Having a good time

I enjoy all kinds of odds and ends that make me really happy. I really like to decorate my house for holidays. I enjoy big flower arrangements that I make with flowers I buy at the Ojai Farmers Market each Sunday. I love bike rides to the beach, although I haven't been for a while. I kind of enjoy gardening, although the Southern California weeds are persistent and they can overwhelm me.

My very favorite pastime, however, is food. I subscribe to all kinds of food magazines, including Olive magazine from England, which is a real indulgence and one of my favorite things, what with all their puddings and everything being brilliant. I've had to learn another language because the Brits don't speak English -- seriously. Courgettes are zucchini, aubergine is eggplant, rocket is arugula, chips are french fries -- seriously when did English people stop speaking their eponymous language?

And don't give me the whole "it was their language first." Um, we're bigger, stronger and a whole lot cooler and we have Hollywood. Hollywood determines the popular culture for the world, at least the English-speaking portion of it; at least the American English speaking portion of it.

In addition to the weird language, I get a real kick out of reading Olive and looking at products available in Europe that aren't available here. Unfortunately I'm never going to be able to make a recipe from Olive seeing as how those difficult Brits have everything is weird measurements and temperature. Sure, I could convert the measurements -- after I smash into a wall head first. My head would explode either way.

Another magazine I get is Cook's Illustrated . This is an ad-free magazine that comes out six times a year. It basically gives practical cooking tips, explores recipes and reviews various cooking products. When I say explores recipes, I mean they really look into various standard recipes and see how to make them taste the best. Cooks Illustrated writers will dissect a recipe, looking at each ingredient and each cooking method to find the best way to make the best everything. If you need a great recipe for some favorite dish -- say sugar cookies, brisket or what have you, Cook's is the place to go.

I get periodic emails from them and I don't block them because they're usually pretty interesting and have a lot of information. I noticed one day that they were asking for people to sign up to test recipes for upcoming issues. They will send you a recipe and they ask to to prepare it and let them know how it went, what works and what is unclear. I had signed up some time ago, but I'd never heard back. I'm one of those people who lives in some kind of bureaucratic black hole. When it comes to forms, applications, queries, etc., things get lost. So I figured I'd try to sign up again, but this time I used my gmail account.

Lo and behold I received, not one, but two recipes to try out. One sent to my home account and one sent to my gmail account. One was for tiramisu and the other was for chicken tikka masala. I had a great time trying them out -- tracking down the right ingredients, making sure I had the right equipment.

The tiramisu recipe calls for rum, but I didn't want to use any alcohol in the cake for a number of reasons. I finally had a moment of clarity and realized that what I needed to replace the rum was hazelnut syrup from Torani. It was an inspired choice. The chicken tikka was also really good.

So now when I get my upcoming Cook's Illustrated and I see these two recipes, I'll know I was one of the people who had some small input into their final versions. How fun.