To Souffle or Not Souffle

 Just read Friday, January 3, 2023 of the Julie/Julia Project. 

This blog describes how deceitful souffles can be. 

Lying bastards. 

Souffles are tricky on a diet.  They fool you.  You take a bite of a delicious salmon soufflé, perfectly browned, light and puffy, and you can’t help thinking, against all your experience and judgement, “oh, this couldn’t be bad.  This is like eating yummy, moist air.”

Then before you know it, you’ve eaten half a soufflé.

💯 #truth

Prior to preserving a record of #adventuresincooking with images and words, Danyale and I made JC's cheese souffle recipe. 🧀

I have fond memories of cheese souffles. My maternal grandmother had a recipe from the Orillia Junior League (or some other hoity toity group) for an easy peasy cheese souffle. 

It included:

• 4 eggs (or maybe 5, my memory is fuzzy)
• 1 cup shredded cheddar
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup (preferably Campbell's)
• Salt, pepper and some other spice (again, fuzzy memory)
• Some other ingredient that I'm sure I'm forgetting

With this recipe, I learned what stiff but not dry egg white peaks were suppose to look and act like. I learned that a souffle will fall some but not completely if you had gently folded the egg whites into the rest of the mixture. 

I think I started making this on my own around 13-14. I was an expert at cheese souffle! 

Quite an accomplishment for a teen girl (honestly, teen girls should take the wins whenever they can get them but I digress...). 

I made that sucker #allthetime. 

Now, I was making JCs souffle. 

It was more complicated than my grandmother's recipe and but not overly so. I will say there was a lot of warnings about not-doing-this and not-doing-that. I still felt confident.

I was still accomplished at making souffle (even though I hadn't made one in a couple decades).

It was delicious! (I was never worried, much)

 Light, puffy, crispy on the outside and cheesy. Just like eating yummy, moist air, as Julie states. 

And yes, Danyale and I COULD NOT STOP eating it!

We wiped that sucker out and started planning when the next one should be made. 

The moral of the story is: don't be afraid of souffles. Go make one and gorge yourself! 

And forget about a diet.

🦞 murder 🔪 Qu'est-ce que c'est?

 PSA Warning: This post contains links to graphic murder videos. IF you are squeamish, don't click the links.

 I just read Tuesday, December 17, 2002 of the Julie/Julia Project.

This scene is fabulous especially with the Talking Heads soundtrack. Love it! Julie steams lobsters.

However, the Tuesday, December 17th blog post wasn't this recipe. It was the last lobster recipe for Julie and was Homard a 'Americaine. If steaming a living creature isn't bad enough, this recipe requires murdering a LIVE 🦞. 

Yes, I said LIVE. 

I guess the steamed ones are live too but using a 🔪 to cut into it while it is still wiggling. Awwwww. And you can watch Julia do this on the YouTubes. Damn, that woman was truly fearless. I squealed out loud while sitting at my desk (yes, I watched it at work 😜) when she hack the claws off and dismembered a LIVE 🦞. And apparently the girl lobsters are tastier than the boy lobsters. The more you know...

While I was reading Julie's blog post, I was cringing and groaning. And feeling slightly nauseous. 

I love that Julie describes everything so graphically but perhaps I could've passed on this blog.

You know that's a lie because I want to read them ALL.

Then, after I read this, I make the bad decision to watch Julia murder more lobsters.  Apparently, she is THE 🦞 KILLER (que Talking Heads). 

I'm damn sure NEVER doing any of that 🦞 murder. 🔪

So just get over your disappointment. I won't be doing it. EVER.