I somehow managed to do entirely non-computer related things from Friday afternoon until now. This amount of time away from my desk is unusual unless I am on a transoceanic cruise.
What in the world was I doing to entertain myself? Well, some reading, some board game playing with mom and a lot of cooking and baking.
Most of the TV watching I do these days is either home improvement or cooking shows. I also enjoy lectures from the Great Courses and I have just finished several seasons of America’s Test Kitchen.
In the past, I always rather slavishly followed recipes. Watching all these cooking shows has encouraged me to be a lot freer when cooking. I am a lot more likely to just start throwing things into a skillet and seeing how they come out. The downside to this is that when I do something really well, I am unlikely to be able to replicate it.
Friday I was baking oatmeal-craisin cookies. Craisins give the cookies a little more tartness than the usual raisins. I put the first batch in the oven and checked them at four minutes. What I saw was a pile of raw dough surrounded by liquid.
Now I am definitely a mise en place sort of cook and I was sure I had measured out all the ingredients before hand; but I carefully went down the list again. Wet ingredients, dry ingredients; no, I hadn’t missed anything. Meantime, I had pulled the cookies out.
I went back to the counter and checked my ingredient list once again. Then I saw it: the flour was still sitting in the measuring bowl. Rats! The dough I had rescued from the oven was still so malleable that I put all of it back into the bowl, threw in the flour, and started dolloping out the dough once more. Not the best cookies I’ve ever made, but quite edible.
Saturday was much more successful. Lunch was a mélange of pantry items and leftovers: chickpeas, black beans, corn, mushrooms, and some diced up summer sausage. All simmered in some coconut milk with some deeply caramelized onions I had pulled from the freezer. Seasoned with cumin, chili powder, pepper, and who knows what else. Served over rice. Fantastic!
The pepper I am using these days for most things is Aleppo. Black pepper to me is mostly heat, but no particular flavor. Also, I hate grinding peppercorns, eating my meal, having a fabulous dessert, and only then having some small piece of peppercorn make an appearance in my month and completely ruin the meal’s finish with an overpowering dose of heat.
Aleppo pepper is not as hot as red pepper flakes. And it has a slightly sweet and, to me, smoky flavor. Try it! I think you’ll like it.
Sunday I baked a cake. Now I have been becoming a fairly competent cook, but I have not tried my hand at much baking beyond cookies. Sunday I baked cake from scratch and made toffee from scratch and made frosting from scratch! Whew! Everything tasted great and for my first try I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out.
Now it’s back to shooting radscorpions in Fallout 4.
Tuples and Attributes 