Eat Your Heart Out, Julia Child
Last night was Dad's birthday, so I brought over the birthday cake I made earlier in the week (pictures below, not that it's much to look at) and was prepared to help Mom make a dinner menu that we'd worked out earlier in the week, drawn from my favorite French cookbook. (Mom, too, has seen Julie & Julia, and was inspired, and so the idea sort of spontaneously generated from our mutual enthusiasm.) So I arrived, and the cake was sitting on the table, and we started doing some of the prep work... and then we hit a snag.
Mom had a massive allergy episode, probably triggered by all the mold and such in the outside air. She was sneezing, eyes watering, itchy, stuffy--in short, totally miserable. I told her to take Benadryl, which she did, and that finally helped to control her symptoms.
Unfortunately, it also helped her to fall asleep on the couch. And I felt sorry enough for how terrible she'd been feeling that I would have felt too, too guilty to wake her up. Besides, the last thing I need is to have my doped-up mother slicing something off because she's too fuzzy-brained to pay close attention to the relative positions of her fingers and the knife. (Her knife skills are already terrifying to me. I have to look away in horror whenever she tries to dice an onion. I love her, but I have no idea how it is that she still has all ten fingers, whole and intact.)
And then my brother arrived, fresh from work, and he was whining about skipping his lunch so that he could leave early, and he was ZOMGHUNGRYNOW, and... it's so NOT my problem that he didn't bother to feed himself, but still, hungry menfolk and snoozing mom and nothing done on the menu but chopped tomatoes, and...
Yeah. This would be the point at which a sane individual would say, "Oh, screw it. Let's just get takeout."
Luckily - or sometimes unluckily - I am both bloody-minded and not especially sane when it comes to giving up on goals and plans, so of course I decided to take the whole thing as a challenge and execute the menu, damn it. I helped plan this thing, and I was going to see it through, come hell or high water.
And so I cooked. I cooked in a way that I have rarely cooked before. I think I must have been in the zone, because it all just seemed to flow so easily from one task to the next, even when I had three things going at once. Maybe it was the spirit of Julia Child smiling down on me. Maybe it was a weird warp in the fabric of time and space. Maybe I just got lucky. I don't know what it was, but I chopped and minced and braised and boiled and marinated, and by some miracle, I had the whole thing on the table within an hour, without any help, and it was, if I may be so gauche as to praise myself, really, really tasty.
~preens in newfound Domestic Goddesshood~
For reference, the menu was : Cotelettes de Porc au Sauce Nénette (pork chops in a creamy white wine-dijon mustard pan sauce with fresh tomatoes), Herbed Rice Pilaf (from scratch, obviously) and a totally non-French dish that nonetheless complemented things really well, which was a cold Cucumber-Cashew Salad, marinated in an Asian-style vinaigrette. (That may sound weird, but it formed a really nicely clean, crisp counterpoint to the rich sauce.) Wine was poured. Baguette was sliced. And it was good.
By that point, Mom was awake, feeling much better but terribly sheepish and apologetic. No problem, I said, still glowing with accomplishment and dazed by the fact that, for once in my life, I had actually managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat. She can make it up to me at Thanksgiving. (Not by chopping, though, because the last thing Thanksgiving needs is a stop at the local ER to get some vital organ reattached.)
And it didn't stop there, because I had already brought dessert, and the birthday cake turned out to be... um, really good. Exceptionally good. Better, if I'm being totally honest, than I'd expected. The Golden Vanilla cake was pleasingly moist and fragrant with vanilla, and the Milk Chocolate-Malted Milk buttercream was so smooth and satiny that it resembled a chocolate silk pie. My picky, picky Dad, who is very fussy and sniffy about cakes in general, admitted that my take on the Birthday Cake of Legend that his mother used to make was not only as close to the original as one can get, but it tasted better.
More tellingly, he had two slices of it. Two slices. My father... basically never has two slices of cake. Ever. I can't recall a single previous instance of it. So a request for two eagerly-devoured slices is the equivalent of rhapsodic odes composed to the glory of this cake.
~beams so much as to appear nearly radioactive~
Anyway, pictures. Now, the cake may not look like much of anything, but taste trumps looks for me, every time. In fact, ugly cakes often look more tasty to me than perfect ones.
If I seem happier than usual today, you know why. I'm still living off the afterglow. :D
To all those headed to ZibitCon: Good luck, safe traveling and a glorious weekend to you! I'm sorry that I couldn't make it to be there with you, but as envious as I am (and I can admit that I am), I'm thrilled for all of you, especially for those of you will be having your first HP meetup/con experience. Now that I've been to one, I can truly say that they are as great as advertised, and you will have so much fun. Your friends really are as wonderful (in fact, even more so) than they seem to be online, and I predict that none of you will be eager to go home afterwards. Hugs to all of you; consider me there in spirit, in not in the flesh. I'm really looking forward to seeing the pic spam and hearing your reports.
To all those, like me, who are NOT headed to ZibitCon: hpcon_envy is running a mini-fest for the mini-con, and ZibitCon Envy is open for business. Come and hang out with us, whether you want to read, make an offer, put together some icons... anything goes! It sure beats sitting around, feeling mopey that our friends are off having fun in Chicago. Drabbles and ficlets have been offered, and a few have already been posted. I personally have some very yummy prompts to work on today, and if all goes well, I should have some ficlets to post on the comm later. ~tempts~
Good Fridays and Saturdays to you all, wherever you are in the world today.
Mom had a massive allergy episode, probably triggered by all the mold and such in the outside air. She was sneezing, eyes watering, itchy, stuffy--in short, totally miserable. I told her to take Benadryl, which she did, and that finally helped to control her symptoms.
Unfortunately, it also helped her to fall asleep on the couch. And I felt sorry enough for how terrible she'd been feeling that I would have felt too, too guilty to wake her up. Besides, the last thing I need is to have my doped-up mother slicing something off because she's too fuzzy-brained to pay close attention to the relative positions of her fingers and the knife. (Her knife skills are already terrifying to me. I have to look away in horror whenever she tries to dice an onion. I love her, but I have no idea how it is that she still has all ten fingers, whole and intact.)
And then my brother arrived, fresh from work, and he was whining about skipping his lunch so that he could leave early, and he was ZOMGHUNGRYNOW, and... it's so NOT my problem that he didn't bother to feed himself, but still, hungry menfolk and snoozing mom and nothing done on the menu but chopped tomatoes, and...
Yeah. This would be the point at which a sane individual would say, "Oh, screw it. Let's just get takeout."
Luckily - or sometimes unluckily - I am both bloody-minded and not especially sane when it comes to giving up on goals and plans, so of course I decided to take the whole thing as a challenge and execute the menu, damn it. I helped plan this thing, and I was going to see it through, come hell or high water.
And so I cooked. I cooked in a way that I have rarely cooked before. I think I must have been in the zone, because it all just seemed to flow so easily from one task to the next, even when I had three things going at once. Maybe it was the spirit of Julia Child smiling down on me. Maybe it was a weird warp in the fabric of time and space. Maybe I just got lucky. I don't know what it was, but I chopped and minced and braised and boiled and marinated, and by some miracle, I had the whole thing on the table within an hour, without any help, and it was, if I may be so gauche as to praise myself, really, really tasty.
~preens in newfound Domestic Goddesshood~
For reference, the menu was : Cotelettes de Porc au Sauce Nénette (pork chops in a creamy white wine-dijon mustard pan sauce with fresh tomatoes), Herbed Rice Pilaf (from scratch, obviously) and a totally non-French dish that nonetheless complemented things really well, which was a cold Cucumber-Cashew Salad, marinated in an Asian-style vinaigrette. (That may sound weird, but it formed a really nicely clean, crisp counterpoint to the rich sauce.) Wine was poured. Baguette was sliced. And it was good.
By that point, Mom was awake, feeling much better but terribly sheepish and apologetic. No problem, I said, still glowing with accomplishment and dazed by the fact that, for once in my life, I had actually managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat. She can make it up to me at Thanksgiving. (Not by chopping, though, because the last thing Thanksgiving needs is a stop at the local ER to get some vital organ reattached.)
And it didn't stop there, because I had already brought dessert, and the birthday cake turned out to be... um, really good. Exceptionally good. Better, if I'm being totally honest, than I'd expected. The Golden Vanilla cake was pleasingly moist and fragrant with vanilla, and the Milk Chocolate-Malted Milk buttercream was so smooth and satiny that it resembled a chocolate silk pie. My picky, picky Dad, who is very fussy and sniffy about cakes in general, admitted that my take on the Birthday Cake of Legend that his mother used to make was not only as close to the original as one can get, but it tasted better.
More tellingly, he had two slices of it. Two slices. My father... basically never has two slices of cake. Ever. I can't recall a single previous instance of it. So a request for two eagerly-devoured slices is the equivalent of rhapsodic odes composed to the glory of this cake.
~beams so much as to appear nearly radioactive~
Anyway, pictures. Now, the cake may not look like much of anything, but taste trumps looks for me, every time. In fact, ugly cakes often look more tasty to me than perfect ones.
If I seem happier than usual today, you know why. I'm still living off the afterglow. :D
To all those headed to ZibitCon: Good luck, safe traveling and a glorious weekend to you! I'm sorry that I couldn't make it to be there with you, but as envious as I am (and I can admit that I am), I'm thrilled for all of you, especially for those of you will be having your first HP meetup/con experience. Now that I've been to one, I can truly say that they are as great as advertised, and you will have so much fun. Your friends really are as wonderful (in fact, even more so) than they seem to be online, and I predict that none of you will be eager to go home afterwards. Hugs to all of you; consider me there in spirit, in not in the flesh. I'm really looking forward to seeing the pic spam and hearing your reports.
To all those, like me, who are NOT headed to ZibitCon: hpcon_envy is running a mini-fest for the mini-con, and ZibitCon Envy is open for business. Come and hang out with us, whether you want to read, make an offer, put together some icons... anything goes! It sure beats sitting around, feeling mopey that our friends are off having fun in Chicago. Drabbles and ficlets have been offered, and a few have already been posted. I personally have some very yummy prompts to work on today, and if all goes well, I should have some ficlets to post on the comm later. ~tempts~
Good Fridays and Saturdays to you all, wherever you are in the world today.