Yesterday my mayonnaise broke!!! I had decided to make some cider vinegar mayo and dump the too vinegary sherry vinegar version. And for the first time in my months and months of making mayonnaise, now, it thinned out and the emulsion broke.

But this was not cause for despair- in fact, I was kind of excited. Mayonnaise has become so simple for me, and I relished the challenge of restoring it. Plus, I had Jacques and Julia to guide me. I put a little dijon mustard in a new bowl and whisked in the broken mayonnaise spoonful by spoonful. Instantly fixed mayonnaise. Some people see culinary disaster- I say, bring it on.

You might think that I would rest on Sunday and not cook at all. Ha! I have Baking with Julia to conquer, remember? Plus we had to do something with those leftover short ribs. I snagged a recipe from The Gift Of Southern Cooking that was totally different than the ribs I'd done the night before. You brown the ribs, and then saute onions and then add garlic and canned tomatoes and chicken stock and wine and simmer it before pouring it over the ribs in a casserole and baking them. They came out very nicely, though Jeff insisted I serve them with rice instead of grits. Jeff's a grits hater.

I also made the whole wheat sandwich bread from Baking With Julia, even though I couldn't find any malt extract. I'm not normally so cavalier about omitting ingredients, even in non-baking recipes- I'm a pretty by the book kind of cook. Even my one big homemade dish, pizza with lemon pepper cream sauce, caramelized onions, and prosciutto, is basically a restaurant recreation using separate cookbook recipes. I'm not that creative or instinctive, which is okay- I just want to be a good home cook. Anyway. So without malt extract or a stand mixer, I proceeded. The dough was supposed to be a tad sticky, and it was, but it was so much more handle-able than the shaggy sticky messes that my other two sandwich bread attempts had been. The last bread I made, I could barely look at the dough without getting it all over my arms. This bread dough, though, I could actually knead, and I did. It rose beautifully and I punched it down and put it in the loaf pans where it rose again. Then I went to bake it and somehow, midway through, the oven got turned down from 375 to 275 (I blame Jeff, who had been clearing up the kitchen after dinner). So I turned it back up and left Jeff in charge of getting the bread out of the oven. It came out quite tasty- my favorite sandwich bread yet.

I also decided to make mayonnaise from the recipe in The Gift of Southern Cooking. Substituting sherry vinegar for cider vinegar is not a good idea, I'll just tell y'all that. The mayonnaise came out vinegartastic. Vinegarrific. Vinegarabulous. Then I was too exhausted to make salad dressing, but fortunately had leftover orange citrus dressing from the dinner party.

Well. Friday night I did all my grocery shopping- TJ's, and then the Farmer's Market, and then Ralphs. Came home and lugged everything inside in just two trips (Jeff was at Radiohead). I started by making the syrup for the lacquered almonds from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone- and then realized they needed to be in the oven for two hours. (You preheat the oven at 200 and then turn it off when you put them in.) This negated my make the parmesan crisps (from A New Way To Cook) in the oven plan, but fortunately they could also be done in a skillet. I grated up 8 oz of parmesan (love you, Microplane!) and mixed in 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp flour and a little cumin. Then I spread 1/3 cup of the mixture on a hot skillet and cooked until it just started to brown. I discovered that a thinner crisp is a better crisp and I think I could have crisped them all a bit more. Also that I like them better hot from the pan. And then the almonds weren't nearly mahogony, so I turned the oven on for a bit until they were. Then I realized I had no cupcake liners for the cupcakes, so I decided to save those for the morning.

I got up early on Sunday and went to the store. Ralphs and then TJS for the flowers- I got cream roses, some cream dahlias and some orange dahlias. A woman saw me and then grabbed the orange dahlias and some roses as well- I felt good that I was a role model in flower selection. I came home and made the cupcakes- they would have, I am convinced, come out less dense had I used my future KitchenAid. I am sure of it. I'll try again after Christmas and let y'all know. Then there wasn't much to do- I turned the table around the other way to add the card table on the end and threw a tapestry over it, and arranged the flowers and put gourds and strawberry corn down the center of the table. I put the ribs in the crockpot (Crockpots are the nervous dinner party hostess' best friend) and realized they wouldn't all fit. Then I realized I had calculated ribs for 10 when it turned out we would only be 8 and two of those 8 were vegetarians, so all those ribs didn't need to fit in the crockpot at all.

Around 5:30 I started working on the rest of the dinner. Mixed the salad dressing. Set the table. Roasted the peppers for the tart (a pepper and tomato tart from VCFE), and made the yeasted tart dough with olive oil. Y'all, this tart dough was such a nightmare. I set it aside to rise and hoped it would get less sticky. As I sauteed the diced red onions and was working on seeding and dicing the tomatoes, my dad called with the play by play of the USC-Cal game, then in its 2nd overtime. Y'all, don't take phone calls while you are cooking. Especially not intense phone calls that will make you edgy and nervous and keep you running to the other room to try to figure out what channel Fox Sports is and then want to throw things when you don't get it.

My dad's play by play, though amusing ("And now they're showing the stands, and, well, it's Berkeley- there's a lot of hippies and no parking."), caused me to run late, and the tomato pepper onion saffron garlic etc. mixture was just ready to go in the tart at 8 PM. Thankfully, all our guests were slightly late so they missed the chaos that was me trying to roll out the tart dough and crying (it was supposed to be very thin but it also kept breaking and in the end I tossed it in the oven and prayed for the hideously misshapen best). I put on the rice and had already prepped the asparagus, so as our guests arrived I finished that up as Jeff served drinks and played good host. The tart came out looking much more impressive than I'd hoped and it tasted pretty good, too. I was a little disappointed in the salad dressing (and had way too much actual salad. Way, way too much) and the rice, but everyone ate plenty and went back for seconds. Afterwards we ate the dense cupcakes and I forgot to make coffee, but instead we all watched our turtle and then Jeff got out, on request, video of William Shatner singing Rocket Man and then the Wookie Christmas special, which was a nice cap to it all.

So that was our first dinner party. We can't wait to do it again.

Grocery list for tomorrow's dinner party, taken directly from two pages from my 99 cent TJ's shopping list pad (they have cute drawings at the top- the first section was a leek with "Leek and you shall find," which I have moved past to "eat, drink, and be berry")

-8 oz parmesan
-1 cup blanched almonds
-oranges (?)
-1 lg bunch arugula
-red or green leaf lettuce (both?)
- oj (if not oranges?)
- 4 lb asparagus
- 2 red onions
- 1 1/2 lb roma tom.
- 3 lg red bell pepp.
- saffron (?)
- basil
- 16 nicoise or 8 kalamata
- 4 oz semisweet chocolate
- vanilla
- eggs
- sugar
- all-purpose flour
- 8 oz. cream cheese
- semisweet chocolate chips
- 7.5 lbs short ribs
- soy sauce (!)
- scallions
- ginger
- sichuan peppercorns (?)
- wire cooling racks
- bigger baking sheet
- cava
- wine


I like the exclamation point. Because normally when I put soy sauce on a grocery list, I'm just kidding? I don't know.

Last night I went back to the Zuni Cafe Cookbook to make onion, bacon, and apple tarts. I made puff pastry, people! Well, "rough puff." You may think it would be daunting to make a notoriously difficult comestible from a notoriously demanding cookbook. You would be so very wrong. "Rough puff" is easy as pie. It's just a bunch of refrigerating and then rolling and then folding in thirds. I knew that the folding and the butter would create the puff pastry effect- I saw it on Baking With Julia, after all- but I didn't really believe it until I saw it. Flaky pastry- it astounds me. Like magic in my oven.

Next time I will double the amount of onions, though, because I have no restraint when it comes to onions. None. I may even replace the onions in olive oil with onions made via A New Way To Cook's "fried" onion technique, omitting the final caramelization step. Because a) those onions rule and b) less fat can't be bad. Also, the tart shell cooked before the bacon, but that could be that I didn't cook it long enough in the first step (you cut the bacon into 1/2 inch pieces and cook on low for a minute until a thin film of fat is released- and then you pour off the fat and toss the apple slices with the bacon. Mmm. It was good.).

It was also the first time I used my Silpat for baking- I use it to roll out dough all the time, but I cooked two of the tarts on the Silpat and two on wax paper. The tarts on the wax paper? Burned a little on the bottom. I think I'll be using the Silpat a LOT more now- my copy of Baking With Julia just arrived and I plan on cooking through it until I have made pastry my bitch. Thankfully, I work in a high traffic office and can unload spare baked goods on the students.

I still want to ask Jacques why it solidifies in the refrigerator, but I should point out that his dressing in a jar does reliquefy if you leave it out for a few minutes. And that it is delicious.

Friday night was, as it was the week before, bread baking night. I made the honey cracked wheat bread from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone (which is an odd title, since Deborah Madison says she prefers using bulgur instead of cracked wheat, and you can use honey or molasses, so what I made was really Molasses Bulgur Bread, which I suppose is less tasty sounding). Man, is bread dough sticky. I am counting the days until Christmas- my constant hinting to my mother and Jeff ("So, Mom, when exactly did your mother buy you your KitchenAid? Was it a Christmas present?" "Uh, did my mother give me the KitchenAid? I think maybe she gave us money, and we used it to buy it..." "But a KitchenAid would make a GREAT gift from mother to daughter, wouldn't it??") combined with a sale at Kohl's has lead to a cobalt blue future for me. My sister is jealous, but as I said, is she baking bread and making pizza dough every week? "No, but I would if I had a KitchenAid." Sorry. You have to prove it first, I think. Those suckers are pricey.

So anyway. The for now still hand kneaded (kned?) bread turned out really well. It didn't rise as high as I wanted it to, but Jeff liked it much better than last week's sandwich bread. I like it, too, but more with Better N' Peanut Butter than as a sandwich bread.

I almost don't even want to write about Saturday night's dinner. It is too awful to bear. It was Date Night, "Date Night!"- complete with its own sound effects. We went to see the amazing Lost In Translation at the Arclight during the Date Day portion of Date Night. Then we came home and were going to have a wonderful meal of roast duck and potato puree with walnut oil from The Cook And The Gardener.

The roast duck, y'all. A Very Good Roast Duck, according to Amanda Hesser, who felt she had finally arrived as a cook when she could roast a duck successfully, and who can cram it. I am NEVER AGAIN using one of her recipes where she has you use a roasting pan to make a pan sauce because the roasting pan barely fits on the stove and is just not shaped right to make a pan sauce. I am also taking some of the blame since I took out the liver (not the heart, I tossed the heart, I couldn't bear it) and cooked it in butter and chopped it up and then squicked out. The liver squick plus the roasting pan made the pan sauce fail to happen. I can totally eat foie gras that someone else has made delicous. I can't do liver that I pulled out of a bird my ownself.

Anyway. The duck itself, after 65 minutes and plenty of basting, was nowhere near mahogany or even kind of browned, but it was definitely done. Jeff said it was like good roast beef. Uh, thanks. I hate you, date night duck. I blame Amanda Hesser while Jeff blames the bird. I also blame myself, my oven, and Amanda Hesser one more time.

But then, the potato puree was amazing. So I can't fully hate her, just her roasting pan pan sauce ways.

Sunday I wowed Jeff with my omelet skillz- he had not had one of my omelets since I'd perfected them (and it is a classic omelet I make. I think. Dammit.), omelets being my Jeff's away and I don't want to wash too many dishes dish. He was suitably impressed. Then we went to stock up for our dinner party next week at Ikea, or as I think of it, Swedish Hell. I always get stuck behind some Ikea-addict tools who are discussing the designers by name and arguing the merits of a dresser designed by Dagmar Hammerskjold or whatever. Dude. It's pressboard. Chill. However, their $3.99 six pack of wine glasses can't be beat.

Then, Sunday night, to get right back on the horse and prove myself after the Duck Disaster, I went for potatoes roasted in duck fat. This redeemed the disaster because some of the duck went to tasty use, and because I used a recipe for rosemary roasted potatoes from the notorious Zuni Cafe Cookbook. She has you simmer the potatoes first, and then toss with rosemary and olive oil (or duck fat). Oh, man. Like mashed potatoes with a crispy delicious shell.

Also, my Sunday night ritual of making salad dressing and mayonnaise for the week. I used Deborah Madison's recipe from VCFE, and it made a much paler in color mayonnaise than I am used to. However, it held up better in a sandwich- sometimes handmade mayonnaise, out of the refrigerator, breaks down at room temperature. And she has 9 million variations. I may have found my mayonnaise.

The salad dressing is an eternal quest. Let me ask Jacques Pepin why, exactly, if his dressing in a jar from Julia and Jacques Cooking At Home holds up so well in a jar in the refrigerator, as he claims, was it solid when I went to get it this morning? Hmm? I'm going back to whisked vinaigrette next week.

I've barely cooked this week, it seems. Last night I went out to dinner for a friend's birthday- we went to Harold and Belle's and I am still regretting my order, spicy crawfish cakes which were spicy, well, crawfish coated in batter and deepfried. Everyone else's etouffe was so good. And then I got vicious heartburn. Hate.

When I got home, some more free/cheap cheap book club cookbooks came in. How To Cook Everything: The Basics, which I ordered for Jeff and because it came in a package with The Minimalist Entertains. I see a few Minimalist dinner parties in our future, and the introduction made me happy- we're having our first dinner party next weekend, and Mark Bittman says our crappy tableware is fine! It was a good introduction- I'll keep y'all posted on the recipes. I was disappointed to read in The Basics, though, that Mark Bittman had changed his introductory statement from HTCE from believing that everyone can cook and most everyone should- he now no longer believes that most everyone should, and he gives no explanation why. Perhaps I'm taking this all a bit to seriously when the Minimalist's changes in outlook hurt me personally.

I also got Jacques Pepin Celebrates, which I briefly paged through before my heartburn made it hurt to look at food. Remember how I said everyone should get Jacques' Complete Techniques? Well, you still totally should if you are an obsessive nerd like myself, but if not just get Jacques Celebrates. It's got a lot of the same techniques, in beautiful color. And he explains the difference between a classic omelet, a conventional omelet, and a Spanish omelet. I can't remember now if my omelets are classic or conventional- they are not the kind where you pour the eggs in and let them set but the kind where you pour the eggs in and immediately start moving the pan and the eggs. And apparently that kind is not meant to be cooked til browned on the outside, either, so they're not really that kind either. But they are good.

So last night I figured it would be fun to make hamburgers, Julia-style. I dug out the Mastering the Art of French Cooking, defrosted a few buns, and went wild.

Julia-style, y'all, involves first sauteeing some diced onion in butter and then mixing that onion with an egg, salt, pepper, thyme, ground beef, and more butter. I love that she says to, after mixing, adjust seasoning to taste- are we supposed to taste the raw ground beef? Then shape into patties, dredge in a little flour, and fry in some more butter or to mix things up, oil. Then you make a pan sauce with just about whatever liquid you've got lying around and you guessed it, more butter. I used her mustard butter for the sauce, which was simple to make and I could probably eat it, like all forms of butter, straight.

Any hamburger that laden with butter is going to be as juicy and delicious as you would expect it to be. And it was. Oh, man oh man. It was good. It felt totally sinful and the exact opposite of my Worcerstershire laden on the Foreman turkey burgers, which are equally delicious, and all. No one needs a butter burger every day, but everyone should have one sometime.

Jeff went out of town this weekend. Which meant lots of goat cheese omelets for me, since I hate doing too many dishes for just myself. I thought about making Eggs Benedict, but hollandaise for one is ridiculous. I continue to marvel at the thing of beauty that is the omelet. Lightly browned, fluffy, beautifully rolled. If anyone wants a perfect omelet, just let me know.

Friday night I decided to bake bread. I wanted to make the honey something wheat something bread from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, but at the store couldn't remember what the recipe called for- it asked for bulgur or (something). No bulgur in sight, I guessed the something could have been oat bran- it was not. Not being sure if oat bran and cracked wheat were interchangeable or not, I made the white sandwich bread instead, using wheat flour. The kneading was a bit of a Pain- the dough was really, really sticky. But it took less kneading than my pizza dough does (someday, Kitchenaid, someday) and rose up beautifully. So then I put it in two loaf pans, let it rise some more, baked and voila. Actual real sandwich bread. Like magic. After it cooled, I ate two slices plain, out of sheer marvelment.

Yesterday I made up some tarragon-chive mayonnaise and spread it on two slices with bacon. There may be something in this world better and more fulfilling than your own bread and tarragon-chive mayonnaise with bacon, but I don't think I'm ready for it. I'm not going to slaughter my own pigs or grow my own wheat, which would, I suppose make that sandwich more of an accomplishment. Maybe if I had a perfect tomato lying around, maybe that would have made it better. But I doubt it. This is how I make up for Jeff not being around- making perfect little meals.

I also whipped up some salad dressing for this week- Julia's Lemon Oil Dressing from Jacques and Julia Cooking At Home. It is essentially lemony oil, with no vinegar. Unlike most homemade vinaigrettes, it doesn't seem to hold up/travel well, and is a bit too heavy feeling for me. (To be fair, Julia does say it should be used immediately.) Next week I'll make Jacques' vinaigrette dressing in a jar. The plan is to experiment with every vinaigrette recipe I have until I come up with Hannah's Master Vinaigrette. Right now I'm liking Julia's Kitchen Wisdom the best. I'll keep y'all updated.

Y'all can just guess whether or not I made asparagus last night.

I got home around 7:30, actually in a kind of chipper mood due to the fact that I take far too much glee when some asshat cuts me off in traffic (in this instance, driving onto the shoulder of the 10 in order to move from directly behind me to directly in front of me- a whopping advantage, I tell you) and then is left far, far behind me as the natural order of things smooths it out (at the exit, he got stuck behind a Mack truck and I whizzed past). That and getting semi-rockstar parking (rockstar parking is directly across the street, semi-rockstar parking is within the first section of the perpendicular street across the street) put me in a good mood despite being at work 2 hours late for the second day in a row.

So I was happy to tackle the curry crusted scallops and ginger curry rice from A New Way To Cook. I've cooked this a lot- the first time, I used shrimp, which is what the recipe calls for. This was also right around the time I really started cooking regularly, and the shrimp were a bit of a disaster. (The charred onion salsa I made to go with them was delicious, though. I should make that again.) The curry didn't stick or crust. They came out overdone, and messy messy messy. I tried to make it again with scallops, and it came out well, but I think more due to luck than anything else. The next time, they came out disastrously. I actually cried. Then I got them down. I hadn't made them in a while, though- not since before I got my gorgeous Calphalon and before I really mastered the art of pan-frying and sauteeing. So this time, with evenly heating cookware and an expertise at cooking in a pan, the scallops were a snap. Basic things like patting them dry with paper towels first, that never occurred to me before, now would never NOT occur to me. I guess my point is, cooking really is a set of skills. Learning is its own reward. Or something. The scallops came out beautiful and tender and sweet but crisp and tangy on the outside.

The rice, though. A bit disastrous in prep due to a lack of mise en place. Chopping garlic while Jeff stirred the onions (and note to Sally Schneider: how does one cook something covered while also stirring frequently, exactly?) and then making Jeff continue to stir the rice as I measured out curry powder and grated ginger directly into the rice. And then, my homemade chicken stock wasn't quite fully defrosted, but taking a cue from Julie of Julie/Julia, I said "What could happen?" as I dumped the semi-frozen chicken stock in and brought it to a bowl. And as it turns out, not much- the rice came out fine, if a bit less flavorful than in the past. I think that is more due to inaccurate ginger measurement and running out of curry powder than any frozen stock issues, however.

Tonight, God as my witness, I will make asparagus. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying all that asparagus fresh way back on Sunday, but it was cheap. I'm making grill pan fish with greek seasoning- which asparagus prep do you think would go better: a) steam/sauteed with Chinese five flavor oil and toasted sesame seeds b) steam/sauteed with Hollandaise sauce c)roasted with brown butter and pecorino romano? Leave your thoughts in the comments section if you are reading.

I added more cookbooks to the list at the left. Those are still just the ones I use most frequently. I have 37 cookbooks at home, including a Marlboro Country cookbook that was in the aparment when Jeff moved in. Five more in the mail at the moment, a jillion more on my Amazon wishlist. I think it's excessive, but then I see the people on eGullet who have 867 cookbooks, or I can't find a decent matzo ball soup recipe, and I realize I'm just fine. Like the Just Chicken. Which we threw out yesterday- it was days old and no one wants Just Salmonella.

Last night I made spaghettini with sugo crudo from Forever Summer. Basically, blanched, peeled, cored and seeded tomatoes with a bit of sugar, a smashed garlic clove, salt, pepper and olive oil. Whisk together and let sit for half an hour and then stir into hot spaghettini. I used capellini, and honestly, don't know the difference. I actually dislike pasta, except for canneloni or manicotti or lasagne, which I really only like as vessels for ricotta. I made the spaghettini as a labor of love for Jeff, who ate all of his and took mine to work for lunch today. Apparently it was good. I was going to make asparagus with hollandaise, too, but I had no lemons and was absolutely exhausted, having worked until 7, so I did not.

Tonight, though I'm not leaving campus until 7 or 7:30 again, I have optimistically scheduled the somewhat labor intensive curry crusted scallops and ginger curry rice from A New Way To Cook, as well as ANWTC's steam-sauteed asparagus with five flavor oil. We'll see about that.

This weekend I'm baking bread- apparently Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone has bread recipes, and I think some homemade sandwich type wheat would be better than the supermarket stuff I've been having for breakfast. Once again, my kitchen for a KitchenAid. (Side note to Jeff and anyone else who may be planning to spend that kind of money on me for Christmas, which would be no one but Jeff: All I really want is a KitchenAid. Any color but white. Thanks.)

I added more cookbooks to the list at the left. Those are still just the ones I use most frequently. I have 37 cookbooks at home, including a Marlboro Country cookbook that was in the aparment when Jeff moved in. Five more in the mail at the moment, a jillion more on my Amazon wishlist. I think it's excessive, but then I see the people on eGullet who have 867 cookbooks, or I can't find a decent matzo ball soup recipe, and I realize I'm just fine. Like the Just Chicken. Which we threw out yesterday- it was days old and no one wants Just Salmonella.

Last night I made spaghettini with sugo crudo from Forever Summer. Basically, blanched, peeled, cored and seeded tomatoes with a bit of sugar, a smashed garlic clove, salt, pepper and olive oil. Whisk together and let sit for half an hour and then stir into hot spaghettini. I used capellini, and honestly, don't know the difference. I actually dislike pasta, except for canneloni or manicotti or lasagne, which I really only like as vessels for ricotta. I made the spaghettini as a labor of love for Jeff, who ate all of his and took mine to work for lunch today. Apparently it was good. I was going to make asparagus with hollandaise, too, but I had no lemons and was absolutely exhausted, having worked until 7, so I did not.

Tonight, though I'm not leaving campus until 7 or 7:30 again, I have optimistically scheduled the somewhat labor intensive curry crusted scallops and ginger curry rice from A New Way To Cook, as well as ANWTC's steam-sauteed asparagus with five flavor oil. We'll see about that.

This weekend I'm baking bread- apparently Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone has bread recipes, and I think some homemade sandwich type wheat would be better than the supermarket stuff I've been having for breakfast. Once again, my kitchen for a KitchenAid. (Side note to Jeff and anyone else who may be planning to spend that kind of money on me for Christmas: All I really want is a KitchenAid. Any color but white. Thanks.)

I just wanted to report that I either got a)really crummy bell peppers or b)Jacques Pepin is insane. The peeled pepper was totally bitter and disgusting and I LOVE bell pepper. I'm eating an unpeeled pepper later today and will keep y'all posted.

Friday night, for real, I almost served pizza- to company, no less- made from TJ's premade dough. I've been that exhausted lately. I rallied Thursday, though, and made a batch of dough from scratch. I did use undoctored jarred marinara for the cheese pizza, and TJ's "Just Chicken" for the barbeque chicken pizza. (The leftover "Just Chicken" caused much hilarity this weekend. 'Hey, Jeff, what's that?' 'Oh, it's Just Chicken.' Well, okay, maybe hilarity to exactly two people. But anyway.) Still, the pizza was just fine. Just pizza.

Saturday Jeff went out to the Valley, so I conquered baking my own brioche. Conquered might be too strong of a word. Man, is brioche dough sticky. I used Jacques Pepin's technique, from his complete techniques, and doing it by hand convinced me what I want more than a food processor is a stand mixer. I've wanted a KitchenAid forever, but now I kind of covet the Maytag Atrezzi, although that picture makes it look three feet tall. Regardless. I will be liberated from kneading, someday.

I didn't have little brioche molds, so I used muffin tins. Even with the little tetes and slits I cut (I just used Jacques method for a giant brioche to make the little brioche) they looked like nothing more than corn muffins. Jeff got to me all day Sunday, talking about the muffins. "They're not muffins!" However, they tasted wonderful- no buttering necessary, that is for sure.

I made my own single girl dinner- catfish, with Konriko Greek Seasoning, in a grill pan. Shamelessly stolen, as are most of my new recipe ideas, from my friend T. I'm making the fish again for Jeff this week. So easy- just heat the grill pan, spray it with olive oil and rub the fish with Greek Seasoning. Grill until cooked through, turning once.

Sunday I went to the Hollywood Farmer's Market. I'm trying to eat five servings of veggies a day this week. That, plus the fact that the stupid Triathlon made the Farmer's Market difficult to get to and therefore less busy, causing me to feel guilty that the farmer's weren't selling as much, led to a bigger haul than usual. I bought three bunches of asparagus. Three! I'm preparing them all week- steam/sauteed with chinese five flavor oil, and then with brown butter and pecorino romano, two light techniques from A New Way To Cook. Then I'll have some with hollandaise, because I can.

I really like coming home from the farmer's market all laden down with flowers and eggs and produce. It feels good.

Yesterday I made Eggs Benedict again, with brioche instead of English muffins. A really good idea, that. Though I need to remember that toasting the bread should be the Last Thing to do, since otherwise it gets cold and what is the point of toasting it? I didn't cook any dinner last night, but did some prep for lunch/snacks today- made a salad dressing, the basic vinaigrette from Julia's Kitchen Wisdom, hardboiled some eggs, and peeled a raw bell pepper. Why on earth would one peel a raw bell pepper? Well, Jacques Pepin says in J&J Cooking at home that a bell pepper to be eaten raw is best peeled for digestion and taste. And he has pictures showing you how. It looks so easy, and I had my Oxo Good Grips peeler at the ready. It's not easy. Don't peel a raw pepper, unless you really want to. I haven't actually eaten the peeled pepper yet, so I'll let you know if it was remotely worth it.

So, on Wednesdays, I don't get home until 8 or so. The plan was for Jeff to start cooking dinner- this Wednesday, we had pizza. I let him preheat the oven and take the dough out of the fridge to reach room temperature.

Clearly, I have control issues. I don't let Jeff help much in the kitchen, because his kitchen temperament and my kitchen temperament do not mesh well. I need to come up with some simple dishes I can let him take on and let go. Suggestions welcome.

Last night I made the chicken tikka with spicy red onion relish from the Nigella column the day before- it proved my every other Nigella recipe theory. The last Nigella column, spareribs, a bust. The chicken? Delicious. Fortuitously, I had marinated three chicken breasts in the yogurt mixture (which I blended by placing a plate over the gap in my still-broken blender lid) in anticipation of having the third cold for lunch today. Fortuitously because a friend of mine came over bearing a free microwave, and how can you not offer dinner to someone giving you a microwave? You can't. I was nervous about the chicken, untested Nigella recipes being so iffy, but it was delicious. The relish, too.

Crazy weekend ahead- I think the only meal Jeff and I will even have together, besides dinner with friends tonight, is breakfast. Is it wrong to have Eggs Benedict three weekends in a row?

So here's my thing with A New Way to Cook. I think it's the greatest cookbook I've ever seen, and it has never no not once let me down... but. I still don't always trust it. I have yet to make Sally Schneider's macaroni and cheese because, c'mon. Rice cream? Or her mayonnaise. It involves tofu.

And while she's converted me to the tiny amount of butter actually required for slow cooked, tender caramelized onions, I sometimes double it or triple it anyway. And then kick myself, because there is no real difference in the end product. And I love her pastry dough. Sometimes I make it solely to force people to eat it and guess how much butter is in it. Practically none, really, but you would never know.

So the problem is clearly me. And last night, when we made her cold spicy sesame noodles, I had some high anxiety going on. First, it was the first time I'd done more than read approvingly the back sections of the book- the flavored oils, rubs and things that are really the key, I think, and yet have remained too much hassle for me to try. I made my own Chinese five flavor oil. And then used only one tablespoon of oil for the noodles. One tablespoon for four servings of noodles. This is madness, I thought, and wondered what I would do when the noodles came out disappointing. Run to TJ's and make sandwiches? Heat the frozen pear and gorgonzola pizza in the freezer? Call out for more bad Chinese?

I don't know why I put myself through this. The noodles were the best cold spicy sesame noodles I've ever had. Sally Schneider, why do I doubt thee?

First of all, this book is such sheer, unrestrained genius. Everyone should own it. You should buy it RIGHT NOW. I know I've already discussed it, but man.

Y'all know about my quest for the perfect Roast Chicken, right? I don't know why I spent all this time on a quest when Jacques Pepin has all the answers. I already knew to stuff garlic and herbs under the breast, and that high heat/small bird is the way to go, but who knew trussing would make such a difference? (Certainly not Cook's Illustrated, who had assured me that trussing would not make any difference at all.) I think it did, though. Trussing, and roasting on one side, then another, then breast side up. And the lying it breast side down after it has roasted, to let the juices flow back into the breast, is so obvious, but clearly not obvious enough, since I had never thought or read of it. And the glorious skin. I have never in my life made a roast chicken that was so golden brown all over.

(Though that may be also due to the butter- I am usually all about the olive oil, but as Julia says here , she likes to use butter because (she) thinks the chicken likes it, and (she) likes it too. And the chicken does like it. And if you're talking about eating chicken skin, worrying about the extra calories from butter seems a bit silly.)

So I am as close as I ever have been to roast chicken nirvana, and leap years ahead of where I was last. Jeff tore all the leftovers off the carcass in the kitchen, even. It was a three pound chicken, people.

Next time I'm trying the stuffing under the skin method Jacques gives here. I feel ready to advance beyond your basic roast chicken now.

(A side note: If you are not cutting up new potatoes and placing them under your chicken as it roasts, well, you are doing potatoes everywhere a disservice. It should be criminal to not roast potatoes this way, even.)

We went to La Super Rica when we were in Santa Barbara this weekend- it's rumored to be Julia Child's favorite taco stand. It was delicious, though I was a little disappointed Julia wasn't actually there. I really did think maybe she would be. Probably for the best, because I don't think Julia needs me blabbering over her hollandaise. And y'all know I would.