Well, I was a little cranky this morning, since I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep but tried anyway instead of getting up like a sensible person and just doing some of the work that was haunting me with anxiety and not letting me sleep. Instead I wasted three hours. Argh.
On the plus side, I've managed to cheer up reasonably well, though my 7:30 class all looked as exhausted as I felt and clearly wanted to be silent, not to talk about passive vs. active verbs, or whether Paper A or B was a more effective argument and deserved a better grade. I should have made 'em move their chairs into a circle like I normally do. Next class I will. (They probably didn't enjoy their quiz either, but what can you do?)
Colleen, here's that egg salad recipe you asked for, and as for the temperature here, I don't know for certain, but it's roughly t-shirt and shorts weather during the day, light-to-heavy sweater weather at night. Pretty perfect, really. If it stayed like this for a few months, I wouldn't complain.
Egg Salad ala Mary Anne
- 8 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
- 1 T mayonnaise
- 1 T dijon mustard
- 1 T spicy brown mustard
- 1 t. dried dill (or 1 T fresh chopped dill)
- 1 t. paprika (optional)
- 1/2 medium yellow onion, minced
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Combine everything except the onion, salt and pepper in a large bowl.
- Mash well (you can use a fork, but a potato masher works better, and your fingers probably work best for the final mushing)
- Stir in onion.
- Taste, then add salt and pepper, tasting until perfect.
- Either spread on wheat bread for tea sandwiches, cutting off the edges, or serve over crisp lettuce leaves as salad.
All the food got eaten; next time I'll make more. :-) Roshani informs me that that cranberry/sultana concoction I made yesterday is called a coulis. Who knew? I did have some trouble with the shortcake; I thought it had cooked through (I even tested it with a fork!), but somehow the center turned out to be all gooey. So I improvised: I cut out the center of the shortcake (baked in an 8-in cake pan) and make it a shortcake ring, piling strawberries in the center. It probably looked even more impressive; I may just make my shortcake with a hole in the middle from now on. :-) Baking at higher altitudes (4500 feet) is hard! I reduced the leavening to half, as instructed (dear Fannie Farmer!), and reduced the temperature of the oven by 25 degrees, but I suspect that I need to let things cook longer. We'll see.
2:20 p.m. I should be depositing my paycheck, and then starting grading. What am I doing? This. David, are there any other dishes I make regularly that I've forgotten to list? I figure once I list them all, then I can just fill them in as I get requests for them, or feel like it.