Breakfast: homemade "ginger ale," leftover dandelion green salad, leftover homemade sausage.
Lunch (eaten in the restaurant after my shift, and before going down the street for a haircut): cup of chicken noodle soup and a "Crudite sandwich," which is basically a bunch of raw vegetables with sweet onion jam, on wheat bread. Then I proceeded onwards to the hair salon where they relayed various rumors they had heard about my workplace over the many years they've been in business. It is important to keep up with the information trading. I usually feed them one or two stories in exchange, though I try not to choose anything damaging.
In the late afternoon I try making Jennifer Reese's homemade cheez-its. One pet peeve: why do so many modern recipes assume you own a food processor? I no longer possess one, and, while I have a very good blender, it does not do so well with sticky/fatty ingredients such as butter (or sausage). Reese's cracker recipe here would not really require a food processor, and indeed when my blender could not handle creating a crumbly butter/cheese/flour mixture I simply dumped the whole thing into a bowl and rubbed the fat in with my fingers, as God intended. Then, there was a minor miracle. I had a bowlful of dry crumbs. The only liquid called for by the recipe was a single teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce (did she forget to mention some milk or something?). I added the teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and tried gathering together the dough with my hands-- it worked! I won't doubt Reese's proportions again.
Dinner: we had little dishes of the cheez-its along with a roasted boneless turkey breast, roasted potatoes mixed with portobello mushrooms, and cabbage salad with minced dates. The cheez-its were honestly only okay, and nothing like actual Cheez-its. They are by far flakier and more buttery, while substantially less salty and cheesy. I would definitely add more salt to this recipe. The turkey breast developed to be bizarre-- it took forever to cook, and then had the density of pork (my daughter actually thought it was pork), and hardly any turkey flavor. I found it actively unpleasant, but my family-- ever the optimists-- said it was fine. The potatoes with mushrooms were also not as good as I'd hoped. On the other hand, the addition of chopped dates to a basic cabbage slaw with olive oil and red wine vinegar was brilliant, and everyone should do it always.
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half. 1 chocolate hazelnut linzer cookie before dinner (I was starving). A couple of sample cheez-its before dinner. Cup of sake before dinner. Then, truth be told, I was not hungry for dinner.
A note: I seem to have no original photos from this date until Dec. 28, more than two weeks later. Racking my brain about how this could be so, I suddenly remember that I lost my camera for a while. In my house, which is really not all that untidy. I searched and searched and couldn't find it anywhere, until, weeks later, it turned up inside a box of mementos that I keep on my dresser-- handmade cards from my daughter and suchlike. What it was doing there, I have no idea. And then, apparently, I promptly forgot that this had ever happened. That's more or less what December was like.
Lunch (eaten in the restaurant after my shift, and before going down the street for a haircut): cup of chicken noodle soup and a "Crudite sandwich," which is basically a bunch of raw vegetables with sweet onion jam, on wheat bread. Then I proceeded onwards to the hair salon where they relayed various rumors they had heard about my workplace over the many years they've been in business. It is important to keep up with the information trading. I usually feed them one or two stories in exchange, though I try not to choose anything damaging.
In the late afternoon I try making Jennifer Reese's homemade cheez-its. One pet peeve: why do so many modern recipes assume you own a food processor? I no longer possess one, and, while I have a very good blender, it does not do so well with sticky/fatty ingredients such as butter (or sausage). Reese's cracker recipe here would not really require a food processor, and indeed when my blender could not handle creating a crumbly butter/cheese/flour mixture I simply dumped the whole thing into a bowl and rubbed the fat in with my fingers, as God intended. Then, there was a minor miracle. I had a bowlful of dry crumbs. The only liquid called for by the recipe was a single teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce (did she forget to mention some milk or something?). I added the teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and tried gathering together the dough with my hands-- it worked! I won't doubt Reese's proportions again.
Dinner: we had little dishes of the cheez-its along with a roasted boneless turkey breast, roasted potatoes mixed with portobello mushrooms, and cabbage salad with minced dates. The cheez-its were honestly only okay, and nothing like actual Cheez-its. They are by far flakier and more buttery, while substantially less salty and cheesy. I would definitely add more salt to this recipe. The turkey breast developed to be bizarre-- it took forever to cook, and then had the density of pork (my daughter actually thought it was pork), and hardly any turkey flavor. I found it actively unpleasant, but my family-- ever the optimists-- said it was fine. The potatoes with mushrooms were also not as good as I'd hoped. On the other hand, the addition of chopped dates to a basic cabbage slaw with olive oil and red wine vinegar was brilliant, and everyone should do it always.
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half. 1 chocolate hazelnut linzer cookie before dinner (I was starving). A couple of sample cheez-its before dinner. Cup of sake before dinner. Then, truth be told, I was not hungry for dinner.
A note: I seem to have no original photos from this date until Dec. 28, more than two weeks later. Racking my brain about how this could be so, I suddenly remember that I lost my camera for a while. In my house, which is really not all that untidy. I searched and searched and couldn't find it anywhere, until, weeks later, it turned up inside a box of mementos that I keep on my dresser-- handmade cards from my daughter and suchlike. What it was doing there, I have no idea. And then, apparently, I promptly forgot that this had ever happened. That's more or less what December was like.