The weather is not worse, however. It seems to me that there is always a stretch at the beginning of February where the temperature gets warmer and you are led into a false hope that spring is just around the corner. The daffodils begin to pop up out of the ground and you just can't help but feel excited for spring.
Last week was a week of cloudless skies and sunshine; the temperature even rose above 50 degrees some days. Try as I might to remind myself that this was fleeting and that the rest of February would be a colossal disappointment, I was drawn in once again. When the rain returned on Tuesday evening, it was as if the world ended.
The turning of the weather brought a wave of bad tidings. I gave my first exam in one of my classes that evening; this did not go well. The bad tiding continued on through Wednesday and came to a crescendo on Thursday morning after too little sleep and two days of 12 to 14 hours of work.
Yes. I would like some cheese with my w(h)ine.
This week is the week of whining. It is the week of feeling like you have not made much of your existence. It is the week when hope fades with the fading sunlight.
It sounds dramatic, but I know more than a few people living in this city that completely agree with me.
We are all drawn in, we all fall flat on our faces, and we all pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep moving forward.
Weeks like this are part of why I cook. Cooking is a singular activity. Only I rely on my cooking and only I suffer from my failures (well, Patrick does too, but he has a high threshold for bad food). Over the week, whilst coping with the returning gloom, I gathered recipes as an escapism. These recipes now include Garlic Potato Chips, Oatmeal Almond Thumbprint Cookies, Candied Lemon Peel, and Pasta Carbonara with Leeks and Lemon. Two of these recipes are not gluten free, but I believe I have finally reached a point in my cooking without the use of glutinous ingredients where I can alter just about any recipe to be both gluten free and palatable. After a week of mistakes, something I can feel proud of is welcomed.
While I haven't made any of these recipes, one of them requires a back story: the thumbprint cookies.
As you are aware, I didn't update my blog last weekend. This wasn't for any particularly good reason, it just never happened. On Sunday, however, I had my first experience with canning. The process of canning is actually terribly simple if you have all the right tools.
Patrick and I had an over abundance of pears from our box. For whatever reason, these move more slowly than apples and they subsequently go bad quite often. A couple months ago I attempted a caramelized pear up-side-down cake that took forever to cook (and never really did completely). Since then I have found many pear recipes, but have lacked the desire to deal with the fickle fruit. The only other recipe I mostly managed was a pear and apple pie with a crumb topping. This turned out deliciously, but the peeler-corer-slicer that I purchased was brutal on the pears.
As a result, the bowl of pears sat until I finally decided to tell my friend Brie that I wanted to make and can pear butter. Why Brie? Because Brie has all the tools to make canning simple (and because she appreciates cooking in a similar way that I do).
Saturday evening I set about making the pear butter that Brie and I planned to can the next day. I took some photos, but missed a very large part of the cooking/canning process, as you will see below:
Its like magic.
Magic that took several hours of cooking down those pears after they had been put through a food mill to remove the skins, stems, and seeds. Not to mention the fact that you completely missed the process of sterilizing the jars and lids to make the pear butter shelf stable.
Regardless, the result is delicious. If you noticed the lemon photo, you might guess that this butter (which is just a term to refer to its consistency - somewhere between sauce and preserves - but has no real butter in it) has a tartness that is well complemented by the subtlety of the cardamom, ginger, and anise. We have 8 jars of magical pear butter now.
So what does this have to do with the thumbprint cookies? I intend to use it to fill the thumbprint, of course!
You may also see from above where the candied lemon peel idea came from.
Make the most of the February blues in your kitchen as this winter comes to a close!
