I made an attempt at an omelette today, using a new non-stick frypan I bought at Boswells at half price. While it never quite entered the world as an omelette – the word ‘scramble’ comes to mind – it was nonetheless quite tasty. It had peppers, sharp cheddar, garlic, ginger, tofu, and potato. That is to say, every kind of vegetable matter I had at the time of production. Tofu is enormously better when cooked in a frying pan – it loses the squishy mud texture. As a culinary experiment, I rate this a low pass. It didn’t quite end up an omelette, but was still enjoyable to eat. I really need to get a cutting board: it’s absurd to be using my Swisstool and pieces of paper towel to chop up all my cheese and veggies.
The book which I’ve previously mentioned being in the process of reading and enjoying is Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad: the Myth of Penelope and Odysseus: a retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective. The best thing about it is definitely the skilled narrative style: delivered from Hades with an impressive emotive range. If I were to teach The Odyssey, I would assign this as a companion work. It’s also good to see some of the dodgy aspects of a piece of literature addressed in a way that is creative, as well as cutting. I will post a full review here once I finish it.
Now, I need to don my suit and head out in search of both dessert – I am thinking pie and ice cream – and beer for tonight’s New Year’s party. Judging by the high quality of Claire’s last party, which I remember partly for the lengthy argument I got into about superstring theory, it should be a good one. There look to be rather fewer people this time round, which will doubtless alter the character of the gathering considerably. In any case, I am glad to be going. I shall write something about it tomorrow.
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope people have fun tonight. There’s really no point in me specifically listing resolutions. It has all be said here before.
- A number of new posts are up on Kerrie and Nolan’s blog: describing their ongoing adventures – and misadventures – in Africa. This entry is particularly interesting, though also quite dispiriting.
- If you’re looking for something brief, engaging, and lighthearted to read, try this account of a man struggling to keep squirrels out of his birdfeeder. Anyone who has ever seen a full size Toblerone completely devoured by these furry-tailed rats will empathize completely.
- What Germans do for New Year’s, apparently. This is just as strange, but rather funnier.
I’m sorry to see that your lack of culinary skill is impacting your photography. Definitely not your best work.
Quite right. I got rid of the large version. The defects show less in the thumbnail.
Oh, and while you’re here, I can announce a policy that pertains to you. No anonymous readers in the Members Section. By invitation only.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this before, but it’s exceptionally funny:
Unusual Excursions
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Quite a lot of omlettes of mine have become scrambles. it’s a common occurence, and not necessarily a bad thing. And yes, tofu isn’t very good on it’s own. I’ve only recently been able to knowingly eat it, so unappealing do I find it. In fact my mom couldn’t get away with hiding it in food when I was young either. But it’s vastly improved by marinating or frying or when used as an ingredient (eg blended into things, a la kelsey patton) and so on.
One thing I tried that turned out quite well was freezing and defrosting some firm or extra-firm tofu (it changes the texture) and then breading and frying it.
Mmm. Ginger in omlettes is so good…
Despite checking three different supermarkets, I can only find one brand of tofu in Oxford. Locating a firmer variant would be quite welcome.
If you do not own a cheese grater, but would like to have shredded cheese, just pop a block of cheese in the freezer. When you take it out and let it defrost, it will no longer maintain its form, disintegrating into little pieces. I learned this by accident, when I tried to keep a large block of cheese from going bad by freezing it for later.
Meghan
Good to know, though I enjoy the heterogeneous nature of my large-ingredient omlettes. The attempt after this one worked very well indeed.