falling into....

having great luck with my braises and stews book. tonight, i modified the sausage and lentils recipe (since i hate lentils) and combined it with a recipe from my rice cooker book to make braised sausages with brown rice. i cooked the rice partway and then threw in, as per my braising recipe, some tomato paste, a pile of cooked mushrooms, and a bay leaf. yum-my. the only bad part was that after my mushroom soup (FINALLY found a recipe that works from this month’s issue of martha stewart living) and the huge slice of french bread (which i made this afternoon), i could barely do more than taste it.

it’s been an excellent weekend for cooking. last week i also tried the braised curried chicken and some jasmine rice. makes me really glad i finally remembered to steal the rice cooker from mom.

the apple cake out of my new “passion for” cookbook was really pretty and fun, but i guess i overcooked it. i also KNOW that i didn’t make the batter quite right, because the butter wasn’t evenly distributed. i’m going to pull more stuff out of that book--i love it, and i love how it is divided up by seasons--to play with this week. i anticipate having some time, since we’re in recess, and an audience of eaters if i bring the leftovers to work. also on this week’s list: plum pastry and the apple splits. i made honey creme anglaise to go with the apple splits. (which i was going to make tonight but now i am not so sure...)

my new resolution, since it was one of the reasons i justified my impulse buy of the digital camera, is to take pictures of my creations for my journal and my side project, the little blog.