I’ll admit that I wanted to write another political blog, or at least, a whiny one – the economy’s crap and the campaigns are turning nasty. However, I’m resisting the urge to mope publicly.
I’m not a true stress eater, but food is definitely a comfort on a day like today. Or any day. I made a comforting tortilla casserole with a southwestern bean and corn salad tonight, taken from my Mollie Katzen cookbook. The casserole called for buttermilk, and though I’m usually a slave to a recipe, I didn’t want to hunt down the real thing. Thanks to the internet, I now know that you can make buttermilk by throwing a tablespoon of lemon juice (or white vinegar) into about a cup of milk and letting it sit five minutes! It’s amazing how tickled I was by a trick that everyone else probably already knew about. And I’ll definitely be using the internet to figure out recipe substitutes before I run to the store for that ingredient I forgot…although you can’t always substitute or omit, as I discovered last week when I forgot the baking powder and made rock-hard muffins. But THAT is another story.
LOVE the buttermilk tip – genius! I had buying it for a recipe, too – you need 1/2 a cup and end up buying a quart, and I have no other use for it.