Monday, 10/30/17

Finally got around to making chana dal (from Made in India), with fried onions and garlic. I knew Jason would approve, but I was pleased that Carter liked it, too. Served with sauteed spinach (leftover broccoli for Carter since he isn't a fan of cooked spinach) and rice.
Made in India has yet to let me down.

Sunday, 10/29/17

I was simply too tired to make dinner. We had nachos again, plus some leftover vegetables and grilled cheese (to use up a loaf of bread).
Cheesalicious.

Saturday, 10/28/17

We went to a Bar Mitzvah in eastern Mass, and I felt like I spent most of the day eating, from the bagels and smoked salmon after the service, to the hors d'oeuvres,cheese and crackers, late lunch, cake and candy at the party, to pizza and cannoli at Jeff and Sue's house later. Fell in to the hotel bed afterward.

Friday, 10/27/17

Dinner with Jen and John. Lots of homemade pizza (all kinds of tasty combinations), lots of wine, and these sad excuses for S'More's cupcakes:

I am a little ashamed to say I served them anyway. We just picked off the burnt parts. Pathetic.

Thursday, 10/26/17

No Jason, so here was dinner:

Nachos and Youtube!

Wednesday, 10/25/17

Carter was home late, so I made extra spicy noodles for Jason and myself. They are called "Midnight noodles" (from Fuschia Dunlop; I found the recipe online) and had lots of chili oil and black vinegar. I tossed in some broccoli, and served it with tempura style tofu. Quite spicy and funky.

Tuesday, 10/24/17

Mixed results for dinner. My cream of celeriac soup is too thick and gloopy. Carter complained and I secretly agreed. Fried green tomatoes were basically successful ( I served them with a dip made with a spicy cilantro pesto mixed with sour cream and yogurt), and Jason's bread was great. I had made another apple skillet pie in the morning (adding extra apples this time); that was a hit. I don't know why it feels easier than a regular pie, but it does.

Monday, 10/23/17

Another great meal at my mom's: lasagna, salad, breadsticks. I made a batch of caramel-butterscotch blondies (from David Lebowitz), knowing that Corrina, my mom and I love blondies. They are good, too; there are chunks of milk chocolate, but not too much, and the shards of caramelized sugar on top melt into crunchy-chewy bits.

Sunday, 10/22/17

I had intended a dinner of chana dal, but the leftovers were just too much. We used up some pork, all the tortillas, and the meatballs and the remnants of a loaf of bread. Plus I was able to do one of my favorite chores: moving leftovers into smaller containers. It gives me so much joy.

Saturday, 10/21/17

Dinner with Jennie and David. Jason made a loaf of bread, adding in a bunch of scallions leftover from scallion pancakes. The bread was good, but the scallion flavor was faint, at best. Made a recipe recommended by my mom for a skillet apple pie. You melt butter and brown sugar in a cast iron skillet, lay a pie dough on top, add your apples and another pie crust and bake. Somehow the butter/sugar bakes up into a sweet crunchy bottom crust. It was delicious and Carter had requested that I make another. It was also a great way to use up some overly tart apples from co-housing.

Friday, 10/20/17

It was a pan Asian dinner: scallion pancakes, Korean spinach, Vietnamese caramel chicken. The scallion pancakes were from Serious Eats, and though it seems like I have had success with them in the past, these weren't great. The scallions kept leaking out and they were a little doughy. The spinach is from the Maanchi website and I have made it before. Carter HATED it but Jason and I thought it was delicious. No amount a Popeye references could get him to eat more than a few bites. The caramel chicken was from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen . This seemed like it couldn't work: you put diced boneless chicken thighs, a dark dark caramel, fish sauce and ginger into a pot, bring to a boil, and cook just like that. I was sure the chicken would be stringy and hard, but it was nice and juicy. I ought to have made rice to serve it over, and I would like a little more spice, but we all liked it. After making recipes from several books, I must say that Andrea Nguyen is an excellent recipe writer.

Thursday, 10/18/17

Spaghetti with meatballs and cheesy garlic bread (Jason made a loaf of bread). Doesn't that sound good? It was.

Wednesday, 10/18/17

Dinner with the folks at Frontier. I made some snickerdoodles from Bravetart: the texture is perfect (thick,chewy, crispy edges), the flavor is cinnamony and slightly suggestive of the coconut oil she has you use instead of  shortening, but...
Without cream of tartar they just weren't what we think of as snickerdoodles. Maybe we should just call then cinnamon cookies.

Tuesday, 10/17/17

The Great Leftoverpalooza is now over, so I made a big batch of slow cooker pork with salsa verde, some homemade flour tortillas, and roasted some little half moons of delicata squash (with sriracha, maple and olive oil). Along with a little cabbage and queso fresco, this was our version of Taco Tuesday. Using the slow cooker meant that my pork was more like pulled pork and less like carnitas, but it was much easier on a weekday.

Monday, 10/16/17

Carter was studying for a big math test, so dinner at home. The last of the leftovers! potato-sausage casserole from a few weeks ago, plus a very simple salad and the last scraps of a loaf of bread that Jason made. The casserole reheated well and the satisfaction I get from looking at a roomy freezer cannot be underestimated. Now if I could just find something to do with all the condiments, dips, and sauces I make/acquire.

Sunday, 10/15/17

Stayed home sick all day. The only efforts I made all day were throwing together some rice pudding for Jason and Carter, and making dinner. I tried a second recipe from "Asian Tofu", her version of mapo tofu. I didn't use much schezuan pepper because Carter doesn't like it, but didn't hold back on the chili flakes or fermented chili paste. This version used ground beef, and was really delicious and different from my usual stir fries. I threw in some spinach and served it over rice and I think everyone liked it.

Saturday,10/14/17

Dinner with Jennie and David: bread with caraway from Jason, a pumpkin bundt (from the NYT) from me. The cake was just a glorified pumpkin bread,. I used up some brown sugar-bourbon glaze on about a third of it, and made the maple-brown butter glaze (which was what I was really craving more than the cake itself) for the rest. The maple glaze and the toasted pepitas on top are really the draw. And a bundt cake is nice and quick to put together.

Friday, 10/13/17

Took a break (sort of) from the leftovers to make a rendition of a dish I have loved at The Slanted Door, in San Francisco. Well, my shaking beef was actually chicken breast instead of filet mignon, and it sat on a bed of spinach instead of watercress. It was nothing like the dish I love, but it was still good. Certainly cheaper. We also finished up the potstickers and had various dips: the spicy fish sauce sauce, a spicy soy-lemon, and a salt, pepper and lime for the chicken.

Thursday, 10/12/17

The mysterious dumplings turned out to be......samosas! I was glad I had Jason test one out in the toaster oven. I baked them up and served them with some salsa verde. We also had a salad with the roasted eggplant and squash, plus tomatoes and beets. Oh, and Jason made bacon-onion bread that was probably superfluous but who cares because: bacon onion bread!

Wednesday, 10/11/17

From the freezer: lasagna! But to pep things up, we also had delicata squash roasted with maple and sriracha, plus some roasted eggplant. Tomorrow I am going to try out the mysterious dumpling shaped things. Not sure what they are. Pierogies? Empanadas? We'll see.

Tuesday, 10/10/17

It's going to be a boring week here, since I am determined to clear leftovers out of the freezer. Tonight we had some pot-stickers and a eggplant-ricotta pasta dish. I remembered not loving the pasta, but maybe I had just gotten sick of it, because I thought it was really good. We also finished a box of Aldi fried cheese curds. I was sad to see them go.

Monday, 10/9/17

Dinner in Whately. Linguine with meat sauce, green beans, and a loaf of bread from Jason. A real crowd pleaser.

I made cornflake crunch cookies from MilkBar. I made these several years ago, so knew I wanted to leave out the chocolate chips, and that they really need time to chill before baking. I still loove the flavors (especially the way some of the mini marshmallows get gooey and others caramelize a bit), but they spread too damn much. Even though the recipe calls for creaming the butter and sugar for a long long time, I think it might work better with a more standard technique.

Sunday, 10/8/17

Spicy Korean chicken (chicken buldak), reprised from about a year ago. The diced chicken is mixed with a spicy sauce with ginger, garlic, soy, corn syrup and hot pepper paste, then cooked in a skillet, then mixed with Korean rice cake and mozzarella cheese (!) and broiled. The flavors are so, so good. The disappointment was that I overcooked the rice cakes and they were inedibly hard and chewy. I hope they soften up a little in the fridge. Served with a simple steamed (but fancy looking) romanesco broccoli:

Saturday, 10/7/17

Dinner with Jennie and David. Jason's bread, and a Boston Cream Pie (from Bravetart). One of the cake layers didn't bake long enough and then had to go back into the oven, which may have dried it out a bit, but overall it was a solid if not amazing recipe. I broke the ganache a little which detracted from the looks, but not the taste.

Friday, 10/6/17

Tempura style tofu with a spicy soy dipping sauce (from Asian Tofu), plus a stir-fry with baby bok choy and the leftover sweet potato noodles. The tofu was terrific---nice and crunchy on the outside and soft inside. I would cut the pieces smaller next time, even though it would be more of a pain. The stir-fry was only meh, and too spicy for Carter. It was kind of watery. Homemade Snickers for dessert. The good and bad news is that they taste just like Snickers', albeit with a higher ratio of (excellent) nougat. The other good news is that I finally worked up the courage to temper chocolate and it went nearly perfectly. The recipe is from Bravetart; I have been happy with the things I have tried from there so far.

Thursday, 10/5/17

Jason was off giving a final, so Carter and I fended for ourselves with a tomato-mozzarella salad, plus a loaf of bread that Jason made earleir. I had a broccoli melt and JAson just had bread and butter. Odd combo, but not unpleasing.

Wednesday, 10/4/17

Made japchae for I think the third time? I knew if was time consuming so when I got home at 4:15 I immediately started chopping away. It's nothing tricky, though: a quick brown sugar/soy/sesame oil marinade for the beef, cook the noodles, and individually saute all the vegetables (onions, scallions, spinach, carrots, peppers, garlic) . Season with more soy, sesame seeds and sugar (plus I added sriracha cause we all like it).
Carter looked down at his bowl and said "I don't like this. I don't like these noodles". Well, I found that I had made this almost exactly a year ago and back then, he liked it, and especially the noodles. So he ate it and admitted that it was delicious. Reason enough to keep a blog.

Tuesday, 10/3/17

Just a leftover night. It made for some strange bedfellows: potstickers, pizza and some broccoli. Still, it is nice to be able to open the fridge without fear again.

Monday, 10/2/17

Pulled pork, pinto beans, coleslaw, pickles and hush puppies, courtesy of my mom. All predictably delicious. Carter even mentioned how good the coleslaw was on the ride home.
I brought nutterbutter style cookies, from the Bravetart cookbook. I thought the cookies were too crunchy, but then I remembered that actual Nutterbutters are pretty crunchy. They are fairly simple and quite nice (if you like peanut butter). I am looking forward to trying our something more complex from the book, as soon as I have time and ambition.

Sunday, 10/1/17

Jason made pizzas for us: one with jalapenos, pepperoni and provolone (this was so good that it was very difficult not to eat more and more of it), and a new variety with leftover pork, barbecue sauce, red onions and gouda (I didn't tell him that this is very similar to one at Bob & Timmy's in Providence. I wasted to boost his morale). The second pie was also great, but I will never get tired of pepperoni and provolone.

Saturday, 9/30/17

Jason wanted to make potstickers, so we did. We filled them with a mixture of pork, cabbage and mushrooms; the big surprise was how good Carter is at folding dumplings. Faster and better than his parents. We also had zucchini fritters (an odd accompaniment, but I like them) and some fried cheese curds from Aldi as an appetizer. I bought two boxes, knowing they would soon disappear from the shelves, and I wish I had bought more. They are remarkably tasty and who knows if Aldi will ever have them again?
I forgot that I made rice pudding on Friday. Followed the same recipe as last week, but added more rice and less cream. I may have also cooked it longer. The result was thicker and more set, as I was expecting, but a little too firm. Carter and I both like it a little softer and creamier. Next time I'll try to hit the middle somehow.