Midaregami

At various times when I have put forth the effort to make this attractive, slightly sweet bread for public fuctions of one kind or another, I have often been informed by helpful parties that it is not in fact real challah, because it uses butter, and moreover it is not a “festive” or “festival” dish, as I had been initially told, because Jewish people blah blah blah—by this point I am typically done listening to their helpful advice.

So the food whose recipe and braiding procedure I am about to divulge is clearly not Challah—it is not Jewish, it is not for festivals or indeed events of any kind, it “cheats” and uses butter, and in all probability is not even bread.

But: it is gorgeous, and delicious. I am going to call it “shmallah.” It is a dish I have invented and of whose correctness I am sole arbiter. It is completely original, and is the traditional festival food of whenever I goddamn well feel like making it.

Here’s how to make shmallah—and anybody that tells you otherwise is a filthy liar, and although death is too good a punishment for their vile dissembling, death, nevertheless, is what they shall have.

This isn’t a recipe whose wording has been inflated to ridiculous proportions, but simply an observation of a phenomenon: Canned evaporated milk is delicious in coffee, and significantly cheaper than half & half. This discovery is revolutionizing my mornings.

Maybe everybody already knows this, in which case, why were you jerks holding out on me?

Field Note B43D9C02-BD34-43E6-809C-B921DB20317C
Sublieutenant Grace Ming-Doubtless
Auth: 37b35cb71e97684763ab1897e0bec09b

We shouldn’t be surprised that the reports the Qan-Rj Hierarchs gave us turned out to be inaccurate. This brief summarizes the latest findings from the research into the Kishir derelict fleet—a more detailed report from Dr. McAllister will be forthcoming in a week or so.

While acknowledging the genius and efficacy of the Overnight Waffle, it appears the the Qan-Rj saw fit to supply us with a deliberately crippled version of the formula. Our research into the exotic Carbon-Molybdenum monopole compounds (dubbed “cavorite” by a particularly droll postdoc) found in the most intact Kishir derelict has shown that the addition of a significant fraction of a third egg white—but, crucially, discarding the associated yolk—improves consistency and durability markedly.

The Qan-Rj suggested that the formula could not be improved at our current level of scientific understanding. Either their knowledge is inaccurate, or (more likely) they deliberately lied. In any case, heartened by the strides made in texture, we pushed forward along the flavor axis as well. Preliminary tests using cinnamon and nutmeg have commenced—adding up to a teaspoon of the former and a dash of the latter has yielded a waffle of intriguing flavor and attractive appearance. The current consensus is that while the spiced varieties of the Overnight Waffle are unlikely to replace the standard unit, they will certainly prove of tactical use in a variety of culinary contexts.

Attention all mewling, dimly-aware primates of Earth.

The next stage in the long, barely-begun process of your uplift from carcass-scavanging pre-rodent to full galactic citizen has arrived. I admit to thinking that this day might never come; opinions among those of my kind ran the gamut from heady optimism at your delicious home-made gumbo to sad, head-shaking resignation at your apparent love for the culinary atrocity that is fast food. But progress was steady.

The days when our people could themselves consume the sacred offering-cakes have long passed.

We know¹ that long ago, in the distant past, our ancestors must have been able to make and ingest the offering-cake, else why would they have left the manner of its making so clearly writ in their recorded past? Yes, we are forced to assume that long before we came to this world,² before the pollen of the great zhuu-aa continent-trees changed us and found for us a place here, our bodies could metabolize the strange constituents of the offering-cake.

Alright, I’m going to tell it straight, here. I do a lot of blustering and pontificating here, a lot of what might be reasonably termed exaggeration. At times, my hyperbole has, within it, nested layers of sub-hyperbole, which in turn have—well, you see, it is meant to suggest a pattern not unlike Signeur Mandelbrot’s exquisite creations.

What I’m getting at is that I understand if it all starts to blur together after a while—I understand that—but what I’m about to share, and the terms I am about to couch it in, exist outside such high-flown discourse. When I speak of absolutes, in this case, I truly mean them as absolutes, writ in the ebb and flow of space and time, inviolable and true as humans can only begin to comprehend.

I speak of the most delicious chocolate chip cookies ever fashioned by god or mortal. I speak, you see, of the Cowboy Cookie.

I don’t know if I’m going to post much in the way of recipes or cooking stuff, as I’m far, far from any kind of authority on the subject (as opposed to anything else I write about here, on which I am the final word.) What I can say is that this following recipe makes a fabulous breakfast dish, that I actually look forward to eating in the morning—and I am most assuredly not an oatmeal-oriented human. The stuff takes a little bit of doing, but is well worth it. One batch lasts us about three days, with three adults eating the stuff. Depending on the consistency, you may have to spoon it to serve, but typically it’s stiff enough that we can cut it into squares.

A note about the fresh fruit: Julia’s been using frozen mixed berries in addition to a chopped apple, and it’s fine.