Day 3426 - Dogs and bones

Heaven.





I think I've finally figured out how to stop stressing out over onions.  Recipes always call for "onions." What is an onion?  It's a bulbous vegetable typically found in three colors: red, white or yellow; and in sizes ranging from golf ball to softball.  (I'm excluding "pearl onions" which are about the size of a large grape.  But recipes almost never specify color or size.  What we have here in the house are always the largest onions in the grocery store, and I can never make the conversion between how many giant onions = a recipe-sized onion?  A smart cook would measure them, but that would require (a) having a normal onion in the house to start with and (b) thinking ahead, before you're ready to chop it up.

So I found advice online at salon.com --

Small onion = 4 ounces by weight or about ½ cup chopped
Medium onion = 8 ounces, or about 1 cup chopped
Large onion = 12 ounces, or about 1½ cups chopped
Jumbo onion = 16 ounces, or about 2 cups chopped

And fyi, half of a giant onion cut is still a little bit more than a medium onion.  I don't begrudge the little bit, but at least I finally know.   I'll ignore color and just stick with the default white or red.

On to other cooking adventures.  I wanted to try using pears instead of apples in the apple crisp recipe, so last week I bought a bag of nice, ripe pears.  Things being as they were last Sunday--harried--I shoved the pears in the fruit tray and ignored them all week.  But they nagged me...

So a little while ago I pulled them out, salvaged the good in them, and came up wtih only three cups for a recipe that required five.  I could supplement with apples...but why waste good apples that Callie would eat when there were four out-of-season, dried out peaches in the fridge? 

So tonight we're going to see whether or not it's possible to put sugar on a dry-ish, untasty fruit, cover it with a crumbly crust, and fool people into thinking it is good.

I also finally tried Harriet Hands' chicken pie.  The one ingredient it requires, which I've never been able to procure, is Sell's liver pate (sold on amazon.com for $50 a case).  So I made my own.  The mixture of chicken and gravy and pate smells delicious, to me.  But then--I like liver.  I know it's not good for you but I figured the trivial amount in the pie was minimal--like a spice or a seasoning.  After all, I doubt if very many spices are good for you when consumed in quantity.

Pictures tomorrow.  If it tastes good.  I'm not going to jinx it.