Post match report
Mar. 4th, 2010 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceHah. All that fuss about the chicken scratchings? Guess who left them on the counter, forgot entirely to scatter them across the risotto as planned...
Damn it! (But it's okay, there are leftovers, and Karen comes home for lunch. I get a second chance.)
Also, I forgot to add the melted butter to the batter for the lemon pudding. Knowing nothing about the chemistry involved, I worried that absence-of-fat would cause it all Not To Work - but no. The cakey bit caked and the custard, um, cussed (it ought to be a mediaeval insult, don't you think? "You insufferable custard!" Tho' actually it sounds more Elizabethan: one of Shakespeare's minor mockeries), and people ate every scrap of that.
Note to self: talk to your guests. The day before, for preference. Then you won't find people at your table saying how they don't like broccoli, just as you are putting the broccoli on to steam as the absolute centre and focus of your starter... (This too was okay, though: we devoted time to persuading her that this was not broccoli-as-she-knew-it - which of course it isn't: in the UK we tend to call it purple sprouting broccoli even when the flowers are yellow; in the US, I learn, it's known as broccolini - and she did nobly eat thereof.) (I am foolishly proud of this dish, because I Made It Up. Which, as ever, does not of course mean that other people have not Made It Up before me - broccoli and stilton soup, of course, is a classic - but nevertheless. All by myself, I thought that broccoli and sour cream and stilton and smoked bacon would work well together, and I was right, and it was my idea which was my own and I am proud of it.)
So, yup. Lots of eating, lots of drinking (people who like red wine? are good people, by me), happy dinner all around. Even if I did forget stuff.
Talking of people who like red wine, my math-fu is failing me this morning, but I think Mark and Helen must be in mid-air by now, somewhere over the Atlantic, yay. Everything gets to be different when they arrive. It's going to be lovely to see them, and slightly odd (I am always startled to find friends-from-home overseas; I tend to drift around conventions in a vague daze, a constant state of mild startlement: "This is a foreign country! I am Abroad! How can you be here?"), and tomorrow we all head south. Down the coast to Santa Barbara, then San Diego for the weekend (come and see me, San Diego people! Mysterious Galaxy, noon on Saturday!) and after that there are rumours of Joshua Tree, Las Vegas, allegedly grand canyons and I know not what more.
Wifi may be sparse; I understand that there are deserts involved. Your f-list may get a breather for a week or so, before I re-emerge in San Francisco Friday week (come and see me, San Francisco people! Borderlands, 3pm Saturday 13th; and then SF in SF that same evening. I will try to read different things, for the sake of variety & interest).
Today, though? Today is all about the leftovers. If I were a restaurant, people would always be leaving me with boxes full of food for later. *has no notion of portion control*
Damn it! (But it's okay, there are leftovers, and Karen comes home for lunch. I get a second chance.)
Also, I forgot to add the melted butter to the batter for the lemon pudding. Knowing nothing about the chemistry involved, I worried that absence-of-fat would cause it all Not To Work - but no. The cakey bit caked and the custard, um, cussed (it ought to be a mediaeval insult, don't you think? "You insufferable custard!" Tho' actually it sounds more Elizabethan: one of Shakespeare's minor mockeries), and people ate every scrap of that.
Note to self: talk to your guests. The day before, for preference. Then you won't find people at your table saying how they don't like broccoli, just as you are putting the broccoli on to steam as the absolute centre and focus of your starter... (This too was okay, though: we devoted time to persuading her that this was not broccoli-as-she-knew-it - which of course it isn't: in the UK we tend to call it purple sprouting broccoli even when the flowers are yellow; in the US, I learn, it's known as broccolini - and she did nobly eat thereof.) (I am foolishly proud of this dish, because I Made It Up. Which, as ever, does not of course mean that other people have not Made It Up before me - broccoli and stilton soup, of course, is a classic - but nevertheless. All by myself, I thought that broccoli and sour cream and stilton and smoked bacon would work well together, and I was right, and it was my idea which was my own and I am proud of it.)
So, yup. Lots of eating, lots of drinking (people who like red wine? are good people, by me), happy dinner all around. Even if I did forget stuff.
Talking of people who like red wine, my math-fu is failing me this morning, but I think Mark and Helen must be in mid-air by now, somewhere over the Atlantic, yay. Everything gets to be different when they arrive. It's going to be lovely to see them, and slightly odd (I am always startled to find friends-from-home overseas; I tend to drift around conventions in a vague daze, a constant state of mild startlement: "This is a foreign country! I am Abroad! How can you be here?"), and tomorrow we all head south. Down the coast to Santa Barbara, then San Diego for the weekend (come and see me, San Diego people! Mysterious Galaxy, noon on Saturday!) and after that there are rumours of Joshua Tree, Las Vegas, allegedly grand canyons and I know not what more.
Wifi may be sparse; I understand that there are deserts involved. Your f-list may get a breather for a week or so, before I re-emerge in San Francisco Friday week (come and see me, San Francisco people! Borderlands, 3pm Saturday 13th; and then SF in SF that same evening. I will try to read different things, for the sake of variety & interest).
Today, though? Today is all about the leftovers. If I were a restaurant, people would always be leaving me with boxes full of food for later. *has no notion of portion control*