Clementine Marmalade

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I was craving apple crostata the other day. Unfortunately, my favorite recipe calls for peach jam and—as usual—I didn’t have any on hand, and—also as usual—I was feeling too lazy to go buy some. But I did have a pile of clementines on my counter, so an idea came to me: what would apple crostata taste like with a layer of clementine marmalade in place of the peach jam?

Now I know. It tastes delicious.

Clementine Marmalade

Adapted from Clementine Marmalade at Binny Cooks and Lemon Marmalade by Shuna fish Lydon at eggbeater.

(Continue to recipe)

Aside

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The recipes I post would have 30x more photos if I had a camera assistant to take them for me. One who didn’t make any noise, didn’t take up any room and folded easily for storage in my junk closet.

Basically I need an unobtrusive robot butler. I would call him Jeeves.

I made the apple-pear tarts with clementine marmalade yesterday

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like I was planning, and then they were so good I ate them all. So I’m making them again (but more of them, and better!) on Wednesday.

Also, ten or so years after I received it as a gift (and after who knows how many failed attempts to finish it), I’ve finally gotten more than halfway through Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Maybe this time I’ll actually make it all the way to the end! Although if I do, it won’t be without a whole lot of annoyed skimming, huffing and eye-rolling. That man sure loves the look of his own … words? on a page? That didn’t come out right. In any case what I meant was he can go on and on about very little for very many pages, in a mixture of snooty, anitquated Italian and Latin that leaves me looking up every other word in the dictionary, all tied together by 14th-century European ecclesiastical goings-on that I care next to nothing at all about.

Argh.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how the second batch of tarts turns out. Ciao!

“I never look back, darling. It distracts from the Now.”

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My coworkers seemed to really enjoy the clementine cream tarts I brought in today, but my brain is so busy planning my next endeavor (an apple-pear tart with clementine marmalade) that I almost didn’t hear their compliments.

And of course I had to include the video the quote in the title comes from:

Edna Mode: No Capes!

(I.e., my favorite character in one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies.)

Things I’m Currently Craving

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  • Berry tarts with pastry cream. Even though fresh berries are decidedly not in season in Utah. And despite the fact that I’ve made pastry cream exactly once and it turned out a tad too… muscular for my taste.
  • Noro Silk Garden wool/silk/mohair blend yarn.
  • Pesto alla Calabrese over rotini al dente.
  • Miyazaki films.
  • The soundtracks to the above.
  • French.
  • Beards. Other people’s, specifically.
  • The Nightmare before Christmas.
  • The soundtrack to the above.
  • Milk.
  • Even though I’m lactose intolerant.
  • Cowboy Bebop.
  • The soundtrack to the above.
  • Pizza.

Actually, except for the first three items, this list could be titled “Things I’ve Been Indulging In to Excess Lately.”

Also except for other people’s beards. There are no beards in my life right now except my own.

My knitting needles are beautiful, but they reek of burnt gingerbread.

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I mean that in the literal sense. Here they are:

Fifteen sets of 5″ double-pointed needles for one low, low price. And here’s what they smell like:

Gingerbread Men Massacre

Gingerbread Men Massacre by Andrew R. Whalley on Flickr

This is the scarf I made, but not with the burnt-gingerbread needles:

As you can see from the bottom edge of the second picture, I have no fucking idea what I’m doing when it comes to weaving in ends.

The end?

Aside

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Somewhere on the internets recently I saw a tip for coffee drinkers: I’m not sure (or don’t remember) what the reasoning was, but supposedly if you filled the tank of your coffee maker with already-boiling water, the coffee would dispense more quickly and would be… better. I’m almost certain that last bit was part of the promise.

Long story short: this is an excellent tip for getting your cut-rate plastic Mr. Coffee to rev up with alarming, angry groans and gurgles and hemorrhage a full batch of coffee into the decanter in two minutes flat. Of course, the coffee will taste like stale cigarette butts steeped in tar, but if you’re short on time and have no tastebuds or sense of smell it works out all right.

My Current Writing ‘Process’

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I’m kind of stuck in a rut with my writing right now. No, that’s wrong–I’ve hit a wall. I have multiple writing projects (thanks be to Scrivener for keeping them organized for me) but with each one I’m currently facing a monumental decision, or task, or rewrite that I’m having trouble forcing myself to complete.

Every few days I go through them, look at each one, think, “I know this story is culturally appropriative, and I’m sure there’s a way to rewrite it so it’s not, but my brain can’t take that right now,” or “There are some troubling anti-feminist themes in here that I can’t let slide, but I also can’t unpack them right now, I’m too tired,” or “I have to decide whether or not to include a lesbian sex scene in this story, because it’s totally normal for a lesbian couple to, you know, have sex, but I’ve never written a lesbian sex scene and I want to do it justice, so maybe later,” or “I’ve rewritten this story almost completely, but now that I’m near the end I’ve realized the originally ending won’t work with the rewrite at all, but for some reason I can’t think of an ending that would work, so does that mean I should un-re-write it back to the original or does it mean it’s not supposed to end here after all and needs to be a novel?”

And then I close Scrivener and go read manga instead.