i found something to do on columbus day weekend besides drinking myself silly in vineyards, rollerskating at a heavily nostalgic childhood spot, and stuffing my face with microeconomics.

CURRY AND ORANGE POTS DE CREME.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

i’ll be out on the island for most of the weekend, and youknowwho’smother has tiny creme brulee pots gathering dust in the basement. done, done, done, done, done, donnnnnne, done, DONE DONE DONE!

after spending most of my monday off doing microeconomics homework in the sunnyside starbucks and then tromping home through the sudden onslaught of rain, it was really nice to come home to a dinner ready and (almost) waiting.

tonight’s dinner was the remains of a binge of cooking i did this weekend, none of it a disaster:

saturday night:
post lounging half-in/half-out of bed until 3pm, and prior to another massive study session, i found myself in my kitchen with a glass of white wine and the will to make tomato sauce from scratch. i looked up a few recipes, but mostly decided to do a little experimenting. some olive oil, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and fresh basil from the windowsill later, i had something that resembled tomato sauce and something that i swear to god made me go, “OHHH. CRAPPP,” when mixed with some thin penne and fresh grated parmesan. success.

sunday morning:
post lounging in bed until a more reasonable hour, i found myself in my kitchen with the will to make popovers. specifically, a popover recipe from angry chicken.  maybe it was the adorable little hand poking one of them.  maybe it’s my lust for all things bread-like and sweet.  but god damn it, i needed popovers.  the recipe was ridiculously easy, but i’m fairly certain i earned a fail in the actual popping-over bit.  i had read a little on how it is actually quite difficult to get your pops to stay popped, so i automatically assumed that on my first try, i would see deflated and only deflated creations.  HOWEVER, as soon as i peeked in the oven, there was a mass of popped-up overs, and they were beautiful.  i went screaming to sL that i had, in fact, succeeded against the odds.

it was all pretty cruel, too, because as soon as i took them triumphantly from the oven, they didn’t even collapse instantly, but in that slow… ridiculously mocking way that actually had me grasping at their edges, trying to keep them propped.  it was that slow, and painful.

BUT, they were delicious.  after a heart-wrenching decision to NOT put blueberries inside something i didn’t know the explosive properties of, i instead made a blueberry “sauce” of heated up blueberries with a little lemon juice and sugar.  i put confectioners sugar on top of the popovers, topped them with the blueberry sauce, and then hit the town.  they were the kind of ridiculously light, eggy, sweet thing that i’m fairly certain i could have everyday.  i’m also fairly certain that the recipe is actually the long lost recipe for “jane eyre pancakes” that i knew as a child and NO ONE ELSE has ever heard of. success.

sunday afternoon/evening:
my co-worker irene and i bonded over food a very long time ago. we’ve shared each other’s creations that we’ve brought into work, made themed food and brought them to a movie, and quoted cooking lite at staff meetings, but, we had yet to actually cook together. we decided to amend that on the occasion of irene having brought back some special san francisco sourdough yeast culture. what turned into just making some sourdough bread inevitably turned into making a feast. over the course of four hours (with breaks to romp with her ridiculously adorable cat), we made fresh sourdough bread, a potato soup with roast garlic, chorizo, and pine nuts, and a salad with roast beets, roast squash, and lentils.

this meal had a complexity that i dream of and then wake screaming from because i’ve realized it isn’t real. but this was real. and ridiculous. and i’m not sure what else to say about that except that now my bowls are empty and i feel emptier inside because of it. success.