Tuesday, March 02, 2010

March 2

What We Ate (while you were gone)

Austin,
It has been such fun for me to have this lovely email conversation with you while you were gone.! As much as I look forward to your return, I will miss the ritual it has become to write you a letter as I'm nursing Jali to sleep at night. You have been an inspiring and gentle muse. In the kitchen, as well, not a meal gets prepared for which I'm not thinking about how I will report to you about it: "yes, greens again," or: "I bet I wouldn't be cooking yet another hotdog if Austin were here," or, the best: "I should save some of this so Austin can try it.!" I actually did jar up and freeze some soup I made that I thought was extra tasty, but I think Sealion ended up taking it to work for lunch...
So, one last food report:
What happens when Tiffanie uses her discipline to avoid eating a delectable white-flour biscuit at Venus yesterday??She gets to eat a Whole Batch of homemade sprouted spelt biscuits at home!! I win! I followed the recipe in The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters (my gift to myself the time we ate a Chez Panisse dinner!), which calls for 3/4 cup heavy cream (!) as the liquid, and used sprouted spelt for the flour. I think I rolled them too thin, however I employed the technique I learned from Porsche and Misa to just barely mix the ingredients, and then fold it a few times, to create a flakey crispy pastry essentially. They could've been a pie crust - and that's a compliment.! Last night Sealion was off-kilter after getting home from a nightshift, so he wasn't hungry. I did something uncharacteristic of our meals here at the Pope house - I just made biscuits. And I had a big bowl of baked apples that I happened to cook that afternoon to take advantage of the end of the season at the farmers' market - "cosmetically challenged" apples. So one by one I spread butter on biscuit and perched a baked apple quarter on top. Hello? Better than apple pie. Austin, it was so good. What's almost as good as having fresh biscuits and butter and baked apples for dinner? Having leftovers for breakfast! I scored.
The other night I made an impromptu Indian dish that rocked. If you lean toward Asian in your cooking, I go for Indian these days. I love the artful way they prepare spices.. And I love the rich, slow-cooked sauces. It was coconut curry with potatoes and sweet potatoes. Anjali scarfed it down despite it being pretty heavy on the cayenne. I was pleasantly surprised.

Ok! I imagine you'll actually be home by the time you read this, but I just wanted to be in this space one more time.

Love!
Tiffanie

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