Macaron Fail
I had a MAJOR macaron fail recently.
I usually have maybe one or two shells that crack, but in this batch almost every single one cracked. I am not sure why because I didn’t really do anything different than I normally do.*
It seems like it can be caused by any number of issues including: the batter being too wet, whipping the egg whites too long, too much humidity and too high heat, or generally the oven was too hot. I always cook my macarons at the same temp…so…was it the humidity? Did I mess up my ingredients? Did I over-mix the batter?
I DON’T KNOW. That’s the mystery of these finicky dang things.
So…it just goes to show you. Even after lots of successful batches, you can still have major failures. I’m going to pop them into the freezer and repurpose them in a trifle or something for a last minute dessert.
*I lied. I got to thinking about it and remembered that I added some vanilla extract, which I don’t normally do. Half of me doesn’t believe that something small like that could make a difference, and the other half of me thinks it probably does since I sort just dumped it in there and didn’t really measure. In researching the causes for cracked shells, I found “using liquid coloring” to be a potential culprit, so perhaps the extract was to blame as well. Crazy.
Thrift Score
Last year I made some pretty fantastic furniture scores at local thrift markets and I hope continued that trend this year. I’ve been on the hunt for little foot stools and I went into my favorite flea market with the intention of buying one (or two) that I had seen in there about a month ago. As is usually the case with things like this, (and I should totally know better by now) I should have bought them when I first spotted them because they were gone!
However, all is not lost. I picked up this beauty:
It’s a piano stool! I love the little round knobs. It will make the perfect side table for the chair I am still trying to make cushions for. It was a whopping $25 bucks! The paint looks like a darker teal in regular light, but when I take it upstairs to the guest bedroom, where it will live for real, the paint looks almost black – which is perfect. I might try to work on the top (seat) a bit to get the stains out, but aside from a good cleaning that’s all I’m going to do to it. I love it!
Wanna go thrifting this weekend? I saw two new stores in Olympia that I haven’t been in yet. We’ll do lunch!
I Ate Salmon & Liked it
EDIT: Damn, I should not write blog posts first thing in the morning. Remind me not to do that.
We spent time this past weekend with wonderful friends eating wonderful food. That blobby looking roll is my contribution.
I didn’t get pictures of the delicious little appetizers we had. They were mini-scrambled-eggy glorious bites of yum in a filo cup. Also missing is the salad course! Alas!
I did learn that I like smoked salmon and am pretty darn excited about it. Our host made the AWESOME blinis with smoked salmon and crème fraîche. I could not believe how great it was! And I was eating it!
Salmon is so good for you and I live in Salmon Country, which means we have access to great salmon (or so I hear)…but I can’t stomach the stuff. I can’t even swallow it. I am thinking that the “smoked” is the key. I was afraid that smoked salmon would have an even stronger salmon taste, but the folks I’ve talked to about it say just the opposite. I’ve been hearing that Costco has great smoke salmon, and I’m thinking about trying the stuff that comes from our local fish monger.
You guys have any idea what I can do with it? What to eat it with?
Woo!
I was just looking for my Resolution post from last year and realized that I didn’t post anything! I also nuked my list that I keep in Evernote to make room for 2013 goals so I can’t remember everything I wanted to accomplish this past year to check to see how I did. Oh well! The main thing I feel when I look back on 2012 is how fast it seemed to go. Things that I thought happened in say, June, actually happened in February.
Here’s my 2013 Resolution and/or Goal List:
- Be better about taking a daily vitamin
- Build drawers for the pantry
- Print/silkscreen fabric
- Blog more – and more consistently
- Create art from personal family stories
- Work on the house – quit being lazy
- Take better photos
- Sew more of my clothes
- Organize my crap
- Keep working out consistently, especially with the weight training
- Eat better – less bacon
- Make cheese
- Make pasta
- Master the art of Hypertufa
- Build a coldframe and a potting bench
- Front porch – get some damn pots already!
My goals are not super grand…I don’t want to run a marathon or anything like that. I’m not even sure that they can be considered “resolutions” but I take comfort in setting goals for the year ahead. I feel like it gives me structure and a sort of roadmap for the year. The most important thing is that I don’t beat myself up if I don’t accomplish what I want to do. I think the “front porch” goal has been on this list for the past five years and I haven’t slit my wrists over that one yet. Yet.
Do you make resolutions?
Intergalactic cowl
So…remember the lazy wheels I was crocheting? I had a grand vision of what they would eventually look like once I had them attached to each other, and it actually wasn’t too far off from what I had imagined. However, when I sauntered out into the living room to show my husband he said to me:
“You look like a Klingon.”
Hu’tegh! Now I cannot get that out of my head. Back to the drawing board!