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My days are predictably pleasant, if you don't go too far below the surface.
Yesterday the CBC and I spent the morning making masks. Lunch was soup and the last of the little salty rolls I'd made from the Internet recipe. After lunch I was free. To me that means free to read, though to some it might mean free to wash the windows or mop the kitchen floor.
I read for an hour and then, even though I was gripped by the story, I felt like a slug for not doing my work. So I went to the kitchen at 2:30 and here's what I did. I started another batch of those salty rolls from the Internet. I made a custard/cheesecake-y thing with a crust of dry bread crumbs, eight boughten shortbread cookies someone gave us, and a little butter. While that baked in its piepan, I gathered every leftover dairy product in the fridge and made a filling (yogurt, previously frozen milk, Montforte soft cheese flavoured with orange, and ricotta). I added four eggs, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and some vanilla. I poured this into the pie shell and put it back into the oven.
By now it was time to start the actual supper, which was to be steamed broccoli and carrots, steamed for healthiness but served with a bagna cauda sauce to offset the healthiness. I'd never thought to use bagna cauda as anything but an extravagantly fatty party dip to make once every five years. But I have recently developed a strong craving for anchovies, so bagna cauda has now become a staple: olive oil, butter, anchovies, garlic, and a little lemon zest, all melted together. My anchovies, the salted ones in the round flat tin, dissolve in the oil.
So there I was, working away. The sauce was simmering nicely and I was prepping the broccoli when I smelled smoke and burning metal. I'd turned on the wrong burner and was on the verge of setting fire to a cookie sheet that I had lazily set aside on that burner.
Oh, no problem. I turned the vent on high, removed the cookie sheet, and let my heart rate return to normal. Having thus been alerted to possible mental lapses, I checked the oven and discovered that the pie/cheesecake thing was ready, so I took it out.
Still piddling away in the kitchen twenty minutes later,
I was surprised when my portable timer, which I wear on the front of my apron, began its insistent beep-beep-beep. I stood at the stove for two minutes trying to figure out why the timer was beeping. Although I saw that the oven was on, I had no memory of having put anything into it. I knew I'd taken the cheesecake thing out of the oven. I wasn't making bread—or cookies, or a cake. Finally, not finding any answers in my memory bank, I opened the oven and looked in. And there was the pan of rolls that I had obviously put in to bake after I took the cheesecake out. If I hadn't had the foresight to set the timer, those little buttery rolls might have continued baking for another hour or two, which would have done them no good at all and would definitely have set off the smoke alarm. So: problem averted by the beloved portable timer—and not for the first time.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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