Holiday eating
I ended up rushing to Target and buying a tree on Friday afternoon, go me! It'll only be up for a week or so, but it was nice.
Christmas Eve
Four of my sister's old classmates arrived on Christmas Eve, and we all sat around and had a most excellent dinner, even though my cheesecake ended up cracked.
The cheesecake baking was an overall disaster, as I ran out of flour for the crust, burned the pecans I was attempting to toast and set the oven to the wrong temperature. But everyone scarfed it down, so even if it looked awful, people seemed to agree that it tasted good.
The sister's classmates also cooked soy chicken, as I forgot to include any sort of meat in the menu all together. This sort of thing happens to me a lot, most likely because I tend to steal recipes from vegetarian or largely vegetarian sources.
After dinner, they went off to attend a midnight mass while I stayed at home to start off the bread for the next day, madly refreshed the Yuletide page every three seconds, and then squeed as the archive went live.
I spent the next four hours or so reading stories while snuggled with the rats in the bathtub
Christmas Day
On Christmas, we all slept in late. I put the bread out to let it rise, and we all went off to watch Dreamgirls, which is ok, but ran a little too long for me. Also, the musical bits were a little odd, since at first they were just when the characters would normally be singing, and then the movie edged into musical territory.
Dinner consisted of: chickpea pancakes (all agreed they were quite delicious, which made me happy), squash and leek Thai curry, brown rice, more jicama salad, potstickers, mi fun (rice noodles), biscuits made from pre-made dough and my bread.
My bread turned out to be as dense as a rock and slightly flavorless. I used the slow-rise white bread from Joy of Cooking. I think next time I will add more salt. I'm not sure what cures the dense-ness -- I suspect it may have been a combination of not kneading the dough enough and not giving it enough time to rise. Any solutions would be highly welcome!
Also, I tried to shape them into batards so there would be more crust (and also because I only have one loaf pan). My batards ended up being unsightly, lumpy pieces of troll bread. Alas.
I suspect breadmaking is an art that will take me quite some time to master. But then, one entire loaf has already been devoured, albeit with cheese and jam to disguise the lack of salt, so it couldn't have been too awful.
And then... the current crown of my cooking achievements! I made chocolate souffle! And it worked! And it was delicious and had the right texture and was wonderful and rich and chocolatey and didn't fall at all!
I am so proud of myself.
The insides ran a little liquid-y, probably because I ended up pouring the batter into 4 12-oz. ramekins instead of the recommended 6 10-11-oz. ones. I think next time I will leave it in the oven for another five or ten minutes. But it really was very good, and since I didn't have sauce to pour on top, the liquid-y center was perfect, and the top was slightly crunchy and the inside was moist and melt-in-your-mouth.
Next time I will have to make raspberry sauce to pour over it, as it will be a perfect contrast to the dark chocolate.
I am also going to try lemon souffle as well.
But yes! Souffle! I win!
Also, we played card games until four in the morning.
The day after
Everyone overslept and lounged around in PJs playing board games instead of going shopping, as originally planned.
Honestly, that was fine with me. Plus, it was pouring rain outside.
And the UPS guy came and delivered my present from my sister! The complete Calvin and Hobbes boxed set, all for me! It is immensely heavy and has beautiful, thick paper, and I am planning on slowly flipping through it and rereading. I adore C&H.
Also, present, yay!
Today, I am at work and feeling incredibly lazy. But there is yhlee-meeting tonight and a movie tomorrow, and then possibly ballroom dancing and Asian Art Museum visiting on the weekend. And then it will be 2007 and I will write up my year in books after I moan over all the books and manga that I haven't written up.
Possibly I will also write up my year in TV, anime and manga, but only so I can pimp the things I loved. And manga has taken over so much of my reading this year that it really should have its own entry.
Christmas Eve
Four of my sister's old classmates arrived on Christmas Eve, and we all sat around and had a most excellent dinner, even though my cheesecake ended up cracked.
The cheesecake baking was an overall disaster, as I ran out of flour for the crust, burned the pecans I was attempting to toast and set the oven to the wrong temperature. But everyone scarfed it down, so even if it looked awful, people seemed to agree that it tasted good.
The sister's classmates also cooked soy chicken, as I forgot to include any sort of meat in the menu all together. This sort of thing happens to me a lot, most likely because I tend to steal recipes from vegetarian or largely vegetarian sources.
After dinner, they went off to attend a midnight mass while I stayed at home to start off the bread for the next day, madly refreshed the Yuletide page every three seconds, and then squeed as the archive went live.
I spent the next four hours or so reading stories while snuggled with the rats in the bathtub
Christmas Day
On Christmas, we all slept in late. I put the bread out to let it rise, and we all went off to watch Dreamgirls, which is ok, but ran a little too long for me. Also, the musical bits were a little odd, since at first they were just when the characters would normally be singing, and then the movie edged into musical territory.
Dinner consisted of: chickpea pancakes (all agreed they were quite delicious, which made me happy), squash and leek Thai curry, brown rice, more jicama salad, potstickers, mi fun (rice noodles), biscuits made from pre-made dough and my bread.
My bread turned out to be as dense as a rock and slightly flavorless. I used the slow-rise white bread from Joy of Cooking. I think next time I will add more salt. I'm not sure what cures the dense-ness -- I suspect it may have been a combination of not kneading the dough enough and not giving it enough time to rise. Any solutions would be highly welcome!
Also, I tried to shape them into batards so there would be more crust (and also because I only have one loaf pan). My batards ended up being unsightly, lumpy pieces of troll bread. Alas.
I suspect breadmaking is an art that will take me quite some time to master. But then, one entire loaf has already been devoured, albeit with cheese and jam to disguise the lack of salt, so it couldn't have been too awful.
And then... the current crown of my cooking achievements! I made chocolate souffle! And it worked! And it was delicious and had the right texture and was wonderful and rich and chocolatey and didn't fall at all!
I am so proud of myself.
The insides ran a little liquid-y, probably because I ended up pouring the batter into 4 12-oz. ramekins instead of the recommended 6 10-11-oz. ones. I think next time I will leave it in the oven for another five or ten minutes. But it really was very good, and since I didn't have sauce to pour on top, the liquid-y center was perfect, and the top was slightly crunchy and the inside was moist and melt-in-your-mouth.
Next time I will have to make raspberry sauce to pour over it, as it will be a perfect contrast to the dark chocolate.
I am also going to try lemon souffle as well.
But yes! Souffle! I win!
Also, we played card games until four in the morning.
The day after
Everyone overslept and lounged around in PJs playing board games instead of going shopping, as originally planned.
Honestly, that was fine with me. Plus, it was pouring rain outside.
And the UPS guy came and delivered my present from my sister! The complete Calvin and Hobbes boxed set, all for me! It is immensely heavy and has beautiful, thick paper, and I am planning on slowly flipping through it and rereading. I adore C&H.
Also, present, yay!
Today, I am at work and feeling incredibly lazy. But there is yhlee-meeting tonight and a movie tomorrow, and then possibly ballroom dancing and Asian Art Museum visiting on the weekend. And then it will be 2007 and I will write up my year in books after I moan over all the books and manga that I haven't written up.
Possibly I will also write up my year in TV, anime and manga, but only so I can pimp the things I loved. And manga has taken over so much of my reading this year that it really should have its own entry.