Blessed are they

I do a lot of my meal planning for the month on the fly while doing our monthly grocery shopping at WinCo. It's not that I don't have things in mind before that, it's more that that's when I manifest the realities of what I need. Anyway, I saw a recipe a few weeks ago for lasagna made with egg roll wrappers for the pasta, and thought that was such a good idea that I picked up a couple of packages while shopping this month. Then, sometime last week I decided that it was time to actually make the darn stuff, and decided, influenced by this book and this post, that I would make my own ricotta.



So here's my first cheese, draining. I wanted to take more pictures during the process, but I had put my camera battery to charge, so I couldn't... let's just say it all went as planned, and that it really does work to make ricotta out of a gallon of milk from Safeway. Oh, yes, and if you're using lemon juice as your acid, it really works much better if you add it after the milk is heated, not before!

36. Breakfast at midnight?

Last night, in the hours I couldn't sleep (the Infanta went into the crib shortly after 11, I didn't sleep until shortly after her 2 am nursing), I had a thought. I'd seen somewhere a recipe for making oatmeal in the crock pot - put it in at night, let it cook on low overnight, and in the morning you have perfect hot cereal all ready to go. So I tried it. I pulled out the Little Dipper that came with my big crock pot, and which has been gathering dust for... a year now? and loaded it with my usual oatmeal proportions - 3/4 cup uncooked cereal, 1 1/2 cup water, a little salt - plugged it in, and went back to trying to sleep. It was fabulous this morning - hot cereal with no especial effort!

Sinterklaas

First, a gratuitous baby shot, taken just moments ago:



Today is Sinterklaas. Now, I'm not Dutch, but my SIL is, and we thought this was such a good idea that we've adopted it ourselves. I have a few gifts for our immediate party - Josh and Lina and me, and my brother and his wife (we'll be celebrating at their place tonight) - and I can't show you pictures because that would spoil the surprise, now wouldn't it? Tomorrow, I promise. :)



I also have cookies - at least, cookies in progress. It's kinda hard to make cookies late in the evening with a tired baby and no daddy to take his shift... Nonetheless, I did manage to make half a batch of Dutch Letter Cookies (thanks to Norma for sharing the recipe!), with the rest to make this afternoon, and I have the dough chilled for Pepparkakor. Yay for ethnic European spice cookies! I would post the recipe, but I have a sleepy baby in my lap, and getting up to get it would disturb her. Again, tomorrow, I promise!