much ADO about ... not much

Well, the short version is -- if it weren't for the bacon and onions, the lamb fries wouldn't have tasted like much of anything.

As i anticipated, their flavor (like sweetbreads) depended upon how they were cooked and sauced.  Liver, heart and kidney have a flavor of their own as do well-used-muscle meats.  Less-exercised muscles have less flavor.  Certain glands seem to have even less, and the "mountain oysters" of pre-pubescent animals seem to fall into this category.

We'll be interested to taste lamb fries again if we find them on the menu of some well-regarded restaurant, but won't go out of our way to order and cook them again ourselves.

Other creations of my kitchen have been of more note this week:  i made a batch of tomato ketchup from an "old" twentieth-century recipe which turned out very well, as did a version of bacon jam, and a loaf of Wooo's flax bread.  The mac&cheese recipe from our new Fat Fast Cookbook was also tried and approved -- needs some tabasco or cayenne, though!

It's been another "funny" week.  Some painter/paperers, recommended by our OUTSTANDING carpenter (Mike Schoenlaub of Standard Construction Inc.) have been coming almost daily to relieve me of some of the work of our living-room rehab project, which made our irregular hours even more discombobulated.  The good news, though, is that we're making good progress on the decoration.  The plaster walls are as sound and smooth as they'll ever be, the woodwork is primed and painted, and most of the major wall was papered today.  I removed, cleaned and repaired the lock-mechanisms from both the pocket-doors, and a local locksmith has provided a key to operate them.  We chose and ordered new tile for the hearth and firebox-surround, and identified the perfect carpet for the room (to be ordered when it goes on sale in another ten days).

So altogether, we've been busy in an on-again-off-again sort of way!  My excessive fatigue has passed, though my energy is definitely not all it should be.  I'll be pleased and relieved to have my living room habitable again ... but of course when it's done i'll need to throw a party for our friends and neighbors who have extended their hospitality to US over the past few years!

fruestuecksgulasch

[chuckle of delight]

WHY are we so married to eggs and grain-products for breakfast, in this country?  My new Austrian cookbook mentioned goulash (American spelling) for breakfast "over there" and i just had to do it.  In the crockpot, all night on "low."  I just cubed a beautifully-marbled chuck roast and threw it in with all the onions (sliced) i had in the house (2), a spoonful of paprika, a dash of vinegar, an open can of diced tomatoes i had in the fridge (about 2/3 of it, in place of the tablespoon of puree in the recipe), and some marjoram and caraway seeds.  Voila, breakfast!  Next time i need to add more caraway.

Now, for the love o' pete, will someone tell me why there are so damn many delectable-sounding desserts in this book?

best time of the year

It looks like the air conditioner is going off today.  This is the day i look forward to through the sticky hot summer -- when i can open the windows and turn on the attic fan, and the air that comes in may be a little moist, but fresh and "alive."

Tomorrow i can set the oven to self-clean, and not get the kitchen all hot and smoky -- because any meat that's baked in the oven inevitable leaves fat spatters that cook on the next time it's used, and cleaning it is an ... ahem ... AROMATIC process.  Time to remove the summer ivy garland from the bannisters, and wind on the autumn leaves.

I've been looking up new soup and stew recipes, too -- i love one-pot meals when the weather is cooler.  These can usually be made in a low-carb fashion, whether by leaving out the flour thickeners and using alternatives, or simply deleting things like potatoes.  I even ordered myself some new cookbooks so as to spread my wings a little -- one French, one Austrian, one Hungarian, and one generic "European peasant foods."  The Mexican, German, generic Celtic, and Pueblo books i already had are stuck full of tape-flags marking promising recipes i've yet to try.  Then there are the historic cookbooks, and the HUGE variety of ethnic-American ones....

Thank the gods for low-carb alternatives!  Harvest-time COULD be dangerous to me, because i have this instinctive attraction to those foods my ancestors fattened up on before the onset of winter.  Nevertheless, i WILL indulge a little with things like the occasional baked apple and crustless squash pie.

Can't wait to see how big my sunchoke harvest will be this year....

yet ANOTHER thing to make from scratch

*Sigh* ....  Now that the weather is warming up, the subject of WHAT TO DRINK shifts gears.  Coffee, tea, wine and bouillon served very well in the mild winter we just had, while i was doing nothing to dehydrate myself very much.  Yesterday and the day before i did a little light yard work, and thirst raised its first hydra head (pun intended).

A very dilute gin and tonic sounded AND tasted good (after i invoked the 80/20 rule and decided to indulge myself).  Later on, my stomach wasn't as happy as my tastebuds, and i don't think there can be much doubt about the cause.  Tonic is such a simple substance in theory, but let a beverage manufacturer play with the formula and they manage to trade an X for the N, and it becomes ... toxic.

I don't want their bloody fructose, be its source sucrose, HFCS, agave or whatever.  And DAMNED if i want aspartame, which many of the artificially-sweetened tonics contain.  I've never seen one made with sucralose alone, or with stevia ... and it's those i tolerate best.  We compromise with saccharine-sweetened brands, but something in there is far from supportive of THIS body's processes.

Therefore, i hunted down a recipe for home-made tonic, and ordered myself a bunch of cinchona bark with which to concoct it.  Since the recipe calls for the juice and zest of three different citrus fruits, i'll try using it without any more sweetening than that, and add a little dextrose as needed.  Wish me luck!