A Rainy Day at Home

I'm not sure what's going on with crazy picasa collage blogging thing but I'll just go with it.
A rainy day with nothing to do but tool around in the kitchen and eight episodes of The Amazing Race? How cool is that. I can't remember the last time I stayed in the house ALL day. I usually get a little squirrely around four and need to get to Tia's somehow someway. I thought about it but nothing seemed worth getting all wet over and the kitchen needed me. I started off dusting off the old waffle maker. I think I use this once a year. I had a recipe from ATK for The Best Waffles Ever. As ATK tends to do it complicated the process with the folding in of stiffly beaten egg whites, but since I had nothing but time I did it and got some really fluffy waffles. Nice! One happy accident was after messing the crap outta my waffle iron with oozing batter, then an under calculation the next time I really like the visual effect of lacier misshapen waffles. I still haven't cleaned off the waffle iron yet.

Next up was butternut squash soup. I had a ton of sage to try to save as it was wilting badly. My kitchen smelled great though. This soup recipe contained sage and maybe that's what made this batch the best batch of all? I'm not sure. One little note I lifted from an ATK version was to simmer the seeds and stringy insides into a little stock. I added some rosemary sprigs and thyme sprigs to about two cups of water, had I thought about it in time I would have let it simmer longer to get more flavor out of the herbs.

Next up were the Gougeres from Dorie Greenspans Around My French Table. Omigosh these cheesy little puff pastries were like little bites of heaven. I baked a tray of a dozen then froze the shaped dough drops for another time. I ate all of them. They were perfect for scooping up soup. Awesome!

The kitchen day rocked!