my life on a plate

The first time I made this since I’ve been back in the US I screwed it up. I have always stuck to making the recipe just as written, which makes four nice sized servings. Since it was generally only my husband and I or a friend or two over for dinner, I never thought about making it any other way. Then, once I was back and staying with my son there were six of us. So I screwed around with the recipe trying to make a full six servings and not just dividing four servings up into smaller portions. It was a huge failure! It was liquidy, weak tasting and looked more like curdled milk then the fancy afters that normal got oohs and ahhs when brought out. So what if you have more than four people to serve? Make something else!

BTW It’s not French, it’s English and it’s pronounced “poss-ette”

Lime Posset with Macerated Raspberries

When I lived in England I used to really miss the hot California summers. English summers seem to last just a week or two and by English summer I mean it didn’t rain. Well not as much anyway.

I know that I romanticized California summers in my head. I found it easy to forget about stepping out of my home into heat so high that it took me a few minutes to start breathing normally again. Or that there were days that were simply just too hot to go out at all. Staying in and keeping the curtains drawn to keep the house cool meant spending days in dimly lit rooms with fans blasting and telling myself I wouldn’t curse the winter weather this year. But, even though I am back in Cali and have experienced a few stiflingly hot days even this early on in the summer, I still romanticize it in my mind.

I think about all those 4th of July barbecues, pool parties, hot nights parked on the main street watching “the cruise”. Kids running through sprinklers and getting hurt on homemade slip-n-slides. Snow cones (blue is the best!), hosing off the patio furniture before sitting on it so you wouldn’t burn yourself, the way the wet concrete felt underfoot afterwards, sweaty afternoon naps, water balloons and the way the air smelled at night when it was getting cooler outside… if it got cooler outside.

This is my first summer in Cali since moving back to the US and it’s so early in the summer that anything is possible and the summers to come still have the potential to live up to my memories.

This week I’m sharing two of my favorite summertime recipes - Homemade Lemonade & Rubbed Ribs

I’ve ranted about trying to pass off store bought crap as homemade, but I didn’t mean to imply I eat nothing but homemade stuff or that I think it’s wrong to use or eat anything made for convenience. I like chips but I’m not going to peel potatoes, slice them with a mandolin, drag out the deep fryer and make my own chips (as in crisps) to go with my sandwich. Ok I might on occasion, but it would be a very rare occasion.

Over the years I’ve often heard celeb chefs confess to eating all sorts of things that were apparently supposed to shock the interviewer and/or the audience. Surely this type of thing can’t be a shock to anyone? I mean, hearing that chefs (celeb or otherwise) eat canned soup, chips, cold cereal and even snack cakes can’t be scandalous or shocking… does anyone really think that a chef eats 100% homemade everything all the time? Or is it that they eat unhealthy foods? That just can’t be it, I mean after watching them use a pound of butter, a pint of cream and a half a pound of sugar in a dish that serves 4 people, then confess to loving snack cakes? Yeah big shocker there!

Recently I’ve been watching a few of my favorite celeb cooks and they confessed to using stock cubes as if it were a dirty secret, then they defended it to the camera as if the people watching were standing with fists shaking in outrage. Seriously? I like stock cubes, I use them a lot and I make no apologies for using them.

I think it’s funny when I see a chef or cook tell people to use homemade stock and then say “but if you don’t have any then good quality store bought is OK”. As they pour in some can of stock with the label blocked or ripped off. They don’t generally say “or just a crappy old store brand, can of stock” even though they know that is what most people are going to do if they don’t just use a stock cube.

So what is the spectrum of comfort in regards to what foods are “normal” when bought instead of homemade? Things like cheese or flour, which most people never make in their entire lifetime. Then there is the WTF is wrong with you?! Type of bought stuff like frozen scrambled eggs or sandwich in a can. SANDWICH IN A CAN! Yeah, Google it.

So what is my guilty little store bought secret? It’s this weeks recipe! Even though I am capable of making a pretty decent homemade glazed lemon pound cake, I mostly get cravings for its white trash cousin. When I make it I am never disappointed. Plus I love the name… say it out loud! If it doesn’t at least make you smirk, you are not human.

This weeks recipe Mountain Bundt