Till I'm satisfied

Yes, I know. I've been ignoring this blog mercilessly, for its shiny new counterpart over at 1000 Markets. I'm featured on their Community page so I feel like I should make the most of it, and write new blog postings frequently so people don't have to stare at the same old posts all the time.

I have a bit of a new project. I just got the Bon Appetit Fast Easy Fresh cookbook and I am *so* excited about it. I think it might be exactly what I need to get me out of my food rut, and actually make yummy food at home. I look forward to fewer nights eating cereal for dinner because nothing sounded good. It has snooty food recipes with minimal ingredients which works perfectly with my crazy schedule.

So after planning what I was going to make, I ordered groceries from Amazon Fresh. I had to supplement it with a trip to Trader Joe's because the meat-buying experience at Amazon Fresh is not so good - the product descriptions are somewhat lacking, *and* meat seems to be nearly twice the price per pound there.

So this morning, I woke up and made the recipe on p.510:

Smoked salmon and leek scramble with Meyer lemon creme fraiche


Yes, I know that sounds totally random, but I chose it because I had leeks in the fridge from a recipe I didn't make last week, and my parents brought me back smoked salmon from their trip to Alaska this summer. Also, any scrambled egg recipe that uses whipping cream in place of milk is A-OK in my book.

And seriously, I've never had such lovely, fluffy scrambled eggs. Next time I'm switching to half and half, though - I don't think I can indulge like that very often.

They came out great. I used Tillamook light sour cream instead of creme fraiche because it was less expensive *and* better for me. That's the best light sour cream I've ever had. I also halved the recipe because Lord knows TJ isn't going to eat scrambled eggs with leeks and smoked salmon and I don't cook that fancy for the puppies.

So now I have leftovers for the week ahead, or maybe just lunch today. But so far I'm very impressed with this cookbook. It has a great index by ingredient and the recipes are all pretty simple. I wouldn't say they can be done in 30 minutes or less, but they definitely don't require a lot of crazy, hard to find ingredients or techniques that involve steps that need to be done days in advance.

(Subtle product placement here. But no, they're not paying me to fake-review their book.)



Oh, and yesterday we tried the Amazon Fresh "attended" delivery, which is the one where you need to be home. That worked really well - they don't leave the big plastic totes so we're not tripping over them in our entryway now. I still like the convenience of the doorstep delivery, esp when I need something before I wake up the next day, but if I know I'm going to be home, I'll do it the other way.

And in exciting crafty news, I have reached 200 sales online, between Etsy and 1000Markets! I'm very surprised, and also very busy. So life is good :)

I also got my first sale on Dawanda, which is a European handmade site (a girl's gotta expand her audience, right?). That was a bit surprising because I had listed a few items there months ago but hadn't seen much action there.

In the New Year, I'll probably list a few more of my "made to order" items to keep up a presence there. And if I'm feeling really brave, I may try my hand at listing in French or German, if I can remember anything I learned. That's apparently how to get more people viewing my products since it's a German site.

Later today, I'll be making "Indian" curried shrimp from the Bon Appetit cookbook. YUM. I'll report back on how it goes.