THE DAILY TABLE::Soup Weather for Saturday

The kids slept in as expected which gave me a little time to sit by the fire and continue reading "The Racketeer". The story is getting interesting...but I won't give anything away in case you're planning on reading it. Hopefully I'll take more time away from baking next week to explore my other interests - including reading and knitting. And perhaps working on that Death by Chocolate puzzle. My boy seems to have taken after me in the puzzling skills. He sits with the puzzle book that Oma bought for him this past summer and does one puzzle after another. Ok, there are only six pieces per puzzle, but it's a start.

Breakfast was not scones this Saturday morning. It was polenta. Made with the last of the milk. The kids love eating it with maple syrup. Cinnamon was hoping for the hot cereal with the tiny wild blueberries. Maybe next week. After breakfast, I started chopping onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and a red bell pepper for lentil soup. The weather was perfect for it.

Meanwhile, the kids worked on Sagey's new Space Shuttle Lego kit. Of course Saffron wanted to take charge and build it all by herself. "It's Sagey's", explained my husband. Personally, I think it's too advanced for him. Afterall, it does say "5-12 years" on the box. "He wanted it", my husband replies. Yeah, let's see how that argument works when the kids are teenagers. "Oh, but she wanted that shiny new red car!"

The day was also perfect for an experiment after cleaning out the vegetable bin in the refrigerator. There were a few veggies that I had to toss, but others were spared. I had almost half a head of cauliflower. It was leftover from the cauliflower soup I made almost two weeks ago. The one that Cinnamon called "applesauce soup". There were a few brown spots on the cauliflower, but nothing that a knife couldn't take away. After measuring it, I had about 335 grams. Enough for my cauliflower/potato patties with yogurt dill sauce. Minus the dill. And the cilantro. And...I saw that I was not going to be making those patties today. So, I improvised. Instead of making patties, I put the mixture into a gratin dish and baked it for about 40 minutes at 375F. The taste was good and the texture was souffle-like. I'll have to try again with fresh cilantro and the yogurt dill sauce. This could also make a good addition to eggs for breakfast tomorrow.

Cinnamon kept insisting on playing outside. In the cold. We had low 50s today and not a child was to be seen until late afternoon. Saffron joined her sister on her bike and they played for hours it seems.

Sagey preferred to stay indoors away from the bitter cold. He was happy building a house for me. I also made a short video of him building it and he was highly amused watching himself on the little LCD screen on my camera. He kept saying "Again!". And we watched it three times until he went to play some more.

If you're wondering whether or not there was cake today...why, of course! I had two more blackened bananas and instead of tossing them out, I decided to use them to verify my banana cake recipe. All for the sake of recipe testing.

This time, though, I left the cake in the oven about 4 minutes longer than last time. Still, it was delicious and we'll be eating more of it tomorrow.