Froggy

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Happy Birthday to Me

Apparently I needed to try limes, so naturally I decided to ... make a pie.
Fun thing to do on your birthday, right?
Managed to make a graham cracker crust without eating half of it
Got a sufficient amount of lime zest to whisk into the egg yolk without sneezing into the food (lime zest is ... zesty), and whisked and whisked and whisked until "very fluffy."

Whisked in the condensed milk - it was oddly beautiful swirling it into the egg yolk, though I couldn't really get a picture while holding the camera with my neck

PIE.
I was informed that it needed meringue, and the pie left me with three egg whites, so after about three years of beating egg whites (at least I'd realized by then I probably shouldn't use the wire whisk) ... PIE.



Is good.

Clever Title Including the Word "Goat"

So, I was looking for goat meat sold locally.
I found exactly one place, the downtown farmer's market. They didn't have any at the time, but it was a start.
Miraculously, they have a website and keep it updated, so when I finally remembered to check back I learned that they not only had goat back in stock, but they were also having a bit of a craft event where you could make paper flowers, and an old friend would be in charge of it.
So that settled it, off to get my goat.

A bit pricey, more than beef but less than lamb.
I made a forum post asking what to do with it, since about all I ever make with lamb is stew or meatballs.
Most of the suggestions were goat curry, which I'll have to do next time, but I finally decided I didn't have the cash to get all the ingredients I was missing.

I decided I'd try goat tagine, since the meat would need to be cooked a while to soften up. All the recipes had prunes or dates. I do not care for prunes or dates. I wondered if I could substitute dried apricots, which I had on hand.
I searched "lamb tagine" instead of "goat tagine," and to my surprise, there was a recipe using apricots, right near the top of the page. I had all but two ingredients, so I ran off to get them and started cooking.

Browning the meat:

Adding the cilantro (I love cilantro so):

Dried apricots and golden raisins:
The recipe, from foodnetwork.com, had way too little liquid for my taste - a few extra cups of chicken broth fixed that

The finished product, with a hastily-made jumble of couscous and roasted red bell pepper.
So good. I love food.

Ice cream

Have you ever had Ben & Jerry's Mud Pie ice cream?

How about Milk & Cookies?

No?

DO IT.

Now.

Food, food, food....

I don't know why I try the Apricot Foldovers, the dough always drives me batty. Pie crust gives me enough trouble when it's *not* full of shredded cheese.

They were tasty, though:


The tiramisu was ... well, tiramisu, so it was divine:

Now I've got a cheesecake to eat my way through. Mmm. There's chocolate ganache between the filling and the crust. I had to use crushed walnuts in the crust instead of pecans, but you just can't ruin cheesecake.

It needs to get warmer out so I can stop baking.

Dragon's done!

Gaw, that took forever.

I was really going well for a while there....

...Then I got bored and stopped writing.
Not busy, my "busy" involves being on the computer most of the time anyway.

Anyhow.
Little cat, little cat is at the shelter - they're not very full, kitty should be able to stay a while.
Pity this place is no-pets, she looked pretty good in the recliner.

She's not out in the cold, though. She was only a kitten, she had ice in her fur the second time I found her and brought her in ... poor baby, how tiny must she have been a month ago when I first started seeing pawprints in the snow?

Okay. Other news.
Once more I insisted on making a recipe I cannot make. Apricot turnovers. Delicious, but stupid - when you put a cup of cheese in pie dough, weird things happen. They worked out, more or less, but only after a lot of muttering and threatening to just turn the whole batch into Cheez-its instead of bothering with this whole apricot filling nonsense.
But did I mention they're delicious?
Even when they're a boiling mess of sludgy apricot magma oozing through cheesy fissures in a far-from-triangular glob of crust.

Made more chicken Parmesan to reassure myself that the basics of cooking food (dip this, mix that, put in pan, stick in oven) have not been lost to me.

Tomorrow is tiramisu. I have a feeling I may have to make more chicken Parmesan soon.