I Am Not A Domestic Goddess

This post should have pictures, but I can't figure out how to get them off my camera so will have to wait until I get to work (which has the photo-downloader-thingie). We now have pics!

Anyway. I love Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess cookbook. I want to be a domestic goddess! It's one of those everyday kind of goals. You know. Don't mess up too bad at work, get home safely, be a good friend/partner, be a domestic goddess. Something you aim for every day.

Sadly, I have not fulfilled my goal to its fullest potential. Yet.

So, Julia is coming over today (it got to be too late last night) and I thought it would be fun to have fancy cookies. So I decided to make Pistachio Macaroons. I've never actually had the foofy Paris kind of macaroon, so I wasn't really sure what I was aiming for, but the picture looked good. Nigella even said this was the recipe she was most proud of in the book: cookie bliss. Worth a try, right?

Without going into great detail, these were not too hard to make, and I even employed some DYI kitchen techniques like using a plastic bag with one end cut off in place of a piping tube, etc. I was feeling pretty proud. But the end result? (see photo, to come) Eh. I tried one. It was good, and I'll help eat them, but cookie bliss? Maybe not so much. And I don't know the secret to good meringues, I guess. I've made them a couple of times before (and this is a basically a nut-infused meringue) and they never turn out quite right. What am I doing wrong?

And now I have like a 1/2 cup of leftover pistachio buttercream filling. What in the world can I do with this? (I can't make myself do the the obvious -- throw it away -- quite yet).

So, today I am not a domestic goddess. I won't give up on Nigella yet, though. I did make her super-duper yummy chocolate loaf cake last night, and evidently succeeded much better at that, since it is over half-gone already. A little mouse has been nibbling at it all night and all morning before she lapsed into a sugar-induced nap. I only hope it lasts until Julia gets here so I have SOMEthing sweet to offer.

We are going to have Potato, Panir & Pea curry for dinner. This is from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, always a good one for a lazy afternoon of recipe-experimenting.

If all else fails, we'll walk down to the mexican place and then get soft-serve after.

Let's see. Today has been fairly slow. I read more of MDR (fancy psychologist short-hand for Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I learned from Dr. T), we had some breakfast (after rejoicing over the fact that we *could* walk down to Tillie's, the nearby diner. We chose not to, but the fact that it is indeed POSSIBLE for us to WALK to a diner for breakfast, was pretty neato and worthy of a 'woohoo!'). Shortly after this, Terri decided to take a nap, and I have been grocery shopping, cookie-making (and failing), and fiddling around with logo stuff all afternoon.

Julie's due here in about an hour and a half. Just enough time for a little stroll, maybe some more beading, maybe some lazy-afternoon reading. I'm liking this day. It's another good one. Thanks, Universe.