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Unapologetically unsexy.
That's not true. I have never been a Monday hater. Eternally optimistic, the annoying one who likes their job, I usually am able to find something to look forward to on the first day back to work after a glorious weekend.
Except for today, for some reason. All day I was in a foul mood, faced with teenagers who absolutely did not want to be at school learning. Nothing wrong, just not feeling it. So I ducked out right after school to come home and make dinner before the kids got home.
I made Swedish meatballs for dinner (from Time for Dinner). As in Ikea meatballs with lingonberry sauce (except that I served it with cranberry sauce). Have you ever made authentic Swedish meatballs? I was super surprised that they taste way, way better when made at home than at Ikea. Who knew. The recipe was super easy but did not rely on shortcuts like cream of gross soup. I can throw together a roux on a weeknight, thank you very much. Next time I will not be browning the gazillion tablespoon sized balls in three batches--I will put them in the oven like a sane person
Served over egg noodles with peas. Evie ate the cranberry sauce, Elise ate none of it. Please God let Tuesday be better.
Project cook the books update: 12/46. I may actually be able to complete this thing, though I am seriously contemplating purchasing the Joe Beef book. Hmm.
I learned an amazing lesson today.
Last night I made chocolate whoopie pies with vanilla buttercream. I had never eaten a whoopie pie and got the cookbook from a colleague through 'secret' Santa. (Thanks, Toby!) So last night I decided to give it a shot.
I thought that they were...satisfactory. I'm not sure what a whoopie pie is supposed to taste like. I did eat two, however, and so did Erik, so they can't have been that bad.. The reason that I would make something that I had never had before was that 1) I needed to cook something out of the book for my mission this year, and 2) I told my Math 7 class that I would, and even had a kid pick the flavours.
This morning, as I was handing them out to the excited kids, I started my disclaimer. Promptly, Ms. Wood, the educational assistant with neverending patience and talent, told me to basically shut it. She said, "Don't say anything." So I didn't.
Project Cook the Books update: 9/47 46
I turfed a book. Actually, I turfed a few before I entered them into Eat Your Books, but this is the first one that I'm cutting from my collection. I am starting to dislike a certain format of book. These books have menus that are organized by season. That means that as you are reading through, you flip from appie, to main, to dessert...all over the place. One book, Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin, only labels each menu by number so it is really confusing to read. Gordon Ramsay's book, Family Fare, uses very loud formatting, colour and font. Unlike Sunday Suppers, however, the recipes in Family Fare aren't appealing or intriguing. I expected much more from Gordon Ramsay, but I do acknowledge that writing recipes for a restaurant is a vastly different process than writing them for the home cook. You're fired, Gordon. (But I still love you and think you're a hunk of a chef.)
For the record, I do not advise hosting a multi-course dinner party for seven adults and two pre-schoolers on a Tuesday night. Sometimes, unfortunately, we go against our better judgement and end up on the right side of the situation. The girls turned three today so Erik and I hosted a family meal to celebrate. The opportunity to prepare an elaborate meal was irresistable but provided a challenge as I knew I would have next to no time to cook on the day of the meal.
I chose an Italian menu as my mother-in-law is a lover of all things Italian, and I am a lover of Marcella Hazan. For appies: roasted bell peppers, marinated carrot sticks, salami, prosciutto, parmesan hunks and garlic bruschetta. For the main: pork ragu served over fresh, home made pappardelle noodles. For dessert: the best birthday cake ever.
The key to having a dinner party where you actually enjoy yourself is to prepare as much or all of the food ahead of time. Because of my time constraints, I cooked on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. Having been through it once, I can say that everything I cooked on Monday, except perhaps the birthday cake, could have been prepared on Sunday.The pork ragu cooks in a slow oven for four hours before being shredded, cooled, and refrigerated until the day of the dinner party. The pasta can be made, rested, rolled, dried, cut, and frozen many days ahead of time. (How to freeze fresh pasta dough.) Likewise, the carrot sticks and bell peppers can be made up to three days ahead of time. I’m not sure how far ahead one can frost the birthday cake…but I do know that the individual layers can be wrapped well and frozen nicely.
If everything that can be made ahead of time is ready in the fridge, this meal takes approximately 30 minutes of hands on time (as in, “don’t talk to me right now I’m cooking” hands on time.) Which considering the extent of the meal, is pretty amazing. I had to make the bruschetta (toast bread-rub with garlic-drizzle with extra virgin olive oil), boil water for pasta (remember, with this much pasta you need two pots), heat the ragu, and finish the odd thing like re-setting the table after Erik did it not exactly the way I had hoped. Oh, and then re-re-setting it after realizing that he did it the right way the first time.
It was a truly enjoyable party, which for a mid-week party, is an accomplishment. The food was appropriate to the occasion. We reached across each other to spear sweet, oily peppers for draping across the garlicky bruschetta. We cut the long noodles with kitchen scissors when it got unmanageable, piled tangled shreds of tomatoey pork on top and dusted fine shavings of parmesan over top. We ate multiple pieces of fudgy cake with multicolour sprinkles. Before setting the table, we laid a long piece of brown paper over the white tablecloth for colouring and loved the olive oil stains and doodles that were left at the end of the night. Every single recipe that was prepared was beginner-basic and tasted absolutely authentic. (This from someone who has never been to Italy.)
The girls ate nothing except for birthday cake and sparkling apple juice, which I suppose is as it should be for a birthday party. The event really was not for them...it was to celebrate that we have managed to keep them safe as they are growing into two interesting little people.
Until relatively recently, I had always been desperately jealous of those people lucky enough to have best friends. Through childhood and adolescence, I had friends, close friends, good friends, but I did not have one person whom I loved unconditionally and who I knew loved me the same way.
I met Kim in a second year biology lab at UVic. Together with our beautiful friend Heidi, we sauntered through the lazy days of university. We studied together, partied together, got in trouble at the back of the lecture hall for talking too much, and ogled cute boys. Kim and I were roommates for a long time. She introduced me to jalepeno havarti, rock climbing, and the extreme pleasure of being outside. We studied history of biology on the back deck. We drew the chemical structures of cholesterol on our white board. We went on an invertebrate zoology field trip to Bamfield.
oh Best of Bridge,
your comforting casseroles
soothe,
all-CAPS shouting
the message of easy shortcuts,
kooky quotes eye-roll
inducing,
Canadian cornerstone.
Cookbook: Best of the Best and More by Best of Bridge.
Recipe: Casserole for a cold night
I despise recipe comments when the reviewer comments on how much they like or hate the recipe and then proceed to outline all of the changes made to the recipe. I feel almost bogus posting that I cooked this recipe as I did change it quite a bit, but not in spirit.
The recipe has you cook a basic tomato meat sauce with ground beef. I had leftover spaghetti sauce and bolognese sauce, so I combined them together to make enough sauce for the recipe. You then boil egg noodles, combine them with cream cheese, sour cream, and green onions. I had no egg noodles so had the girls break lasagna noodles into shards, but otherwise I followed the recipe exactly, layering the meat sauce with the cheesy-creamy noodles and some shredded cheddar.
Cookbooks: 6/50 covered.
Tonight I made the Zuni Cafe roast chicken. Hands down the best roast chicken recipe out there, especially if you remember to salt the chicken the night before. (Recipe conveniently located here.) I salted the chicken this morning and the chicken was nowhere near as succulent as usual. It was still delicious, however, and I always have the makings of the most delicious gravy in the cast iron pan I use for roasting. I have never made the bread salad that is supposed to go with the roast chicken, but I expect it will be something that I tackle this year.
In other news, I changed the look of the site. Again. The lame thing about knowing nothing about web design is that I cannot customize the site according to my needs. This theme provides all tags and the search field conveniently as a side bar. I use the search bar a lot to access the archives...the tags are moderately useful.
Back to work tomorrow, for better or worse.
1. Duck confit. It's been on my list for a long time. I have 12 recipes to choose from, so the whole process should be fun. (Want to know how I know exactly how many recipes I have for this recipe? Eat Your Books is an indexing site for cookbooks. Super duper handy.)
2. Marcella Hazan's green lasagne. It's supposed to be ridiculous.
3. Stop buying so many processed crackers for snacks. Make packed lunches for the family more nutritious. (Mothers world-wide are doubled over in hysterics right now. If I actually figure out how to do this, I'll be a millionaire.)
4. Cook one thing from every cookbook and food magazine I own.
5. Use at least some of every random obsure ingredient in my cupboard. Some will be easy (smoked salt, dried porcini mushrooms), some harder (harissa, green peppercorns). Black truffle, I'm coming for you.
6. Get a deep freezer. I've been so good at freezing leftovers right away because I don't really like eating the same thing all week. However, I'm running out of room to keep stock, sauces, pot pie filling, soup, bread, in addition to the frozen ingredients for meals (peas and corn, meat, pastry, ice.) It would be so great to go down once a week to collect a couple of meals for weeknights.
