Second Best

I've spent most of the last week cooking.

I made more of perpetual Nut-house favourite, Anna Olson's gyoza. Easy but time consuming, they are tasty morsels, and very filling.

I made blood orange sorbet in the ice cream maker attachment for the stand mixer. I haven't quite got myself motivated to make actual ice cream yet, because every time I look at a recipe that calls for more than a cup of whipping cream, I have a bit of a heart attack. Sorbets, however, are perfect--delicious, simple, and (relatively) healthy, since I get to control how much sugar goes in to it. (It also makes lovely daiquiris, too, and if the price of limes ever drops, I will be making margaritas by the pitcherful.)

I've also made bread--more specifically, caramelized onion beer bread. I have actually not made bread very many times in my life, but this recipe was so simple that it turned out incredible. The student services department hosted a "Northern University's Best Baker" competition today, with categories in cakes, cookies, squares, and bread. I chose bread because I wanted to try a savoury option. A brief visit to a friend's gourmet food shop/bakery last weekend suggested a caramelized onion and cheese bread to me, and the recipe above sounded the most delicious of all the hits that my google search turned up.

I made the first batch on Monday, omitting the cumin because a) I didn't have any cumin seeds, and b) I just forgot to add the ground cumin. It was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ate the two loaves by myself because Mat hates onions and wouldn't touch it. I used Sleeman Honey Brown as my beer of choice.

When I made the dough last night, I remembered the cumin. It smelled fantastic today while it was baking, but I couldn't taste it as much as I would've thought in the finished product, probably because it was just the ground cumin. The bread was even better the second time, I think, and the judges thought so too--I came in first in the bread category, and in second overall. (I lost to a very elaborate 4-layer cake.)

Other than that, most of today has been lost to cleaning--we finally trucked our unusable computer desk and broken washer off to the dump, and we moved the furniture in the living room around--it's so much nicer now. Almost like we live in a grown up house.