Month: July 2008

I would love to write a big, long blog about the July Daring Baker’s Challenge, but I just posted another blog, so I’m out of interesting. Fresh out.

The Daring Baker’s Challenge is a baking club, and this was my first month. It’s internet-based, and we’re given the challenge the first of the month. On the last day of the month, we all post pictures and a blog about our results. The challenge this month was to recreate a very, very complicated cake that is called “Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream.” It’s from an old cookbook called “Great Cakes, by Carol Walter. At least I assume it’s an old cookbook, because who the crap calls hazelnuts “filberts” without getting punched, repeatedly, in the mouth. Also, who writes a 7 page recipe for a single cake? What single cake costs $80 to make?? Why does it taste so much like Nutella?? I’m getting ahead of myself.

The cake basically consists of several layers. First, I had to peel about a bazillion hazelnuts (actual number: 1.124 billion). I accomplished this by taking whole, organic hazelnuts and dropping them in boiling water with baking soda. I then put them into ice water. I then added my iPhone to the ice water. The electric shock from the destruction of a $500 phone helps to release the hazelnuts from their peelings. Here is a picture, partway through. This part of the task made me want to punch elderly people or cut down redwoods or something equally heinous. As you can see, Carol Walters is apparently one of the lucky elderly who has not been afflicted with severe arthritis, or she would not have devised this type of torture mechanism.

These hazelnuts got turned into: nut meal, nut praline brittle, and one blonde nutcase. Then the meal got whipped into a foam cake, which is like a regular cake, only involves fun “steps” like dirtying your double boiler and whipping egg whites over low heat until they’ve given up and gotten jobs.

The brittle got bashed into paste via my Cuisinart and a fair amount of swearing. Then, I made a Swiss buttercream. The Swiss buttercream is solely responsible for the advent of Swiss Cellulite. It has an entire pound of butter, along with more egg whites, beaten until they’ve called egg white safehouses and are subsisting on canned goods and support groups. The Swiss buttercream does not wish to actually continue BEING a Swiss buttercream, and spent a lot of time breaking off into factions, which then had to be heated, cooled, beaten, spoken harshly to, etc, until they became a functioning unit again. Once the Swiss buttercream had agreed, temporarily, to stop seceding from the union, I introduced the praline brittle paste, and that seemed to unify them all, probably because they were laughing at me together. So that’s another layer.

Then there’s whipped cream, made of cream that has been smacked so soundly that it cringes when you walk into the room.

And apricot glaze, which is where you boil water and apricot jam, pull out all the fruit bits, and have a gel leftover that is, if I am not mistaken, relatively pointless.

Also, there is a ganache, which is a chocolate sauce made of cream and shaved Belgian semi-sweet, fair-trade chocolate (cost for such a product is apparently determined by syllables in the name). This also involved the double boiler, which I had always assumed was a piece of equipment that was more a placeholder in my cupboard to prevent the bakewear from encroaching on the cookwear, but I was wrong.

I created a boozy simple syrup with Grand Marnier and Jamaican rum, most of which made its way down my throat and into my belly, but some of which was brushed across the genoise to keep it moist and glisteny. Anyway, once all the layers had been assembled, I wanted very little to do with the eating of the cake. The piece I had was delicious and complicated, but again it tasted a lot like Nutella. I actually gave the whole cake, minus my piece and Chris’s piece, to the same pulmonologist who barfed on my stairs. This was the week BEFORE he barfed, or I might have thought twice.

I look forward to next month’s challenge. I have a feeling it will involve the felling of a Unicorn and possibly some cold fusion, but who knows? You won’t. Until the end of August.

I went to the grocery store after the gym today, and kind of got log-jammed in the produce section. It all started with a 5lb tray of blueberries for $5.99. What fresh hell is that?? Do you know how many antioxidants are in that many blueberries? Do you know how pornographically enthusiastic I am about breakfast baked goods that involve blueberries?? Pshaw. But then they had something called a “personal watermelon.” Huh? In the cart it went. I don’t know what that means, but I like the sound of it. It smacks of ownership and servitude towards me, of which I am also a fan. Then I went kind of willy-nilly, tossing in luscious red cherries, unblemished strawberries, cantaloupe so juicy that torrents of payload ran down my arm when I scooped out the seeds. Hot damn! I was a woman possessed. I partially blame this on my kickboxing instructor, Tamra, who is sadistic and had me so hungry for actual nutrition that I was willing to seriously consider raw carrots as a delicious food option. Without ranch!! I also loaded up on fresh vegetables of all kinds, excited to see the return of my beloved fresh jalapenos, which had been ignominiously chucked out of all of our grocery stores due to a random, rapid-fire accusation of salmonella, issued from government officials who were clearly shooting from the hip; (“tomatoes, NO!,WAIT!, jalapenos, NO!,WAIT!, serrano peppers, NO!”) They’re still at it, since the serrano peppers were gone this week (but the jalapenos had returned without any explanation of their safety, leading me to believe this is some kind of elaborate prank designed solely to make sure that I cannot, at any one time, create a complete salsa).

Once I got home I spent, no kidding, over TWO SOLID HOURS just chopping things. It takes a long time to pit cherries, scoop out melons, make teensy little carrot molecules that add color to a salad but are still able to fit into a mouthful of ingredients without taking over…it was chaos. I finally assembled three complete food products.

1) The GORGEOUS fruit salad shown above. Chock full of different fruit flavors and colors, and all bound together with a very light “sauce” of honey and mojito mix to add some depth and a subtle mint flavor. It’s seriously the bomb. I will be eating it for the next week, given that I made about 2 gallons of the stuff.

2) Agua fresca–a drink that is currently comprised of watermelon juice, lime juice, and cucumber juice with just a touch of mint. I say currently because you and I know damned well that it will not last the next 48 hours without being liberally dosed with either rum or vodka, depending on my mood. It’s fresh, as the name implies, and clean tasting in a way that is reminiscent of sunshine, dew, and an awesome facemask. And it’s sweet enough to cover the taste of booze without being so sweet as to become cloying or forward. I heart it.

3) Quinoa tabbouleh with vegetables and diced tofu. This is a vegetarian wet dream, comprised of fresh sweet peas, cucumbers, carrots, scallions, radishes, spinach, and jicama, tossed with little cubes of very firm tofu and quinoa (called the “mother grain” because it contains a full range of complete, accessible amino acids. It’s protein rich, deliciously nutty/grainy, and looks just like little rolled-up condoms, which I adore). I tossed it in a homemade white wine and dijon vinaigrette, and some freshly squeezed lemon juice. Gorgeous and so healthful that it’s basically a nutritional-deficiency vaccine. I get to feel all self-righteous eating it, like what would happen if an earth mother and a dainty forest creature had a baby, only less hippyish.

These are DEFINITELY not yo mamma’s salads.

Cornbread really pisses me off; always has. I ADORE the taste of it, but it’s so disappointing to make, and even harder to navigate. The boxed kind is totally weak, and lacks substance, flavor, texture, and imagination. Boxed cornbread is the devil. Even the homemade kind is a pain, though. It’s all about the texture and maneuverability. It falls apart and leaves crumbs all over the place unless you wad it into a dense ball, held together by a thick paste of honey and butter. The only part of the cornbread that really stays in place is the crusty part that actually comes into contact with the skillet. So I decided I’d had enough! I put my foot down! I wanted cornbread that could keep up with the fast-paced life that accompanies a delicious chili! And I still wanted to pile it high with a meringue of honey butter! Dammit! Phew. So I introduce to you my prototype for a hearty, tasty, flavorful, cornbread–the corncake. It’s basically a solid buttermilk cornbread batter (solid in its integrity, not literally solid), but instead of only allowing a thin layer to touch the skillet, ALL of it touches the skillet. It’s cooked just like a pancake. And to add further heartiness, I used the roughly-hewn, stone ground cornmeal. It’s gritty, it’s earthy, like an indy documentary of awesome. And I still slathered the little beeyatch with honey butter. Hoorah!

It’s partnered up with the kind of chili that makes you want to saddle up a horse and eat directly from an iron pot on a fire, if it weren’t for the ants and discomfort of camping.

I made the chili with some festive ingredients. It had the old standbys of cumin, chili powder, garlic, onion, tomato, bell pepper, beef, and beans (pinto and kidney, working side by side all amicable-like). But it also had some newcomers. Like cinnamon, beer, adobo peppers in their thick, vinegary sauce, and….a big hunk of bittersweet chocolate. Chocolate and cinnamon seem like preposterous things to put in chili, but I assure you–they add a rich, deep, subtle sweetness that’s almost like you took a regular chili, added a dark, silken cape and top hat, and all of a sudden the chili could do MAGIC. Yeah. That’s what it was like.

And here’s a somewhat blurry picture of dessert (I was so excited to eat it, I was probably shaking). It’s a chocolate cupcake baked in a mini-brioche pan so the little “feet” get crunchy while the middle stays soft and fluffy. It was topped with a dollop of homemade strawberry jam, a couple of chocolate curls, and a vanilla bourbon sauce tinted with Chambord (black raspberry liquer). It was awesome, and a really good compromise. See, I had to bake a cake for Chris’s grand rounds this Friday, and in order to avoid eating all the batter while baking, I abstained completely and used 1/4 cup of the batter, not a noticable extraction from the cake, to make two little brioche cupcakes. I’m a genius of weight loss. Except for the whole “not having lost the weight yet” part.

I just spent some time going over my most recent postings and noticed an alarming trend. I, Kristie, am a typical American eater. Every meal I cook contains a checklist of protein, vegetable, and starch. It’s ridiculous. It’s as if I see every plate divided into thirds, and I feel like a meal hasn’t been a nutritious one if I don’t honor those divisions every time. I’m going to try to think outside of the bento box and try spending the next week making a meal, not a composed series of thirds. Cookiecrumb, I have to thank you because looking at your beautiful soup made me think “that’s a fine meal” and then realize that it was a singular dish that was healthful and satisfying. I need more of that, I think.

As for tonight, well, it’s too late. I made grilled turkey scallopine with a dry balsamic rub and a balsamic drizzle (I’m on a tremendous balsamic kick because I accidentally jammed the cork into my bottle of the good stuff, and now I have to use it up before the cork starts to disintegrate). In the other two rigid, structured thirds of the plate were whole wheat couscous with parmeggiano and olive oil, and spinach sauteed with bacon and garlic.

I just finished my new favorite dessert (as far as desserts that are healthy and nutritious, as opposed to, idk, cake?): Gerber Graduates Strawberry Yogurt Melts. I’m not even messing around, guys. The entire BAG, which is a solid 30 minutes of snacking, is only 120 calories, has tons of calcium and vitamins, and tastes exactly like the yogurt version of astronaut ice cream. Sure, it’s in the babyfood aisle, but why should kids get all the awesome snacks.

Speaking of: I once got kind of loaded and had an idea for a juice box for adults that had alcohol already inside called “The Gin N’ JuiceBox.” Copyright that shiznit.

This is the newest addition to our family: The 2008 Specialized Dolce Elite racing bike. Isn’t she a beaut? Chris has had his Trek since I met him, and his level of devotion to the thing has always made me a little jealous. I mean, he really, really loves it, to the point where I’m pretty sure that I would be given the boot if it weren’t for the republicans’ views on non-traditional marriages. And rightly so, given the cost of racing bikes. Anyway, I’ve been feeling extremely homesick lately and have been prone to crying bouts, so the new bike should help with that…or it would if San Antonio had any bike lanes or trails, which it does not because its citizens are completely allergic to any kind of exercise that doesn’t directly involve the consumption of smoked meats. But I digress.

The bike is beautiful, and is accompanied by equally beautiful accessories, including some badass shoes that have snowboard ratchet clips instead of traditional velcro (awwwwwsooooommmmmeee!). The downside of the whole maneuver, really, is that I have to wear bike shorts to ride any major distances. Bike shorts are functionally very important to prevent what I have seen, terrifyingly-termed on the internet as “vulvar trauma.” Forget that. As a matter of fact, I’m going to completely avoid anything that even resembles vulvar trauma for the entirety of my life, and I do not exclude natural childbirth from this equation. I was a c-section baby and look how fantastical I am!!

But about the shorts–they have a pad in the hoo-hoo vicinity called the “chamoise” that keeps your girly bits from being smashed by the impact of bumps in the road against the seat of your bike. The chamoise is somewhat cumbersome and, this is where it gets really great, presses your inner thighs outward to meld together with your outer thighs creating the appearance of saddlebags unlike anything that has existed since the termination of “donkey” as the most common form of transport. They have tight rubber grips at the bottom to keep them from riding up, and these have the added benefit of creating a muffin-top, mid-thigh, on even the most toned of legs. And they have ANOTHER ring of very tight elastic at the waist, creating the more commonly seen version of muffin top. Basically, even Heidi Klum would look like a twinkie-eating Wal-mart shopper in a pair of these shorts. Actually, probably not, which is why she must be hated. But I sure look crappy in them. Also, why are cyclists fatter than runners? I think cycling is HARDER. And you’re more likely to fall off a bike, making cycling more extreme than running. In fact, I am almost CERTAINLY going to fall off of my bike today, due to the installation of clip-pedals that require your feet to be literally attached to your bike in a mechanism that requires you to make complicated ankle motions to extricate them. How this is done at the high rate of falling? I do not know. I think the answer probably involves sutures.

Good day.

Do you remember how a couple of weeks ago I said that I was making my own cheese? Well, it was very difficult and low-yielding, but tasty. Last night I got to debut the mozzarella and some of my fresh basil (the one plant I’ve managed to keep alive, by some miracle that I cannot explain), and they were a hit. Probably because I put that ancient balsamic on there, and that stuff is made of the tears of angels or something. It’s ridonkulous. We had a friend of Chris’s over for dinner, so I was okay whipping out some of the bigger guns. I also served teensy crackers with a soft french cheese that had garlic and chives in it. I don’t, as a rule, eat soft cheese. I think it’s ucky. But this was really savory and not at all pus-like, so rock on!

Speaking of rocking: Here is a picture of the two boys really bringing it home, so to speak. The one on the left is my Chris, and the one on the right is his buddy, a pulmonologist. We all ended up getting so plastered on pinot grigio and cherry vodka that the pulmonologist barfed all over our stairs. It just finished being deep cleaned, and I’ll tell you: grown-ass, professional, intelligent men are still endearingly frat-like when drunk. And their puke is still revolting. So I had to call “not it” on the cleaning portion of the competition. Poor Chris. He’s an abused man.

I did manage to put together some pretty good eats through my haze of fermented, grapey goodness. Chicken marsala with artichokes and baby bella mushrooms over spaghetti with a side of haricots verts that were sauteed with prosciutto.

Be still, my beating heart. This is one of my most favorite meals of EVER. I love to order it out, I love to make it, I want to bathe in its silky goodness. Except right now, when I want to bathe in the salty terribleness of Ramen noodles instead, because I am very hung over. The kind of hung over where you wake up and throw up–in the toilet, because one of the things I learned while I was NOT in medical school was the appropriate portion of the house in which to vomit.

Somebody has expressed an interest in paying me actual American currency to bake. To me, this is absurd. Who gets paid to dance around in a cloud of confectioner’s sugar when they would happily do it for free? It’s like someone has offered to pay me for sex, and that person does NOT look like Wilford Brimley. Woot Woot! Anyway, it’s at a gluten-free bakery, which I’m not even sure I understand completely, but is VERY fortuitous.

For a long time, Chris and I have discussed how his career in allergy could, one day, lead to me teaching culinary lifestyle skills to those with severe food allergies. He’s going to specialize in food allergies in his practice, just to facilitate this career compatibility, which I appreciate very much. But I don’t know how to do gluten-free baking (baking without anything related to grain proteins; specifically wheat), so I would have had to do a LOT of independent research on the subject.

But via my Craigslist posting, someone contacted me and suggested I call this bakery because they have part-time work available. I called, on a whim, and lo and behold! It’s an ACTUAL bakery run by a load of crazy Aussies that caters to people with dietary restrictions. They do everything gluten-free, but also have options for vegetarians, vegans, soy/nut/etc allergies.

I have an interview at 2:30, and I’m pretty nervous. Who knows? It might be awesome, or it might be too good to be true. It’d definitely give me something to do, and reduce the number of times I have to clean my kitchen on a daily basis. Yesterday was insane:

This is a german chocolate cake that I had to make for an ad response lady. Her husband is an optometrist in town, which she kind of flaunted in my face like “look how important I am.” I didn’t even bother putting her in her place, because I am lazy. The nub and gist of this experience is that I will never make a german chocolate cake again. The frosting is unreliable and chunky, meaning it’s difficult to spread and keep at an even consistency. The chocolate buttercream was melting all over the place because of the heat and humidity (and because I cheated a little and used part store-bought chocolate smear since it was such short notice). I mixed the cheater chocolate in with my own regular decorator frosting I had made, and the result was a mess, even after mashing coconut along the sides and putting pecans on the top. It’s definitely servicable, and I think it looks okay, but it DESTROYED my kitchen and a little bit of my soul trying to make it, adjust it, fix the adjustment, fix the fixing, rebuild the sides, etc. Ugh. So it’s in the freezer to make it easier to transport. The extra cake that the batter made got transformed into little mini chocolate layer cakes (my chocolate cake recipe is phenomenal–taken from Warren Brown’s Cakelove book). I split the little cakes in two, filled them with homemade Mexican vanilla ice cream, and wrapped the sandwiches up. I have about 5 of them, which I think my brother will probably eat in the first hour he’s here. They’re really, really tasty. I put a picture of one at the top of this post, and then Chris and I ate it because it was getting too melty to re-freeze.

Then I had to deal with Chris’s Grand Rounds, which means whipping up a healthy, transportable lunch for 15-20 people and then telling Chris how to serve it in a way that will not destroy it’s snacky integrity. This week I did a chicken salad with apples, walnuts, cubed chicken, celery, and a homemade olive oil mayo/yogurt/honey/garam masala dressing. I hear it’s delicious. I won’t eat it, though, because I fucking detest mayonnaise in all its dastardly forms. It’s hard to cook without tasting. I had to make Chris keep tasting it and telling me if it needed salt/more seasoning/whatever. Then, and here’s the part where my heat-addled brain failed me, I made 30 little cheddar biscuits to serve with the salad. Making biscuits in that quantity is a dumb, dumb idea in this heat. It was exhausting, physically demanding work. And I did it while I whipped up another Amish classic:

BRATWURST!! Served it up with sauerkraut (cooked in cast iron on the grill to avoid odd smells), homemade french fries, brown mustard and ketchup. Mmmmmmmmm. I LOVE french fries, but don’t allow myself to eat them very frequently, so it was a treat.

All of this happened during the S.A. version of Hurricane Dolly, which meant mostly torrential downpours and a lot of convincing the dog that he could go outside without being swept away by the current…

I am Amish. Or, at least, I’m COOKING like I’m Amish. The sturdy, hooded people would be very proud of what I’ve accomplished, even if it’s left me sadly exhausted and not having lost any weight (even though I’ve been doing workout classes like it’s my job–cuz it kinda is).

It all started with those crazy vegetarians…An aside: Allison, I forbid you to be a vegetarian. 26 years old is FAR too late to develop a whole new moral code. That’s why old people are given carte blanche to act like racist little gremlins. You cannot change such things at any point after you’ve fully developed all of your more major sex organs, unless it’s because you had a traumatic experience with a farm decapitation device or something. And people from PETA are crazy, unless they are Alicia Silverstone, in which case they’re mostly just fabulous.

Back to the matter at hand: I’ve been trying to use all these vegetables, some of which I have never personally deigned to eat, nevertheless prepare. The eggplant is one of those things. Marinated with lemon pepper and grilled alongside chicken breasts, onions, balsamic artichokes, skewered potatoes, and the humble carrot, I thought it’d be all chewy and delicious–like purple tempeh. It wasn’t. It tasted like refuse, and I want none of it. If I’m going to bread something in a parmeggiano crust and coat it in a rich marinara, it’s going to be the American variety of eggplant that I like to call “chicken.” Not veal, though, because even I have limits on my allowance of animal cruelty. And I buy free range, humanely raised stuff from Central Market because I’m a snob, and it tastes nice.

I ate the hell out of those artichokes, though. And I’ll tell you that, dipped in a 30-year balsamic, you don’t miss the dippin’ butter at all. Mmmmmmmm.

This is an old horse-n-buggy favorite called chicken and dumplings. Or chicken’n dumplins’, if you want to be really technical about it. A dumplin’ is just a biscuit that gets poached in the chicken broth by letting it float around and then is served in/on thick chicken soup. If you’re anything like me, you eat shitloads of dumplings and ignore the chicken soup, and then feel like a jackass because you know damn well that the dumplin’ is the caloric epicenter of the dish. Whatever. It was dinner. I have more news on the food front, but I’m saving it for tomorrow because Chris has Grand Rounds tomorrow (which I think is like doctor intellectual show and tell) and he’s in charge of snack again, so I’ve spent all day making mass quantities of things, and baking for strangers, and I’m very tired. And a little fat.

This week has been declared “healthy eating week” by the queen of the kitchen: me. This is partially because we have a bunch of visitors coming next month that includes Chris’s best friend (whom I’ve never met) and my darling baby brother (which is notable because our family thrives on smack talk, and if I keep the weight I’ve gained, it will be noticed). So I’m trying to cram a lot of dieting into a short period of time. Plus, Chris’s friend’s wife, and by association his friend, are very strict vegetarians. So my traditional run-to of coating everything in bacon isn’t going to fly. Sad news, right? It means a lot of veggie dishes will be making their way to our table so I can practice. Ah, the stress of not being able to cook and eat whatever the hell I feel like without consequence…

Sunday we tried a vegetarian version of my all-time favorite Thai food of EVER. Panang curry. I substituted tofu for the traditionally delicious chicken, and added pineapple to make it a little more complex. Served with rice and a cucumber “salad” which was just cucumbers and Thai sweet chili sauce, it actually was filling and tasty. I am SO glad that I brought our Panang pastes with us from CO, because God only knows where I’d find a clean container of the stuff here in S.A. I don’t think our local Asia mart does a lot of curry (being more chinese/korean than anything, I think). Panang does have a coconut milk base to it, so that probably wasn’t very healthy, but I like to think that tofu cancels out anything with which it’s served. Like a caloric vacuum. The only slightly concerning thing is that I’m pretty sure I’m going to run out of paste before our time here is up, and I don’t know anyone in my family brave enough to venture to the Asian area of Colorado. If only there were a way that I could connect with various importers via, say, a “web” on my computer. Hmmmmm…

Then, yesterday, we went WAY healthy on the grill with traditional teriyaki chicken kebabs. I used the organic teriyaki sauce from Whole Foods, which has, inexplicably, about half the calories that regular teriyaki has. Bizarre. Fresh pineapple on the grill makes me swoon like a 19th century maiden seeing a young man’s nekked ankle, so there was a LOT of that. Chris took some artistic shots of it with his iPhone camera, because the light was hitting our kitchen in an interesting way. I’ve included one of those (up top) and one of ALL the kebabs disassembled and piled on his plate (below). An aside: how awesome are grilled mushrooms? I mean, really. For something I went much of my life hating, I’ve taken quite the shine to the mushroom, partially due to the woodsy, musky, sexy, chewiness it adds to a dish when grilled. I still think raw mushrooms taste like earthworms, though. Just so you know.

The last time I made biscuits, they ended up being hockey pucks that didn’t rise at all, but tasted okay. I made them into jam sandwiches and told Chris they were called Swedish Love Cakes and he gobbled them up. Inside, though, I was deeply ashamed. I mean, what kind of self-respecting southern transplant can’t make an effing buttermilk biscuit?? It was a threat to my womanhood. So, like any other self-respecting, run-of-the-mill biscuit failure, I just didn’t make any for a month. Ha! Showed them! But then today we woke up and, in the kind of haze that can only result from Absolut Pear and sodas the night before, I offered Chris either scones or biscuits for breakfast. I am a dippy, dippy girl sometimes.

So I busted out the ol’ school-issued baking text, girded my flaky, tender loins, and strode confidently into the kitchen wielding my new pastry cutter. I cut the cold butter into my flour mixture, dumped in some buttermilk that had been sitting in the back of the fridge and started rolling and folding the dough to create layers of butter smeared between layers of flour. It’s called “laminating” the dough, and is ostensibly responsible for the flaky layers within a good biscuit. I’ve only seen this done successfully in restaurants and out of one of those terrifying tubes of biscuitry that Pillsbury pimps in the chilled case at the grocery store. So I assumed I wouldn’t be able to do it correctly. The key, in addition to making layers of butter, is to not work the dough very much at all. This prevents protein (gluten) from forming too much and making the biscuits chewy.

I worked the dough very minimally and cut rounds from it. I then realized that the rounds were rolled too thin, and I had to bunch them together and start the rolling over, meaning the dough got worked a TON. So I was expecting another rendition of Swedish Love Cakes, except this time I brushed them with buttermilk and stuck cheddar cheese to the tops to prevent me from using them as a jam delivery system. God knows I’ll take any excuse to inject sugar into my system. I think I ate an entire bag of pound cake scraps yesterday. Fuck. Back to the diet tomorrow I suppose.

Ignoring my shame in favor of returning to my biscuits (this time, not a euphemism):

They turned out AMAZING, which goes to show that the all purpose flour in our kitchen is actually fairy dust-a claim I’ve been making for weeks. The breakfast below was actually Chris’s. I myself ate 2 (maaaaaybe 3) biscuits and some egg whites and a slice of lunch meat sauteed together. I like to call that “atonement.”