Little meat pies and vegan chocolate mousse in handmade "white chocolate" cups.

I read an article recently about, more or less, how the 40-hour workweek pushes people into exhaustion, which then pushes people into spending extra money to cram stimuli and convenience into the precious few hours available on weekends, evenings, and mornings, outside of work.

My Blogger app is still wonky about hyperlinks, so you know what to do:

URL:http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/your_lifestyle_has_already_been_designed/

(Copy and paste.)

The article compares the lifestyle of a nine-month vacation to the lifestyle of working full-time in a high-paying job. Both options might seem almost unimaginably privileged, but the basic points made, about comparing free time to its absence resonated with the observation I made some time ago, that a lot of "aging" that people complain about seems to kick in as soon as their freedom to engage in satisfactory self-care plummets. I've seen twentysomethings feel older than sixtysomethings, when the twentysomethings are sleep-deprived and professionally sedentary, and the sixtysomethings have considerably more flexible working hours, and richer lives.

This article gave me an intensified gratitude for the freedom of being on academic break. I'm struggling a little bit to keep up with grad school as it is, because my health is in questionable condition. My spouse is a producer for a video game company (currently making Never Alone! EEEEEE!) who works the notoriously long, salaried hours associated with that profession. Therefore, the financial stability of our household is best served by letting me revel in delights, on a flexible schedule, instead of attempting to work for money. My job is to do well as a student, with the ultimate goal of working flexible hours as a therapist. My job is to be to my spouse what that guy with the water at the corner of the boxing ring was to Rocky Balboa; to keep him operating as efficiently as possible while he pushes himself through the game creation process at a sprinting pace. To make sure that his birthday party goes well. To hand him food when he's too tired to cook, and to keep the kitchen stocked with ingredients for whenever he does have the time and energy to cook. 

Luckily, my father taught me well. My father works flexible hours, juggles several projects, gives himself time to be creative, is the king and keeper of his kitchen, and he throws huge, amazing parties. Parties with live music and over one hundred guests. My father caters family events, the weddings of loved ones (including the wedding of his administrative assistant), and he got his bartending license so he could mix drinks while coordinating dinners at the yacht club where he races sailboats.

I am the eldest child of a legend.

I am, more or less, Pippi Longstocking, really. 

So!!! In the spirit of free time, I drew from my upbringing last night, and trashed my kitchen while making the following things:

Several little beef pies

Shepherd's pie

Vegan chocolate mousse

Little serving dishes for the mousse, crafted out of white candy melts.

The first thing I made was the mousse. I followed the recipe available here:

http://www.gourmantineblog.com/silken-tofu-chocolate-mousse-is-it-real/

I hadn't intended to use a vegan recipe when I decided to make mousse, but my husband wanted to save the fresh eggs, so he could make us omelets this weekend, so the original plan I'd hatched when coveting the eggs was not to be. 

Just like the Gourmantine piece reported, this recipe is rich, chocolatey, without any tofu flavor or smell in it despite having a tofu base, and its only real shortcoming as a mousse is that it lacked the foaminess of a mousse made with whipped egg whites. I HIGHLY recommend giving it a shot.

Ingredients Used:

In place of the port wine or Grand Marnier, I used a cream sherry that cost me under $5 (on sale) at the neighborhood grocery store. After tasting the wine and wincing, I used it for only half of what the recipe called for, and substituted a very fine vanilla extract for the other half. (Penzeys, plus my better half thought to put a vanilla bean in the jar with the extract, which was a very good idea.) 

THE GOOD STUFF.

The cheap cream sherry I'm stuck with is not bitter, sour, or too acidic for my babylike palate, but it tastes a little like artificial grape jelly that's been spiked with extremely cheap wine. I realize that this makes me even more of a fancypants, spoiled, pretentious hipster, but I plan to only drink and serve this wine ironically. I have also learned my lesson when it comes to skimping on this sort of thing. I plan to invest in some decent port or sweet liqueur sometime in the future. 

Because it is considerably easier to buy "the good stuff" when getting a chocolate bar, I was able to spare no expense (dinosaurs!) and invest three whole dollars in some quality.

I used the best chocolate-chunks-for-cookies that I had in the house, to make up the last 20 grams of chocolate:

For the tofu, I used tofu:

For the sugar and water, I used sugar and water. (Not pictured.)

For the cocoa powder, I used Hershey's. (Also not pictured.)

The almond milk is not pictured either, because I bought a little carton of it, drank the rest while cooking, and recycled the packaging before I thought to take its picture.

Here's everything but the tofu, looking kinda gross while melting in a double-boiler:

I forgot to photograph the tofu. I don't have a food processor in my house right now, so I whipped the tofu in a Magic Bullet little blender. Not to be confused with the Magic Bullet brand of sex toys. When whipped, the tofu looked like Greek yogurt.

I poured some "not chocolate" into a two-part candymaking mold, for crafting little cups.

I scooped the mousse into the cups, and took a blurry photograph:

I made a TINY portion of whipped cream, because it struck me as being very funny to do so at the time. The whipped cream is not vegan. It's made from cows' milk.

I still find this method funny. Only one beater used in a handheld mixer, and I don't own a whisk attachment?!? I have a teacup?!? Who can handle such things as this?!?

I put dollops of whipped cream on the little mousse cups:

I tried to just pick one up and bite it. I got a lot of mousse on my nose and chin, and the candy dish cracked in half instead of shattering nearly as expected. Because it is June, but it's still Christmas year-round, I finished that mousse cup in a festive little holly-themed...shot...glass?...teacup...for...cider?...cocoa? I don't actually know what the tiny mug is called, but it is, according to me, comically small.

There is no real sense of scale in this photo, but I assure you, that mug is almost dollhouse tiny.

The candy cups look cute, and they're a great idea in the abstract, but I need to either learn to work with real chocolate, or I need to get some candy-making flavored oils to mask the taste of the stuff I used. No, I will not used alcohol-based extracts. Science says no. CANDY science says no.

I'm eating mousse--a larger, proper serving, in a ramekin--while typing this, and it would benefit from having a layer of chocolate shavings sprinkled very liberally on top, like the crust on a cobbler. I also think that this mousse should be served in layers, with whipped cream between the layers.

So, LEARNING took place. 

While the meat pies should probably be written about in a separate blog entry, I started out with the intention of writing about it in the same...no...my thumb is tired. Tuckered out from all this phone typing. Giving it a rest. This blog entry will be a two-parter. Fuck it.