Long Weekend

Rush is still out of town and while I do like some time to myself, I've now had enough.  Officially.  It was a rare weekend in Southern California where we didn't see the sun, and it poured (POURED!) all day Sunday. 

So I cooked.  And cleaned.  And baked.

I froze the bones from Rush's goodbye rack of lamb and then made some lamb stock this weekend when I was hanging around the house.  Really basic - sort of sautee up the bones, getting some nice brown bits in the pan, then add a bunch of water, some peppercorns, a bay leaf or two, stems of parsley and thyme, smashed garlic cloves, and carrots and an onion.  Then, just let simmer, skim the froth, and let simmer (partially covered) some more.  I think I started with 8 cups of water and finished the stock with maybe 4 cups of stock.  

brown bits

I made bread from Smitten Kitchen's Sally Lunn bread recipe.  It was my first foray into breadmaking and probably won't be my last, but I wouldn't call it an overwhelming success.  It wasn't a failure, but I failed to get the bread to rise enough, I think.  Maybe it was just too chilly in the house.  It started doing it's thing when I finally wised up and moved near the stove where I was making stock.

And I made some pretty decent chocolate chip cookies.  Nothing beats the original Tollhouse cookie recipe. I meant to bring them to work, but I forgot.  Kind of a bummer, but they'll still be good tomorrow.

cookie monster

Finally, I made my-lonesome-self some dinner.  One of our favorite recipes is this Pasta Carbonara recipe that calls for a poached egg on top.  So easy and so delicious.