Sick

In order to be at work on time, I have to leave my apartment at 6:45 am. I have to be out of bed at 6:00 am. Every night I set my alarm for 5:00 am, so I can hit snooze for an hour. That is how long it takes me to gain the will to live in the morning. However, I don't actually drag myself out of bed until about 6:10-6:20 which causes me to be about 15 minutes late for work everyday.

This morning when my alarm first went off at 5:00, I had a sore throat and a stuffy nose. By 6:00, the conditions hadn't improved. I am sick. My nose is stuffy, my ears hurt, and my throat hurts. My body jumps back and forth from being chilled, to hot flashes rivalling those of menopausal women.

I also have no appetite. Which is ok, because my lunch is yesterday's leftovers and I wasn't too crazy about supper last night.

I made crab cakes. I pulled the recipe off the Internet, but I'm not going to share it because I wasn't crazy about them. I used canned crab, and possibly the problem I had with my crab cakes was my aversion to canned seafood. Overall, I think I wasn't crazy about the taste. They were very mayo-y.

I also dipped them into cheater aioli. Aioli is a dip of homemade mayo with garlic and lemon (at least the basic one is). Cheater aioli, is using actual mayo instead of making it with eggs and olive oil.

Cheater aioli is gross. Although I am usually a fan of a certain "miraculous" mayo-type spread which I find a bit tastier than regular mayo, and I was using regular mayo so maybe that was the problem.

I plan on tinkering with the recipe a bit and see if I can improve upon the crab cakes.

The other night I made Julia Child's Potage Parmentier. Which is potato and leek soup. The ingredients are:

8 cups of water (I really can't get over the use of water as a soup base, most everyone uses a stock of sorts, and when I first saw this recipe I was so skeptical of how good it would taste)

4 cups of peeled and diced potatoes

4 cups of thinly sliced and cleaned leeks

1 tbsp salt

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, partially cover, and simmer for 40-50 minutes. I kid you not, this is it. When it's done simmering you are supposed to run it through a food mill. I do not own one, so I used a hand immersion blender the first time. Which I wasn't too keen on since there was no food bits left. I used a potato masher last time, and the texture was way better. (In Julie & Julia, the book by Julie Powell, she uses a potato ricer).

To finish off you stir in 2-3 tbsp of softened butter, or cream. And you can top it with chopped chives or parsley.

This soup is so tasty, and it's so simple. I still can't believe the flavor that comes from so few ingredients.