Hello Everybody

[xifeng]

Dear Ginger People: Plz don't sue me, I just love your mascot and I couldn't resist.

We had an unexpected visitor for Halloween! I've already told duokinneas about this, but we had a bat come by and hang upside-down from the eaves on the house. (Our house already looks kind of like the house from The Amityville Horror, or so I'm told by the neighbors.) The kids were so delighted by him that they almost forgot to collect treats.

I thought I was done bleeding for a while, but I'm not. My doctor and I are having words about this come my next physical. Seriously, I have no objections to bleeding as appropriate, but this is starting to veer into the realm of the absurd. (lol I can haz hysterectomy nau and not in another 20 years?) Other than this, though, I still really like Depo and will probably stay on it because I have no intentions of ever again becoming a psychotic hosebeast like I was on OrthoEvra.

However, I still really want pancakes and may get some when I get paid next. Because sometimes you just want pancakes that you don't have to make.

ALSO: I was hyperproductive on Tuesday and made pumpkin crème brûlée as a treat for the lolmom. (You may recall the ongoing thing re: pumpkin.) I then went on to make lunch (I goaded lolmom into making the porkchops, because I fear making porkchops and I don't want to cook porkchops like my grandmother), and it was nice to, you know, have an actual meal. (The brûlée was not ready to eat by the time lolmom left to vote and get to work, so was consumed later.)

Here, have some cooking photojournalism! As ever, ask and the recipe shall be yours. (Note to forgottensanity: I haven't forgotten about your request for coconut cream. I'll look it out this afternoon. Still no luck on finding a pumpkin pie recipe that I might want to eat; I keep meaning to dig out Grandma's, but I don't know if we have it.)




So you mix together sugar and pumpkin and spice and vanilla and eggs and so on and beat them with the wire whisk attachment on your KitchenAid or other mixer, because it is exponentially less tedious than hand-beating them. (You seriously need a KitchenAid, though. Yes, I am a corporate shill today. Speaking of, Domino Sugar is following me on Twitter for some reason, even though I don't even use Domino most of the time.)


Then you fill your ramekins (we only have four ramekins proper, so Pyrex dessert cups have had to do for the rest), stick 'em on a baking sheet, and stick 'em in the oven for 35 minutes.


Let them cook on a wire rack for about half an hour, and then stick them in the fridge for 4 hours and do something productive elsewhere. As fair warning, the centers of my custards sank a little bit after 4 hours in the fridge.


Time for the brûlée part of crème brûlée! Yay! :D The recipe calls for the use of a sieve to press the brown sugar on top of the custards, but I really don't have a sieve that small, so I just used my (clean) fingers. You then stick the sugar-topped custards under the broiler for three or four minutes. I really think a brûlée torch is necessary in order to get the crisp sugary crust we associate with crème brûlée, but most people don't have one (myself included, because first of all I shouldn't be eating crème brûlée all the time, and also for some reason the lolmom does not trust me with fire).


PROFIT!!!!

Also, have a bonus picture of our haul from the CSA last weekend:


Not shown: The rest of the produce. We actually hit around freezing temperatures that Friday night, so I think they harvested everything that was ready to go in order to keep it from dying of frost. L2R: Bok choy, turnips, I think that's a cucumber, kale, zucchini, yellow squash, Napa cabbage. Not shown: green tomatoes.


I am off today and plan to write and make lasagna for lunch and screw around and do absolutely nothing productive. :D

Comments

[forgottensanity.livejournal.com]

Your harvest shot looks awesome. Can you actually manage to eat all of that veg before it starts to go dull?

I love crème brûlée, but then again what normal person doesn't? I'll definitely have to get a brûlée torch at one point, I just need an occasion to make crème brûlée first in order to convince the Boyfriend that we need one.

Maybe next year I'll have time to go pumpkin crazy and try all sorts of different recipes, because the only pumpkin I've tried was in a pie, so my knowledge of it is limited. What sort of spices do you typically use with pumpkin? I've used cinnamon and nutmeg. I've seen ginger in recipes as well, but I don't like ginger so never use it.

[shake-the-stars.livejournal.com]

I was overjoyed when I saw it! The CSA dispenses a LOT of produce, so I don't know if we'll be able to eat it all before it goes bad, but we're going to give it a good shot. We already ate the green beans (not pictured) and have nefarious plans for the zucchini (incorporation into a pie, most likely) and bok choy (consumption in chicken chow mein). Kale actually lasts quite a while in the fridge, but we're going to do another round of a salad we had over the summer which was really good. Oh, and I didn't mention that we also had some radishes and lettuce, too, so we're probably going to make another corn-and-radish-and-avocado salad like we had in the spring. :D

Crème brûlée is THE SHIT. It is one of my favorite desserts ever (the others being Key lime pie and tiramisu). :9 EVERY occasion is an appropriate one on which to serve crème brûlée! :D

Pumpkin bread is always good, and so is pumpkin cake (I was always one for the grotesqueries of life, and I used to think of it as "earwax cake" as a kid, because, while it was delicious, it was also orange and sticky). There's something called "pumpkin pie spice" here, which I imagine is a mix of various spices, but we don't buy it since we have some imagination. XD Cinnamon and nutmeg both work well; I like ginger, so I use a little bit, but if it's not your thing omit it. Cloves also work combined with the cinnamon and nutmeg (I find 3 shakes of each is about right), and allspice might also be good though we have none at present so I can't report back on it just yet.