Last night, as I was reading the cooking blog that I became a member of, M. saw the picture on the screen and said "ohhhh I looove creme caramel/flan (insert your word of choice here)" and asked me if I was going to make it. I've never been a big fan of creme caramel, for me it's always been a strange kind of dessert, somewhere between the consistency of jello and pudding with a weird eggy aftertaste. But since he said he loved it, I couldn't resist. Also, I'd never cooked anything in a Bain-Marie (waterbath) before, and the whole waterbath concept seemed like an interesting thing to try-- very microbiology laboratory-like where you try to keep the agar warm and in liquid form until you're ready to pour it out into a petri dish..Then you pour it out and swirl the plate around and ohh the pleasure of seeing a perfectly even agar surface that's so smooth and shiny and ready to be streaked...but I digress...So, yeah, I decided to give it a try...The flan I mean, not the microbiology stuff. Given that this was my first try, it came out pretty good. The recipe called for a single medium-sized oven-safe bowl, but I didn't have that, so I improvised (old lab habits die hard you know) and used single-serving size ceramic mugs. This decision was made on a gut-feeling that told me the mugs would be safe since they were, as it read at the bottom, "high fired stoneware"...So basically they'd been in an oven before, and I was going to put them in a waterbath anyway, so I decided to give it a go (please do not take my advice on this for your own mugs, I can't guarantee yours won't crack).


Reversing them was so much fun and M really liked the taste (in his words "I can't believe you made this from scratch"), so I am happy (and they're so easy to make, too!). It came out with the holes on it even though I took care not to let the water boil...Maybe I let it stay in the oven a little too long, but the taste was OK so now I can be worried about the cosmetics next time. But I realized last night as I was making this that for me, trying all these new things in the kitchen has nothing to do with the anticipation of eating them later (because I wasn't dying to eat this), it's more like a curiosity, kind of like "I wonder how they make that and if I can make that at home"...That's the fun part...It's all the more rewarding if you've got someone anxiously waiting to eat it (assuming it is edible) of course.

On a slightly different note, tomorrow night I'll go to McDonald's to have a BigMac before we go to catch a movie. I think this will be the third time in the last 13 months that I've gone to a McD's, I know it's unhealthy blah blah, but give me a break, once every 4 months is as good as it gets, I really am looking forward to it!