I had an excellent and restorative three day weekend (thanks Presidents Day!). Saw Tinker Tailor (again.) and got some fun groceries. Grapefruit! Ooo!
I even treated myself to some non-red roses...
...that are now drying on my front door.
As if seeing Tinker Tailor that morning wasn't enough, I spent Monday evening watching the original Tinker Tailor with
Meat loaf seemed like an appropriate accompaniment. Very 70s. If I had a tv tray I'd use it.
This is my Grandma K's recipe-it's the classic meat, bread crumbs, onion, egg, and Hunts tomato sauce loaf. The sauce on top is soooo deliciously tangy though. Hunts tomato sauce, cider vinegar, brown sugar, French's Mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. I even take it a step further and squirt ketchup over the top. I'm crazy like that.
This time, however, I had to do things a little differently than usual. I forgot I don't have a pan large enough for a full loaf so I ended up using a muffin tin. That's right. I made meat muffins. Worked really well actually. I just used a 1/4 cup measure to plop the mixture into the greased tin, smushed them in and spooned some sauce over the tops. Took 20 minutes to cook (so I guess this is also a good course of action if you're really hungry and forgot how long a full meat loaf takes to cook as I usually do!).
One note-if you make one full batch of meat muffins and then use that same tin for the second batch, spoon some water into any empty spots if you've got some residual meat stuck in them. Otherwise it burns to a nice crisp and can both set your smoke alarm off and be a total pain in the ass to wash off. Just saying.
We actually got some snow on Friday. Seeing as I've been whining about the lack of snow this winter I took full advantage. Wore my Ice Princess Boots, down parka, and stomped through as many sludge puddles as possible.
Finished up my snow day with a wintry dinner of roast acorn squash and The Bourne Identity.
I love that you can see just how many times (5??) I stabbed that lower one with a fork, just to be really really sure it was thoroughly cooked. Clearly I have issues.
I meant to get a lot of things accomplished today, but I spent most of the afternoon laying in bed with my heat pillow and a bout of wicked lady cramps watching the rest of the Guinness Tinker Tailor (I read the first Smiley book in less than 24 hrs this week. I'm on a bit of an espionage bender). They'd buggered off by the evening though so I made Miss Linda's comforting Honey Curry Chicken for dinner.
And after taking a walk to the grocery store I whipped up these delightful little coconut cakes to stave off the odd craving for coconut I've had the last few days.
I've never really pegged myself as a coconut lover, though I'm not a coconut hater. I suppose I'm generally sort of apathetic towards it. I annoyingly keep spelling it as 'cocoanut' which I feel is wrong, but according to spell check and Wikipedia is just archaic. Typical. We usually had coconut in the pantry when I was a kid. I can't remember a specific thing Miss Linda used it for (Mom-can you remember what you used it for?? Did you have a coconut dessert/dish I'm totally blanking on? Or are you just that Boy Scout level prepared for any baking situation that may arise?*). D-Mon and I used to put chocolate chips and coconut on soft flour tortilla shells and heat it up in the oven to make a snack if we craved something sweet. And I typically do feel it my duty to eat the lone coconut filled chocolate in the box since nobody else will. It just seems cruel to leave it there...
I've never actually craved it before though. I blame this week's Smitten Kitchen. I didn't have enough of the ingredients to do Smitten's muffins, and the recipe for macaroons I have calls for ground almonds which I also don't have. The Sweet Paul recipe seemed the most reasonable, and more along the lines of what I wanted, a cake thing that was coconut-y. Of course I (unlike my mother) didn't have any coconut or coconut milk in my pantry so had to go to the grocery store anyways. I really could have made any of these things. I think I made the right choice though, they really are delightful and smell divine. I didn't want to make a whole cake in a spring form because whole cakes are ridiculous when you live alone. I don't have mini-bunts pans (again with the never having anything ever) so I whipped out my handy dandy muffin tin. They are dense and moist with a pleasing vanilla and coconut flavor that's not bad suntan lotion/pina colada coconut-y.
Craving sated. Yay for coconuts.
Clearly I would starve to death if I didn't own a muffin tin. Yay for muffin tins.
And a final yay for George Smiley. He's kind of fantastic.
*Update 3/7: Apparently the coconut was used once a year to make German Chocolate Cake for Dr. Karl's birthday! The world makes sense again!
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