Things I Swore I'd Never Do That I Find Myself Doing

Along with Facebook and buying my underwear at Costco, food blogging is one of those things I swore I would never do. I love cooking (and more importantly, I love eating), but it agitates me to no end when everyone has to stop everything to take endless photographs of food at family dinners. It's probably because I just want to dig in and taking pictures takes away from precious eating time. I think I also fear that if I were to food blog, there would be whispers of, "Well, no wonder she looks like that, all she thinks about is food..."

Anyway. We had some lovely friends over for dinner last night, and along with the crab legs, the shrimp, the Korean beef ribs, the mango-peanut noodle salad, and the grilled vegetables, I made this nectarine tart.

The crust was meh; I made it in the food processor according to the instructions in my Joy of Cooking and found it tough, but I probably overworked it and I didn't let it rest, as I was impatient to get on with the day. Also, cutting up 8 nectarines into 1/8" slices and then arranging said slices in a billion rosettes in the tart crust can only be described as, hm, mentally fatiguing and a huge pain in the ass.

However, it was very pretty when it was done.














My compliants are as follows:

1. The tart was very thin because it was only as high as a nectarine slice, so maybe half an inch.
2. I had too many slices to fit into the tart shell before baking; however, the slices got thinner as it baked, so afterwards, it seemed skimpy on the fruit.
3. My crust sucked. A crumb crust with ground almonds in it would have been quite nice.
4. It took way longer than the 40 minutes the recipe called for to be finished.
5. The juices released by the nectarines totally watered down the custard.
6. Have I mentioned that it was a massive pain in the ass to make?
7. I forgot the ice cream.

There you have it! I wonder if you'll find me food blogging again in the future.