Monday, January 19, 2009

Weekend in food


So this weekend in food I...
  • Made injera (or rather I made an injera hack -- made with regular wheat flour and only a half-day's fermentation). Injera + a nice flavorful stew + lentils + a couple of pastes/sauces to add more heat for the grown-ups made for a highly entertaining meal. For Grace, I just spread the bread on her placemat and spooned lentils, meat, etc. onto her plate. For once we were all eating with our hands, so she was right in place. Though the flavor was off, the texture of the injera was just right, and the whole point is that it does such a good job soaking up the other flavors anyway. Once the meat and sauces hit the bread, it was pretty awesome.
  • Made two loaves of raisin bread with Grace. Making bread is becoming a tradition -- she loves helping me knead. We ate one loaf almost instantly, but still haven't cut into the other. It will make nice toast whenever we break into it.
  • Made brownies with the Obama logo on them for tomorrow. I actually made two pans -- one round with the Obama logo and one square, on which I attempted to do an Obama silhouette. I had to abandon the silhouette, which resulted in a vague blue and red tie-dye look... oops. I'll be cutting those into squares so they look less like a screw up.
That's just a start. Also in the fridge for lazy nights this week are left-over roast chicken and vegetables and some multi-grain pancakes to cook up tomorrow morning (we have a tradition of making real breakfast on Monday mornings to take the edge off -- since it's a three-day weekend we'll push that to Tuesday.

All of this is pretty firm evidence that I had a boatload of work to do this weekend... nothing like procrastination to make me ambitious in the kitchen.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Lullabies

It turns out that if I limit myself to the first five frets of the guitar, I can put Grace in the sling, sit in my desk chair, and play. Luckily the arrangement of the Brahms lullaby I've worked out is easily played in the first five frets.

Sweetest thing in the world: watching your baby fall asleep on your shoulder while you play.