Addicted

 I'm addicted.

To cooking shows.

This morning, on DABL, one of the off channels I get from the antenna, I couldn't stop watching Jaimie's 30 Minute Meals.   

I tried frantically to remember some of the recipes I want to replicate, in my own not as good as Jamie can cooking.

I could not wrench myself away until his show turned into the 60 Minute Makeover show.  I don't like that one so much.   They makeover a home for someone worthy in 60 minutes of pure chaos.

Check out Jamie's 30 minute meal recipes here, if you like.

I was making a mental list of ingredients I'd need and don't have for some of the salads, especially, like his green goddess dressing, to overtop a chicory salad topped with lightly fried capers.

Finally I thought better of a mental list and began writing down my list.

I really meant to then take off to the store, but I was roasting two beets already, to shred for his beet root salad.  The beet root is shredded with chopped parsley and topped with feta cheese and looked delicious.  No, I don't have any fresh parsley or feta cheese either.

I refrigerated the baked beets then, after removing their skins.  I'll make that for tomorrow.

He was making delicious desserts with Creme Fraiche, which I thought was the same as sour cream but its not quite the same.  I read that I can make some easily enough if I get heavy cream and put some cultured buttermilk in it and leave it out for a day.

He made this stone fruit dessert, with all sorts of halved stone fruits, mixed in with vanilla, sugar, cinnamon and brandy.  He baked that in the oven until the fruits were soft and the syrup from their juice and the brandy-sweet!  That was to be served with vanilla ice cream.   

He made a great point about the stone fruits.  When you get them at a store or stand and they're just too tart really to eat raw, and you're upset over that, you can always grill them and bring out their flavors while adding some of your own, including sweetness to counter the tartness.

He made a a dessert mixing sugar and vanilla into creme Fraishe, then layering it with fresh berries, pulverized ginger wafers and chocolate shavings he knifed off the top of a chocolate bar.

I settled for a lunch of steamed beet greens, kale and pieces of fresh chopped purple onion.  I got the onions at the grocery outlet.  The whole bag of them was $1.49.  The clerk said they were trying to get rid of an overstock and that's why they were so cheap.   I said I don't think I can eat a bag of onions before some go bad but I bought it because it was cheap and thought I'll look up everything you could make with red onions.  But these are the sweetest tangiest onions you could imagine and work almost like the tang and crunch of pickles in a salad or sandwich or in an egg salad sandwich.

And then, full of 30 minute meal confidence, I made vanilla pudding.  I had no whole milk for it, so I used a combo of canned evaporated milk and almond milk and my last two eggs.  Good riddance to those.  I had bought half dozen eggs awhile back and its taken me til they're almost bad to eat them.  I used them in egg salad sandwiches and now the vanilla pudding.

You can tell if an egg is bad or good by submerging it in water.  If it floats off the bottom its bad.

We're back to full on winter weather here.  Pity the farmers.  Things were trying to grow and now I suppose they've given up.  The tulips and daffodils have withered beneath snow, hail or are pounded down to ground level by heavy rain.  

Ok, another half hour maybe, and my pudding will be chilled enough to eat.   

And maybe the house makeover show will have given way to more cooking shows.