Wednesday, July 09, 2003

My husband has requested that I not spend my post ranting about how horrible my life is, so I’m going to focus on the positive. 1)      Due to the usual sharp defensive play between my job and the MTA, I was unable to get to the butcher to pick up my sweetbreads before they closed.  Therefore, I didn’t have to mess with sweetbreads. 2)      Because I rid myself of a lot of excess energy by sobbing like a small emotionally disturbed child on the subway platform, my head cleared enough for me to realize that cooking the Ile Flottante wasn’t really necessary, I could do it in the morning.  More time for leftover cassoulet and drinking – yea! 3)      I got up early this morning to make the Ile Flottante, which is made by beating together 8 egg whites with a bit of salt, a cup of superfine (suuuperfine!) sugar and half a cup of pralin, which is a hard caramel with almonds, pulverized, and which I have handily had half a cup of in my fridge for lo these many months, and baking it in a sugar-coated charlotte mold, set in a pan of hot water, for 40 minutes.  It is then to be refrigerated, and served with a strawberry sauce.  It is baking now, but I am absolutely certain that it will turn out badly.  Two terrible things happened, one inexplicable and the second, uh, explicable.  The explicable thing is that the pralin had hardened up in the fridge.  I ran it through the coffee grinder, and it got powdery again, but in the humid heat, it clumped up immediately, before I could mix it into the egg whites.  Grr.  The inexplicable thing was that the egg whites simply did not stiffen.  It’s not that they didn’t expand enough, or get quite as super-poofy as you’d like – no, they simply stayed entirely liquid.  White, a little bubbly, not at all poofy.  Not.  Poofy.  At.  All.  I dunno – I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before.  But regardless, this is all good news, because now I don’t have to eat loads of another dessert, and god knows dessert is the last thing I need more of. 4)      I tricked somebody into buying me lunch at Craft yesterday.  It’s a very pretty, airy, slightly intimidating place, where everything is served a la carte, and you have to pick stuff that will go together.  I was with a very nice lady who knows a whole lot about food, and even she was intimidated, and I was even more intimidated making choices in front of her.  It was great, not least because it kept me away from work for more than 2 hours. 5)      I had a dream with Buffy and me in a creepy house, and a great big kick-ass sword was involved. Okay, so even with all this positive energy going on here, I can’t avoid mentioning one minor pet peeve here.  Don’t you hate it when you’re walking down the street enjoying a nice, private hissy fit and some big stupid-looking bruiser standing in some doorway, usually a security guard or a bouncer or a doorman or someone otherwise unduly in love with his big fat bruiser self, says, “Take is easy,” or “Cheer up!” or “It’s not that bad.”  It’s not that bad – that’s the worst one.  Don’t you just hate that.  Doesn’t it make you want to ram a high heel through his teeth? Ah.  Yes.  That does make me feel better.   7:21:26 AM    comment []