Off into Other Wild Blue Yonders

Yesterday after the knitting zoom,  I had a lovely chat with my neice, Shasha who is the only other member of my family acivetly knitting.  She is working on the Montana Mountain Cowl by Andra Mowry in some really delicious yarns and she was wearing a stunning colourwork sweater, which is only her second sweater ever.  She is living and working in the US right now and is really looking forward to spring and being able to get around their city to explore. She has found the yarn store though.  First things first.

Around all the other goodness in my day, I pulled all my old cookbooks, to search and find the orange merinque pie recipe which I  have been searching for all winter.  All I could remember was that it was delicious and that there was something different about it.  I did find it.  It wasn't specifically an orange meringue pie as it was an orange chiffon pie, which also explains where my putting the meringue into the lemon part of the pie comes from.  

Bottom line, if you like lemon pie, instead of topping your pie with the meringue, carefully fold it into your lemon custard.  It is delicious and for those who love the lemon part of the pie but take off the merigue, the perfect way to use the egg whites.  It produces a lovely light airy lemony rich tart pie.  And if you have a recipe for the lemon pie from scratch, substitute orange.  It is sublime.

In my search through my books, I was reminded of why I like the books and why the books, and having libraries for all kinds of material matters.  To wit, last year, at the start of the pandemic I connected with a group on facebook that was all about cooking and baking to entertain yourself during the pandemic.  They eventually put out a cookbook, which is great and many many new bread bakers were born.  But the group also showed one of the weaknesses of  relying only on the interent for information.  

In those early pandemic days, there were weird shortages.  As people started baking there were shortages of yeast and flour that took weeks to clear up.  It takes time to ramp up production enough to replace the yeast to fully restock every store every where right across the country.  Sour dough and starters became the way to go.  And then along came new bakers who only ever interneted, telling people they did not have to go through all that work, that baking soda and baking powder were the same as yeast and could be used interchangeably.  

Utterly and completely false, of course and scientifically provable by trying to get a regular sandwhich bread from a product leavened by baking soda.  It took more posts by many longtime regular bakers than I care to say explaining that all levening agents were not equal and that they were not interchangeable if you wanted the same product.  Eventually it was stamped out within the group, but it did show how easily, information could be skewed if you listen to those who only shout louder.  If you only ever use recipes from the internet, please, please go read cookbooks.  In books you find not just the product but the why of the thing, the subsitutions, the thrill of the knowing and the better than even the internet can imagine, the beginning of understanding the chemistry of cooking and food, and wine and all sorts of weird delightful cool stuff. All this means I ought to be a better cook than I am, but well, cooking is only something that I do.  It is not a natural talent like knitting.  

But I have my books to back me up, to entertain and inspire me.  Our supper today is going to be a pot of beef barely soup and I am going to bake some soda bread to go along with it.  I am also going to bake a recipe for carrot cake cream cheese bars that I did find on the internet.  

Goodness is everywhere, books are not the only source, but neither is the internet.