I ended up making banana peanut butter pie and it was DELICIOUS. I started with a chocolate cookie crust, layered it with crushed toasted peanuts, then sliced banana, then peanut butter mousse, and then a sour cream chocolate icing.
Usually when I make something, I’m pretty critical. I taste it, judge the flavour & texture, and pronounce it acceptable/good/pretty good. Well, this pie was AMAZING. Definitely a keeper.
Tomorrow is March 14, or 03/14, or 3.14, or pi. I haven’t decided what pie I will celebrate with, but it’s a toss-up between traditional apple pie, banana cream pie, or banana peanut butter pie. I’m sort of leaning towards banana peanut butter pie but I don’t know if i have enough time for all the components. We’ll see what happens.
For Elisa’s birthday party last night I made three kinds of cupcakes:
(a) white cake with banana-white chocolate ganache filling, whipped white chocolate icing
(b) lemon-coconut cupcakes with lemon curd filling, cream cheese icing, candied lemon chip
(c) chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese filling, sour cream chocolate icing
Tonight, I made gnocchi from scratch and they turned out to be delicious, fluffy pillows of potato goodness. I sauteed them in brown butter, with button mushrooms and red swiss chard. SO DELICIOUS.
You know it’ll be a good day when it starts with old friends, orange juice and champagne. That excellent start was followed by caramelized banana french toast.
Unfortunately, I had tried to make a pink grapefruit granite for dessert. I say tried to make, because I used a recipe from my restaurant days which called for a significant amount of vodka. Vodka doesn’t freeze at the same temperature that water does, so while the boozy granite froze quickly in the super-freezer at the restaurant, it didn’t freeze as nicely when I tried it at home. In the end, I nixed the granite and served a citrus salad instead.
On a completely unrelated note, I am sipping a lovely pink grapefruit cocktail.
Yesterday I ran 10 km in the National Capital Race Weekend. Two years ago I traned for about three months, and finished in 58 minutes. This time around I put in a week of half-assed training and came in at 1 hour, 3 minutes. Not bad.
The thing with 10 km is that I get really bored at the 8 km mark, and I have to think of reasons to keep running. Invariably, it’s the post-run bagel that gets me going. They’re soft and bready, ever-so-slightly-soggy from sitting in a plastic bag, and they’re cold. But after 10 km, they taste like the most delicious thing in the world.
Alas! By the time I got to the food tent, all the bagels were gone! Yargh!
I had to settle for several bananas, apple slices and one orange slice (I think I got the last one, so there). I also had some free yogurt and lots of red radioactive gatorade.
Maybe it’s those five minutes that make the difference between getting a post-run bagel and not getting a post-run bagel. I guess I’ll run faster next time.
