popovers

Ah, the photogenic popovers in winter sunshine, with narcissus shadows…

This winter is so much nicer than the last two.

Remember all that unrelenting gray rain?!

Perspective Duck

Okay. Are you having a hard time? Depressed? Struggling through a rough patch? I swear, I thought it was just me, or just me & some of my friends, or how about just me & almost everybody I know? After getting off the phone with yet another pal who had recently fallen into a pit of gloom, I finally realized, hey… something’s going on here. I don’t think it’s just the economy, although they don’t call it a depression for nothing. (Recession my ass!)

I think we are all in some kind of weird anticipatory Bush post-trauma. (Anticipatory, because he’s not actually gone yet.) I mean look, the past 8 years have sucked & we’ve all tried to put a brave face on it & just keep going, because what else can you do, & really I can’t be the only one who thought that if McCain had won the election, it would basically mean the end of the fucking world, & so here we are now like in some action movie where we were dangling over the precipice hanging on by one cracked fingernail for the longest time, & someone finally threw us a couple yards of dental floss, just enough to pull us up & over where we now lie panting & sweating on the ground—just inches from aforementioned cliff, mind you—trying not to faint because [fill in your preferred action flick menace] is rapidly approaching & may end up throwing us back off the cliff anyway. Am I right? How can a person not freak out a little bit in such a situation? (I mean unless you’re Xena or someone of her ilk. Last time I checked, I most definitely was not anything anywhere near that ilk. My ilk is more like this or this.)

So cut yourself a little slack & remember the big picture, if that sort of thing helps you. Way back when we worked in adjoining offices, Michele K-Tel kept her famous Perspective Duck always near at hand. Whenever necessary, coworkers could run into her office, squeeze the duck, & it would dispense its little squeak-quack for us, along with some much-needed perspective. The original Perspective Duck didn’t sound anything like this, but why not give it a try anyway?

If that doesn’t work, make yourself some popovers.

Still coughing. Still dragging around the house with no energy.

I wish I could just pop up & be well again!

Oh, to be the picture of robust health, sigh…

Popover report: 1st try with the new recipe was a nice, poofy success. The popovers leapt cheerfully & confidently out of their silicups, held their mushroom shape well, & were plenty yummy. However, we missed the custardy elasticity of Moosewood’s appropriately-named Custardy Popovers, which contain proportionally twice as much egg. Next time I will use the custardy proportions with the temperature & time of the new recipe & see what happens.

I think you may be getting the wrong idea about me. See, I blog so much about cupcakes, but in fact I’ve never baked a single cupcake in my whole life. On the other hand, have I ever mentioned popovers here, even once? (Maybe once. Yes, once.) Yet the number of popovers to have popped out of my oven is beyond reckoning. & maybe, reading this, you think: Indigo is a Popover Goddess! or at least a Popover Expert. Again you would be misguided, because my popover experience has been haphazard & inconsistent. Of my last five batches of popovers, one was a miserable, airless, custardy failure, & one was just okay. The others were fabulous, but 3 out of 5 is not exactly Popover Reliability, is it?

Here is someone who takes popovers seriously; next time I will try her method & see what happens. Although, scientifically speaking, I suppose I should try her method the next 5 times & see if more than 3 batches come out well.