Breakfast: leftover Sri Lankan eggplant, slice of herb toast with butter, carrot slices, half grapefruit, grape tomatoes, clementine, small dish of roasted peanuts.  Glass of homemade "ginger ale."

Lunch: Dish of mixed green raisins, roasted peanuts, and chocolate chips.  Fruit, protein, fat: a balanced meal.

My afternoon project was Deb Perelman's chocolate hazelnut linzer cookies.  I'd considered making these as a big batch of Christmas cookies, so considered this a trial run.  The cookies came out beautifully, just gorgeous and festive, as well as tasty with a toasty hazelnut flavor.  Each cookie was so hearty and satisfying that eating just one was enough.  However.  I will not be making a triple or quadruple batch of these as Christmas cookies because they are a  HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS.  The dough was extremely sticky-- I hoped it would harden up during chilling-- and it did, somewhat, but still required constant flour dusting during rolling and yet stuck to the rolling pin anyway, over and over and over.  Cutting, baking, spreading of Nutella, etc., were relatively incident-free, but it is a many-step, time-consuming process.  Just not gonna happen in the week before Christmas. (Later note: everyone who ate these cookies were tremendously impressed with them.  So, if you are looking for some serious baking cred, and don't have too many mouths to feed, I still recommend them.)

Dinner was somewhat involved as well.  I made the Bitter Greens with Sauteed Corn and Shallots from the August issue of  Bon Appetit, as well as toasted coconut muffins and the last of the homemade sausage I froze from Jennifer Reese's recipe.  I'm not sure whether there was an error in the salad recipe, because 4 c. of corn kernels seems like a lot to add to a salad dressing.  However, I used all 4 cups, and the salad tasted good.  About half its volume just consisted of this tasty mixture of corn kernels, browned shallots, and pancetta.  Dumped on and around some dandelion greens.  While this may or may not have been what was intended (the photos in the magazine and online show a much leafier salad) , I enjoyed it.  I also enjoyed the one coconut muffin that I ate, but I came home from work the next day to find the muffins all gone.  My husband had stayed home sick from work and I guess he ate them all?  As I have commented before, I found the sausage icky and cloying.  But I eat it anyway because I am a responsible non-waster of food.

We ate chocolate hazelnut linzer cookies for dessert while watching Survivor.

Snacks: 4 cups coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half, plus a little more at work.  A small lump of baked hazelnut cookie dough that was left over after cookie cutting.

Breakfast: Leftover Sri Lankan eggplant; 1 scrambled egg plus one extra egg white, with thyme (I've decided that my spice rack-- I mean my two spice ranks and large crowded spice shelf that runs the length of my kitchen counter-- is out of control, and I'm going to start adding random spices to things); individual coconut-mango pudding cup.  Small, civilized-looking cup of organic instant coffee with half and half.  The latter reminds me of traveling in foreign countries, where the cups are smaller and the coffee frequently instant, and makes me happy, even though the coffee tastes like shit.

Lunch: some pieces of parmesan cheese, Liberte caramel yogurt, half a grapefruit.

Shopping (Whole Foods): unsalted butter, 2 packages of chicken thighs, Barbara's Puffins cereal, Barbara's dark chocolate cranberry granola, Tom's toothpaste, 2 lentil dal wraps and 1 chicken salad wrap, piece of gouda, cocoa hazelnut spread (like Nutella but more natural), potato cheddar pierogies, organic hazelnuts, Italian parsley, frozen corn, dandelion greens, 1 green serrano pepper, free-range eggs, yellow grape tomatoes, diced pancetta, big chunk of dark chocolate, a small boneless turkey breast, pitted dates, 2 organic eggplants, 6 organic shallots, 3 organic portobello mushrooms, Cabot "seriously sharp" cheddar, organic firm tofu, 3 russet potatoes, 1 organic yellow onion, 2 tomatoes, 1 red bell pepper, 1 lemon, big box of clementines.  $151.

Dinner: lentil wrap from Whole Foods, cut-up mango, clementine orange.  Jennifer Reese's homemade ginger ale (while it tasted good, alas, it was not fizzy.  At all.)

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee with half and half, 2 regular, 2 decaf.  Cup of warm sake after dinner.  Small dish of Barbara's Better Dark Chocolate Cranberry granola with 1% lactose-free milk (I didn't care for this product, which didn't exactly taste like chocolate or cranberries, or indeed granola.  But I was hungry after a light dinner).

Much hooting and hollering today over the prospect of a new Starbucks in Old Town Takoma Park.  Will it happen?  Who knows?  (Jan 30 update: I can't find anything more recent about this brouhaha, so perhaps it blew over.  But in whose favor?  Since I'm not at the restaurant as much anymore, I spend much less time gossiping with local business owners about such things.)

Breakfast: Leftover Szechuan eggplant, leftover Bon Appetit green beans, leftover herb muffin, a few slices of Parmesan cheese.

Lunch: Last glass of flat guarana soda.  Slice of 6-herb toast with butter, carrot slices, half grapefruit with a little sugar, handful of mixed green raisins and roasted peanuts.
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Finally emptied the bottle of guarana soda so that I could make Jennifer Reese's ginger ale.   The main challenge in this very simple recipe was getting the ingredients into the designated bottle.  Reese instructed us to use a funnel, and advised not to worry if some of the ingredients got stuck-- adding the water at the end would rinse them through into the bottle.  Clearly, my funnel was too small, because ALL of the ingredients got stuck in the funnel, and I had to push them through a little at a time using a chopstick.  It worked out in the end.  And I got a science demonstration: it worked much better to swirl the sugar and water with the chopstick (so that the sugar was suspended in the water), and let this thick liquid pour through, than it did to simply push the wet sugar downward through the hole with the chopstick.  In retrospect, this makes sense.  Also, adding the yeast meant immediate bubbles.  This was cool.  I'm a little worried that the bottle will explode.
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Also made Deb Perelman's Coconut Tapioca Pudding with Mango.  Honestly, besides the problem that was my fault (buying the wrong size of tapioca, I'm guessing: the recipe called for "small pearl tapioca," specifying that larger sizes required longer soaking times, and my tapioca came out chewy, so it was probably a larger size)... this pudding tasted only OK.  I mean, if the tapioca had been soft, it would have been just fine, and we ate it regardless, but it didn't excite me.  It needed more oomph somehow, don't ask me how.  Perhaps something as simple as more sugar or salt?  On Perelman's advice, I left out the optional sugar in the mango puree, and maybe I should have put it in.  But the pudding itself was just bland.  It didn't taste that strongly of coconut, which is odd because it was made entirely from coconut milk and had toasted coconut sprinkled on top.  Maybe not a good brand of coconut milk? 
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Shopping (Co-op):  1/2 gal organic skim milk, 1/2 gal 1% lactose-free milk, 6 Liberte individual yogurts (assorted flavors), Crofters apricot jam, pint of half and half, 3 rolls Seventh Generation toilet paper, organic coffee beans, 2 bars of soap, cage-free eggs, Dr. Tung's Smart Floss, organic cotton balls.  $53.

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's Sri Lankan Eggplant Curry; white rice; oven-baked tofu marinated in soy, mirin, ginger and garlic powder; cabbage-and-carrot salad with apple cider vinegar dressing.  The tofu was not that good.  My daughter, who is a picky eater not in the sense of disliking unusual foods but in the sense of having high standards, did not bother to eat it.  The Sri Lankan eggplant was powerfully flavored, practically encrusted with a wealth of spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, fennel, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, mustard seeds) and then bathed in coconut milk and lime juice-- in my opinion, definitely worth the effort for the unique flavor.  What I wrote in my cookbook: "Yum.  But intense.  I am the only person who will like this, ever."  Because I cannot think of anyone else to whom I could safely serve this dish.  Maybe my father.  But he never comes to visit.

Dessert: The mango-coconut pudding.  My husband and I ate it while we were watching the first season of The Amazing Race, which happened a really long time ago now.  My daughter ate hers in her bedroom while she did her AP History homework.  Too bad, I usually count on desserts to create Family TV Time, but my now-high-school daughter is often too busy for that these days.

Snacks: Cup of sake.  Too hot this time, which is also not delicious.  I guess the traditional way is the right way.  It was good once it cooled to lukewarm.  Bite of the instant stuffing my daughter prepared one hour before dinner, because she always gets hungry one hour before dinner.  It was insanely salty, but kind of good at the same time.  I would eat the leftovers except I think she probably feels they belong to her.  4 cups coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.

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Does everybody remember Amy Dacyczyn, of The Tightwad Gazette?  Her newsletter was an inspiration in the 1990s to everyone wanting tips and tricks for getting off the personal consumption treadmill.  If Your Money or Your Life was the Bible of the voluntary simplicity movement, Dacyczyn's work was the marginalia: all the comments, the letters, the life hacks, the small stuff of which the big ideas are made.  I devoured the thick compendium of all her newsletters in 2002, as my first husband and I were struggling to get out of debt and achieve a reasonable quality of life with two very low incomes, a foster teenager, and a baby.

(What is Dacyczyn doing now?  Well, it seems that she just went ahead and retired.  Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar did an interview with her in 2014, for those that are looking for an update, but I can't promise it's very exciting.)

Now, at the risk perhaps of copyright infringement (but I have a feeling she wouldn't care), I'd like to share the single most useful recipe I have ever encountered, courtesy of this fine and resourceful writer.  The "Little Multigrain Herb Muffins" I just posted are based on this recipe, as are pretty much all other muffins I make. (I literally keep her 959-page tome in my household for this sole purpose-- pp. 466-468!)  As the primary cook for a new family in 2002, the very concept was earth-shattering: a "recipe" that did not require you to go out and buy special ingredients, but which gave you a blueprint for transforming whatever you already had lying around into something delicious.  You can find the entirety of her article here; the crucial text, to me, reads

Here is the skeletal framework of the muffin recipe:

2 to 2 1/2 c. grain
1 c. milk
 up to 1/4 c. fat
1 egg
up to 1/2 c. sweetener
2-3 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
up to 1 1/2 c. "additions"

Each of the components above gets some discussion from Dacyczyn (again, see here), but here are some notes from me (some of which overlap with hers):

*It is easiest if at least 1 cup of the grain is white all-purpose flour.  The rest can be pretty much anything you want: whole wheat flour, other grain flours, oats, cornmeal, breakfast cereal (I've done this), stale baked goods.  Usually I use 3 or 4 things.  I think one time I used Grapenuts, because nobody likes them, including me.  They worked fine.
*You can substitute other interesting liquids for milk.
*fat can be anything but it is obviously desirable to liquify it before adding to the muffins.  Besides butter, oil, shortening, etc., I have also used things like sour cream and peanut butter.  
*If you choose to use a liquid form of sweetener (honey, maple syrup, that corn syrup that's been in the back of your cupboard for five years, Torani raspberry Italian soda syrup), reduce the quantity of milk/liquid by 1/4 c.
*Use a full 1 T. of baking powder if you have any significant quantity of additions.  Dacyczyn's universal recipe actually just reads "2 t. baking powder,"  but I usually go with 3 t. unless the muffins are very tiny.
*You can add a little more salt than this if you like, especially as the trend has gone towards sweet+salty baked goods
*Be creative about additions.  I have added many different fruits (fresh and dried), nuts, coconut, chocolate, herbs, cheeses, vegetables, and more.  Or, if you don't have much in the way of additions, you can simply create an interesting texture and taste through mixing grains and adding spices or herbs.  Just use what you have.  It is so easy.

Whatever you have stirred up: grease muffin tins, or use papers, fill cups about 2/3 full, and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.  Cool another 20 minutes before consuming.

The universal muffin recipe should never be allowed to die.  Please, if anyone knows any more great universal recipes, I would love to hear about them.