dud

I have a lot of cookbooks, but I rarely use any of them. I have recipes bookmarked with post-its, but that doesn't really do any good when I have so many more bookmarked online that I can access with a click of my mouse. So, in an effort to give my cookbooks the attention they deserve, last Sunday, in a fit of boredom, I decided to index the recipes I'd bookmarked in an excel spreadsheet. Separate worksheets for each category. I was quite proud of my productivity, and I came across some very yummy-looking dishes that I'd completely forgotten about.

This one, though, was a disappointment, through and through. It's from Ellie Krieger's The Food You Crave. I didn't have any lowfat buttermilk so I replaced it with skim milk soured with cider vinegar, and added a tiny bit of melted butter. Aside from that I made the recipe as written but the batter came out thin and the resulting pancakes were flat and limp. They didn't even have a good flavor. I think I'll stick with my oatmeal pancake recipe.

I'm alone in the house for a few days (well, not if you count the pup) while Matt's in Tokyo, which means I'm restless. A hankering for chocolate cake led me to try out this maple syrup sweetened Basic Chocolate Cake recipe. I kinda ruined it with modifications, I think. I replaced some of the flour with coconut flour and used rice milk instead of coconut milk. The result was dense, fudgy, and not too sweet, with a hint of maple flavor that I wasn't really crazy about. Oh well.

It's bound to happen once in a while, right? A total dud. The worst part was that I was really hungry, so the bowl-full I did have was forced down.

It was bland, the greens were over-cooked, and the chicken was dry. I added more salt and pepper, but that just made it taste like salt and pepper.

Here's the recipe anyway, just to remind me what not to do next time.


» Recipe for Dijon Chicken Soup

This is a dish that definitely has potential, but it certainly failed tonight. The main problem was that I couldn't use soy sauce because it's not gluten free. I tried to make up for it by using sesame oil and a little fresh lemon juice, among other things, but I had the feeling all along that it was not going to be great. Oh well. At least I was only feeding myself.