Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Lesson Learned: it is very difficult not to read too much into buying your first bottle of glucosamine one week after you turn thirty. Yesterday was the launch of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition.  Come on, everybody, register!  Send in your designs!  Life should get a little easier at the old LMDC after this, though now I’ll have to spend my time talking with people like this old guy I’ve been dealing with for awhile, who when I told him that to get the guidelines he’d need to either go to the website or fax in a request, he said in this sad little voice, “Oh, no, I guess I’d better just drop out.”  So I felt bad, right?  So I insisted on giving him the fax number, and when I’d done that, he said, “So I get this fax, and then I mail it to you?”  Wha?!  Turns out the guy doesn’t know what a fax is.  Dealing with people like that all day is how the word “postal” came to be. Last night we ate the Volailles en Escabeche, Cold Fowl in Lemon Jelly, which tasted like congealed, cold chicken stew.  I suppose I could posit that perhaps this would have tasted better if I’d used partridge or some such thing, but I don’t really believe it.  I think that as a species we have simply evolved past the need for anything that tastes like cold congealed soup.  On the side, though, we had Fonds d’Artichauts au Gratin, Stuffed Artichokes au Gratin, so all was right with the world. I’d not made up a shopping list before I left home – or rather I had, but it involved veal roast, and then I looked at our bank account.  So I asked Eric, who was coming home for lunch, to write down the shopping list for some artichoke recipe.  In my mind, the artichoke section of MtAoFC was this eternal font, the pool that would never run dry – but lo! Fonds d’Artichauts au Gratin is the last recipe!  Wow.  The last few months of this thing are really going to be a bitch, you know that?  So anyway, I trimmed the artichokes, which you know artichokes are no match for me anymore, I can break those spiny little bastards.  Tear off the leaves, cut off the cone, rub with lemon juice, soak in acidulated water, boil for twenty minutes in a blanc – flour paste, water, lemon juice, salt.  Scraping the choke – ah, a dirty phrase I loved, never to be uttered again.  In the hearts, scoop up this filling you’ve made: a very thick béchamel, mixed with an egg yolk, half a cup of swiss cheese, a couple of tablespoons of butter, and some fancy-dan French ham -- which tastes oh so good, I say it loud, GOD BLESS THE FRENCH!!! – that you’ve sautéed in butter.  More cheese on top, more butter, and stick in an oven until warm and brown. Good.  Shit. For dessert, I finally got around to making Crème Sainte-Anne au Caramel.  This is just Petits Pots de Crème with pulverized almond macaroons.  I’d gotten the macaroons off Sharon from work, which was nice of her, but since then I’d been feeling all guilty, because she kept asking about the dessert.  Yesterday I actually lied to her and told her I’d done it, that’s how guilty I felt.  Well, last night I really did make it, 10:30 at night though it was.  It was pretty easy, really, because I’d already lined the ramekins (read: pyrex mise en place dishes) with caramel, and pulverized the macaroons.  Only something weird happened, either the caramel had been sitting too long or I’d gotten it too brown initially, because when I made the custard, poured it into cups with the macaroons, and baked it, the custard turned out fine, but the caramel on the bottom didn’t melt – it just stuck in this bendable plate at the bottom of the ramekin.  So that was disappointing.  The custard part of it was good though. The next dessert is a Diplomate – Custard with Glaceed Fruits. The next few months are going to be a bitch. So while we were eating dinner, we had the soundtrack to Casablanca, with dialogue, playing.  This is something we do sometimes, I’m not going to try to defend it.  Anyway, Eric came up with a way of describing the movie more or less in a nutshell.  “You know, it’s true.  Women – they’d rather fuck you than shoot you in the chest because they’re fucking someone else when they’d rather be fucking you.” Ain’t it the truth? In the All The Glucosamine Bottles In The World Will Not Make You An Adult Department:  Eric is at this moment considering using a pair of his boxers as a coffee filter.  And if he does, I will drink the coffee.   8:02:15 AM    comment []