from me:
december 3rd. yes we had pancakes yesterday for my birthday, and yes i had kugelhoff later in the afternoon. then for dinner we had a very easy meal of ham and cheese sandwiches with lovely ham and lovely cheddar, both from our M&S outpost here. french cheese is lovely but it’s not cheddar.
husband had a sore back this weekend (!) so he spent a lot of time lounging. i watched Lady Bird (didn’t like it much) and i’m part way through watching the very-long Interstellar, which i’m liking enough even if i’m not a mcconaughey fan.
which is to say …
when you’re sober, you do regular puttering-around things. you go for breakfast (or not). you sleep in (or not). you don’t spend the day in bed wishing your head pounding would stop. sober girls run and then watch tv in they dark. they do laundry. they ask their husbands to re-do a painting that got damaged in transit (not bad, only one out of 250+).
which is to say …
if you haven’t tried being sober, you might want to try it. there are only upsides. including being able to think about other things. like movies. and laundry. and tea. and instant hot chocolate packages that arrive in the mail!
yesterday …
in my daily email, i asked for hilarious/horrid food stories, this one was #40 from G: “Raw fish? i can remember marinating salmon in a soy and honey sauce that I made. The following day I gently wrapped it in foil to cook in the oven. While it was cooking I did noodles and stir fried some lovely fresh veg. Unfortunately when i took the salmon out of the oven it was raw, I’d switched the grill on instead of the oven…”
and some others that just made me smile, like Noelle: “My worst, and so embarrassing food disaster was with jello [called JELLY in the UK]. My husband’s dad was marrying for the second time and having a reception at his house. I was about 22 and still dating my would be husband. I wanted to be part of the festivities and make my boyfriend and his family proud of me, so I offered to make the jello – for 75 people! I can remember it was grape jello with some kind of fruit mixed in. It was in a very large oblong container. The goal was to immerse the container in hot water and then turn the container upside down and plate it. When I did this, with several other family members in the kitchen, the jello plopped our onto the dish as purple liquid! I was mortified. Needless to say there was no jello served at the reception. P.S. the marriage only lasted two months!”
and this one from ladybug11: “My favorite bad food story was the first time I made homemade baked Mac and cheese with my boyfriend, now husband. We were so proud of ourselves and excited to taste it. We didn’t realize that we had used the vanilla soy milk instead of plain soy milk. The taste combo of vanilla and cheddar cheese is so nasty! I can still conjure up the memory and gag to this day.”
but this message from suzabelle, i can totally seeing a young kid doing this exact thing: “I have a great food story … I attempted to make brownies from a box. I mixed everything and got them in the oven, then realized I forgot the egg. I didn’t think they’d really cooked yet. They’d only been in a couple minutes. So I yanked the pan out and just mixed in the egg. When they finished, we had scrambled eggs on top of the brownies. LOL! They still tasted good though.”
today…
today’s gift is my three-ingredient recipe for shortbread cookies. they’re very simple, thanks to a smart trick that skips the whole rolling-out thing. this recipe came to me originally from my high school boyfriend’s mother, who was british and really the queen of doing things brilliantly and simply. no rolling out and no cookie cutters… to this day, i only make these simple shortbreads even though my mother is famous for her intricate ones. sorry mom! So today, I’ll send a copy of the recipe to everyone, no contest required, just send me an email and tell me what you think the 3 ingredients are … i’ll reply with the actual recipe 🙂
hope painting, done by belle, not her husband! this is hope 09. here
