The Week in Review

Despite the fact that I had BOOKOOS (that's a perversion of the francais beaucoups) of time off in the last week, I've been up to my ears in things to do, and thus, have neglected my beloved blog.  Thank you, my loyal supporters for hanging on and eagerly awaiting what I might have to say next.

Being in busy-mom-Christmas mode, I haven't had any major revelations this week, but a couple of interesting stories.  First, I got a steal on cashew pieces and decided, "hey, I'll make cashew brittle to give as gifts."  Found a pretty straight forward recipe but of course, I had one little wrinkle.  Well, turns out it was a pretty huge wrinkle.  I was instructed to cook the sugar and corn syrup until 350 degrees or amber color.  I searched and searched all over and couldn't find my candy thermometer anywhere.  (Neil told me later, "oh yeah, that thing broke a long time ago."  Hmmm, really?  I've never even used the damn thing.  Why wasn't I notified?  Who broke it?  So, anyway, I thought to myself, "I know a good amber beer when I see one, I can recognize amber."  Well, here's what I learned.  When sugar starts boiling, first it's really scary.  Visions of that spilling over on my arm and hardening like a rock and then totally consuming my skin and bones.  Second, when it gets all frothy and boily, you can't tell if it's amber, golden, purple, NOTHIN'.  So, when I thought I'd gotten to amber, I mixed in the rest of the stuff and poured it out on the sheet.  Well...have you even seen that weird white spitty looking stuff on a caterpillar's nest?  It looked a lot like that.  And, it never completely hardened; it was more like white, frothy looking nougat...but PACKED with cashews.  Yeah, epic fail.  Dumped it into an empty pizza box and right into the trash.  Oh well.


So, clearly we ordered pizza one night this week.  Dano's Pizza is about a stone's throw from our house, they throw their own dough and the pizza's pretty darn good.  So, it was the meat lover's with black olives added.  I recommend it.

Then, I actually cooked one night too.  When mom and I were a team at RE/MAX, we sent monthly recipe postcards to our clients.  I always saved them, but never cooked any of them.  We have several clients who do make the recipes faithfully and call to report their results.  So, I came across a 'Dottie & Elizabeth' card for Tarragon Chicken.  Sauteed chicken breasts then made a sauce from the pan drippings  and shallots, deglazed with chicken stock, then added cream, tarragon.  Very tasty and a hit.  Served with yellow rice and steamed green beans. Looked like a respectable square meal from June Cleaver.

And, lastly, we were too tired and disgusted last night to cook.  (Long story short:  house on concrete slab, leak under bathtub, leak man with jackhammer, $900).  So, it was Rockaway burgers for all.  Maybe after the holidays I can get back to cooking on a regular basis!