Mighty Forces

I made a chocolate pound cake today, from a recipe in a cool book called "Small-Batch Baking." Of course, I was halfway into it before I realized I needed buttermilk. Who keeps buttermilk around the house? Really. So I just used milk. It turned out OK, but not great. Afterwards I read online that you can simulate buttermilk by putting lemon juice or vinegar into milk. Well, maybe next time. Baking has always seemed too fiddly and requiring way too many ingredients and too much precise measuring for my taste. And making these small batches doesn't really help things. Well, at least I made the effort.

The project did remind me of one thing: I love the smell of vanilla. Isn't that one of the scents they put in the air in prisons to keep the inmates quiet?

Crab and cream cheese appetizer
Chex mix
Cranberry holiday punch

Mustard and herb-crusted beef tenderloin
Potato gratin with thyme and gouda
Horseradish carrots
Homemade rolls
Caesar salad

Buche de Noel (Yule log cake)
Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream: Zanzibar and Mint Avalanche
Christmas cookies

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who pled guilty to soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom, submitted a recipe to the "Congress Cooks!" cookbook (the exclamation point is theirs) called the "Super Tuber."

It involves, and I am not making this up, shoving a hot dog into a hollowed-out Idaho potato.

I made risotto for the first time last night. I did this because I found a recipe in the Donna Hay magazine (an expensive glossy British food publication) where you bake it in the oven, rather than stand over the stove for hours stirring.

I have to say, for a first effort, it was pretty good. But then again, how can rice, stock, butter and Parmesan cheese be bad?

(inaugurating the Food category on Mighty Forces)