Today is the last day before the tempture begins rising again, I'm taking full advantage of a wonderfully cool morning, and a comfortable day: I'm wearing Lolita Lempicka's wonderfully honeyed smokey ambered citrus sprinkled vanilla scent, L de Lolita Lempicka. This took close to over two years before it made its way to the US market and I immediately snatched it up when it showed up on parfum1; there first fragrance, Lolita Lempicka, being one of my first loves. This one of those beautiful buy without sniffing scents that actually worked. It also turns out that it one of those fragrances I prefer in eau de parfum form rather than more ambered pure parfum form. In the edp variation you smell variation of notes far more easily and get to enjoy the smoky honeyed immortelle middle notes, where as I find that the pure parfum immediately moves to a more ambered bottom with just a hint of citrus.Another way I am enjoying the cooler is by baking bread, I'm not quite sure why but when I bake bread I feel like I have baked an incredible feat, especially when you use this recipe:
http://kitchenmusings.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/no_need_to_knea.html
Also, onto another cooking feat, I finally made good polenta, that did not require more than four stirs, how you ask? With my most amazing of appliances: the rice cooker. I am now becoming a big rice quicker proponent, you can do so much with them. Steam dumplings, vegetables, rice of course, soup, and polenta. These are a god send in hot weather country. If you get yourself one or already have one, I highly recommend you get this cookbook:
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Rice-Cooker-Cookbook-Porridges/dp/1558322035
I ate my polenta last night with my homemade marinara sauce and well it was divine.
More food talk, sometimes you forget that simple ingredients, that when used with proper technique can make the most wonderfully lip-smacking food. Last week I made Mark Bittman's Green Onion Noodles from The World's Best Recipes by Mark Bittman: the recipe required about 6 ingredients fresh chinese egg noodles, green onions, chives, peanut oil, sesame oil, and soy sauce; most of use have these ingredients sitting in our cupboards. What I got was crispy fried noodles with wonderfully sweet bright green onions that tasted caramelized but were not. This was due to technique and not based on having perfect ingredients (these are favorite types of recipe simple with the ingredients but use a technique that really make the food a treat).
image provided by artmagick.com
image: Golden Light by John Atkinson Grimshaw 1893
