Recipe for Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake

 Reblogged from McSweeney's (Who knew it was a food blog too?)

1. Allow the angel to reach room temperature. Then kill it.
2. Kill God. Set Him aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
4. Ecstatically whip, as if possessed by a storm-wind of freedom, 1-1/2 cups of excellent egg whites with 1/4 tsp. salt and 1-1/2 tsp. cream of tartar. Continue until peaks are as if raised to their own heights and given wings in a fine air, a robust air.
5. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, about 3 tbsp. at a time.
6. You are brilliant.
7. Now, add 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/4 tsp. almond extract, and then sift together 1-1/4 cups flour and 3/4 cup sugar.
8. Blend in God and the angel. Emboldened, add the egg mixture.
9. Gaze into the überbatter. The überbatter will gaze into you.
10. While prancing about in a frenzy of self-satisfaction and anticipation, use a rubber scraper to push the überbatter into an ungreased 10" tube pan, for it is destined to be there.
11. Bake on a lower rack until done, usually 35-40 minutes, while reciting to the upper rack a long, convoluted anecdote about your childhood.
12. Invert the tube pan over a bottle for a few hours. Then impetuously rap the pan. Shout, "Aha!" and slide a knife along the pan's insides.
13. Call what tumbles out a cake if you dare. Call it miraculous even.
14. Eat it. It is delicate, morbid, loveable, and you will die depressed, delirious, and overweight.
via Rebecca Coffey

Swinging meatballs

From Steve

We just got back from the last holiday party of the season, a wonderful regifting potluck at the lovely lakeside home of some dear friends, Jan and Roger.

Laura made two sets of meatballs, one glutenous and the other free of gluten.

Both were delicious. I'll leave it to her to detail her recipe.

But I remember feeling a little strange about it when she told me that she'd mixed grocery-store ground pork with ground beef from our quarter cow. Had we cheated again? At the very least it seemed to me to be a sort of carnivorous three-way, but as I've thought it through, I think I was letting my puritanical streak get the best of me. We mix beef with all kinds of other foods without becoming judgmental, and I have come to believe that the same open-mindedness should apply to the mingling of pig and cow.

Cheating on the quarter cow

From Steve

We cheated on our quarter cow.

The whole idea was to buy in bulk, and stop purchasing fast food and grocery store meat.
But on New Years Eve we ate two delicious New York strips from a local grocer.
Blame it on the holidays, I say.

A few days earlier I defrosted and fried some edible ground beef patties. I served them on small plates with an assortment of mustards and some dill pickles. I didn't cook any side dishes, and I got the feeling that Laura felt I hadn't really created a full-fledged meal for the family. But I found it quite satisfying. Kind of like a "lean" meal at a restaurant.

I'm not sure why, but I resist planning ahead when it comes to defrosting meat. (Once again, a quarter cow is not just food. It's a test of character.) It's difficult. How am I supposed to know what I'll want to eat tonight or tomorrow or the next day? Am I a Peter Pan with regards to menu planning?

***

The meat cooks quite badly when it's not fully defrosted. I've always known that you are supposed to fully defrost before cooking, but my recent experience with the burger patties were the first time I've seen why. I can save you the trouble of trying it at home: They tend to blacken on the very outside without cooking at all inside.

The burgers I defrosted in the microwave cooked quite nicely. Laura says she has over-defrosted some of the patties in the microwave, and the results were inedible. I'm not sure if she over-defrosted as the result of inattentiveness or haste. In this blog, as in real life, I will refrain from speculating on any possible character defects in other people.