Still on the Quest

Want Tuna Casserole. Don't ask me why.

Have tuna and little cans of peas. Invest in cream of mushroom soup and elbow noodles.

Don't look up any recipes until the noodles were noodling.

Recipe wants cheese and breadcrumbs. Don't have cheese. Don't have breadcrumbs. Do have crackers. Most important thing recipe provides is time and temperature of oven.

Noodles are done. Begin to assemble casserole.

Discover little can of peas isn't peas. It's corn. Additional cans prove to be cream corn or greenbeans. Go with the greenbeans.

Manage to get tuna juice all over fingers. Ah well.

Can't get all of the cream of mushroom soup out of the can without violence and not feeling violent. But it is annoying. Poptop lid leaves a rim that blocks my spoon. Ah well.

Casserole dish is just barely large enough to hold noodles, soup, beans. After careful mixing, mash the lot down and top with crackers and a bit of butter.

Bake.

Eat.

Okay, it's a bit strange. But it's good strange. And it certainly explains why my sink is full of dirty dishes again.

How to make pancakes.

1. Forget to start the sourdough the night before.

2. Decide that you don't care, because it's a snowday and you can eat them later anyway, so mix up some flour and milk and add starter, pull out the reserve for more starter and wait for it to "proof" (which means get a bunch of bubbles to show that the yeastiebeasties are alive and burping.)

3. Keep looking at it while the bacon is in the oven, hoping.

4. Take out the finished bacon and turn off the oven, leaving the door open so the heat might rise and wake up the yeastiebeasties.

5. Give up and put bowl and tupperwares of yeastiebeastiemix into cooler oven and close door.

6. Forget you did that.

7. Remember belatedly, open oven and find out that there has been much lovely yeastiebeastie eructation going on, hooray!

8. Seal the starter tupperware and put away. Haul out egg, baking soda, butter, salt and a bit of sugar. Add to the bowl with the happy yeastiebeasties. (Melt the butter first, and be sure to crack the egg separately so you don't have eggshells in your pancakes. Of course, when you are careful to do that, the eggshells behave, so it seems that you just got another dish dirty for no purpose...)

9. Heat up frying pan with some oil in it. Eye batter and wonder how on earth you're ever going to eat that many pancakes.

10. Undercook first batch. Console yourself with remembering that Alton Brown says you always have to throw out the first pancake. Throw out first batch.

11. Get distracted by weather report and burn the second batch. Throw out second batch.

12. Get impatient and put third batch in too soon for pan to cool off sufficiently, even though you turned down the heat. Look at scorch marks wistfully and throw out third batch.

13. Watch next batch like a hawk and manage to get them out of pan intact and unburnt. Scrape last of batter into pan for a final pancake. Nurse it along like a faint flicker of hope in a darkened world. Add to plate when it's done.

14. Decorate pancakes with butter and syrup.

15. Eat pancakes. Yum!

16. Wonder why you're still hungry...

Dried beans with recipe and crockpot = disaster.

Experimental French Onion Soup with experimental pear, a wild disregard for ingredients lists and general mucking about with recipes found on internet? = awesome.

And I'll never manage to make it again.

Lentils for lunch,
Beans for supper...

It makes up for being extravagant yesterday and stopping for dinner downtown on the way home. Although I had beans then too, along with bangers and mash, fried onion strings, and apple chutney. There's a lot of pseudo-Irish pub food in Boston, which suits me, since I like it now and then.

And besides, there are occasionally side benefits. Like the chief cook coming out to ask me himself about my carrot allergy. Especially when he's cute. Very cute. And doesn't make his gravy with stock that has carrots in it so I can have gravy, which is a bonus, but the cute part would have been sufficient on its own.

Having indulged that far I decided on dessert, strawberry shortcake with a shot of Grand Marnier (which the waitress asked me before she poured it over the top, and was good even though I don't often have alcohol.) It required tea to accompany it, and that was good too, because being pseudo-Irish, the bar had to provide tea done the right way, with a pot of hot water and the milk separate so I could brew it to my own liking and pour the milk into the cup before the tea. (yes, it does make a difference).

So today is beans.

mmmmmm... beans...

My aunt -- who is getting up there -- has for many years (i.e. since 1967) been the caretaker of a colony of yeastie beasties which have returned her care and love by providing her with leaven for lots and lots of sourdough pancakes and waffles. (She coaxed the starter from a friend, who got it from an old guy who was living in the mountains and had probably been custodian of it for several decades by then.)

This last trip, I used blandishments and big puppy eyes to wheedle a cup of starter out of her, and took it to my sister's house, where I made more starter (and pancakes!) and left some for her enjoyment while I very carefully transported a few ounces of yeast-infested dough back through airport security and home. (The top didn't pop till I got off the plane!)

I dined last night on sourdough pancakes -- my apartment finally being warm enough to proof the sponge. (See all the lovely jargon you can pick up from the internet?) There being far more batter than any one person could consume in one night, I made a few pancakes to pop into the freezer as an experiment, and saved the rest of the batter for morning.

Breakfast, of course, was sourdough pancakes -- which turned out amazingly well, considering how chilly those yeastie beasties must have been after a night in the fridge. I still have batter left, too, so that will be lunch. I may even get ambitious enough to go out and buy syrup by then.

I have a few notes, however.

1. Sourdough pancakes rise. A lot. They are thick, and tasty. This means they probably need to be smaller in diameter than ordinary pancakes, so that you have a chance of finishing them without experiencing a slightly desperate sensation of "oh, no, I'm *not* giving up that last lovely lump of jam!"

2. Sourdough starter does not taste nearly as lovely when you lick the drip off your fingers in haste.

3. Auntie was right. Wash the doughy bits off your kitchen equipment right away and its actually going to work. Later is a baaad idea.

4. Having sourdough starter in your refrigerator and the internet at your fingertips is a recipe for ...er... recipes. Whether ambition will follow the research I have yet to determine.

I've been playing silly buggers with insomnia this week, so belegcuthalion suggested hot milk with honey in, and I tried it last night...er... very early yesterday morning and it was good.

Tonight I tipped over at 8:30 and woke up at 9:15 unbearably cold so I took a hot bath with Lord Peter the book, darn it and when I finally clambered out of the cooling water I decided to short circuit tonight's sleeplessness with honey and milk again.

Only I added a smidgen of brandy.

I think that's just about the ingredients of a posset, although microwaved, so I am now going to feel virtuously smug about doing useless research for a story I've already written down...

And sleep. Yeah. Got to remember the sleep part of the equation...

*yawn*

But I take consolation in knowing that it ain't all that bad. I'll probably live longer.

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/11/fat-and-long-life-obesity-crisis-is.html

And it was good.


*burp*

Took my massive kickoff dose of synthroid this morning, and wandered over to the chowderfest. Many interesting chowders, several with too much salt or pepper for my taste, but still some good ones. I got home and my stomach inquired impolitely about just *what* I thought I was doing putting all that rich food into it after two weeks of the bland, of course.

I'm still not quite right, but at least I don't feel as draggy as yesterday. I may try writing later. Maybe. Or sleeping...

That fresh avocado and lime juice on a salad are darn near as good as vinegar and oil, particularly if you topped the salad with a little homemade salsa as well.

And yes, I am avoiding sending those Nazgul through the camp, why do you ask?