Sourdough crepes

I wanted a snack, and my sourdough starter was sitting out on the counter, and one thing led to another.

I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. Take some sourdough starter, add a pinch of salt, a spoonful or two of chickpea flour, (a tiny bit of sugar if you want), and whisk in soymilk until you get crepe batter. (Optional addition for flax-fiends or the omega-three deprived: a spoonful of ground flaxseed.)

My dad the expert crepe maker always insisted that you let the batter rest for at least half an hour, to let the flour hydrate properly. But sourdough crepe batter is ready to go right away. Yay for instantaneous crepe-based gratification.

Kale!

This is the first kale I've had in over a year (it's not really a thing here). I finally found some, and then it found its way into my belly (sauteed with garlic, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lemon at the end). I did not share this with anyone.

Birthday Dinner!

Another one of my famously terrible photos... but you get the idea. Forgive me the chickens -- I had lots of meat eaters for dinner. The pie is tomato pie, from Laurie Colwin's Gourmet colums. The sweeet potatoes were dry (it's still early for them), but the beans were excellent. There's a big salad down the table, a rice salad (local rice!), and another green bean salad and dressings. I have to say, I was exhausted when it was all over. I had fun, though. Good fun. Worth every minute of prep.

Cake 3

Buttermilk cake with lemon frosting. Cake too squishy to frost entirely, so it has big pancakey layers of frosting. (I need to work on this.)
My birthday dinner was on my sister's birthday (the day before mine). Another guest - a new girl in town M met and, on her funniness and niceness, promptly invited - didn't mention it, but her birthday was actually the night of the dinner. I made this cake the day after, and we dropped it by her house.

Cake 2

Chocolate chocolate, topped with animal crackers.

Cake 1

Almond (naked).

Blowfish for vegetarians

Recently in the New York Times, Harold McGee had a fascinating article about baking baking soda. It turns out that when you expose baking soda to heat, it changes its chemical composition (from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate).

After I baked the baking soda, I used it in two ways suggested by the article. First, pretzels, and second, alkaline noodles. The pretzels were okay -- I didn't think they were much different from my usual recipe which uses plain old baking soda. But the noodles! They were very exciting and I really want to make them again soon.

I didn't have any semolina on hand, so used plain, all purpose, white flour with some added vital wheat gluten. The noodles worked out so well -- they were bouncy and slippery (I'm not sure why the word 'bouncy' describes them so much better than 'chewy', but there you go). I had never really thought about what makes the family of yellow Asian noodles (I know them as Hokkien noodles or yellow mee, but they have lots of names) distinctive, but it turns out that they are all alkaline noodles.

R was very skeptical about my experiments with sodium carbonate. If you touch the stuff it could irritate your skin, so in his eyes I was dealing with a dangerous ingredient, like blowfish.