Wednesday, November 06, 2002

For a long time the Julie/Julia Project seemed to be having miraculously few physical repercussions, but I believe the grace period is now over.  Between the daily fat and cholesterol infusions and the cessation of exercise brought on by our move and a lack of time, I am beginning to get creepingly but undeniably fat.  Eric says he is too, though that’s a little like Gandhi whining about his pot belly.  Of course it’s interesting that I’m writing this after two days of welching on the Project. Monday -- you know, I just don’t know what happened Monday.  I ran completely out of steam.  The idea of cooking made me want to die.  While Eric shook himself out of a severe pepper-vodka hangover to make a green bean and tuna salad, I lolled around like Cleopatra or something, basking in the glow of not being in the kitchen.  It was lovely.  Then last night was Buffy nite, and we had Colleen and Amelie, two of Eric’s friends from work, over to join in the festivities.  We had pizza.  We found a joint to deliver that is marginally better than Domino’s, but still. Well, I did cook just a little.  I made Petit Choux au Fromage – cheese puffs.  Which are just crazy easy, as it turns out.  You just boil some water with butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg, throw in some flour and blend, take it off heat, beat in some eggs, boil it another minute until it makes a dough (actually I didn’t get to boil mine a minute because it made a dough pretty much instantly – I think this is another species of my usual issues with JC’s rouxes, and next time I’ll use more water or less flour or something….)  Then beat in some eggs, and some grated cheese, put it in a pastry bag, and squeeze out mounds of the stuff onto a baking sheet.  Smear with a little beaten egg and bake them in a hot oven for 15-20 minutes, take them out, poke holes in their sides with a knife, and stick them back in the oven, turned off now and with the door ajar.  That’s it. Mine, actually, didn’t turn out absolutely perfect.  Besides the issue of proportions, I also probably didn’t get the oven hot enough before I put them in, so they didn’t puff as much as they might have.  And cool cheese puffs aren’t all that great.  But eat them when they’re hot and they’re pretty good.  Not as good as my mom’s cheese biscuits (no Rice Krispies and cayenne, after all), but pretty good.  Slice ‘em open and stuff ‘em with foie gras or some shit, and I bet they’d be damned good. I know this is off the subject, and the last thing the blogverse needs is another paean to the Buffy experience, but I gotta say this.  I’ve been taking melatonin every night in an attempt to avoid waking up at 4:30 in the morning when the dump trucks begin their morning parade past our apartment, and it has been fueling some very vivid Buffy-inspired dreams, many of them involving Giles to an odd, but not at all unwelcome, degree.  And last night, when we were watching our, ahem, second episode, an old Halloween show, I pinned down the Giles fascination – I just love it when tweedy professorial types get all medieval on somebody’s ass.  Nothing sexier in this world than a violent Englishman. And okay, I'm no cyber-pundit, but what is WITH all these goddamned Republicans?  I just don’t get it…. 7:24:36 AM    comment []