A bit of this, a bit of that
Dec. 11th, 2013 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceThese may be my favourite kind of days, where I spend some time working and some time hanging out with friends and some time in the kitchen and some time shopping and some time hanging out with m'wife. In more clement weather I might add "some time in the garden", but brr. Instead I'm spending some time in the clubhouse, sorting books; that's good too.
Anyway, a confession: as is likely known to you by now, I have a tolerably conservative nature. In the kitchen, as elsewhere: I tend to find what I like and stick to it, more or less. I'm trying to break myself out of this ruttishness. It's slow going, but we're getting there. Like today: I have roasted pumpkins, and Karen enquired hopefully about the possibility of soup. Certainly soup, I said, but it'll have to be tomorrow, because we have no bread and it takes a day to make a loaf (and this was already lunchtime). She may have looked a little disappointed; next thing I knew, I was saying "...unless I make a different kind of bread..."
So I looked through a few recipes, and mixed a bit of this with a bit of that, and I'm kind of inventing a sourdough pumpkin rosemary bread, which I hope to find rising as we speak. I'll let you know how that comes out.
Also I mixed up the fruit for a Christmas cake, because hullo, English. It ain't Christmas unless there's a big fruitcake covered with homemade marzipan and white icing. And again I did have a couple of recipes I was mix-and-matching, but then at the end I just started chucking in chunks of crystallised ginger and lemon peel and so forth that were not at all in the recipes; and I went to the drinks cabinet for brandy or bourbon, and found a bottle of Cointreau noir, which is orange liqueur and cognac; so I used that instead, because why not? It's going to be yummy whatever. And the fruits will soak overnight, and tomorrow I get to bake the cake. And my regular bread, because sammiches. I'm not sure pumpkin rosemary is quite what I want for a sammich.
Again, though: I wish we could eat as much as I want to cook. It's very frustrating, having to cater to two middle-aged appetites.
Anyway, a confession: as is likely known to you by now, I have a tolerably conservative nature. In the kitchen, as elsewhere: I tend to find what I like and stick to it, more or less. I'm trying to break myself out of this ruttishness. It's slow going, but we're getting there. Like today: I have roasted pumpkins, and Karen enquired hopefully about the possibility of soup. Certainly soup, I said, but it'll have to be tomorrow, because we have no bread and it takes a day to make a loaf (and this was already lunchtime). She may have looked a little disappointed; next thing I knew, I was saying "...unless I make a different kind of bread..."
So I looked through a few recipes, and mixed a bit of this with a bit of that, and I'm kind of inventing a sourdough pumpkin rosemary bread, which I hope to find rising as we speak. I'll let you know how that comes out.
Also I mixed up the fruit for a Christmas cake, because hullo, English. It ain't Christmas unless there's a big fruitcake covered with homemade marzipan and white icing. And again I did have a couple of recipes I was mix-and-matching, but then at the end I just started chucking in chunks of crystallised ginger and lemon peel and so forth that were not at all in the recipes; and I went to the drinks cabinet for brandy or bourbon, and found a bottle of Cointreau noir, which is orange liqueur and cognac; so I used that instead, because why not? It's going to be yummy whatever. And the fruits will soak overnight, and tomorrow I get to bake the cake. And my regular bread, because sammiches. I'm not sure pumpkin rosemary is quite what I want for a sammich.
Again, though: I wish we could eat as much as I want to cook. It's very frustrating, having to cater to two middle-aged appetites.