Now I’ve done it. The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow Farm requests that all visiting fellows give a day of volunteer service for every thirty days of their stay. Last week I received a very nice letter from the director of the Colony, asking me to brainstorm some ideas for what I’d like to do for my volunteer work. Since I figured that of the dozens of thoughts one can float in a brainstorm, very few of them will stick, I wrote some charming nonsense about giving a baking demonstration in the kitchen (the Colony has a spiffy demo kitchen, donated by Kitchen Aid). I could make a nice custard or three! I can make brioche! I can make regular old white sandwich bread, one with eggs, one without, so that we can see just what eggs bring to a dough! While I’m doing this, I can give a little lecture of the development of egg cookery in patisserie! I can mention, just as a sidebar, the use of eggs in Asian desserts, particularly in Thai cookery, which puts duck eggs to beautiful and imaginative use!
You’d think that after well over 30 years of my mother reminding me that words have consequences, I would have learned by now...but noooooo. The director thinks that this is a brilliant idea. Friends, it looks like I’m teaching a baking demo on Our Friend the Egg, with corresponding historical observations. I’ve never even assisted at a demo, much less taught one. Fear, trepidation, dry mouth, high school’s most embarrassing moments flashing before my eyes. I must have been high, dear friends, I must have been totally hopped up on goofballs, the day I said to myself that this was a good idea.
If I am even more silent than usual in the coming weeks, it is not due to sloth, indifference or lack of love for my darling pals in the blogiverse, but rather to the copious amounts of research I will be doing to maintain this illusion of capability I seem to be casting.
The future looks bright.The Five Questions live on at mmm, iced water. Go visit Audrey and see what she had to say in response to the questions I asked her. And whatever you do, do not miss her observations on the kola nut.
The Contentment That Only a Hot Dish Can Bring: In response to Snowball‘s ode to creamed spinach, I was going to e her a recipe for the best creamed spinach I know, but then I thought, heck, why should we be the only two to have the fun?
I keep promising to write a nice chewy post about the late Laurie Colwin, who was one of my favorite writers and who I still miss on a daily basis, nearly 12 years after her untimely death. Tonight is not going to be the night for it, but in the meantime I can share with you my variation of her creamed spinach with jalapeno peppers, a recipe she received from a woman named Betty Josey, and which appears in her first collection of food essays, Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen. This recipe serves eight “regular” eaters, 12 eaters of delicate appetite or 4-6 fans of creamed spinach. 
You will need two packages of frozen spinach (you can substitute four bags of fresh spinach if you’d prefer, but since this is getting baked, the difference in using fresh vs. frozen spinach is pretty much miniscule); four tablespoons of unsalted butter; two tablespoons of flour; one small yellow onion, chopped; one clove of garlic, minced; 1/2 cup of evaporated milk; 3/4 teaspoon kosher or seasoned salt (Ms. Colwin specifies celery salt, but I usually use a blend of salt and roasted Sichuan pepper, ground together); 6 ounces of Monterey Jack cheese, either regular or jalapeno Jack, cut into cubes; chopped pickled jalapeno peppers to taste*; buttered bread crumbs (optional).
*Mrs. Josey’s original recipe calls for jalapeno Jack. At the time Ms. Colwin wrote the recipe (1987), jalapeno cheese was hard to find up north, so she substituted regular Jack and pickled jalapenos. These days, jalapeno cheese seems to be easier to find, but because I like this very peppery, I use pepper Jack and a couple of pickled jalapenos. You can add or omit either of these ingredients depending on your palate.
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a casserole dish.
If you are the type of cook who is good at planning ahead (I’m not), you can just thaw the spinach and squeeze out the liquid. You will need at least one cup of spinach liquid. If you are not a planner-aheader, then cook the spinach according to the package directions. Drain and squeeze the spinach, reserving a cup of liquid. Either way, chop the spinach after you squeeze the liquid out.
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour, stir it in and let it cook a bit, stirring all the while, but do not let it brown. (For you gumbo fans out there, you are aiming for white roux, not blond.) Add the onion and garlic and cook for a minute or two, until they begin to give off a little fragrance. Again, no browning.
Slowly add the cup of reserved spinach liquid and stir to blend. Add the evaporated milk, salt, cheese and pickled jalapenos, if using. Mix everything together well. Add the spinach and mix together well again.
Turn the contents of the pan into the buttered casserole. Top with buttered bread crumbs, if you are using. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes.
The always-astute Calgal recommends eating creamed spinach atop a baked potato, which sounds like the most wonderful idea. I’m picturing a nice big Idaho russet, skin scrubbed with salt, baked in a hot oven, taken out, smashed so that the interior gets all fluffy, skin pinched so that that fluffy interior pooches out, all ready to be topped with spinach. Mmm. (Incidentally, do not ever, ever, ever, ever wrap your potatoes in foil when you bake them. If you wrap them in foil, they will steam, not bake, and the skin will never crisp up in that delightful way that it does. Foil-wrapped potatoes are a restaurant affectation and an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Well, if they’re not, they should be. They’re just wrong, in any event.) If you’re not a baked potato fan, this spinach would also be very nice atop a bowl of soft polenta. If you are not an eater of potatoes or polenta, well, you’ve come to the wrong blog. We’re all about the carbohydrates here.