Buttered toast

Closeup of buttered toast

Toast with cat shadow

Here, the cat's really moving in on my toast

lemon meringue, day two

I was worried about this bread when I took it out of the oven – it seemed spongey rather than crusty, and I was afraid, because of the hot weather, that it would be like a sour dough loaf I baked last fall, on a hot day, that came out big and overblown and white.

Next morning, though, this loaf had a crust, and made really good ultralight toast.

The too-brown, too-thin lemon pie benefited from a night in the fridge, too – you can see that the filling is set – but the crust is stuck to the bottom of the pan because it leaked.

I started my at-home sick day with a big bowl of cereal. Somewhere in the afternoon, I polished off the malted milk balls. I was pretty good at staying away from snacks during the day, but I did eat three of the stuffed dates (tho only one is depicted). They’re Mollie Katzen’s recipe – an almond inside and coconut with fennel seeds. Mollie says to roll the dates in the coconut mix, and I don’t know what kind of dates she uses, but no way that stuff was going to stick to the big Medjools I had – so I opened up the pitted dates and stuck the coconut to the sticky insides, popped in the almond and closed them up.

Around 6:00 p.m. I sent Mark & Joelle off to the symphony and dinner downtown, and they also got to see a bit of the 1-year anniversary, recall Walker rally (although one of my facebook friends was complaining about why is there both a Friday night AND a Saturday rally?! and she has a point …), including Fireman Irish pipers, coming into the pub. I took a shower and settled in on the couch and had Indian leftovers and watched the first two episodes of the season of Downton Abby on DVD – Indian food seemed appropriate because India was still part of the Empire in 1912. And, since of course Walgreens had all the Easter candy in stock when I visited for cold meds, I had peeps for dessert.

And for Saturday breakfast I had toad in hole eggs & toast & two sausages – Mark & I went out and did all our Saturday a.m. errands on foot, including new glasses for me and new running shoes for him – so I didn’t have breakfast until noon, and was really, really hungry. And, I think this is quite enough of the recording of what I’ve eaten – I’ll go back to shooting what I’ve cooked, instead.

Man, this is hard – I went and got a hard boiled egg for a snack with coffee at about 2:00 – and I remembered to photograph that – on top of the rice pudding lid. I’m doing a dinner tomorrow, and after work I had to go grocery shopping for ingredients – I wanted to go to yoga, but my 4:00 meeting went till 5:15, which was just a tad too late, especially because I had to go buy resume paper for Al. I got home with the groceries at about 6:30 – forgot to get the chicken for the curry, dammit, I’ll have to go again tomorrow – and made cheese quesadillas and chicken quesadillas, with that leftover UN-photogenic chicken from yesterday. I photographed the cheese, but completely forgot to shoot the cheese quesadillas, until after they were all eaten – all I got was the last chicken wedge, atop the extra, seasoned, shredded chicken.

Everyone around me has colds – my throat is really sore and my head’s all stuffed up, so I suspect I’m getting it too. Maybe I can leave work early tomorrow ….

Multi-grain cereal

This is the multi-grain cereal I just had for breakfast at work – Heidi’s recipe, but I didn’t soak it over nigh this time, and I only used 2 cups of liquid (instead of 2 1/2): one cup water, one cup skim milk. And dates and apples. Joelle & I ate it on Saturday morning, and there was still this ample serving to reheat in the work kitchen microwave.

I also had a bit of an overstock of baked goods this weekend. I made long rise whole wheat bread and cranberry bars on Saturday, and cupcakes to take to a birthday party – of a Madison school teacher, who’s kids are the same ages as mine, so it seemed only right to use the Betty Crocker cocoa cupcake recipe I always sent to school with the kids for their birthdays. I put a little lump of cream cheese mixed with mini chocolate chips into the centers and frost them chocolate. This time I used this perfect chocolate frosting recipe I got from Smitten Kitchen. There was a lot of frosting left, and I have overripe bananas, so I see a chocolate-frosted banana cake in the future (to be leftover yet again??). Then on Sunday I made cinnamon scones. The bread had to go into the freezer, because we have enough other bread; the cupcakes came to work – the last 8 or so. We’re eating the scones – I had two yesterday, as did Mark, I think, and both he & Joelle took them for lunch today, and Al was eating one with his coffee when I left for work. So no need to share or freeze them.

Last three cimmy scones

Cupcakes packed to bring to work

Two cupcakes posing for closeup

• Crostini with goat cheese, slow-roasted tomato, & pickled onion – homemade baguettes, and I used Heidi’s technique of pouring the oil (or butter) into a bowl and tossing the bread slices in and mixing it all up – more effective than brushing or spraying or drizzling the oil onto the bread – but I used a touch too much oil. Homemade slow-roasted tomatoes, too, and the pickled onions were a dark magenta hue I’d not seen before, tho it’s a recipe I’ve made many times. And I mixed the goat cheese with a dash of honey. I didn’t make the white bean crostini – so now I have a yogurt bucket of cooked white beans to use or freeze.
• Chicken salad with apples and walnuts – white meat chicken, toasted nuts and one giant, local Delicious apple. I didn’t make the crispy wonton cups to put the chicken in – it ended up being a chunky salad so it woulda been a pain to stuff into the cups. Instead, I made chicken salad canapes – the salad, mounded on buttered bread – and also put out a bowl of the chicken salad for people to eat however they wanted.
• I bought Carr Valley Mobay and Marieka Gouda with Fenugreek and Farmer John’s Asaiago and smoked Gouda – which was the crowd pleaser – more of that eaten than any of the others. I put the cheese out with crackers and fresh figs and pears and olive tapende (made by whirring up all old olives from the fridge with a small jar of purchased). There was also Jacque Pepin’s cheese spread – all the cheese ends, also whirred up in the processor, with butter. This one had some bleu, some cranberry cheddar, some orange cheddar, and some Parmesan.
• Vegetables and chips and dips. Dill dip, because I got a lovely bunch of fresh dill at the Wednesday market. Edamame hummus from the newest Martha, quite tasty – but a little pasty and thick because I cut back on the large amount of water called for, since, naturally, I thought it was one of those Martha tricks to insure that no one can make her food as good as her – but in fact somewheres in between the 1/3 cup I used and the 3/4 cup she said to use would be right. With blanched broccoli, beauty heart radishes, and carrot sticks. And a big bowl of these pickled veggies from Saveur – I left out the zucchini, and only used 1 jalapeno, but it was still a gigantic batch. I’ll be eating them for lunch all week.
• Cocktail meatballs & tofu balls – the standard Heinz chili sauce meatball recipe, using red currant jam and the last of a bottle of siracha along with the chili sauce, instead of the canned cranberry sauce or grape jelly (and packaged meatballs) specified in the original. The tofu balls are Mollie Katzen, from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest – I put them out with a bottled BBQ sauce, but, me, I preferred the fu balls dipped in the sauce from the meatballs.
• Sweets – mini pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, Heidi’s chocolate truffle cake made into cups which had to licked (or spooned out) and Dori’s jammers, a la me.

Goat cheese, tomato & pickled onion crostini

Last three of the chocolates

UN-color corrected radishes

Beaty Heart radishes

'Fu balls, trying to escape

"Fu balls contained

Jammers with American Spoon cherry jam

Pumpkin cupcakes

So, probably the funnest thing was Terese brought Janie, and these two women are my Ovens of Brittany cronies – friends from my years of restaurant work, 20+ years ago. Friday morning, I went for a walk with Rach, and she peeled off early, so I was doing the long last leg of the walk on my own. I ran into one of John’s friends from high school, Sam, unlocking his bike in front of his parents house – he has his own apartment, shared with a girlfriend downtown, but said he comes to his folks’s when he wants to study. Sam ate lunch at my house almost every day for four years in high school. So, anyways, Sam said he works at the Greenbush Bar, owned by another of my Ovens of Brittany pals, Anna. I said I used to work with his boss, Anna, and Sam replied, “oh yeah, the desserts at Greenbush are kinda like the stuff I used to eat at your house.”

On Saturday, I had scrambled eggs with tomatoes, onions & goat cheese from the crostini and broccoli, leftover from being a dip veggie.