It's not enough to be satisfied with the things I can do well, or well enough. I always want to learn new tricks, try things that I haven't gotten around to in all my years of experimenting with creative pursuits. I have several of such new experiences in progress right now, with more popping up on my radar out of the blue just this afternoon.
It was probably Saturday or Sunday when I bought a fresh pack of eggs, and left several sitting out on the counter to come to room temperature slowly. The recipe for French macarons said to leave them overnight at the very least, up to three days ideally. They had three full days plus a little bit, depending on when I set them out. I kept getting busy and getting tired and sore. I put off learning how to make these temperamental little cookies. Today the feeling of things left undone got to me, and even though my back was killing me all day and I didn't want to stand up, I made my first batch. The final product looked significantly better than it should have for as slapdash as my processes were. I did several things wrong. I didn't weigh my ingredients. I didn't blend the batter long enough. I don't currently own pastry bags or a big enough pastry tip (as far as I can remember). I faked it through the lack of a pastry bag with a Ziploc bag that came open and covered me in sticky pink mess. I pulled the too-small pastry tip off and piped it through the fatter nozzle of the clamping system. One of my trays was too big for my ludicrously small oven. And I tried to pull them out too soon and discovered (thankfully before it was too late) that they were still gooey inside.
But for all of what seemed like catastrophic errors, they came out looking really good. Sure, they're not perfectly round, and the sizes vary a little bit. But they developed feet on my first try! (Feet on a macaron are those ruffly bits around the base of the cookie that comes from letting them dry on the counter before baking so that they rise instead of spread.) With the egg yolks that were left over, I made my first ever lemon curd, which also came out acceptably well. I left in the lemon zest (on purpose) and accidentally used almost a whole cup of sugar instead of 3/4 (the recipe was written stupidly), but it was also way easier than I expected. It's currently chilling, and I'm hoping that it will work to sandwich between the macarons.
A creative idea that I had never before considered fell into my lap this afternoon like blessings from above. My close friend at Rotary needed a ride home, and on the way she told me that she had been harvesting golden Italian plums from her four trees this week. They produced exceptionally well this year, and she wanted to give me a bunch of them. Before I got to her house, we stopped at a locally-owned bookstore, looking for the Bob Woodward book. They hadn't gotten their shipment yet (because they couldn't order 70+ at once to be high on the priority list), but while we were chatting with the clerk, my buddy turned around and found a pamphlet on how to make homemade wine on a rack of similar how-to booklets. She had just minutes earlier told me these plums at her house make excellent wine. She loaded me up with about five pounds' worth in a bag, enough for the recipe in the book plus a few to eat because they are so exquisitely good. Now I need to dig through all the old beer making equipment in the garage, and see how much can clean up and how much might be contaminated with gluten that I'd have to replace. I think I know what I'll be doing this week, while these plums are at their peak of ripeness.
And now, I've had to download the book I sought on Kindle, because I can't find a paper copy in town. I haven't read past the dedication yet, but once I have posted this essay and changed into jammies, I plan on seeing how far I can get into it. I've already seen the last line of the book posted on television, but I think I'm willing to read even after the spoilers. Starting .... now.
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