Dogs Hate Daylight Savings Time

Their tummies say, "It's suppertime."  Their eyes say, "It's getting dark.  It's suppertime."  Their humans say, "It's only 5 o'clock.  It's not suppertime."  Their tiny little brains reply, "Then why are you in the kitchen messing with stuff that smells like food?"  Their Bunny says, "I'm always in the kitchen messing with food, at least when I'm not taking a nap."  They say "Gimme some.  NOW."  Bunny's feet say "Scoot."  And no supper is forthcoming.  And you can't reason with them that it's only once a year because they don't remember for one and for two they find no comfort in that.  

I woke up at 7:00 today, only it was really 6:00, and I celebrated being up by watching football.  Viola--Donkeys were live online at 6:30 a.m., so I had coffee and sleepy beagles and yarn and I watched football in bed.  The league decided to have some 6:30 12:30 matches on Sundays, probably for television purposes, but some Italians are predictably decrying the intrusion of crass popular culture into the sacrosanct rituals of mass and Sunday dinner with the family.  This is a little hard for me to understand as a secular American, because everyone knows that it's church and family that encroaches on television, not the other way around.  Anyhoo, you can't expect the die-hard fans ("ultras") to skip the match because of church and family, so they go, but they don't like it.  A few weeks ago, I can't remember which match, but the ultras went to the game, but protested:  By bringing sandwiches to the match.  And eating them.  

And after that, Mr. D got up, and we watched Juventus live online at 9:00, because it isn't being televised and isn't carried by ESPN3 or Foxsoccer.tv.  When that happens, it's live feed or nothing.  Juve won 3-1, but it didn't feel like a decisive win.  Not at all.  But it was a good time to get three points because Inter got only one and Lazio dropped three.

And after that, we did a little yard work.  I put in some crocuses, some hyacinths, and some tulips, and Mr. D cut back the hostas and removed leaves.  I only fell down twice, and only one of the falls was a full-on faceplant, so hooray for me.

And after that, I came in and watched footie and made food.  Jeez, Bunny.  Why can't you just have a sandwich for lunch like everyone else?  Because I really need to pay close attention to what I eat.  I'm terrible at that and I eat too much, but four years of weekly therapy with a registered dietitian finally taught me that it's better to overeat things that I really like instead of crappy stuff that doesn't really please me, because that is likely to result, over time, in being a lot more selective about what I eat.  By choosing carefully, I eat less and I'm no longer a binge eater.  So I cook because food is important and I can do better for myself.

Until last year, this was my idea of Tomato Soup.  Vaguely pinkish red, with lots of sugar and salt, and maybe some clumps of stuff from the can that didn't get mixed in very well.  A big bowl with a giant handful of crumbled saltine crackers just spells "Sick Day," am I right?  Also, it's like installing a pipeline for simple carbohydrates directly from the can to your pancreas.   Then maybe you grow up and think about it a little and then Campbell's introduces its healthy line of soup, so you get all excited and give the low-sodium a try, and you discover that it is terrible.  Terrible.  So you switch back to the regular stuff and you still eat it when you're sick, but it takes so much water for your body to process the sugar and salt that you end up feeling dehydrated and maybe even a little worse.  

Last year, I gave one of Jack Bishop's recipes a try and I have never looked back.  It starts with canned tomatoes, which you drain and seed and then roast with a pinch of brown sugar.

Aside from the tomatoes and their juice and a little vegetable broth, this is all that goes in:

Leeks, sauteed in butter or olive oil, then a little tomato paste and nutmeg added and heated until it blooms, then a bit of flour, and when that has cooked for a minute or two, some broth, and when that is incorporated, the tomatoes and juice.  Let it simmer for about half an hour, then puree it in the blender, return to a clean pan and heat a little more, then season with cayenne pepper and however much salt you like.

Usually about the time I'm pureeing it, I have a look around at the mess (the roasting pan, the colander full of seeds and skins, the bowl that the juice was in, the fact that it takes two saucepans) and the little red drips and splatters, and I ask myself whether it's worth it.  Hell, nowadays, they have tomato soup ready to eat drink in a microwaveable package.  I soldier on and I finish it, and I eat some and I ask Mr. D, is it worth all the mess and all the dishes (since he's the one who does dishes)?  It is.  It's totally worth it.  Just don't ruin it with crumbled-up saltines or a grilled cheese sandwich made with plastic cheese.  You can make a pretty good panini-style grilled cheese sandwich from fresh mozzarella or Fontina Val d'Aosta in your George Foreman Grill.  (ATTENTION:  Fontal Fontina is not even close to being as good.)

TANGENT:  Mr. D is getting ready to put a pot of water on for pasta, and I ask "Do you want rigatoni?" like I don't know the answer.  He responds, verrrry casually, "Um, OK, that would be nice" when I know he's doing a Snoopy dance on the inside.  If it were me, I'd say, "Rigatoni?  WooHoo!"

The other part of the weekend cooking spree is the Bunny Baking Project.  Now that I've gone public to both of my readers, I feel a certain commitment and a bit of pressure to follow through on my plans.  This week, I made a Linzertorte and iced lemon cookies.  Linzertorte is nothing special, just a nut-based pastry dough and raspberry preserves from a jar.  There's nothing to slapping together a delicious Linzertorte.  The problem is making one that doesn't look ridiculously awful.  The dough is soft and kind of hard to handle, and the top crust is arranged in a quasi-lattice pattern.  That means cutting the top crust into strips and transferring them to the pan without tearing them.  If you don't cut the strips in straight parallel lines, then the lattice doesn't look like a lattice. Go ahead and ask me how I know.

The best way to make cuts in straight lines is with a pizza cutter and a plastic ruler.  I do not have a plastic ruler that is long enough to cut 12-inch strips.  But I am a knitter, so I can improvise:

I thought I might never use my size 13 straight again, but I was wrong.  Ha!  So that brings us to this:

I made Linzertorte once before and it was nothing to be proud of.  This one looked okay, and I learned a bit more about how to get the presentation the way I want it.  And it was delicious.  I give the recipe three stars.  The lemon cookies get two stars.  They were very nice, but not something I'm likely to develop a craving for.  I made the Italian Almond Cake today, but we haven't had any yet so I don't know how it turned out.

One of the upcoming recipes is for Black Forest Cake, which requires high-quality tart cherries (canned, because you can only get fresh if you happen to have a tree) which I used to be able to get at the Glutton Place.  I can't find them.  I can't find them anywhere.  This is a problem.  I must make the cake, so I must find the ingredients, or else I will lose my everloving mind.  Let the obsessing begin.

Oh.  One more thing.  I'm not sure whether this is good news or bad news.  

The 2010 edition is available on your newsstand now.  Yikes.

This post was brought to you by Kirby, who loves to be outside, but not without his Bunny: