Christmas kitchen
Conrad doesn't use recipes. He hates them. Why would you want to read while you are cooking? he asks. They just get in the way. He can't pay attention long enough to get to the end of the recipe. Instead, he's already wrist-deep in a butternut squash, devising his own take on the soup I tore out of Martha Stewart Living. Despite his disdain for culinary instruction manuals, he is an amazing cook. I am wholly the opposite. I pore over cookbooks, foodie magazines, Epicurious. Most of the time, I can follow a recipe (to the letter, I do not risk deviations) and end up with an edible, and sometimes even palatable, dish, but when turned loose with no galley map, the only thing I can turn out is a bowl of cereal. I am to the kitchen what a 16-year-old with a dog-eared copy of the Kama Sutra is to the bedroom.
Conrad had to leave work yesterday with a case of the pukes (poor Pea!), and in between refreshing the cold cloth on his forehead and tucking the blanket around his shivering frame, I put together Alicia Paulson's gumdrop wreath. About halfway through, I ran out of gumdrops and went to the store to buy more (they were out) and had to settle on a different brand from another store. I hope you can't tell. I think it still looks awfully cute.
Conrad was still feeling under the weather today, and we had to reschedule our Game Night with Mom, Dad and Angela for next week. With Conrad out of commission, I took over the kitchen for my own devices. First up, broth and crackers for Sick Boy:
Then I got to work on something to take to the Repertory Company holiday party tomorrow night. After much deliberation and lots of thumbing through cookbooks, I tossed them aside, and bravely stepped into the wide open frontier. I came out with mashed potatoes. But! I did manage to "infuse" them, a la Conrad, with cream of thyme.
Next, peppermint bark for the interns, whom we are taking to lunch tomorrow for all their hard, unpaid work. I had bookmarked a Martha Stewart recipe and set aside most of the ingredients a few weeks ago, but the required peppermint oil was not to be found at regular grocery stores and I was too lazy to go to the specialty market. Turns out peppermint extract works just fine (I just used 8x as much). Besides, who cares what it tastes like when it looks this pretty?
I got these cute cellophane bags at the Target One Spot. Oh, One Spot, how my cart runneth over!
And when it's 80 degrees in December, peppermint ice cream is at the top of my menu. Perfect right out of the carton--no recipe required.
April
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