December 21st, 2009

elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Monday, December 21st, 2009 10:58 am
Just made the GF brioche from HBin5, adding holiday citron. The half recipe made one large and one small loaf pan, which is all my little oven can hold. (There is also the massive oven, which we never use.) Looks OK.... Just sliced into it. Seems wet, but that was how the olive loaf seamed, but after *much* cooling was just fine. I mixed the dough yesterday evening, and left the loaves to rise the 40 min plus an additional OVERNIGHT and baked immediately this morning.

This success is unlike my experiment with the cracker recipe here: http://www.elanaspantry.com/fig-tapenade-with-walnut-crackers/ . Substituting coconut for the walnuts and almond flour didn't seem to work. It was very dry and crumbly. Suspicious, i added sugar and butter and a touch of baking soda to the second half and developed something like macaroon bars. They had to be flipped to get baked on both sides, the whole pizza pan worth.

I have used a gingerbread flavored cream cheese to hold together the coconut "crackers" and Christine says it's good in yogurt.

--=--

L left a voice mail i heard yesterday after meeting. She'd called around 3 pm EST to say Mom & Dad were going to the hospital. Mom was feeling ill, nausea and a fever, and Dad was going with her, Note that Dad can't drive while his lens implant is floating loose in the vitreous humor of his eye, surgery has been scheduled with the three eye surgeons to help him recover his sight in that eye on 8 Jan.) This is mildly distressing news because the level of discomfort my mom must be in before care is rather high. On the other hand, there may be some good sense in play: she's the only driver, she shouldn't get so sick she can't drive. I called them around 3:30 EST just as they were arriving. They sounded calm so i let go of initial scenarios. No news before i went to bed. Skype from my sister saying she'd had no news & couldn't contact them. We conferred, L planned to call the hospital then finally heard from them: "pnuemonia... they have been on the phone... driving dad to meeting in oxford today... on antibiotics." Mom is currently Dad's chauffeur to business meetings as he deals with the decline of "his" company. Sheesh. Could things let up for them?

By the way: stay off I-85 between Oxford and Durham in NC today.

So, my brother & his family will be arriving at my folks' in the next few days. My call right before leaving for Meeting (and library committee) was from my sis wanting to talk about my brother's clear anger in his brief reply to our parental status warning alert. He's angry with our mom and "increasingly sympathetic" to our dad. Sis L wanted to reply, try to fix, but she noticed what she was doing. We agreed that the best thing for us with our brother is to listen compassionately and affirm reality. (I can't say how affirming it was for me when my brother and i briefly shared memories of the dark drives back from Florida where we were silent and still in the back seat and my mom shredded my father's character and dignity. Knowing now i wasn't alone, wasn't imagining it, helps me feel just a little more sane.)

I hope things let up for my parents soon.

--=--

Health: Read more... )

--=--

Got a good deal of library committee tasks done this morning. Somewhat last minute.

Running late to the office, but going in anyhow.

Happy it is the solstice, happy it is our eighteenth anniversary. We had a spontaneous dinner out at Ming's that became a bit of a celebration; probably will see Avatar tonight.