After working up actual sweat compiling deposition exhibits, three paper cuts and a couple extra hours at the office (discovery is environmentally irresponsible and harmful to your health), I came home and was only greeted by one cat. I checked all of Max’s favorite nap spots — the back of the couch, his scratch lounge, the left bottom corner of the bed, our laundry stroller — and he was nowhere to be found. Then I noticed that the closet door was closed. Oops. He probably spent about eight hours stuck in there, and he probably slept the whole time. Poor Ted was most likely bored out of his mind with no one to wrestle and use as a feline pillow all day.
Last night I made warm lentil salad and added some sausage that’s been in our freezer for months. The lentils were fantastic but the sausage tasted like freezer. I also made banana bread with two of the gazillion frozen black bananas taking up occupancy in our freezer. Despite being short one egg, accidentally turning up the oven temperature to 500 degrees while cleaning the stove and burning two of my fingers, it came out just fine.
I usually use Mark Bittman’s banana bread recipe, but it calls for melted butter*, which hardens when the frozen banana goo is added to the batter and fucks everything up. Lane got me a butt-ton of cookbooks for Christmas and I’ve been really terrible about using them. One of the books I’ve barely cracked is The Fearless Baker by Emily Luchetti, a local San Francisco baker. Her recipe thankfully did not call for melted butter, only the gently softened kind.
Speaking of butter, clarified butter is my new favorite cooking, um, thing. Making it and getting every single bit of dairy solids out is incredibly satisfying. Cooking a chicken breast dredged in a bit of flour in clarified butter and serving it with a squeeze of lemon and a spritz of parsley will make you feel like Julia Child.
* I re-read the recipe and it does not call for melted butter, just softened. Read the label, ya dummy!
Recipes
Warm French Lentils (Barefoot Contessa, Food Network)
Banana Bread (Mark Bittman via Diner’s Journal)
The Fearless Baker by Emily Luchetti
