Wednesday, November 24, 2004

well, shoot

Drove all the way up to Phoenix this morning and met with my surgeon -- he said the magic words, "You never have to see me again," hooray! -- and then went for my scan. Except the tech stopped after only half-an-hour to tell me that I have to come back in a week or so, because there is still so much RAI left in my neck that it is giving off a glow like NYC on the Eastern Seaboard -- you can't really make out much of what's going on in there, it's just too bright. So I'm rescheduled for Friday next, 9AM. I asked about distant metastases, but it wasn't clear whether or not they really even looked for them.

So, while I was in the surgeon's waiting room, I copied out a recipe from the November issue of Gourmet magazine for Cranberry Eggnog tart, which looked beautiful and sounded delicious. I knew I had all the ingredients on hand so I was crazy and made it this afternoon, along with the pumpkin pie and the cranberry sauce for tomorrow. (Both the pumpkin pie and the cranberry tart were made with Dana Carpender's pecan praline crust -- it's very tasty, but I think I'll do some tweaking for next time.) The apple pie is finishing off in the oven right now. My first run making the pie crust with organic shortening -- it worked up beautiful. Then again, I had the idea to roll out the dough on my silpat (silicone baking mat) and that worked like a dream. Should give nice flaky crust, it needed so little "work".

We also dried the bread for the stuffing, too. That leaves just the green beans, assembling the stuffing, and cleaning the turkey as prep work, and the turkey I will do when I'm finished here... the g.b.s can wait until tomorrow, they're easy, and so for that matter is putting the stuffing together -- no big deal, especially with the food processor doing all the chopping.

The lasagna was a big success, at least with the grownups. The kids, as I knew, wouldn't go near it. They enjoyed their bread, though. Lasagna, bread, salad. Great meal. I whipped some cream and DD ate pumpkin custard (leftover filling; I only have 9-inch pie plates, and the recipe was for a 10-inch pie, so I put the extra into custard cups) and whipped cream for dessert. She enjoyed it so much the boys asked for same, and since there were 3 custard cups, it was not a problem... except they don't really like the custard, they just like the whipped cream! Silly boys.

The cranberry eggnog tart tasted as good as it looked (and it looked quite pretty), and it was actually nice and light, lighter than I expected. I'm not "saving" anything for any particular time -- it's all fair game as far as I'm concerned: you want to eat it, eat it. Hee! better the stuff get eaten than go to waste...

The kids watched HP3 today while I was cooking, so I got to watch/listen, too. I'm still looking forward to really watching it attentively one of these days.

I am too tired to think, but happy that all the food has been yummy so far.
Tomorrow, just a little more cooking and then basically no cooking until the food runs out, which won't be for several days. Hee!

I'm happy right now just thinking: pie for breakfast! pie for breakfast! pie for breakfast!

I'm going to have a slice of each, and a cup of coffee. Sounds divine, hmmm?

No comments: