Post 228 Mostly food and feathers

I've been experimenting today with the construction of this blog post, after my battle yesterday with my embroidery blog. It appears the new tools work best if you load one photo at a time, add text and continue in this pattern. They do not work well if, as I have long done, you load photos as you take them and attempt to add text later. It's a relief to work this out. I'm adapting to a new routine.

Today's goal was to prepare the eggplant parmigiana for tomorrow. Out of a fifty year habit I still salt eggplant before I cook it, even though I rarely use salt in cooking. After I have sliced, salted, soaked, rinsed  and squeezed the moisture out, I now spray them with oil and cook the slices in the oven rather than frying them as I once did.  I am a very habit-ridden cook but it occurs to me it might be time to shed this habit. Next time I will at least try without the salting process, since science seems to tell me contemporary eggplant does not benefit from salting.

The other trick I have to practice is taking the eggplant slices out of the oven before they burn. I'm gradually learning to use the timer on the oven! Today no burning.

Yesterday I succumbed to laziness and, instead of making an extra trip to the butcher as I normally do, I bought the lamb shanks I wanted at the supermarket. As well as abundant packaged meat, this supermarket has a butchery counter, where you can buy unpackaged meat from the display. There were no lamb shanks in the display, but I rang the bell and enquired when the attendant appeared. She called the man in charge of meat, who appeared with a tray of lamb shanks vacuum packed into lots of two. 

I expressed my displeasure, hesitated, but bought them.  

Even as I bought them, I knew I would not make the same mistake again. I have three good butchers available to me and visiting one of them is not a lot of extra effort. The lamb shanks are fine but I ended up with a pile of plastic packaging to wash so I can dispose of it in the soft plastic recycling. Lesson learnt.

I had intended to cook the lamb shanks from scratch tomorrow, but last time I cooked this I was very tired by the end of the day, so I did the preparatory work today. It took a while to brown them, and, even with the exhaust fan on, creates a bit of smoke. I worry about setting off the smoke alarm. Fortunately it was a very pleasant day today and I could keep the balcony door wide open as well as having the exhaust fan on.  I got the ragu made, covered the dish and refrigerated, ready for several hours in the oven tomorrow.

I've been watching my two frangipani plants for signs of Spring growth. Today the bumps I've been watching turned into very definite leaves. I'm hoping for a few more blooms this year, but regardless, it is great to see these lovely, shiny, green leaves.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the first of my feathers, then moved my hoop on to another one, which I'm planning to work in lighter pinks. I also sent out the reminder notice to the World Embroidery Study Group of the Guild which meets this coming Wednesday.                                                                                                                   

 I prepared this post earlier in the evening today in an effort to get the layout right. My plan was, after I've cooked the salt and pepper squid I bought yesterday for my dinner tonight, to try to sort out the summary post to my embroidery blog  then knit. I succeeded in the former, but ran out of time to knit.

It's been a lovely day in terms of weather as well as what I have achieved. At this time of the year it is a privilege to live in Adelaide in an East-West facing apartment. It will be less pleasant when it is 40+C, so  I'm making the most of it.