Jessie couldn't remember a favorite cauliflower soup so I made my own today. It turned out incredible and we thought we should share. It has I guess hints of Indian flavors perhaps. To get your drooling in a healthy sort of way check this out:


I think this is probably cauliflower-tomato soup for those keeping score at home. Anyhoo, here's the recipe which I can't emphasize enough just how easy it is:
6 cups vegetable stock (or water)
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
5 carrots (or there abouts, your call)
3 celery ribs (or there abouts, your call)
1 onions, finely chopped
3+ garlic cloves (never can have enough, right)
Some olive oil (or your favorite oil I'd imagine)
1 sweet potato/yam, finely chopped (optional but it was nice and you can buy them individually)
The Spice Action:
Black Pepper
Mild Curry
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Salt
Cumin
Bay leaf or two (optional)

So, dump the garlic and onions into your soup cauldron and follow up with the oil. Cook it up for five to eight minutes to soften up the onions. You can dump in all the spices now, too. I put in healthy amounts of pepper, cumin, and curry. Probably the curry was the largest quantity. Then the cinnamon and nutmeg were in there just to sweeten things up a bit and were a nice addition.

Once you've got the onions softened then dump in the tomatoes and vegetable stock / water. I use vegetable stock since I'm always making it but I imagine water works well, too. Move the heat to medium-high. So now as the soupy part cooks away chop up all your remaining vegetables and dump them in. Once they're in you can bring it to a boil and then drop the heat until you're ready to eat. We found it just crazy good. Brought a stupid grin to our face and there was enough that we'll have lunch and dinner soup for freezing.

I bet you could dump in sausage or beans into this if you wanted, too. It's quite tasty as is though.

Side note, hopefully this week, due to popular request! I'll get a desserts and foods section fired up on the website someplace so you can see all the recipes in one place.

So, Christmas is over and we're basking in the afterglow. Mixed it up a bit this year and didn't do any pies. Instead tried a couple new items I was curious about. Jessie got me creme-brulee cups for Christmas and so when I decided to make that for one Christmas dinner I got to open a present early. Score! I was excited.
I started with this recipe for Lemon Creme Brulee but used it as more of a jumping off point. If you choose to follow my footsteps (and they're worth following!). zest the heck out of two lemons. That left me with in the neighborhood of 3.5 tablespoons of zest. Dump that in instead of the 2 Tbsp mentioned in that recipe. I also did a bit more lemon juice (and added one more egg to counteract the extra acid in all that lemon juice and zest), and grated probably in the neighborhood of 1.5 tablespoons of ginger.
The result was tasty. Tart with a bit of bite from the ginger. There was disappointingly little creme brulee in each cup but totally worth it.

Then for proper Christmas dinner I riffed on this flourless chocolate cake. I used chambord (a rasberry liqueur) instead of the coffee liqueur and also dropped in 1/2 cup of finely chopped dried cranberries. The cake part turned out pretty well but to really put if over the top I also put a dark chocolate ganache which was like 10 oz heavy whipping cream 11.5 oz dark chocolate chips. You heat the cream over low to medium low heat until it begins to have steam come rise off the liquid. That's a good time to drop the temperature or turn it off and then dump in the chocolate chips. You should be able to whisk them in and they will nicely melt. Some people will tell you to boil the cream. You don't need all that heat to melt the chocolate though and the lower the temperature of the cream then the shorter your waiting time on the ganache cooling to the point of being spread and stickable on the cake. One tasteful rendition:


So, flourless chocolate cake with chocolate ganache is good but to really put it over the top I made up a cranberry dessert sauce. It was pretty similar to this one from the chocolate torte made at Thanksgiving and Emily's nominee for best chocolate dessert of all time. If you try it at home you really need to make the sauce. The chocolatey goodness can be overwhelming without the cranberry sauce to balance it out. But together, super. Emily says not as good as the chocolate torte from Thanksgiving but still pretty decent.

Celebrated the Solstice, Christmas a couple times and Christmas Eve over the course of the last five days or so. Pretty awesome. Some friend have chronicled the highlights here at the E&L blog and here at Jillian's website. They're both well worth your time. I won't dwell on those two gatherings other than check out one Christmas present:

Yes indeed, it's a real honest to goodness Lucha Libre mask! How awesome is that. Merry Christmas from Mr. Johnson. Look for it to make a reappearance on New Year's Eve...

In other partay events, John also scored some free fireworks from co-workers. It was awfully fun discovering what they were at a solstice party:



And, don't look now, but Pat's been sporting a video camera to these shenanigans. So look out world now that there's some additional documentary evidence.

Finished the semester on a high note, am just finally recovering. So, Jessie had been out of town on work and family. Last Wednesday night she came back but I had a heck of day leading up to it. My last final was late in the afternoon. So, thought I'd hit up coffee roasters for a breakfast pocket and some coffee. They were out of pockets so against my better judgement I got the hotdog that's kind of like a pig in a blanket. It has dough spiraled around the hot dog. They're kind of rough and I swore them off after the last time I tried them but that was what was available. So, popped onto the road towards campus. Thought I'd get a jump on studying if I ate the hotdog on the drive to campus. So of course the bun unraveled around the hotdog when I pulled it from the paper bag. Fixed it up at the stop light and resumed eating without incident. Got to campus. Pulled into my parking spot and the hot dog jumped out of the bun and hid under the e-brake. Figured I'd dump it in the paper garbage bag but when I grabbed it the bag jumped from the passenger seat to the wheel well. Had to unbuckle and carefully miss the slimy hot dog retrieving the bag. So, wrap things up with the hot dog and pull the extension cord out to plug in the car. The extension cord got tangled with my skis and popped the lid off the coffee and nearly knocked it over. Ouch! So, carefully pulled the extension cord out and plugged in. Made it up to my office without incident but then discovered I'd locked my keys in the car. Ooops! Insult to injury, got food poisoning from the hot dog. That's seriously the last time I eat one of those things.

I had to study so I didn't revisit the keys in the car till the end of the day. Everyone says call the campus police they love to get you into your car. Well, they only do it if you're the registered owner... I'm not. So, out of luck on that score. Rena, Ana, Pat, and I were going out to celebrate the end of the semester but before that I gave Emily and Luke a jingle to see about borrowing their car until Jessie got home later that night. No problem but it was almost out of gas. So, Pat and Ana dropped me off at their house and I scored their car which looked like it had enough gas to get me home to the dogs and then back into town for Jessie later.
I get home and it turns out you can open the house if the keys are locked in the car on campus. So the dogs got all fired up for nothing. Johnson suggested I call a taxi to get serviced on campus.

Back to campus. On campus I tried every taxi but the North Pole ones. No one answered the phone. Eventually gave up and figured I'd run back to the house and somehow break in. But first, to try breaking into the car. So here's my successful setup:


Of particular note I think is a fork. This setting from Fred Meyer's a few years ago comes through again. Last time this silverware made an appearance was digging a boulder out from under the truck a couple years back. This time around it was key to prying the window open enough for the yard stick to work its magic:



After a half hour or so I was in and had enough time before Jessie got in to run home and clean house a bit. Woo!

When every morning is gorgeous if the sun is out. This was a not super picture with my waterproof camera but the colors yesterday morning were just so gorgeous. Otherwise, in the getting down to business part of the semester but it's almost over.

This is just a planetarium but when I look at it I see the supersized version of a favorite from Christmas past, the snowglobe (and weren't those the days)...

So, I think the technology behind that project is worth doing in other locales, like large scale inflatable sculptures. If only I was crafty... so, I guess the world is safe for a bit longer.