Tail End of Winter

Well, I believe I've covered my neighbors here, haven't I? They're an odd assortment with an unfortunate habit of turning up in the same place I am, and the funny thing is, being unfriendly doesn't do a thing to discourage them. They include people who come and go at strange hours; talkative folk who have rap sessions in the parking lot in the middle of the night (sometimes when it's freezing); pseudo punks (who wouldn't know rock music if it rolled them into a muddy ditch); and an amazingly heavy-footed upstairs socialite who always seems to have it "all going on." She now seems to be styling herself a special agent, since she was wearing a trench coat when last seen.

Personally, I spend my days cooking and cleaning when I'm not job hunting, which makes me sound more boring than I am. I am actually a well-rounded person, decent conversationalist, and good human being, but I'd rather not cast my pearls before swine. This is not out of snobbery but rather out of a sense of self-preservation; there's no telling what you might step into if you so much as put your nose one-eighth of an inch in the wrong direction around here. And it used to seem like such a nice neighborhood!

Speaking of cooking, I don't think I mentioned the brownies I made last week, but they were really dee-lish, even though I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I had a couple of egg whites that I needed to use up, and the recipe calls for three, so I added a whole egg for the third one. They rose a little higher than they normally do, but that was great--"more" rarely being a problem when it comes to brownies, as you'll no doubt agree. Once those were gone, I made sugar cookies, and the only hitch there was that I was washing dishes while the last batch was baking, got distracted, and left them in too long. However, I only had to throw away two, as the rest were salvageable, if a bit crunchy. I'm eating the well-done ones first and put the "pretty ones" in the freezer. I have a lot left, and since I used my special cookie molds, they are all in fun shapes, hearts and Easter eggs. But the neighbors are not getting any of them.

I also made soup with tomatoes, kale, and chicken stock, but I had cleaned out a lot of magazines during my winter housecleaning surge and no longer had the recipe, so it wasn't the way I remembered it. I think I must have originally adapted the recipe to my own use because the one I found online that seemed most similar to it called for chicken, and I don't think I've ever made it that way. (There were some decent recipes in some of those magazines, but I had gotten tired of looking at them.) I always used sausage for this soup, but this time, I used leftover meatballs, and I think that made a difference, too. The meatballs were too dry to flavor the broth properly.

Today I baked bread. I had a feeling I might be low on flour, and I was. I had five cups, so I substituted ground flax seed for the sixth cup. (I have sometimes used oatmeal to round out a loaf, but the only oats I have right now are fancy Irish steel-cut ones that cost about $6 and are too expensive to use in lieu of flour.) I had to forgo kneading, as the dough was too sticky, so it went directly into the bread pans to rise. I couldn't even punch it down midway through rising because it struck to my knuckles when I tried it. So into the oven it went, and it came out of the pans cleanly half an hour later, though definitely browner and denser than it usually is. I ate some while waiting for my soup to heat up, and I've got to say, that is some healthy-tasting bread. It's got a slightly nutty flavor and is good on its own but would also make a good sandwich, I believe. However, I still prefer my average homemade white bread.

And that's about all I have to say this week. I feel that I should try to do something for St. Patrick's Day, but it will probably end up amounting to a bowl of Irish oatmeal for breakfast. I don't have a shamrock cookie mold, I'm not a fan of corned beef and cabbage, and the only time I tried to make boxty I was disappointed. I used to make a pretty good bread pudding from scratch, but I've already got cookies, as previously discussed. One dessert at a time, that's my motto.