For personal reference and archival purposes...

( Lemon curd )

( Chocolate souffle )

• For those of you who have been reading the 2004 Italy trip write ups, jinian is blogging about her recent trip to Seville, complete with nifty photos!



• vom_marlowe offers pie recipes, many of which feature Cool Whip, which I am assured is a sign of Midwestern cookery. I was introduced to Cool Whip a few years ago by my (American) ex; it is awesome. Also, I have been craving pie for a month or so for no really good reason. Thankfully, I found a wonderful pie place around here. Unfortunately, it's about half an hour away.



• vom_marlowe also posts on depression, a subject that I sometimes wish were not quite so near and dear to my heart.

For rachelmanija, who's been requesting cake-from-scratch recipes

I think I found this from some recipe website a few years ago. It's the very first cake I baked after I moved to California!

This is a pretty forgiving recipe; I've forgotten stuff or randomly substituted things when I ran out of ingredients, I've made it non-dairy and dairy, I've tried it in different pans for different thicknesses. Though, unlike cofax7, I haven't accidentally left it in the oven for another hour, so it may not be quite that forgiving. (also, I need more recipes like that, given my extreme absent-mindedness!)

( Recipe as follows )

Yay! I have successfullly made cheesecake, despite my penchant for recipe modification!

( Chocolate marbled cheesecake bars, annotated )

I was feeling incredibly lazy and inactive yesterday while cleaning the rat cage, which basically meant that every step of the process was interrupted by about half an hour of petting the rats, scritching the rats, squishing the rats' tummies, and having staring contests with the rats (I usually win, as the rats get very easily bored by staring at my nose). Normally every step of the process is only interrupted by about ten minutes of above activities, as I can usually tear myself away from the cute fuzziness and get off the sofa through force of will.

Anyway, so I wasn't going to cook, but then I got to washing dishes and standing around in the kitchen, and for some reason, washing dishes seems to make me want to cook. I never want to do it at first, but just swishing the sponge around in hot water is actually quite relaxing.

I made some tiramisu, except with pound cake instead of ladyfingers, because I couldn't find any ladyfingers in Safeway. I don't know how it is yet; it's still refrigerating. Last time my sister made it with pound cake, it took longer to set. I think I may have also put too much coffee in, so I hope it's not too soggy.

Also, it was my first time beating egg whites into foam! So cool! I think I nearly overbeat them, though... they were getting a bit shiny by the time I stopped, and when I poured them into the mascarpone they seemed just a bit lumpy. Oh well. I also folded for the first time and didn't ruin anything! (I think)

Folding is fun. I think this means I should make souffle. Perhaps I am overambitious.

And then, since I was cooking already, I decided to go ahead and cook my dried black beans. Black beans are very cute and make a nice noise when I run my finger through them. I followed heresluck's instructions, though I wasn't quite sure what a blemished bean looked like, so I mostly just tossed aside anything too wrinkled and anything split. Dumped them in the pot around ten and proceeded to make the entire apartment smell like beans, which is actually not as bad as it sounds.

Also, black beans turn the water purple! Hee!

Then they were actually done cooking much sooner than I anticipated! I'd been thinking that I'd just refrigerate them and make soup the next day, but since they were finished in about half an hour (I only cooked about a cup and a half because my pot wasn't big enough), I decided to venture forth and continue with the soup!

( Recipe and modifications )

( Top 5 tropical fruit )

( Top 5 imbalanced effort/reward ration recipes )

( Five sexiest things about Eliza Dushku )

Picked up an extra copy of Emma Bull's Finder at the library sale, anyone want it? (aka, free book!)

I also picked up a random magazine -- The Upholsterer and Interior Decorator, June 15, 1931, and was going to see if anyone on LJ wanted it. Then I found it out was selling on Abebooks for $20. Sooo... maybe not. Must investigate selling options. Unless there is anyone here who really wants to buy it (for less than $20, naturally)?

I caved and got vols. 6 and 9 of Saiyuki, so now I can read straight through (I have 4, 7, and 8 currently and sat in Borders reading 5).

All the cooking shows going crazy over the holidays and eating coffeeandink's tasty food and marvelling at the fact that she actually made it all has sort of inspired me to cook. Well... we'll see how it goes.

Things I want to try:
coffeeandink/Moosewood Restaurant's cornmeal scones
Alton Brown's fruitcake
AB's oatmeal
Some gingerbread recipe (anyone have a good one?)
AB's clotted cream
heresluck's polenta
upsy_daisy's garlic chicken