But wait, you say, they look the same.

Wrong!

Wax paper is covered in…wax! Which when you put it in the oven…melts! All over the Martha Stewart brownies you spent an hour slaving over a double boiler for!

I attempted a rescue by scooping out the batter from the insides of the pan and transferring to an 8×8 dish. We’ll see how this turns out.

UPDATE: The brownies burned a little on the bottom, but based on initial tests, appear not to taste like crayons. I’m counting it as a victory.

That, and the access to good shopping on the way home from said weddings. Last weekend, Dan and I stopped at a farm stand on the way home from a wedding in West Virginia and each bought a bushel of stone peaches. Hundreds of peaches that were ripe and sweet and awesome. I gave half to my mom, but still found myself with an unbelievable quantity of peaches to do something with on a pretty tight timeline. I perused some blogs and cookbooks and determined that peaches could be frozen and pseudo-canned, both of which I attempted with an uncertain degree of success. I now have two gallon sized bags of frozen, lightly sweetened peach slices in my freezer and two large mason jars of peeled peach halves in light syrup in the fridge.

Tonight I cooked down some of the canned peaches in syrup to eat with yogurt for breakfast. I also tossed some rolled oats in a tupperware with buttermilk, goat’s milk, a pinch of cardamom, and some syrup from the canned peaches in the hopes that it will make a Swedish-style muesli for the morning.

This weekend, I was in Chicago for Liz and Dave’s wedding. On my way home from Dulles, my dad introduced me to the wonder of Wegman’s, land of…everything. We stopped, I shopped, and came home laden with meats, veg, bulk nuts, and a Revlon brow wax pencil that Dell introduced me to over the weekend (apparently I hadn’t gotten the memo that we now have to start obsessing about the tint of our brows. But hey–the brows looked good in photographs! Did I mention it’s the land of everything?).

So in a cooking frenzy, I made:

-Sauteed baby spinach with olive oil and garlic

-Broiled chicken with herb rub (garlic, parsley, lemon peel, salt, slid under the skin before cooking) and roasted veg (a la Judith Jones, though it took more than an hour instead of the promised 35 minutes, and I’m still not sure the breasts are cooked all the way through. I may resort to the microwave to avoid death by salmonella.)

So this week I’ll be looking for creative things to do with cooked chicken for lunch and dinner. I’m dreaming of the happy union of chunks of roasted chicken, Hellman’s, celery, s&p, and maybe some bits of peach.

Sauteed artichoke for one or two

• Prepare artichoke by slicing off stem and taking about an inch off the top. Trim rough outer leaves. Rub with lemon juice to prevent discoloration.
• Halve the ‘choke. Cut out sharp fuzzies. Rub cut surface with lemon.
• In a medium pan, heat a hearty splash of olive oil until very hot.
• Place artichokes face down in oil. Cook until brown.
• Add about 1/4 in. of water. Cover. Steam until tender, 20 minutes or so.
• Eat with lemon butter, on a weeknight, because you can.

I return to the blog with this update: I’ve been living in Miami for about eight weeks in a “furnished” apartment whose kitchen is woefully devoid of towels, a vegetable peeler, reasonable pots and pans, a grater, spices and many other kitchen treasures that I’ve come to rely on. My cooking has gone very minimalist. We also had no Internet access at home for the first six weeks I was here. So my blogging has suffered.

Miami is not the city for me, and I really, really look forward to returning to the comforts of Boston. Fresh food is also remarkably difficult to come by at reasonable prices. I know that food prices are up everywhere, but I hope food isn’t as expensive in Boston as it is here! $5 for a pound of tomatoes??!

This is a photo of a fruit stand in Brooklyn from Brooklyn Photographic Experience. I dream about access to fresh vegetables.

Great results. Could not be easier. Six ingredients. The only fat comes from the walnuts, which are good for you. It’s practically a health food! Ok, maybe there’s a fair amount of sugar in them. And maybe boxed confectioner’s sugar isn’t kosher for Passover (but you can make your own!). But these cookies were very, very easy to make, with impressive results.

“Crisp, fruity whites with good weight and body worked especially well with the dish; their acidity cut through its richness.” Right…

Gary Paul Nabhan, the book’s author, is out to save dwindling American plant and animal species by getting farmers to grow or raise the species and restaurants to serve them. The Slow Food movement is involved, encouraging a market for the endangered crops and cattle among its devotees.

It all gets back to diversity in the diet and not relying on the same five crops to provide most of our carbohydrate intake. Thanks, Liz, for sending the article!

Also, I think I must have accidentally thrown away my camera cord. A new one is in the mail, and I’ll be updating a lot of posts with pictures soon.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt/Custard

Ingredients

3 eggs yolks

1 T. red jam (boysenberry, raspberry, strawberry, etc.)

1 lb. strawberries, cut up

1 1/4 c. low-fat plain yogurt

shake of confectioner’s sugar

Method

Combine egg yolks, yogurt, red jam and half the strawberries in the bowl of a food processor. Blend thoroughly.

Pour the mixture into a shallow dish (I used a pie pan) and place in the freezer. Freeze until somewhat frozen, but still able to be broken up.

Meanwhile, add the remaining strawberries and a good shake of confectioner’s sugar (adjust to your tastes) to the food processor. Pulse until blended.

When the freezer mixture has achieved a somewhat-set consistency, mix in the remaining berries/sugar. Freeze until very hard. Serve.