Weekly Update: April 6th - 12th — The Wine in the Pines

The Week

Technically Spring has certainly come to the Puget Sound area however from the view of our front windows, spring has yet to bloom. The trees outside our windows are still as barren as the winter months but the temperatures have been consistently in the low to mid 60s. Granted, Mr. Mustang and I haven't been able to enjoy the warmer days as we’ve been primarily spending most of our time indoors.

Mr. Mustang has been working 9 to 10 hour days despite his commute being only 14 feet away from the bedroom and sometimes needs to work on the weekends as well. I on the other hand have been focusing on personal projects around the house as well as bettering myself career wise by taking online classes in SQL, Unity and getting certified in both Scrum and Six Sigma (but only white belt level). I am ashamed to admit that the first few weeks of quarantine I haven't been as productive as I could have been but now that we’re nearing the end of the Shelter-in-Place order, I’m aggressively trying to make up for lost time. I have been writing more blog posts that I will periodically release in the next few days to weeks as well as creating a productivity schedule to prevent any kinds of procrastination in my work in the future.

Probably the most exciting part of our week was Friday when our monthly wines were ready for pickup. Since we don’t get out much during this time we decided to bring wine tastings home with us and ordered a bit more than what we typically get from Rain City Wines in Bothell. At present count, our current wine collection is at a little over 100 bottles with a chance it will increase by next month but that depends if the quarantine gets extended again.

As the weekend nears, I readied the flat for a 48 hour cooking endurance test.

Saturday

I view weekends as a time for decompression as well as meal splurges and due to the quarantine, the menu I have been making has been...extra extravagant. For Saturday brunch, I made an entire chicken pot pie from scratch using the leftover mushroom soup I made a few days prior as the gravy. During the day and up until the later afternoon, Mr. Mustang spent his time playing PC games with his friends also trapped in their homes while I planned out our meals for the next week. It was only in this moment that I realized that due to the quarantine, my life has become more and more consumed by the idea of what kind of complicated dishes can I make next.

Wanting to take a break for complicated recipes to experiment on, I made a rustic leek and potato soup for dinner. I’ve made a few vegetable soups so far while under quarantine and I felt this was the weakest out of all of them. There isn’t much flavor to be had from leeks and the vegetable doesn’t bring out much color when cooked so it looked like a muddy green color by the end. I did happen to have a tasty sourdough bread loaf that I’ve been baking to help enhance the dish so it wasn’t too bad.

Sunday

My family like many others typically gathers together for Easter however this will be the first in a long time that the holiday will be spent in relative isolation. To make up for the missed family members, I spent a good chunk of the day in the kitchen. To start the day, I made Eggs Florentine for brunch with an inexpensive Cava Brut Rose to round out the meal. Contrary to popular belief, Mr. Mustang and I actually don’t drink that much but we make exceptions for Sundays and we start early as well. This was my first time making eggs Florentine and the only difference between this dish and eggs benedict is having wilted spinach instead of ham. After the first few bites I realized that eggs benedicts are miles better. Nothing against spinach but those bright green leaves have a lot more liquid inside them than the naked eye can tell. Each bite was like getting a mouth full of spinach flavored water and dilutes everything else. The one saving grace in eggs Florentine was my hollandaise sauce that was so good that I ended just dipping pieces of bread directly into the sauce to eat and pushing the spinach off of the plate.

After brunch, Mr. Mustang returned back to the office to play a few hours of Minecraft while I washed dishes to get ready for round 2 in the kitchen - dessert. Because it was Easter, I thought it was no better time to make a carrot cake than today. I’ve always wanted to get good enough to have my cakes be Instagram worthy but I can’t achieve that level unless I put in the time. I originally planned on making a 3-tier carrot cake but in the end settled on a 2-tier instead. The biggest issue I have when making a 2 or more tier cake is the stacking - cakes aren’t naturally flat when fully baked and having to carve the tops to make it level is a bitch. I managed to get the first two layers looking fantastic but once the third later got placed is where trouble started. Not even a minute later my cake started to resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa and I reluctantly admitted defeat by removing the third layer - that came apart in several pieces.

Trying to recover what cake still remained, I coated the failed dessert in a cream cheese frosting and attempted a caramel drizzle that turned out less than what I was hoping for. Taste-wise, it is fantastic but visually it looks a bit mediocre. After washing dishes for a second time, I only got to relax for about an hour or so until it was time to get ready for dinner.

I based Sunday’s menu off of Easter - brunch was an innocent concept of Eggs Florentine because of the idea of the Easter Bunny hiding eggs in the grass (poached eggs on top of spinach) where dinner went a little darker with the idea of the actually Easter bunny being butchered, braised and coated in a sauce made with its own blood. While cooking the dish, I used heirloom carrots in the cream sauce where the liquid quickly turned a light pink that took me by surprise. After a moment I felt it was actually rather fitting for the holiday to have rabbit with a pink sauce on top and that I might make this for every Easter for now on. To accompany the entree, Mr. Mustang and I enjoyed a lovely Rose to match the ‘pink’ theme of the meal.

Overall it was a lovely week and even better weekend. There are still two more weeks until the end of the Shelter-in-Place order and I’m going to make sure I will take full advantage of the remaining extra time given to me.