Monday, January 09, 2012

this river is wild

I'm going to bed before 11:30pm (I swear), since I got less than six hours of sleep last night and need to wake up at seven to make it down to Palo Alto to train with Alyssa. She asked if I could train two hours earlier than usual, which I acquiesced to at the moment and am now thoroughly regretting. But, theoretically that means that I can start writing earlier in the day, which is a good and v. necessary thing; in reality, it probably means that I'll be surly all afternoon and may need to take a nap.

Anyway, this morning got off to a slightly sour note. In my continued quest to adapt to a gluten-free life (which I have flung myself into wholeheartedly, particularly now that I've noticed a correlation between the hives that I had three or four times a week and gluten -- who knew that not having hives was so normal and wonderful?), I've been eager to explore the world of gluten-free baking, and so I rather rashly and madly decided to make two baked goods for brunch rather than sticking to my tried and true recipes. First on the list was quiche; I love quiche, and wanted to experiment with pie crust. However, the pie crust never came together -- it basically stayed the consistency of flour, and while I could sort of mash it all together into something resembling a crust, it would fall back into the flours from which it came as soon as I tried to move it. I eventually grew so disgusted that I dumped it in the trash as a lost cause and made a crustless quiche instead, which is more en vogue anyway.

As it turns out, the crustless quiche was amazingly delicious, and I wished I'd made two just so I would have leftovers this week. You can get the recipe for the filling here - I cut the mushrooms and added a leek, since Terry doesn't like mushrooms, and I also cut the goat cheese and doubled the gruyere, since Katrina can't eat goat cheese. So basically, I think you could really add/do anything you want with this, within reason; I think it would be awesome with some ham or proscuitto in it, or even salmon, which I may have to try sometime soon since I can no longer eat my beloved quiche at Samovar. I can't vouch for the crust on this recipe, since I didn't try to make it, but if you do make the crust, may you have better fortune than I did with the gluten-free recipe I tried.

After popping the quiche in the oven, I took a v. abbreviated shower, then mixed up a batch of blueberry muffins. These were a substantially better experiment; I used fresh blueberries, and they came out pretty awesomely, if I do say so myself. As I was mixing, my guests started to arrive, but luckily I was able to get the muffins in the oven so that we could eat the quiche while the muffins cooked. They seemed to like the food, even though it was a far less bountiful spread than what I put out last weekend -- I think they'll survive, though.

So we ate brunch and discussed SWAMPLANDIA!, which yielded one of the better discussions we've had, albeit a much more depressing one since it turns out that the book, while v. well-written and wry and funny, etc., wasn't exactly a feel-good story. That's what I get for choosing books based solely because they sound like my name. Seriously, though, it showed up on a lot of best-of lists for 2011, and I can see why; the writing was gorgeous, even if the story was sometimes much bleaker than one would expect given the surface humor. So I would recommend it, with reservations, given that several of us admitted that we probably would have stopped reading at some point in the middle if we hadn't had to finish it for book club.

After we were done, Subz and Terry both left, and Katrina, Chandlord and I sat around the living room drinking coffee and being utterly lazy. Then we all piled into Chandlord's car and went to Cost Plus and Trader Joe's, where I bought a lunch bag and little lunch containers (in which to carry food and snacks to Palo Alto for my long slogs at the library), and zucchini and corn tortillas, before coming home and parting ways with my friends. Then I called my parents, who caught me up on all the goings-on at the caucuses this past week, which I wish I could have attended. Post parents, I cleaned up the kitchen from this morning, made myself some steak tacos (yum), watched a bit of "Modern Family" while eating, and then came upstairs and read another book.

I should be writing, but at least I recognized that I couldn't write with SWAMPLANDIA! still flooding through my system, and so I avoided using the internet as anaesthetic and read a book instead. Tonight's pick was SOLSTICE WOOD by Patricia A. McKillip, and I of course went through it in one go, falling deeply and effortlessly into it without really wanting or needing to pull myself out. It was lovely, straightforward, and exactly what I needed as a palate cleanser, even though it continued the themes I've been reading recently (and am always drawn to) of people trapped between two worlds -- a theme that I shall not dwell upon now. Instead, I must sleep so that I can go to the gym tomorrow -- goodnight!

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