Monday, May 12, 2003

Saturday we went out to breakfast- I woke up thinking we shouldn't try Lulu's, a place down on Beverly that always looks busy, but return to Fred 62, where we hadn't been in a while. The urge to get out and walk won, though, since it was a nice day, and we had a perfectly mediocre meal. I'm perpetually trying to find the perfect Eggs Benedict, and this wasn't it. For some reason the hollandaise had been browned on top, and it was perfectly tasteless. If I'm going to ingest that much egg yolk, I want it creamy and lemon fresh. The side of bacon was tasty, though- perfectly crisp, not greasy, but not charred.


I did so much running around doing errands during the day that I totally forgot lunch. Jeff forgot, too. I had some writing to do and library books to pick up and things to pick up from classmates, and grocery shopping. I planned on making another meal from Cooking for Mr. Latte- the chicken with curryish sauce, watercress and pea puree, and couscous with celery and red wine vinegar. I stopped by the Farmer's Market on 3rd and Fairfax for the chicken and the vegetables. There's one stand there which I really like, because they don't laugh at me for not knowing watercress by sight. I'm still working on parsley vs. cilantro, though I've got that mostly down- sometimes I have to smell it, too. I also love that the pharmacy there still carries 90210 cologne, but that's another thing entirely. I also poked in Sur La Table and got an apron and a springform pan. The pan had an Easter bunny top and stencils to make Easter cakes, I suppose, but the pan itself was usable without the top and was all of $4.99.


The worst part about cooking at Jeff's is all the preparation. I have to remember to pack up and bring knives, for instance- he has nothing that isn't made of alumninum- and other things, like a salad spinner, or spices I have in stock at home and half the time wind up buying second bottles of for his place. I'm moving there June 1, so I've taken to leaving things I know I can get by without during the week, like the crock pot, over there. I'm really picky about my knives, though- one of my older knives was in a horrible garbage disposal accident and the nickmarks didn't add much to what wasn't a great knife to start out with. So I had already snapped at Jeff in the morning, because he left my chef's knife just sticking up out of the dish drainer all akimbo. I told him about the disposal incident and thought all would be understood- but then, while he was washing and I was cooking that night, he just left my knife sticking up in the sink. I of course overreacted and we were both in foul moods for dinner.


The other problem was the peas- I was expecting my new blender, a graduation present from my sister, to arrive, but UPS wasn't going to try to redeliver it until Monday. And I'd already bought the watercress and peas. I'd spent ten minutes trying to figure out what was the watercress on my own before asking, even at the non-humiliating produce stand, so I felt I had to commit to the peas. So I borrowed my roommate's hand mixer and hoped for the best. The best, with a hand mixer, is not going to be anything like a puree. It's going to be peas and watercress stirred up. So between the fight over the knife and the pea non-puree, I was a little less than enthusiastic. The peas tasted fine, but they weren't what I'd hoped for, and annoyance or anger always drains my ability to taste or enjoy. Jeff loved the chicken, though (it was good, and simple) even though it took 25 minutes at 450, not 15, though that is more the fault of Jeff's oven, I suspect, than the recipe. I loved the couscous, and I don't normally like couscous. I packed the leftovers for lunch today, even.


Later that night, we were out for a friend's birthday, and someone commented about what a great couple we were. (We are! It's gross!) I tried to point out that we weren't perfect, mentioning the knife debacle. "You're telling me you fight about a knife? That's your big problem?" It is pretty silly.

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