It is one week until Christmas...
Dec. 17th, 2017 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normal...and I am DONE my Christmas shopping! \o/
I also did a lot of Christmas baking, so here's the rundown:
We had a potluck lunch in work, for which I decided to bake cornbread. First, I tried this Cheddar Dill Cornbread, which was a DISASTER. The Barefoot Contessa has let me down. For the record, one cup of dill is way too much fucking dill for a cornbread. It seemed like way too much, so I read the comments, which unfortunately ran the gamut from "way too much fucking dill" to "this was flavorless, not enough dill" to "best cornbread ever!" (which was the majority of them) so that was no help. Recognizing that one cup of dill is way too much fucking dill, I cut it in half (also, I had used up all the dill I had in the house), it was still way too much fucking dill. The dough was practically green. I tossed it.
Instead, I went with a more traditional Buttery Corn Bread recipe. This came out much better, and got compliments from my coworkers and was scarfed down pretty quickly, so I'd say it's a good one.
There was also a lot of Christmas cookie baking - regular chocolate chip, the Italian ricciarelli cookies from last summer, and a new Raspberry-Almond Shortbread. The shortbread was very good, but I cannot in good conscience recommend them because they were SO MUCH WORK OMG. First of all, the dough was too crumbly to form into cookies - I barely got them to stick together in balls, and when I tried to stick my thumb in to make the thumbprint, they just fell apart. I managed to salvage them by rolling out the dough flat and then cutting circles (with a shot glass, because I did not have an appropriately-sized cookie cutter, lol). However, I had to refrigerate the dough after every step so it took about 4 hours total to make these suckers.
I've also been cooking up a storm, but I don't have recipes to post. I joined both Hello Fresh and Home Chef, and for the most part, I like it? If I had to choose, I'd probably lean toward Home Chef, simply because they have more selections that I can actually eat (my digestive system is still rather violently anti-vegetable), but basically they're the same. It works out to about $10/meal, which is more than it would cost to go grocery shopping, but then I don't have to GO grocery shopping, and it encourages me to cook things I wouldn't normally think to make. You definitely have to be able and willing to cook, though. It's not really a shortcut in that regard. There is a lot of prep and actual cooking technique, though nothing is particularly advanced.
I also did a lot of Christmas baking, so here's the rundown:
We had a potluck lunch in work, for which I decided to bake cornbread. First, I tried this Cheddar Dill Cornbread, which was a DISASTER. The Barefoot Contessa has let me down. For the record, one cup of dill is way too much fucking dill for a cornbread. It seemed like way too much, so I read the comments, which unfortunately ran the gamut from "way too much fucking dill" to "this was flavorless, not enough dill" to "best cornbread ever!" (which was the majority of them) so that was no help. Recognizing that one cup of dill is way too much fucking dill, I cut it in half (also, I had used up all the dill I had in the house), it was still way too much fucking dill. The dough was practically green. I tossed it.
Instead, I went with a more traditional Buttery Corn Bread recipe. This came out much better, and got compliments from my coworkers and was scarfed down pretty quickly, so I'd say it's a good one.
There was also a lot of Christmas cookie baking - regular chocolate chip, the Italian ricciarelli cookies from last summer, and a new Raspberry-Almond Shortbread. The shortbread was very good, but I cannot in good conscience recommend them because they were SO MUCH WORK OMG. First of all, the dough was too crumbly to form into cookies - I barely got them to stick together in balls, and when I tried to stick my thumb in to make the thumbprint, they just fell apart. I managed to salvage them by rolling out the dough flat and then cutting circles (with a shot glass, because I did not have an appropriately-sized cookie cutter, lol). However, I had to refrigerate the dough after every step so it took about 4 hours total to make these suckers.
I've also been cooking up a storm, but I don't have recipes to post. I joined both Hello Fresh and Home Chef, and for the most part, I like it? If I had to choose, I'd probably lean toward Home Chef, simply because they have more selections that I can actually eat (my digestive system is still rather violently anti-vegetable), but basically they're the same. It works out to about $10/meal, which is more than it would cost to go grocery shopping, but then I don't have to GO grocery shopping, and it encourages me to cook things I wouldn't normally think to make. You definitely have to be able and willing to cook, though. It's not really a shortcut in that regard. There is a lot of prep and actual cooking technique, though nothing is particularly advanced.
