Disappointing

So I’m in one of those phases when all kinds of little things are going wrong. That I used to think would protect me from the major catastrophes, but now I’m not so sure. Like how we used to joke about Northwest Airlines “Northworst” that they’d lose your luggage and make you late but [probably] not kill you. And no way to fully test the theory now, since they’ve gone out of business or, more precisely, been subsumed into Delta and other airlines.

Like Thursday night I wanted to make soup & sandwiches for dinner, and hauled out my old Not Strictly Vegetarian Cookbook (1982) for inspiration. Their vegetable soup caught my eye because it has split peas and barley in it, but the split peas never softened up, even after two-plus hours of simmering. I didn’t soak them first and they must’ve been ancient, and probably from the bulk bins at the co-op, found in an unmarked plastic bag in a canister at the back of cabinet, and the remainder that didn’t go into the soup, composted. The soup will probably go down the disposal, presently (the British meaning of presently which means shortly, not currently).

Friday I made a mushroom and Brie quiche. I over bought on brie for the cookie party and have part of a 16 oz. wheel – that went into the quiche – plus a whole unopened one to use. I thought it was going to lovely, but it leaked. And the first pan I took upstairs to put under it was  too narrow and only resulted in more runny egg custard on more pans to clean. (And, oh yea, I’m baking everything upstairs right now because the downstairs oven really only works on broil at the moment.)

Also on Friday, I made 5 banana muffins, a two-banana batch, trying out an Internet small batch recipe. They look nice, not very sweet, but kinda lumpy somehow, and taste too much like baking soda. I think they’re ultimately going in the compost too.

Saturday I roasted a chicken and we ate it with mashed potatoes, and kale-cabbage-carrot slaw. I saw this browned butter colcannon recipe from Nigella and wanted to put the kale in that, but knew that the rest of family would not appreciate kale in their mashed potatoes, so slawed it instead.

Sunday morning trying to redeem I made pumpkin cranberry muffins, with and without chocolate chips. No pics but at least I did do some updates to my recipe that I’d been meaning  to do since fall, reducing the sugar, getting the amounts of liquid correct, adding a cream cheese filling option. And the disappoint there is that even though I left the muffins uncovered cooling all afternoon Sunday before storing them in a big tupperware, and left that only loosely covered overnight, on Monday morning the tops of the muffins were dampish. Dang.

We had huevos rancheros, eggs cooked in Gabrielle Hamilton’s big batch ranchero sauce that I made a biggish, half batch of last summer, with crispy corn tortillas, and refried beans on the side. And potatoes. That actually came out just right, crusty but not mushy. Not as lavish a Sunday brunch as the last time I made all these things back in the first year of pandemic (April 2020 it says, when I resorted to watching TV in the day time to feel better), but a satisfying brunch all the same.

Maybe things are turning around. On some walk … must’ve been Friday – I took some pictures of these frond-y plants and they came out quite nice. Pure luck, it was so sunny that I couldn’t even see the screen of my phone so I just pointed and shot and got lucky. Here’s one on Instagram, the other two are below, and the one I’m using for iPhone wallpaper (same as Insta) is the overleaf.

Although … I’m making a vanilla cake for us for our Sunday dessert in front of TV, and I got a late start, so it might not be ready in time, and I put in too much salt, because of misreading the recipe. The batter tasted OK though, not ridiculously salty. Probably even with the excess salt the cake’s not as salty as commercial baked goods. It’s from a book Rachael gave me, Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Cakes, and yes, I suspect Rach liked the idea of giving a Little Debby a snacking cake. Looks like others discovering the charm of the book, too – this is by a New Yorker food critic.

Here’s a view of the cute little cake, Monday AM. The continuing theme of disappointment is that the glaze that was smooth and pretty when the cake was on the parchment paper that it baked on, on a cutting board, got crackled when I transferred the cake to a plate, so that I could cover it with my cake dome.

Sunday when I was writing this, listening to WPR’s Simply Folk, substitute host & my good friend, Steve Gotcher played Nanci Griffith’s Boots of Spanish Leather, that made me feel better during last week’s blog post. Maybe it’ll work this time too.