Tiny Choux Puffs (Page 91)

RECIPE #1045

• Date: Monday, November 16, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty, Brad, Deniz, Karen H, and Dave
  
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This is a component recipe for a soup that I am making. To make these tiny choux puffs I started by boiling water, butter, and salt. Then I dumped in some flour and beat it vigorously on the stove for a couple minutes. I let it cool briefly, then added some eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. This was a very typical pate a choux recipe -- the dough that one makes cream puffs from, and profiteroles, and all sorts of other yummy things. I put the dough into a pastry bag and piped very tiny little mounds on some greased baking sheets. I baked these until they were puffed and golden. Yum! These are meant to be floating in beef consomme, and I haven't tried that particular application for them yet. But as an after dinner snack they were awesome! They were everything that a choux puff should be: light, delicate, crispy on the outside and airy on the inside. This recipe made way more than the 90 it claimed to make. But that's ok with me -- it made me feel fine about eating a dozen of them this evening! I look forward to seeing how these work with the soup, but they are delicious just as they are.

The recipe is here.

My husband and I have spent most of the last two and a half years living apart. There was a stretch of several months when we both lived in Indiana, but before that we commuted Indiana to Boston and now we commute Indiana to Michigan. For the most part I am used to it, and try to stay positive. I feel very lucky that the end is in sight -- starting in June we will both be living together in Michigan!

When my husband lived in Boston, we often went two and a half weeks or so without seeing one another. But then we lived together in Indiana for a while after that, and since he moved to Michigan we have been spending 4 nights together and 3 nights apart every week. That is very manageable, especially since we are both so busy that those 3 nights apart fly by. We are entering a period though where we we frequently be spending 10 (or more...) days apart at a time. And I just feel sad about it. I haven't seen him in more than a week now, and it's the first time we have spent that long apart since we got married in May.

I have been feeling down about this the last couple days, and now I am trying to have an attitude adjustment about the whole thing. It's obviously a good sign that I feel so uplifted by my marriage that I miss him very deeply if I don't see him every few days. And we are incredibly lucky to have secured tenure-track jobs at the same university, allowing us to live together permanently very soon. So for now I just need to suck it up!