Back and re-dedicated

OK, I have been totally lazy and worrying about other things– like working, and grad school– and when I have found time for food I’ve been eating it or planning to eat it.  The summer was also disrupted by a wheat-free diet I did for three months.  Not pleasant, but it nipped a mild allergy in the bud, so it was worth it.  However (and I attach the photo here) I did start reading about organic vegetable production for the back garden and I grew the carrots and beans you see here myself.  So there’s proof I was doing something when I should have been doing work on my thesis.

 So, new resolution.  I will use this blog to deposit all my obsessive meditations about food to help clear my mind and alleviate everyone’s boredom around me because they are probably fed up with hearing me go on about food all the time but are too polite to say so.  Amen.

 This past weekend I had a group of people come over for a potluck dinner, now that we’re all back in school.  Everyone had to bring a dish related to a book they had read over the summer and be prepared to talk about it.  It was really fun.  I made treacle tart, since it’s Harry Potter’s favorite dessert and I wanted to try it.  I now know that I don’t like treacle tart.  But since I was experimenting anyway, I tried using Dorie Greenspan’s “Good for Almost Anything” pie pastry recipe and it really is good.  It’s a shortcrust, not a flaky pastry, but it’s nice and tender and a little bit cakey.

 Sunday I tried making James McNair’s Chicken Tamale Casserole.  It looks a mess but it is easy to make and I love the flavour.  I also tried Pierre Herme’s brownie recipe.  I didn’t like it.  I want brownies to be either fudgy or cakey, not something in the middle.  And I think that cake brownies should have walnuts and fudgy brownies should have no nuts.  But I’ll keep experimenting.  My guinea pigs said they liked them and that they were really good but I think they are too easily pleased.  I may have to replace my guinea pigs with more discriminating ones.