Les Bonnes Choses

I like lobster, however I seldom eat it. There are two reasons for that: expense, and the fact that Rebecca doesn't like any invertebrate seafood. I can't do much about the second factor, however it appears that the first factor has been mitigated somewhat by an oversupply of PEI lobster. Now that I think about it, the last time I had lobster, it was in PEI. That was about 8 or 9 years ago. Wow. Next time I'm at Sunripe, my new favourite store, I'm going to look into it. It might be worth making two dinners one night.

I failed at pizza. The other day I used a pizza kit to try to make a 'homemade' pizza. The kit, I believe produced by Kraft, contained a pizza dough flour mix (just add water and let it rise), tomato sauce, some dried herbs (just oregano, I think) and Parmesan cheese. I've tried to make a pizza crust from scratch before. I sucked then too. I can make the dough well enough. My problem is in taking the ball of risen dough and turning it into a pizza crust. I can't make a round flat crust without overworking the dough, which I think undoes the rising process by pressing all the CO2 out. I can't get the crust uniformly thick, either. Instead I get some spots that are way too thick, and others that are thin to the point of becoming holes. It's all very frustrating, and nothing like I must have learned from television in my childhood with the throwing spinning disks of dough into the air. On one hand, I could avoid all that frustration by giving up and just buying the ready-made crusts from the store. But then I'd never learn how to do it, and it bugs me that I can't figure it out. If anyone can show me how to make a proper pizza crust, I'd be happy to apprentice.

Speaking as a geek, and as someone who has made excessively elabourate cakes, I can appreciate how awesome this birthday must have been for the celebrant who got this cake:



However, if you check out the rest of the flikr images associated with the cake, you might wonder whether the birthday boy and his friends realize they have allowed themselves to become caricatures.

In response to the avalanche of interest I have received regarding my drained yogurt experiment, I feel I must follow up. I have also abandoned my dissertation and have begun work on my first book, which will be part travelogue and part cookbook, called The Princess Dairies - I plan on touring and developing yogurt recipes inspired by famous European castles.

How did the drained yogurt fare as a spread? I sacrificed about a tablespoon of the yogurt from my 'tzatziki stock', mashed in some coarsely chopped strawberries and some sugar, and spread it on a piece of toast. It had a bit of a tangy zing, owing to the fact that yogurt is a bit more acidic than cream cheese, but I didn't mind. I thought it tasted pretty good and would try it again. But first, I have to make the tzatziki. This is the recipe I will be using, which I cribbed from elsewhere on the internet:

* 3 cups regular plain yogurt, drained as described in my previous entry
* juice of one lemon
* 1 garlic clove, chopped
* 2 medium cucumbers, seeded and diced
* 1 tbsp kosher salt for salting cucumbers
* 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
* Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Peel cucumbers, then cut in half lengthwise and take a small spoon and scrape out seeds. Discard seeds. (If you use the small seedless or European cucumbers with few seeds, you can skip this step.) Dice cucumbers, then put in a colander, sprinkle on 1 tbsp salt and let stand for 30 minutes to draw out water. Drain well and wipe dry with paper towel.

In food processor with steel blade, add cucumbers, garlic, lemon juice, dill, and a few grinds of black pepper. Process until well blended, then stir this mixture into the yogurt. Taste before adding any extra salt, then salt if needed. Place in refrigerator for at least two hours before serving so flavors can blend.

Every now and again, I like to grace my readers — both of them — with a helpful tip, because I feel it is important for everyone to live as blissfully as do I. I presently have about 500 ml of plain yogurt draining in a cheesecloth-lined colander in the refrigerator in preparation to make some tzatziki. As it sits in the colander overnight, all the whey drains out of the yogurt, so that it has become about the consistency of cream cheese. Because it is easy to find yogurt in all denominations of fat content, one might be able to use it as a spread in place of cream cheese if one would like to have finer control over their fat intake (also note that, as the fat content of dairy decreases, its proportion of protein increases).

I still plan on making tzatziki, so I won't be able to try this any time before my next trip to the grocery store, but I think that 1 container of drained yogurt either coarsely blended with strawberries and sugar, or else with minced garlic and dill might make for a good bagel spread. If I get around to trying this, I'll have to remember to post an update with my findings. If either of my readers beats me to it, reply with a comment to let me know how it turned out. Remember to save the cheesecloth, as it can be washed and reused.

When this gets imported into facebook, I'm going to tag a bunch of people that I think might be interested in trying this out. It's also part of my master plan to triple my readership!

Reader John writes in from Maryland today to alert me to the following research, which contradicts my previous statement on the amazingness of grapefruit:

(Source: http://xkcd.com/388/)
Clearly, according to these data, grapefruit does not compare favourably to most other fruits. Fortunately, I have a powerful, dedicated quad-core computer available to run the statistics, so I will begin a cluster analysis of various produce on these and other dimensions to see if I can account for these results.

Thank you John for writing in. Because your email was selected from the hundreds of emails we receive here at Les Bonnes Choses each week, you will be receiving the official Les Bonnes Choses tee-shirt in the post.

For the last few weeks -- let's say month and a half -- I have been on a grapefruit kick. I can't get enough of the things. Fortunately, Rebecca usually peels and defleshes (the underlines from Firefox's spellchecker¹ is suggesting that defleshes is not a word) the segments, leaving behind only the good stuff. We have progressed from eating six to eating eight grapefruits in a week. I'd say I was on a grapefruit diet, except it would be completely untrue.

Fancy sidenote: when you have a plastic container full of grapefruit sections, it fills up at the bottom with grapefruit juice. I discovered that fresh grapefruit juice makes for a nice martini-ish type drink. This evening I mixed:
2 oz of some random Christmas gift exchange Japanese vodka-like alcohol (I'll have to ask Kaz what it was)
1 oz of Triple Sec
8 oz of grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed from some grapefruits that were not satisfactory for eating, but fine for juice
Had I only added a splash of lemon juice (or maybe peel for garnish?) then the drink would have been like marmalade.

Before I hit the publish post button, I realized I should also add that I made the drink to share with Rebecca. I am not a lush.

Finally, I would like to investigate this peanut butter and cheerios phenomenon that Miranda claims is il fait du yum. I am skeptical, but want to know more so I can give a justified opinion.

¹The spellchecker also claims that spellchecker is not a word.