ridiculously exaggerated belly.

( casting vanity to the wind )

From Delia's Complete Illustrated Cookery Course. There are about a million good coq au vin recipes out there, but this one is easy and good. Her whole book is great, by the way.

Two tips:

You may require more wine than it says, that's okay. It's more important to cover the chicken completely, even if you need to add more beurre to the sauce later.

We sometimes cheat and use those bargain packs of chicken legs from the AH. :)

( let me know if it isn't legible )

I spent my energy today making a Flemish sugar pie-- a custardy thing. It turned out pretty well, although I'm still occasionally surprised by the effects of the convection oven on temperatures and timing, so the crust was just slightly burned.

Ah well.

I thought that I was going to watch Quatermass and the Pit from Moviemile, one of my favorite films. But it turned out that they sent me the Hammer version instead of the original. Not too bad, but not nearly as creepy as I remember. I fell in love with it watching monster movies on Saturday afternoon as a kid-- stuck in my head all those years without any idea what it was until I recognized it from the description in Lipstick Traces. Any other Quatermass fans out there?

Words of the Day-- Gasconade to Sutler

Gasconade
Main Entry: gas•co•nade
Pronunciation: "gas-k&-'nAd
Function: noun
Etymology: French gasconnade, from gasconner to boast, from gascon Gascon, boaster
: BRAVADO, BOASTING
- gasconade intransitive verb
- gas•con•ad•er noun

Pactolus
a river, now in modern Turkey. This river contained gold sands that were the basis of the economy of the ancient state of Lydia. According to legend, King Midas divested himself of the golden touch by washing his hands in the river.

panado
Panada \Pa*na"da\, Panade \Pa*nade"\, n. [Sp. panada, fr. L. panis bread: cf. F. panade. See Pantry.] Bread boiled in water to the consistence of pulp, and sweetened or flavored. [Written also panado.]

Sutler
merchant: somebody who follows an army and sells goods to the soldiers ( archaic )
[Late 16th century. < obsolete Dutch soeteler < soetelen "befoul, do menial work"]

Awaking early the other day, and in a fit of housewifely zeal, I decided to make gazpacho. We both like it, it's cold, and we would have something to eat for a week.

Unfortunately I was more well-intentioned then actually awake. Either that, or the Gods were not on my side that day.

( argument with the magimix )