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weekend & thinks
We had a family barbeque on Saturday, which was lovely. (BBQ for, not of, the family, for the pedantic among you.) Ted even made baked beans, which om nom nom. :)
I failed a third time to make decent ice cream, which is really pissing me off. I pride myself on my ability to make dessert, but custards are apparently not my strong suit. I have been given a non-custard recipe that Fred and Bryant swear by, so I guess I’ll have to try that. *sigh*
Yesterday I went to a museum and got a massage, which is not a bad way to spend an afternoon. :) Then we watched the second episode of Jericho, after which I slept poorly (probably due to 11 hours of sleep the night before) and had somewhat disturbing dreams. It’s possible children of the ’80s shouldn’t watch television shows about thermonuclear wars shortly before bedtime.
Ted set up the new (rather large) computer desk, looked at it, and said to me, “Well, you’ll be able to sew on THAT.” And he’s right, and now I want to sew something. In my copious free time.
Oh, I should put in my plug for voting on the Last Days project. I’m afraid that Swan River Press is now kicking my ass, and I fear for my chances of ever catching up. :)
– post office
–migraleve
–unpack &set up desktop computer
–call citybin
–call landlord about leak
– call airtricity
–laundry
– vacuum
–empty rubbishThere are other things, but since that’s more than I’m likely to get done today anyway, I’ll leave it at that.
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ice cream, charming child & guinness
So far I have made one amazingly successful batch of vanilla ice cream, a frozen chocolate mousse, and a crystalized lump of strawberry blah. This is *not* my usual kind of treat-making record, and I’m perturbed by it.
OTOH, I made these chocolate chip meringue cookies with leftover egg whites, and *they* turned out amazingly. Meringue is supposed to be hard to make, but historically I have very little trouble with things that are hard to make (we shall not speak of the first angel food cake, particularly since I know perfectly well it went wrong because I hate folding and took the instructions as written too literally in the hopes that it would all turn out all right, though, well, no, of course it didn’t), and though I’d never made meringue cookies before they’re perfect. Unfortunately, meringue really ought to be eaten at the very least on the day it’s made and ideally within about two hours, and while I did my best, even I wasn’t able–or willing–to eat 2 dozen meringue cookies in 2 hours. (The recipe says it makes 12. I used 1 extra egg white, because that’s what I had, and had 24 very generous cookies. I cannot imagine how big they must be if you’re making only 12.) Anyway, perhaps I’ll bring the slightly soft and sticky meringue cookies to the butcher boys, since Ted forgot to bring them to work, and the only other option is to ditch them. Or eat them, but I’m trying not to do that.
Saturday night I went out for writerly cocktails with several friends, which was fun and gossipy, and because hey, how often do I get to go out for cocktails, I went so far as to put on a dress to do so. When Young Indiana saw me, he gasped, “Mommy! You’re a *beautiful princess*! That’s your *dancing dress*!”
Pretty sweet kid. :)
Here is the daily link to the Last Days project. And to my friend Brian’s Swan River Press project. :)
And here is a very pretty painting of Gambit, for those of you who like that sort of thing. Hat tip to my friend E for the link. :)
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adventures in baking
Some of you will recall I started a Great Cake Baking Project a while back, intending to bake one of each of the cakes in my 80 year old cookbook. The very first cake, an angel food cake, turned out somethig more of an angel food doughnut: it tasted fine right out of the oven, but I’d overwhipped it and it was flat.
Well, having all these leftover egg whites from making custard for ice cream, I figured I should try it again. Except having just moved, I have no idea where my tube pan is. So I ended up making cupcakes.
I didn’t take pictures, but they turned out perfectly. They also verified what my mother has always said to be true, which is that angel food cake is pretty useless cake. It’s only good the day you bake it, and even then the only thing you really want to do with it is pour strawberries and cream over it and make strawberry shortcake. In this regard, it was magnificent. By the next day, it was just sort of nasty. So it’s a good thing they turned out, because now I don’t have to ever make another angel food cake. :)
Then there was the chocolate ice cream I tried making. Now, I screwed up the custard–the double-boiler water wasn’t hot enough when I started, so it cooked too long and got lumpy (causing me to run to the internet to see if lumpy custard could be saved. The answer: yes, with a wire whisk and an arm-numbing amount of whisking.)–so I can’t be sure if it was me or the recipe, but the final result was a frozen chocolate mousse. Now, if you wanted a frozen chocolate mousse, it was very nice, but I didn’t, so it was disappointing. Now I can’t decide if I should try that recipe again in case it was me, or just move on…
