My quest for the perfect creme brulee

there are many recipes on the web, but all of them are a little different, and many make about 6 servings of creme brulee. here's what i've been using, adapted from many recipes:

• 1 1/3 cups cream
• 2 yolks
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3 tbls sugar

preheat oven to 300 degrees. whisk eggs with sugar and vanilla; gradually mix in cream until well blended.pour into 2 oval ramekins. boil a kettle of water. when ready to bake, place ramekins in large baking pan. pour boiling water around ramekins until level of water is about halfway up the ramekins. place in oven; bake for 40 minutes, or until tops are set. remove from oven and allow to cool in the water in the pan. when room temperature, cover with saran wrap and place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving. to serve, cover generously with white sugar and burn to a crisp with a brulee torch.

My first gratin

I was staring down yet another bunch of rainbow chard from the farm, and could not tolerate the idea of more sauteed greens with garlic. A cold front was coming in, and I wanted a casserole, but i didn't want to make tomato sauce for a lasagna. i searched smitten kitchen by vegetable tag and found this recipe for a Sweet Potato and Chard Gratin. Thanks to my creme brulee addition I had cream on hand, and all i needed to pick up was sweet potatoes and gruyere.

This turned out very well, aside from several kitchen casualties, the most dramatic of which was almost losing the tip of my pinky with a dull, cheap mandolin slicer on the sweet potatoes. (Be careful, folks! Thin slices are pretty essential, but so are digits!) I was surprised at how tasty the chard and spinach were after the time in the oven. (I added spinach since I was a little short on greens.) Splitting the recipe in half roughly yielded an overstuffed 9" square pyrex dish. I think that if you let it sit a bit longer after cooking - I just couldn't wait - the potatoes will soak up some of the liquid.

What to do with all that cabbage in your CSA share? Cole slaw.

From NPR: Cole Slaw: You Could Be a Star

The first half of the green cabbage went into the pickled cole slaw. It was crunchy and tasty. Although it used white vinegar, I will try substituting cider vinegar next. I needed to find cucumber, carrots, and red bell pepper as those were not in the share for the week.

summertime

the title of the post is apparently some kind of jazz standard i've heard a million times but can't ever place. plus, it's the beginning of a rainy summer in central texas, which is good news for my garden, bad news for my hobby of cycling.

the butterfly garden: it's in the front yard, with southern exposure and no shade all day. everything has gone nuts. i attempted to transplant the butterfly bush this week, since rain was in the forecast, and it was getting squeezed out by the autumn sage and esperanza. if i'm lucky it'll make it. also, the cosmos and zinnias, which began about a month ago, are taller than the fence already. meanwhile, i have significant aphids on some of the milkweed, which is the only host plant for the monarch caterpillar. this could prove problematic if it continues; in the meantime, i'm removing affected plant parts by hand, moving ladybugs to the aphid sites, and spraying the aphids with a solution of dr. bronner's magic soap and water, which kills them.

the vegetable garden: it has begun! i built a 16'x4' bed of 2x10s, placed it in the backyard in a spot that gets direct sunlight from sunrise to about 4pm in the summer, and is filtered through the pecan tree after 4:00. in the winter, minus the pecan leaves, it should be full day exposure, albeit at a lower angle, and possibly in the shadow of the house near the solstice. earlier this week i scored a pickup truck load of composted live oak leaves and worms from south austin, and threw them down. hopefully i will acquire 2 cubic yards of soil by saturday. i got a hot tip from a woman in a training i was at today that soil is way cheaper south of town in buda than west (about half as expensive). i'd like to get some free stuff but it all seems to be in liberty hill. at least buda is on the way to ma and pa.

to do

over the summer, i have a lot of projects, and few vacations, planned. i scrapped the plan to install pergo throughout the house, since i figured i should try to get as much mileage as possible out of the baby blue vinyl tile floors, even though they clash horribly with my new color scheme (orange, lime green, turquoise, and yellow), since the old owner left me with five boxes of replacement tiles. if it ain't broke, don't fix. here's what i plan to work on:

• finish painting the kitchen yellow
  
• install towel shelf above door in my (only) itty bitty bathroom
  
• shorten and install second towel rack in bathroom
  
• figure out where to store boxes that contain artifacts of the past (attic?)
  
• window treatments for living room windows
  
• install lighting above kitchen sink
  
• finish fixing siding around new front door (purchase nails)
  
• install soffit vents in attic (borrow circular saw from james)
  
• find some kind of seating for the back deck
  
• find a replacement back door with a window to let light in the kitchen
  
• get the ceiling fan in the front room to stop squeaking get new fan for front room
  
• install new shelves above washing machine enhance new shelves
  
• get the ratty old couch the old man left out of here

This is it

So I did it. I finished the months-long search and found my Barbie Dream House in Texas, the last place on earth I would have thought I'd live a decade ago. I've been here for ten days and, although it was an emotional commitment rollercoaster at first, I love my home more and more every day. The best phrase to describe it is blissed out. i sit on my porch every evening after work with my dog, and smoke a cigarette while I watch the sun set over the skyline. Thus far, no regrets.