5/31/15

Dinner in town with my parents and brother at a new-ish Mexican place. The chile rellenos were fine, but we were all pretty much underwhelmed. I can't even remember the name of the restaurant (but it is behind Antonio's).


update, 5/3/18: the restaurant closed months and months ago.

5/30/15

Lunch at my parents---we brought a big salad and the remains of the cookies. Turtle bars are definitely the more popular option. I guess caramel and chocolate are sexier than jam.
Then dinner at Jennie and David's---rhubarb cobbler (from PW) and hard sauce.
Good news: the stove is fixed, and it was a pretty painless operation.

5/29/15

Dinner at Jen and John's. Jason made pizzas (caramelized onion, goat cheese, cherry tomato and prosciutto on one, sausage and hamburger on the other), and I brought turtle bars and  blackberry jam/hazelnut bars (from Martha Stewart; it took me forever to find this recipe again and I am glad I did). The recipe actually calls for raspberry and almond, but I had blackberry and hazelnut. They were great, but I will cut the cinnamon in half next time.
Super fun night!

Pizza Night!

5/28/15

Boring roasted tofu with spicy zucchini and noodles. Perfectly good if not terribly creative.

5/27/15

Leftovers. That is all.

5/26/15

Burritos (for the benefit of Carter). The guacamole was my favorite part.
Unexciting but satisfying.

5/25/15

Green chile macaroni and cheese again. I still love it. I also made some nice zucchini on the side, but nobody ate it. Oh well, zucchini for breakfast.
The exciting part was that the stovetop cracked. Not exciting in a good way.

5/24/15

Broccoli pesto pasta (which Carter declared one of his favorites), plus some chicken andouille sausage that I sauteed with onion and cherry tomatoes.

5/23/15

Dinner at my parents, with more of the extended family. I made brownies, salad and another strawberry pie (I was happy to have a do-over, and tweaked it a bit). My mom made the best gumbo (get the recipe).

5/22/15

Dinner at Jennie and David's. Let's assume going forward that Jason made bread, and it was great. I made a strawberry pie, which imploded upon cutting (thanks a lot, Martha Stewart, for the flawed graham cracker crust recipe). it still tasted wonderful, though.

Hooray for bread, cheese, chips and booze!

5/21/15

No real dinner, because we went to Jen and John's for a party. Lots of snacking and wine though. I have gotten off really light this week, cooking-wise!

5/20/15

Dinner at my parents (pizza). I brought vanilla pudding from NYT recipe but didn't get to try any because things were so hectic over there (Mom and Jason tell me they were good). So I stopped at the Frostie on the way home for a cherry dip. Not a bad trade-off.

5/19/15

Pizza by Jason, which included this very avant garde variety invented by Jason:

Fishsticks, cocktail sauce and mozzarella. Not as bad as it sounds, but  don't think I would request it. My two slices of pepperoni were great, though.

Bonus: Lunch

I try to make enough of something to eat it for lunch all week long. For the last few weeks it has been this salad with beets, cucumbers, mango and avocado. Today I have some asparagus, too:

5/18/15

Sri Lankan chicken (F52), rice, roasted cauliflower. The chicken was great; similar to chicken korma, but cashews and coconut. I will make it again, but add even more spices. The cauliflower was, according to Jason, awesome. I think he was responding to the saltiness.

5/17/15

Lentil soup (the semi-disastrous dosa recipe left us with a LOT of black lentils), Jason's homemade bread, cheese. We used up some bits of cheese that I kept forgetting about (Carter and I really liked the garrotxa; similar to manchego) and some random vegetables. So, thrifty, fast and tasty.

Oddly, the chocolate cake just keeps getting tastier. Maybe I do like it after all.

5/16/15

Saturday night bacchanal. Started with these cherry tomatoes stuffed with fresh mozzarella, panko-ed and deep fried.

The cheese didn't melt completely, but they were still delicious. A very big pain to bread, though, so if I am in the mood for fried cheese I will skip the tomatoes.

We also had a raw asparagus salad and homemade ravioli, at Carter's request. We finished up the meal with toasted marshmallows by the fire pit. A good meal and a good day!

5/15/15

Dinner with Jennie and David, so brought bread, plus some coconut shortbread (SK) and flan. I fell asleep Thursday night with thoughts of individual flans with crispy little cookies, so that is what I did:

The bread was great, I love those cookies, but in retrospect, flan might be better made as one big one. The caramel wasn't as liquidy as usual? Still, I did realize my dream.

5/14/15

Dinner at my parents (really amazing: pasta, bread, fancy honey and cheese). We brought a chocolate cake:

It was a nice enough cake, but very chocolate-y. My favorite part was the frosting (I have the recipe in my email).

5/13/15

Spaghetti with tomato sauce and sausage, plus sauteed broccoli rabe (red pepper flakes, garlic, anchovy) and some mushrooms. I was going to make polenta was we were running a little late. So, another night.

5/12/15

Made cemitas, a mexican sandwich with (in this case) pork shoulder, avocado, jalapenos, oaxacan cheese,  and tomato. I couldn't find the proper buns, so I made my own:

They look better than they taste, but not bad for a first effort

Carter pronounced them delicious, and there is no pork leftover, so I call it a success.

5/11/15

80 degrees out? Why not use all four burners and the oven?

Tofu with a spicy orange sauce and broccoli, basmati rice and some spicy stir-fried cabbage. The tofu was a little bland, but the cabbage made up for it.

5/10/15

The multi-day process of making dosas ended with a whimper. It turns out that it is tricky to get the dosas as thin as I hoped, and starting from raw rice and lentils (instead of rice flour and lentil flour) meant that the batter wasn't as smooth as could be. The potato filling was good, though. Served this with yogurt marinated grilled chicken (a bit dry), and beets with cherry tomatoes.
Ugh. Also it was too hot to be doing all that cooking.

5/9/15

Chicken with shallots, from the NYT. I subbed in rosemary for the tarragon (because that is what I  had on hand) and used boneless chicken breasts. This was a very easy and delicious chicken dish, particularly over the fresh fettucine we made. That really stole the show, as far as I am concerned. More toasted marshmallow milkshakes for dessert.

5/8/15

Dinner with Jennie and David (lentil soup with asparagus). We brought bread and key lime squares. They were delicious, as usual.

5/7/15

Made a frittata with leftover zucchini, roasted red pepper and ricotta. I didn't actually bother with anything else. It was pretty tasty, and I was again reminded of how handy that nonstick pan is (except for not being able to go into the oven).

5/6/15

Carter was at the movies, so I just ordered wings for dinner. Plus leftover broccoli (uninviting as that was, I felt like it was a necessary counterpart to the wings).

5/5/15

We celebrated Cinqo de May with...chana masala. Ole! The recipe is from SK, and I made it pretty much according to the recipe. Started the chick peas from dried last night (will definitely do that again) and made the rest this morning. Served it with basmati rice, cauliflower roasted with cumin and jalapenos, and some paneer naan from Trader Joe's. I am pretty sure that the naan was Carter's favorite part, but I thought the whole thing was good. Still trying to finish that rum cake. One slice left!
Oh, and I made mint chutney (meh) and tamarind chutney (yum!) to serve alongside.

5/4/15

Masa ball soup, a riff on matzoh soup (SE). This tasted great, but I was disappointed by how the masa balls fell apart. I think making them in the morning  and letting them sit in the broth all day may have been the mistake. Served with zucchini/summer squash/yellow pepper. Carter was NOT a fan.
Still eating the rum cake.

5/3/15

  Blintzes, a joint effort between Jason and me. They turned out really well (thanks, new pan!). Strawberry jam, sour cream. Carter and Jason had theirs with sausage, but I thought they were enough on their own.

Totally worth a bit of effort in the morning.

5/2/15

Pride! Made blueberry boy bait at Jen's request. It tasted fine to me, but there were a lot of leftovers. Too much gluten?
I also made this for Jennie and David's:

Bahamian rum cake. My attempt to be artistic.

I liked this a lot---rum, coconut, brown sugar, butter...many of my trigger ingredients.  The recipe is from David Lebowitz. It held up well after being baked the day before.

5/1/15

Green chile and chicken macaroni and cheese from SE. Man, I really liked this. It is just made on the stovetop, so it comes together really quickly. I added some fresh jalapenos for spice. I would not make any other changes (whoops, I also omitted the american cheese and substituted  shredded cotija cheese).

For dessert, we had toasted marshmallow milkshakes. Universally liked. I feel a bit guilty for not serving any vegetables with dinner, but not guilty enough to actually roast that sweet potato....

Did I mention that the macaroni and cheese was really good? Spicy, creamy, bits of chicken. Mmmm.

4/30/15

Pizza a la Jason. Pepperoni, hot peppers, mushrooms. Terrific! Also the less popular kale.