The power of Thor in cake form

In honor of the visit of aurora_knight* this weekend, I decided to make a little present for her.

It's a cake in emulation of a much better made one I found on the Internet, meant to emulate the the look of Mjolnir stuck in the mud in the movie Thor, waiting  for someone worthy of it to pluck it from the ground. It's a two-layer eight inch round devil's food cake iced with Hersey chocolate frosting. The best part was getting to gouge the top up with a spatula so I could make it look like mud to lay the hammer in. I got the toy Mjolnir from Target for twelve dollars. It is nicely modeled for a cheap toy, made of a bouncy Nerf foam. Jane gets to take that home with her after we eat the cake. It tastes pretty decent, but I know my cake baking skills could use some work. Unfortunately the problem with practicing is that then I'll have a ton of cake lying around that I won't be able to stop eating.

Recipe: baked breaded squash with tomato sauce

I've done so little cooking recently, partially due to being busy and partially due to a lack of energy, but I'm finally making time for it again. What I've been meaning to do for some time is start experimenting more, and writing my own recipes.

When my parents visited this weekend, my dad gave me two great big yellow squash that he grew in his garden. In order to make use of them, I decided tonight to make one of the very first recipes I ever devised myself, a variant on eggplant parmesan that has neither eggplant nor parmesan. For just me, I decided to use just one of the yellow squash.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. I sliced up the squash, then filled three pie plates with breading ingredients-- one with pan searing flour, one with two raw beaten eggs, and one with panko. I ran the squash coins through them one after the other and laid them on a wire rack. Then I heated up some olive oil in my ten-inch saute pan. I think I use this piece of cookware more than any other I own, so if you're going to invest in any decent pan, make it this one. I used it now to brown the breaded coins over medium-high heat. My mom recommended this combination of the flour, egg, and panko because it makes sure the breading will stick to the squash rather than come off in the pan. I remember the first time I put this recipe together, it all came off and I had to scoop it all out with a spatula. If you've got the heat right, it should take about two minutes per side to properly brown the pieces.

After browning them, I drained them for a moment back on the wire rack. Then I took the pie plate with the few remaining panko crumbs and laid the largest slices across the bottom of it.

Then I covered it with a layer of tomato sauce. Ideally you'd make your own, but the jarred stuff is fine, and I had some left over in the fridge.

Lay the next layer of eggplant coins over it and cover that too with sauce. It would also be good to include cheese-- I used mozzarella the first time, but parmesan or something would work too --but I'm lactose intolerant, and I don't want the calories anyway, so I left it out.

Lastly, you put the whole thing into the 375-degree oven for thirty minutes for the squash to get soft and roasty. See, it's kind of like eggplant parmesan... except, as I said, no eggplant and no parmesan. Tasty, vegetarian, fairly easy even though you end up messing a lot of dishes, and I used only things I already had in my pantry and fridge to make it.

Perfect straw-rasp-black-blueberry pie!

For the cast party yesterday I offered to bring a pie. I wasn't sure what kind of pie, but I'm good at them and let's face it, what kind of weirdo doesn't like pie? Dad suggested berry might be appropriate for the beginning of summer, so I gathered the supplies to make my lattice-topped straw-rasp-black-blue, the showiest pie in my repetoire.

The one thing I was concerned about was that the last few pies I've made have come out a little bit burnt on the top. Not sure what the problem is. It never happens to my mom when she bakes it, because everything she makes is always better, so she had no insight. I didn't want to bring an ugly pie to the party, so I was determined to fix the problem with this one. I made the pie as usual, rolling out the bottom crust to lay in the pan, then filling with the mixture of berries, cornstarch, a little bit of sugar, and a splash of Chambord. Even unfinished as it was, it looked delightful.

The instructions said to bake it at 450 for forty minutes. I popped it in and set the timer for twenty. Then I went about making the top crust. The lattice is so pretty and festive-looking, and it's a lot easier to do than it looks. You roll out the top crust like you normally would, then you slice it into long strips. You lay five of them parallel across the pie, then lift up every other one to lay five more across perpendicular, so that they weave in and out of each other. The effect is lovely and sure to impress.

After twenty minutes, I gingerly pulled the pie and laid it on a cooling rack. Working carefully so as not to burn myself, I laid out the lattice and then brushed it with egg wash so that it would brown. Then I put it back in for the remaining twenty. I confess I kept peeking at it, which you're not supposed to do, but I wanted to stay on top of whether or not it was burning. But to my pleasure, my trick worked, and the crust came out golden rather than black. Here is the lovely finished product.

It went over very well at the cast party and got a lot of compliments. I was especially happy with how many people noticed and enjoyed the fact that it is meant to be a slightly tart pie, with only three-quarters of a cup of sugar for a ten-inch pastry so the tanginess of the berries comes out. It's the best pie I've made in ages, and it came out so well I know I'll have to make more to enjoy this summer. Pie is, after all, the very best form of food.

7 Topics Meme - Cooking

Continuing the seven topics meme, as suggested to me by rigel*:

- Self-analysis through theater
- Religion
- Performance in LARPing
- Dressing for fuller-figured women
- Self-control
- Cooking
- Generosity

I grew up in a house where food was always considered interesting and important. My mother is an excellent cook that only got better as I got older, and in recent years my dad's hobbies have come to focus very much on food- and cooking-related arts. They taught me to see it as a creative outlet, a fascinating topic of study, and as an expression of love and social connection. The primary way we celebrate holidays is to spend the day together, talking and enjoying each other's company, as we prepare an elaborate meal.

I didn't get into cooking seriously, beyond helping my family growing up, until I moved into Elsinore as a senior in college. I had a kitchen of my own for the first time, so I decided it was about time I figure out how to organize a meal on my own. With my mom's remote guidance and a lot of experimentation on my own, I found I made a lot of progress in a short amount of time! I probably did it in the worst way imaginable, by inviting lots of people over. When you're not sure if the meal is going to come out, having lots of people waiting hungrily is not the best idea! But it turned out I was pretty good at it right away. I think that's one of the reasons I came to enjoy it so much. Around that time it seemed that absolutely everything was tough and required a ton of work to master, I was good at cooking immediately, and that felt nice for a change.

The way I like to show kindness and generosity to the people I love is to provide a nice experience, a good time for them to enjoy and remember. Entertaining in a grand way exactly fits the bill, and nothing enhances such an experience as good food. Providing a well-cooked spread of food makes parties and events so much better. It shows my love, and is a meaningful way to be generous.

With my fixation on my weight, there's always the temptation to look at food in an unhealthy, unhappy way-- to start dividing food into "good" and "evil," to view eating as a chore or an assault. But because cooking is fun and creative and such a great way to share love and good times, it helps me focus on the joy and art of it rather than just thinking, well, it tastes good now, but I'll be a lot less happy when it ruins it my figure.

I really don't like to eat bad food. I'd rather go hungry than eat bad food. I'm not like Jared or my dad, in which a lousy dinner at a restaurant can ruin their whole evening, but I hate wasting the calories on something I didn't enjoy. I rarely go out to restaurants anymore, because I can cook something much more delicious than anything in my regular price range, for usually much less money per serving. When I cook, I can guarantee myself something healthful and delicious. That means a lot to me.

Cooking is also a way I can help and care for the people important to me. When people are having a rough time, I don't think there's a lot I can do for them in a real sense. Sympathy, sure, but I can't get their work done, lift their stress, or fix their problems. But sometimes I know just taking away some burden, even if it's a small one like making it so you have just one less thing on your massive to do list, can be of real help. So when someone is busy, or struggling, or weighted down, I like to offer to cook dinner and bring it to them. It's a small way I can express love and concern, and in a more tangible sense, make it so that you may have a million problems and jobs to take care of today, but at least you don't have to worry about getting yourself dinner too.

Notes from the weekend

This Easter my mom gave me her slow cooker to take back up with me. She bought it years ago and barely used it; she found most of her recipes came out better in the oven or stove stop so she didn't bother with it. But she thought that with my busy life I might be able to make use of it, so up with me it came. This weekend I decided to try it out and made a boeuf bourginnone, a recipe I make frequently. It wasn't bad, but I didn't have enough time to let it cook for the full five hours it was supposed to take, so it wasn't quite as tender as it should have been. On the stovetop I've made it in three or so, but on days when I can't watch the pot (and can time my presence in the kitchen just right) this could be of use.

Bernie also hosted an Avengers movie marathon leading up to the release of the new movie. Jane was kind enough to organize a group trip to the midnight opening in May, so this was to refresh its predecessors in our minds. I had to come in and out because of other obligations, but it was fun to watch and spend time with the fun people who were present. I hope they all forgive me for my catcalling directed at Chrises Evans and Hemsworth. Avengers apparently has pretty much uniformly good reviews, so I'm very excited. Unfortunately I have to go to rehearsal beforehand, but I'll get out in plenty of time to meet up with everyone a little later, well in advance of showtime.

I learned Singer is holding a sewing machine sale right now. Go here if you'd like to take a look. I am very tempted to purchase that two hundred dollar serger they're offering. That seems a little cheap for a serger, so maybe it's not all that good, and I should practice my regular sewing skills before I worry about how I finish my seams, but still... I kinda want one. I still have two more weeks to think about it, so maybe this would be worth dipping into my savings.

This is the last week before Festival of the Larps and I'm in pretty good shape. Paranoia is packed, thanks to Bernie, Matt, Mac, and Tegan, and The Stand is close to it. I have all my sheets and my costumes are in order. I just need to finish reading all the materials and I am going to be good to go. This promises to be an awesome weekend, and I'm excited to throw myself in. Thanks to our lovely con chair ninja_report* for putting it all together! Great work, dear!

First cheddar tasting!

I am at home with my parents for Easter, and my dad suggested that we break into the cheddar that we made back during my Christmas vacation. We pulled the very first wheel we ever made, now three and a half months old, out of the cheese fridge and set it on the counter to properly warm up. Correct cheese tasting is done at room temperature, I have learned.

I was nervous because, as you may be able to see in the photograph, there were some faint spots of green mold developing beneath the layer of wax. That is not uncommon for cheese, and is usually removed with a vinegar or brine wash when it develops and then the wheel is allowed to continue aging as normal. But this was beneath the wax layer, where you can't get to without removing the wax first, so I was concerned that we did something wrong. This was our first, as I mentioned, and we didn't hit the heat targets all perfectly that first time around.

We cut a small wedge off, a part that has a fairly substantial mold patch, peeled away the wax, and cut off the mold. It had not penetrated very deeply, so we just skimmed off the very top layer. Inside, to my pleasure, it was a faint orangey-yellow color and had that characteristic sort of crackled texture that indicates cheddar. It smelled right for cheddar too. All that was left was to taste it. So we sliced it thin and took a bite.

It is still very young, so the flavor was not highly developed, but it was recognizably the flavor of cheddar, and not half bad either! Cheddar's not my favorite cheese, so others would likely know better than me, but it would seem that we did it. Our very first homemade hard cheese has turned out properly, tasting as it should!

We will cut a wedge off for now, but I think we will peel the rest, wash off the mold spots, and then rewax it back up to allow it to continue aging. I may even bring some up with me to Boston when I come back! It's not the best cheddar ever, especially since it's so young, but it's certainly not bad, and it proves that we can do this cheesemaking thing! I'm very proud of us. We're making a parmesan today, so in a few months we'll have even more to try.

Dad's cheese progress

My dad sent me some pictures of the results of all his efforts in cheesemaking. This is his cheese locker, a mini-fridge kept around sixty-three degrees in the basement. The top shelf is all little bries made of goat's milk, sealed in plastic so as not to contaminate other cheeses with their mold. The narrower yellow ones are the wheels of cheddar he and I made, while the thicker ones are cow's milk manchego. The big pale ones are gouda. This is about twenty pounds of cheese, all and all.

Here are my dad's latest products, two wheels of Swiss being kept at seventy-five degrees with little glasses of water to produce humidity. This is to encourage the growth of bacteria to produce the carbon dioxide that is responsible for blowing Swiss's characteristic holes. They stay in that box for three weeks, getting regularly washed with salt water, then they will be waxed and go into the cheese fridge to age for at least three months.

The only ones that are approaching readiness are the cheddar, which we made around Christmastime. Dad says when I come home for Easter we'll break into one and see how it came out. That will be the first time we taste a hard cheese we made ourselves.

Dad and Mom have also been making ricotta out of the whey that's left over from making the hard cheeses. I looked up a bunch of ricotta recipes for them, and they've made some delicious things. They sent me this picture of one such ricotta-based meal, roasted eggplant and ricotta crostini with strawberries in balsamic ricotta cream.

Salmon in a nut and balsamic crust

Lately I've been so busy that my cooking has been uncreative and repetitive, so much so that it hasn't been really worth writing about here. I mean, I'm proud of myself for even making time for it at all, but I have reached the point in developing my skill that I should be trying to push the envelope a little more rather than making the same old things over and over. This Saturday I cooked one of the few original dishes I've ever come up with, and I was pleased enough with the results that I want to share it with you now.

I've developed a taste for marcona almonds ever since my mother introduced me to them last Christmas. The good ones are sweet and oily and I've discovered recently you can buy decent ones at Hannaford. Jared and I eat a lot of fish, so the other day when I was trying to think of a new way to prepare a quick fish dinner I decided to use the almonds. I put them in a pie plate with some pecans and smashed them up with a mallet. Then I mixed them with panko, those extra-crispy Japanese breadcrumbs, and laid the stuff out over the top of a big fillet of pollock. I poured some melted butter over the top, baked it for eight minutes at 400 degrees, and got a delicious crusted whitefish dinner.

That was tasty, but that's not the recipe I wanted to share. I had a lot of the crushed nut and panko mixture left over, so the next night I decided to take it a step further. I bought a nice thick slice of salmon fillet to get a different sort of flavor than the pollock. I covered it with the nut and crumb mixture just as before, but then I got out a skillet and melted three tablespoons of butter in it. When the butter was browned and foamy, I poured in about half a cup of balsamic vinegar, mixed it up, and let it reduce until it started to get thick. Then I poured it over the crusted salmon. In a 400 degree oven this time it took about twelve minutes, but it depends on the thickness of the piece of fish you're cooking. This, friends, was even more delicious than the version before. I am really proud of this idea, and I think I matched the salmon and the balsamic well. I want to come up with more original dishes, which will only happen if I can manage to get myself planning ahead a little bit more.

Second cheddar update

I finally remembered to ask my dad to take a picture of the cheddar we made now that it's been waxed. It had to dry for several days before the waxing could happen, and by that time I'd already returned to Waltham, so Dad had to do it on his own. He mentioned to me that the cheese seemed to be coming along, requiring just a little bathing in vinegar in order to prevent the growth of mold. So I asked him to take a snapshot of the wheels so I could see what they looked like. He said the wax was called yellow on the package but it came out white, in strong contrast to how yellow the cheese itself looked after it dried. He laid it out very prettily, on the island in their kitchen on top of the cheese board Mom got him for Christmas and the end-grain cutting board I gave Mom for her birthday. Very lovely, no?

Cheddar update

We took our cheddar out of the press. It has transformed from a mass of curds into a cohesive solid with a distinctly yellow color. Now it has to dry at room temperature for two or three days. I wonder if the color will get more intense. Then it will be waxed by dipping it into a melted pot of the stuff, and aged for several months. I can hardly wait all that time to see how it turned out. This may be the sort of thing that requires practice before true success.

First attempt at cheddar

Yesterday my dad and I made our first attempt at making a hard cheese. Hard cheese is more difficult than soft, you see, because it has to age for months afterward. That means you don't immediately see the evidence if you screwed up, and that if your equipment wasn't totally clean any contaminants can ruin it in the aging process. Got to be more careful when you make it.

For our very first try Dad and I elected to try what's called a stirred-curd cheddar. That's a way of making cheddar that is a little simpler than the traditional way, which must be really involved given how long this process took. We cooked the raw cow's milk in a double-boiler, a procedure we are still getting the hang of. Depending on the quantity of milk, the temperature rises at a different rate and has different amounts of carryover heating when after you turn the burner off. Cheese making involves enzymes and cultures that die and don't work if you heat them past certain temperatures. We mostly hit the marks we were supposed to, but during the curd-stirring step the carryover heated it almost ten degrees past where we wanted it, and there's really no way to cool off such a large quantity of liquid in short order, so we're worried we may have killed something important. Still, the milk seemed to form curds and set and mold the way it was supposed to, so maybe we're okay. Of course, it has to age for six months, so maybe we'll see the problems after that.

The making took a very long time, hours involving several temperature targets, long periods of constant stirring, and incremental increases in the pressure applied by a cheese press. The cheese is still in there now, requiring fifty pounds of pressure for a full twenty-four hours before being put aside to dry. You can see the whey draining out in the dish below into the sink. One neat thing is that we included cheese coloring to make it yellow cheddar, and though through most of the process it was very white, now that it's drying it's becoming more and more yellow.

I like the little engraving on the press, a little mouse in a chef's hat and apron holding a wheel of cheese.

We're thinking of making a second batch on Friday, once the press is free again. Just to see if we can do a better job of keeping the milk to temperature, in case the first batch doesn't come out.

Recipe for Inaccessible Rice

Recently I made this complicated wild rice dish I learned from my mother for a couple of HTP functions, because the lovely enjoyed it so much. I was just typing up the recipe to give to her, and I thought why not post it here as well? I call it by the rather odd name of Inaccessible Rice, which certain parties will remember came from the first time I ever made it for a dinner party. It is a somewhat strange combination of flavors, so I commented to I believe Bernie and Kindness, who were with me at the time, that I was worried it might be "inaccessible" to some of my diners who I knew to be slightly picky eaters. They never let me forget that-- it was kind of pretentious of me to use that word --and to this day we refer to this dish as Inaccessible Rice. I think it's delicious, and kind of sophisticated too, with a lovely mix of color when you bring it to the table.

Ingredients:

• 2 cup mixed wild rice
• 1 ½ c water
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 1 cup pecans, crushed
• 4 scallions, chopped
• ½ c orange juice, fresh squeezed
• 2 tsp orange zest, grated
• 8 mint leaves, chopped
• 1/2 c olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Cook the rice according to your preferred method. I use the one on the rice package I buy, combining it with the water, butter, and salt. Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and then stir once. (ONCE!) Allow to cook for fifteen minutes, or until all the water is gone. Then stir it thoroughly and allow to cool, at least a little. Then mix with all the other ingredients. It is intended to be served cold, but it’s just as good hot if you prefer that. I like to serve it with chicken, but it is good with pretty much anything.

Ugly pie, ugly day

Today is a lousy day. My whole body aches, has ached since yesterday afternoon, probably a side effect from the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine I had to get for Lesley. My stomach is all messed up and I'm afraid to eat anything for fear of setting it off. And every little thing seems to just be going wrong. The way things are going I'm going to feel too lousy to go to ballet today, which would really be the icing on the goddamn cake.

I made an ugly pie yesterday. To use up more of the homemade feta, I made a bowl of spanikopita filling out of cheese, spinach, onions, and nutmeg and spread it out in a pie plate. Then I laid a probably improperly treated piece of puff pastry over it. I tried to watch the Good Eats on puff pastry to figure out how I should handle it, but by that point I was feeling so out of it I couldn't really focus. I just kind of threw it together in hopes of getting it done. All I could manage was to try to smooth the seams together, dock the top a little, and lay it over the filling. I didn't even bother to trim it. Tasted okay, I guess, probably a little more gooey inside than I wanted, but it looked particularly ugly.

On another pie-related note, the other day on a whim I bought a pie bird. They're supposed to help prevent the problem of when your top pie crust sets before the filling inside completely cooks down, leaving you with a big empty dome. I guess the bird is supposed to support the filling up close to the top. It also vents steam through the hole in its little beak. Alton Brown endorses the use of them. Cute little thing, don't know if I'll actually use it.

Feta cheese making!

So along with beer and wine, my dad has decided to branch out into home cheese making as well. During my visit home, we made a huge batch of feta, which we learned was a good place for beginners to start.

First we drove to a local dairy farm and picked up several gallons of raw milk. Unpasteurized stuff that still has all the living enzymes in it is better for cheese making, you see. It was a pretty place, with lots of pretty cows, some of which you could see through the window of the milk store.

 

Did you make our milk?

Interestingly, upon trying a glass of the raw milk, I found it to be much tastier than any processed kind I've ever had. I've never liked the taste of the stuff straight, but I enjoyed that glass more than I have any other.

Then we put four gallons into a giant double boiler my dad got at a restaurant supply store-- stainless steel, because you can't use aluminum for cheese making. Milk cooks better if you hit it with indirect heat, such as from steam from a double boiler. We heated the milk to around ninety degrees, then added a series of enzymes and chemicals to make it coagulate into a curd. Feta is typically made with goat's milk, so to make our cow's milk have the tangy flavor characteristic of that kind of cheese, one of the enzymes we added was lipase, found in goat's milk but not naturally in cow's. 

We allowed it to set and solidify into a curd. This we cut with a long knife that reached to the bottom of the pot in a grid pattern. It was really interesting-looking, all wobbly and gelatinous. I shall endeavor to embed a video that shows how it behaved when my dad wiggled the pot. 

Then we broke it all up with a spoon. You can really see how the solids have coagulated and separated from the whey.

Then the curds went into a cheese mold, to be allowed to drain of excess moisture overnight.

The next day, we had dry, firm, crumbly feta cheese, which we could then salt down and pack in olive oil for flavor.

And that is my first attempt at cheese making! The feta is fresh and delicious; I like it much better than any feta I've ever eaten before. I can't eat much of it due to lactose intolerance, but the process is so interesting and fun I don't mind not being able to have much of the result of our labors. We used it and some homemade ricotta we made from the drained-off whey in spanikopita, which came out very delicious. I brought one of the wheels up to Boston with me, so anyone would would like some is welcome to try. Just let me know if you'd like me to put some aside for you!

Happy table

Hope you all have had as happy a Thanksgiving as I have. <3

Quick bulleted update



Mixed bag here, some good and some bad. First, the good:

- It's official, I'm going to become a direct employee at Integralis rather than a contractor from an agency. Not sure when it's going to happen, but the process has been started. My rep is going to try to get me a pay increase, which would be really nice, but it's not like I'm going anywhere if it doesn't happen.

- I actually think I'm losing weight, which pleases me. I tried on some clothes that had started to fit like sausage casings and they were a lot more comfortable. My thighs are still too big and I'm still softer in the middle than I have been in years, but I am seeing results while still feeling good about my eating, so using the calorie counter has been working.

- Today I am going to upgrade my phone. I've had an iPhone 2 I think for about two years now and it's showing it age, running slow and blowing up constantly. I'm going to cash in my upgrade and get the new one.

Now the bad:

- Still haven't decided what my next project will be, because this week was an endless parade of expensive, pain-in-the-ass chores that all took longer than they should have. Had to pay to get my car fixed, chase down some undelivered packages, take the HTP props and costumes back to club storage, pick up new scrips for both Jared and me, pay a parking ticket and two hospital bills, and run all over creation trying to get the immunization hold lifted off my Lesley file so I can fucking register for classes. Some of that stuff is still not quite resolved, and I'm still stressing over getting it all done rather than trying to start something new and productive.

- Got back my final packet for the semester with my teacher's comments. My one-act is pretty much a mess, which is discouraging. I never loved it and only wrote it because I had to, but still, I didn't think it was as flawed as all that. And I have no fucking clue how to fix it. For a variety of reasons, I am not feeling particularly good about my work right now, so now I'm stuck between wanting to generate more theatrical writing to redeem myself and never wanting to look at that shit again.

- I want to act again, or direct somewhere other than of out Hold Thy Peace's pity, but nobody will fucking cast me or pick me for it. I don't know what I'm not doing right. I hear other auditions that I don't think are as good as mine, and yet I never get cast. And the directing resumes I send out never come back. I guess I'm not as good as I thought I was, and I'm getting fed up with trying and never getting anywhere.

Quick ham bone soup update

Just wanted to report that my ham bone soup has turned out delicious. Turns out chilling it overnight was exactly the right move. I took it out of the fridge to see that the fat layer had solidified right on top just as I hoped. I scraped it off this morning, though it didn't come off neatly enough to save, and discovered that beneath it the soup had gelatinized into a nice thickness. It was the consistency I was going for from the start, with no need to puree it at all. I ate a mug of it just now, and it was great, smoky, substantial, with a great chewy texture. So I'm going to consider this experiment a success. I'll have to be sure I do this every time I have a ham.

Ham bone soup

Today I finally did something I've been meaning to do for ages, save the bone from a honey baked ham and throw it in a pot for soup. I didn't want to make a special trip for it or anything, so I just threw together some odds and ends in my kitchen. I'm still not very confident about improvising dishes, but I figured if it didn't work out it wasn't like I bought anything special. I started by sauteing an onion in the bottom of my big stew pot. I had originally wanted peas, as my I grew up eating a mean split pea and ham bone soup my mother makes, but I didn't have any, so I used a bag of brown lentils I've had lying around forever instead. In they went with the ham bone. I seasoned it simply using salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaves, then covered everything with fresh water. That I boiled for a couple of hours on the stove, coming by periodically to stir it and see if the meat left on the ham bone could be knocked off into the soup. I had been eating the leftover ham off that bone for several days now, but I found that there was quite a bit left that was too hard to cut off with a knife and fork. It came off easily as it softened in the boiling water, so the broth became quite meaty. When it was finished it wasn't as thick as I wanted; I think I put too much water in in the beginning. Tossing the bare bone in the trash, I considered pureeing it to thicken it, then eat it for dinner tonight. But then it occurred to me that made from meat scraps as it was, it was probably very fatty. It might be better if I put it in the fridge overnight, so the fat would have time to rise to the top and condense into a solid layer I could easily scrape off. Perhaps I could even save it to use as a cooking medium for something else. I wasn't sure if pureeing it would disrupt the separation process, so I decided to hold off on that until after I'd defatted the next day. I will eat it tomorrow, and I'll hit it with the stick blender just before I do. Not sure how good it will be, as there's basically nothing but lentils and junk ham in it, but it smelled delicious while it was cooking, so I have high hopes.

Quick status update

A quick rundown of the state of my busy, busy life:

- Merely Players goes into tech week next week. We're very close to being ready to go; the acting and blocking have come out extremely nicely. We just need a few more costume pieces and props, plus to hammer out preparations for the concessions we're going to sell. Fortunately lots of people have volunteered to help, I just need to finalize the plan and organize those lovely people into useful action. You should come see it on 11/11 and 11/12-- doors open at 7:15, so you can order drinks and snacks before the show!

- My last playwrighting assignment for the semester is also due next week. Bah to that timing, which means I am going to have to work like a madman to get it and all the play prep stuff done all at once. I have begun work on my one-act that I must prepare, and started on the reading and responding, but still I'm probably behind where I should be. I guess this weekend will have to be devoted to finishing.

- I signed up for Feast of the Minotaur as my first pick for Intercon. I am pleased with that; it sounds like a good game and it's already full, so it turned out to be the right choice. I'd ask all of you what you chose, but as a member of bidcom I get to look at the signup logs, which is pretty much my favorite thing in the world.

- Work is going well, though I am not finding it effortless to get up one hour earlier. I do like getting out earlier in the day, though. There is talk of switching me from contractor to direct employee status. I take it that means I'm doing something right. Is it too much to hope that they'll start just paying me all the extra they've been paying to my staffing company? ;-)

- I have put myself on a diet. I am trying to stay within thirteen hundred healthy calories a day thanks to a calorie counter, and buckling down on my efforts to practice ballet for exercise outside of class. The calorie counter is mostly helpful in that it keeps me mindful of whether or not that can of soda is really worth it, and encouraging me to make better choices because the numbers indicate the difference. I feel hungry, but it allows me to get in complete and balanced meals while eliminating room for snackings during the day, so it's probably a good range for me.

- After the next week or so I am going to need a nice long rest. Fortunately my break from school and the finishing of my theater run coincide nicely. Perhaps during that time I will get more rest and start to de-stress.

My version of mushroom duxelle

Mushroom duxelle-- or cooked mushroom paste --is a dish I serve frequently at my dinner parties, but I kind of cobbled together my own process for making it that is slightly different than traditional recipes. I'd thought I'd mark it down here, as it is one of my earliest efforts in devising recipes of my own.

Ingredients:

- 2 tablespoons butter
- 15 ounces of any kind of mushrooms you like; I prefer a wild mix or porcini
- 1 cup chopped shallots
- 1 cup marsala wine
- 1 tablespoon dried thyme

Directions:

Cut the mushrooms into slices. Chop the shallots. Roughly is sufficient.

Heat the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Saute the shallots until softened and translucent. Add the mushrooms and cook until slightly browned and soft. You may have to add them in waves to avoid overcrowding the pan. Add the thyme and stir to distribute evenly. Pour in the marsala, bring to a simmer, then turn the heat down a little. Simmer until the wine reduces to less than half.

Remove the mixture from the pan. Blend into a rough paste with a stick blender. Mix to even out the chunks.

Serve with toasted bread and knives to spread it with. Don't be surprised if guests skip the bread and just eat it with a spoon.

I like the slight variations of including the marsala-- really ups the flavor and gives it a lot of richness --during the saute, and then pureeing it with the immersion blender at the end rather than chopping everything finely before you cook it.

If you want, you can use oil instead of butter to make it non-dairy. Also, onions or leeks will serve in place of shallots.