Cooking Adventures

My mom runs a cooking forum called Cook’s Talk. My alias on there is the “AntiCook”, because really, I don’t cook, while my mom is a self-taught chef. So, on this forum, her handle, “Madmom” has become an verb — to “madmom a recipe” is to improvise on it (when you may not have the ingredients called for). Now, I have become an adjective — something can be “Michele easy”, meaning that it is such an easy recipe that it ranks right up there with boiling water.

One of the members posted a video for a dessert and said it was “Michele easy” and looked nice. So, obviously, I had to try to make this and see if it really was worthy of being called “Michele easy”. We might have to change it to “Anticook easy” just because it looks weird to have my name up there.

Because of limited space, the photos are on Flickr, but I’ll give you a running commentary here. In addition, here is a picture of the finished product (spoiler alert! they turned out delicious and pretty!)

Ta-da!

First off, I unrolled the dough too early, so it thawed a bit crackly. Added some moisture and tried to roll it out. My mother practically wet her pants laughing at all the ways that went wrong.

Eventually got it rolled out in to some semblance of something that I could cut six strips from.

Then, when getting the apricot preserves ready, my mom said it was a cup of water to add to it. So I did. “This doesn’t look right” I says. She double checks the recipe, “Oh, it’s two tablespoons.” Derp. Since you can’t really separate the preserves from the water, we brought in a substitute…strawberry!

Oh, the apples. I butchered those seven ways from Sunday. It was a struggle to find enough halves that would work. But the mandolin functioned beautifully, and I even remembered to wear the protective glove so I didn’t slice my fingers like SOME people tend to do.

I had to put up with my mother chortling through the entire construction process. She’s such an elitist.

I finished making them (a bit sloppily, I’m afraid), and popped them in the oven, and they were very delicious! So nyah.

It’s been sort of dreary here lately, temps in the low single digits, along with rain and some sleet. I did see a rainbow the other day, but the pictures barely came out.

Other than that, life has settled in to a routine, although that’s all about the change – -trips to Greece and Italy are planned, plus my youngest daughter and her friend will be here in about a month! So excited!