Wrapping stocking presents and making peppermint meringues

Mountain Lemons

Lemon harvest. Lymon the Lemon has been doing so much better in Colorado than California!

Not having to buy a new oven: score one for renters.

Yeah, that's right. RED mustard. It's cranberry mustard from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving book.

This was today's project while waiting for the building maintenance guy to come by and fix our broken oven. This is now the last thing the current oven/stove will ever produce. Apparently all the wiring in back is melted together in a giant nasty electrical mess. Great... At least we didn't burn the building down. A new oven is being ordered and should be installed tomorrow.

I bought a similar product a while back, 'wichcraft cranberry-apricot chutney. It retails for a comical $14.oo, but I got it on sale after the holidays for about $3.50. I'm thinking my homemade version is better. The 'wichcraft is cloyingly sweet and the mustard seeds aren't ground up so they get stuck in your teeth. My version is a lot less sweet and the allspice makes it more savory.

Left: The allspice, ground mustard, and sugar waiting to go into the simmering pot of cranberry (leftover and frozen from Thanksgiving) and ground mustard seeds.

I'm planning on using it on turkey sandwiches as a combination cranberry sauce/mustard deal.

Flakey cheese-filled triangles with herbs = YUM!

Phyllo dough... Where to start...

This is the first time I've used phyllo dough. I've always been a bit intimidated by it due to the extra instructions regarding how to keep it from drying out. (I'm in Colorado, everything dries out in a matter of seconds.)

It turns out that phyllo isn't hard to work with at all. It's just shoot-

yourself-in-the-head tedious: remove damp cloth from pile of phyllo, take one strip, re-cover pile, brush with butter, remove damp cloth from pile of phyllo, take another strip, re-cover pile, brush with butter, repeat...

After folding up the first one, I decided I'd already had enough of the project and that I wanted to be done. The 3-inch strips of phyllo became 5-inch strips and the teaspoon of cheese filling became a heaping tablespoon.

I have endless patience for some repetitive tasks, but this was not one of them. I could easily imagine some chubby Food Network chef saying, "this is a great project to get your kids involved in the kitchen!" Um, only if you want to your kids to hate you...

I was ready to chuck the remaining phyllo in the trash, but Aaron rescued it a few seconds before it entered the panda's mouth. (The kitchen trashcan is shaped like a panda.) He's going to try making baklava over the weekend.

Despite all the whining, the cheese triangles turned out great and were delicious. The herbs (mint, dill, parsley, chives) and pine nuts helped make the feta cheese seem very light. And despite all the whining, I'll probably make these again. Just not for several months.

The recipe is from, From Tapas to Meze, by Joanne Weir. There is tons of herb chopping in each recipe, but this is one of the best cookbooks ever.

Thank you, Erica!

Homemade tomato soup from a recipe inside of my head and mini-grilled cheeses on seeded baguette. Yum.

And a special "Thank You!" to Erica for giving me the soup and sandwich plates for Christmas last year. (Or was it my birthday? I forget.)

From deck to table

My jalapeno plant has been working hard. Despite the cloudy and rainy weather, it has made four baby jalapenos, one of which went overlooked for long enough that it turned red. Due to their diminutive (one inch) size, they became a garnish for tonight's green curry.

In their garnish state next to some Thai basil.

Yummy Thai green curry with eggplant and tofu.

Mini-footballs

This evening I set about making some hard boiled eggs. Most people would call them "Easter Eggs", but those of you that have spent lunchtime with me over the past few years know that died eggs show up year round.

The box of egg dye comes with nine colors, three of which do not require vinegar to fully dissolve. These three colors are quite nice: strawberry, pink, and purple. The dye pellets are divided into two pouches, one with three, the other with six. I naturally assumed that the pack of three contained strawberry, pink, and purple. Not so. It has brown, green, and some other color I haven't tried.

Brown? Really? They sell brown eggs at the market, why would I pay money for a dye pellet and then invest time in dying an egg when I can purchase in a pack of a dozen? I am pretty pleased with how they turned out; I have three mini-footballs. However, I would have been even more pleased if they were one of the other colors in the dye box.

On a different note, I have been working for the past three weeks. Upon starting, I commented to Aaron that my unemployed days were filled with Sponge Bob and Rachel Ray and that I was unlikely to encounter such cheerful and optimistic people at work. Unfortunately I was right. However, the job is temporary so I'll be back to days filled with Sponge Bob and Patrick Star at the end of May.