FM 100 Hue Test



This was cool. I scored an 11.

I also have to get around to reading Where the Wild Things Are: An Interview with Ken Millett

Things to do on a sick day, #145:
Make homemade puff pastry



In May of this year, I had a spinach and feta pastry (with — yum! *cough*ick*cough* &mdash a Lactaid) from the Michel's Baguette near work. Knowing full well that eating more of them as frequently as I'd like would probably result in debilitating damage to my digestive tract, I researched a few recipes for puff pastry, finally deciding on attempting this one, planning on substituting the butter with a non-hydrogenated shortening. I printed off the recipe that very day. Then the poor print-out sat, unloved, in my "to do" recipe binder for the next four months.

For the better part of this morning, after having just such a gastro-intestinal blowout as I've been trying to avoid, I opted to call in sick. Having caught up on all pressing domestic matters earlier in the week, I decided the solid chunk of time required to make my first pastry recipe wouldn't be too overwhelming in this instance. I began the pastry at noon, and all work on it was completed by 6pm. At 10:30pm, I made (and sampled two of) the croissants shown in the photo above.

I'm pleased to report that the recipe was surprisingly easy, if time-consuming, and the results are great! I am so glad to finally have a trans-fat- and dairy-free pastry option available to me. This recipe is definitely worth it.

Plans for the remainder of the dough include more croissants for breakfast sandwiches, spinach and goat cheese pastries and crab rangoon. I might even get around to making sweet pastries, once I exhaust all the savoury possibilites. :)

This week's reading list...
...mostly — if not entirely — culled from tnsw/d

The End (of Book Publishing...)

Can Si Newhouse Keep Condé Nast’s Gloss Going?

How Magazines Led Investors Toward Ruin

Need a Job? $17,000 an Hour. No Success Required.

One Wild Ride

Is Pornography Adultery?

The story behind the Palin e-mail hacking

Hackers infiltrate Large Hadron Collider systems and mock IT security. Now with uber-lame auto-load video!

A Baby Earth

In TriBeCa, a New Park Called CaVaLa

Vehicles strike her house 7 times in 11 years

Mesmeromania, or, The Tale Of The Tub

Everybody wants a...



...piece of the pie

Food porn



Just look at the caramelization on 'em!

What's cooking,
Good looking?



My lax food blogging in recent months makes it appear as 'though I've been doing next to nothing in the culinary arena during the summer. While nobody likes having the stove and oven running during our (admittedly pathetic, especially this particular) hot season, I find it hard not to hoard as much of the Ontario-grown produce as possible while it's in abundance.

To that effect, I've been canning like a mad-thing, producing jars of strawberry jam, wild blueberry jam, yellow plum jam and "spirited" (read: boozy) pears. I've also been trying desperately to avoid canning the figs I'm seeing in stores these days, as I still have 3 small jars left of fresh (not dried) fig jam from last year. The Ontario tomatoes are ridiculously difficult to avoid too. As summer wanes, I have to fight the urge not to can the last spoils of the season — it's murder on the hands (all that water) and the feet and legs (which I'm abusing by standing while things simmer or boil).

In other news, I've also created my second truly successful attempt at non-dairy ice cream, this time going with a simple chocolate version, which amalgamated techniques from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise's recipe for Chocolate Candy Cane Ice Cream and The Food Network/Anna Olson's recipe for Dark Chocolate Mousse. I erred in my creation of the mousse, having too much liquid in the batch to make a real mousse, and also by folding the chocolate mixture into the meringue-ish mixture, as opposed to the other way around. Just the same, the mousse component (which I ate as mousse) was heavenly, and the ice cream component was good enough that Matt liked it (which is saying a lot).

Finally, I broke out my pots for two versions of chili for my birthday, one of which was meat-free. Both versions used an heirloom tomato sauce — my first foray into cooking with them.

In hindsight, I suppose I've not been food blogging because I've been far too busy with food preparation.