Monday, 10/29/18

Lentils and rice, plus cabbage sauteed with onions and mustard seeds. I sauteed the lentils with onion, garlic, and ginger, then cooked them in water plus coconut milk. Finished with some sriracha, lime and cilantro, they were creamy and delicious. And vegan by accident!

Sunday, 10/28/18

Jason wanted pancakes, so I graciously allowed him to make some. They were fine.

Saturday, 10/27/18

Dinner with Jennie and David, plus their friends Guy and Elizabeth. We brought bread (with onions), plus a sweet potato pie (from the Patti Labelle recipe in my recipes) that was fine. Elizabeth made these really tasty little savory meringues with togarashi (spicy!), plus they broughy goat cheese and chive crackers AND manchego and homemade quince paste. I felt very outdone (in a good way, since I got to eat all that tasty stuff).

Friday, 10/26/18

Judy's retirement party at Amy's house. I made a large batch of macaroni and cheese (from Martha Stewart via Smitten Kitchen) using up a bunch of different cheeses. The only thing I changed was using panko instead of tiny cubes of bread for the topping. Yum! People seemed to like it.

Thursday, 10/25/18

Jason was giving an exam, so Carter and I walked over to Big Y and had dinner there. Festive! We shared some boneless chicken fingers, a sushi roll and some chips.

Wednesday, 10/24/18

Tofu (marinated and then roasted), plus noodles with spinach, mushrooms and broccoli. Lots of ginger, garlic and onion...nothing out of the ordinary.

Tuesday, 10/23/18

Jason: cheeseburgers and tots. I also made some brussels sprouts but they were nothing to write home about.

Monday, 10/22/18

Tortilla soup, made with leftover chicken and stock from the weekend's roasted chicken. No recipe, just soup. Garnished with queso fresco, avocado, lime and cilantro.

Sunday, 10/21/18

A repeat of Carter's Hobbit dinner from Friday, without the deviled eggs this time, but with the addition of some peanuts, pickled daikon and an apple. I took some liberties. I hope JRR Tolkien wouldn't have minded but I bet he would.

Saturday, 10/120/18

Dinner with Jennie and David----bread, of course, and two kinds of cookies, both from Smitten Kitchen, both repeats. Pretzel Linzers, which I like quite a bit, but they are a lot of work, and super rich. Maybe not worth it. The other one was a brown butter coconut cookie. Nice, but also a bit of a pain what with the browning and chilling of the butter. They are written as a drop cookie, but I did them as a slice and bake. Worked fine.

Mine never look like the picture.

Friday, 10/19/18

Carter's request: Hobbit dinner. Scones from King Arthur website (really good), plus a roasted chicken (from Big Y. Honestly, they are better than my own, easier and perhaps even cheaper), bread, cheeses, pickles, deviled eggs and jam. I am pleased to report that it was a big hit. Sadly, no dwarves came in to clean up the kitchen.

Thursday, 10/18/18

Just leftovers: finished the beef stew and the zucchini, still a few egg rolls lurking in there.

Wednesday, 10/17/18

Potato gnocchi, which are just as easy as ricotta if you have the time to bake the potatoes. They were nice  enough with some leftover tomato sauce, if maybe a little gluey (I used a recipe from the second SK cookbook). Also had roasted butternut squash 'cause tis the season.

Tuesday, 10/16/18

Jason might: cheeseburgers and fried. No one can accuse him of being unpredictable, dinner-wise. But who can argue with actual deep fried french fries? It would take a stronger woman than I . I made a quick spinach salad with carrot-ginger-miso dressing to try to balance it out.
I was so excited on Sunday when Carter raved about my pulled pork sliders, but tonight he said THIS was the best meal. Fickle child.

Monday, 10/15/18

The slow cooker got a second day of work: beef stew. Jason made a giant Yorkshire pudding and I roasted some cute little squashes (that ended up tasting just like butternut squash). I shamelessly pandered to Carter by pureeing the squash with maple syrup and butter. I can't deny that it is good that way.

Sunday, 10/14/18

Pulled pork (onions, bourbon, a little liquid smoke and a little Frank's Redhot) in the slow cooker,served on toasted mini brioche rolls. Plus some slightly dull brussels sprouts. The pork sliders were a hit! Carter RAVED about them, and it's true, those little rolls were great with the pork. Always gratifying when the kid likes dinner.

I put some Romano on my little sprouts to liven them up

Saturday, 10/13/18

Dinner with Jennie and David. Bread from Jason and I made an apple cake with brown sugar frosting. I apparently made an apple cake about a year ago that I loved and claimed was my favorite....and didn't mention what recipe it was!! I am so irritated with past Lace. I looked through my recipes and this one seemed closest to the description and it is in fact quite good. Lots of apples, quick to put together and a sweet penuche tasting frosting. Even if this isn't the recipe, at least it is a winner!

Friday, 10/12/18

Two appetizers for dinner: a reprisal of baked zucchini/cheddar fritters (these are so good and easy compared to frying. But there is so much cheese that I don't think you save any calories. Don't care). A deep discount on egg roll wrappers at the grocery store inspired the other component (egg rolls, duh). Improvised a filling with cabbage, tofu, carrots, mushrooms, aromatics and Jason deep fried them for us. They are good but I was hoping they would taste more like the ones you get in a Chinese restaurant.
I also kindly made Jason a sausage-egg sandwich on an English muffin, because he has been envious of Carter's breakfast.

Thursday, 10/11/18

Jason made pizza (on the grill again) which we scarfed down in order to go to Carter's Open House. The best pizza was an off the cuff one he made: very thin, topped with garlic, Romano, black pepper and butter/olive oil. It was the BEST and I tried to be very encouraging about it.

Wednesday, 10/10/18

I took advantage of having roasted a chicken to make stock and used the leftovers to make a chicken-coconut soup. Basically, ginger, garlic, lemongrass (annoying to chop and didn't add much), coconut milk, and fish sauce. I had to tinker a bit to get the flavors right, but I thought it was delicious. I served it over noodles, and have sauteed kale alongside. I personally just threw the kale into mine and that was also good. The recipe wasn't from anyplace in particular---I just looked at a bunch of recipes to get the general idea.

Tuesday, 10/9/18

It was Jen's birthday, so she and John had some people over for dinner. John made chili, Jason made a bread, there was cheese, guacamole, etc. I wished I had thought to make another cake. There was no dessert!!! I blame myself.

Monday, 10/8/18

I took advantage of the day off and made japchae, which can be time consuming. This is, I think, the 4th time I've made it? So no surprises, but very good. I double almost everything; this time I used a small flatiron steak, sliced very thin.

Sunday, 10/7/18

Dinner with Jen and John. We made two Blue Apron meals, a chicken/brown rice bowl with a carrot-cabbage slaw, and salmon with labneh and dates of a bed of farro with zucchini and carrots. Carter made the salmon all by himself and it was great! I love that making these Blue Apron meals is fun for him AND makes him want to try new flavors.

Dinner by Carter

For dessert, Jason and I staged a cake-off: he has been pestering the hell out of me because he thinks we should use boxed cake mixes instead of homemade. In a moment of beaten down weakness, I agreed to a taste test. So he baked a yellow cake mix, I made one from SK, and we combined them into one big cake and covered it with frosting. My usual cooked flour recipe gave me trouble, probably because my butter got too warm and because we were nearly tripling the recipe. Anyway, I finally got it to cooperate and here we are. Slightly less ugly than my last cake but only slightly:

At least I had enough frosting for the whole border this time

I am deeply saddened to report that Jen and John preferred the mix! It was a blind taste test, and they didn't know that one side was a mix, only that we were using two different recipes. Jen liked it because it tasted like a boxed cake mix and how can you argue with that?? Jason will never let me forget this, but I still prefer cakes from scratch. 

Saturday, 10/6/18

Rare Saturday night at home. I roasted a chicken, with the idea of soup later in the week. Very basic: just spatchcocked it and rubbed with oil, salt and pepper. High heat, since I was also baking potatoes. Good if unremarkable. Also threw together gravy with the drippings. To round out the meal we had butternut squash sauteed with red onions and seasoned with maple syrup and lots of black pepper. Sweet/savory for the win. I even made us a home dessert: pumpkin pie (using the recipe from David Lebowitz). Reliably good if not wildly exciting. Carter's favorite part of dinner was the baked potatoes with cheese, sour cream and butter (duh).

Friday, 10/5/18

Impromptu dinner at Tom's, thanks to my dad. Turns out they have really good burgers! My only regret is that we didn't get more fries (and maybe a coffee milkshake for Carter; I tasted Dad's and it was really good. Lots of coffee flavor). Thanks Don for the invite!

Thursday, 10/4/18

While Jason was giving an exam, Carter and I had chicken wings from the Hangar while watching TV and drinking soda. Anarchy!

Wednesday, 10/3/18

 Classic Lace meal, circa 1986? If anyone came to our house for dinner anytime in the late 80's you would probably get rice pilaf (that I had to call my mom for the recipe for every time), broccoli and chicken piccata. I kow know how to make the rice, and it was chicken francese this time, but other than that...
I still like this meal, and so did Carter and Jason.
I also messed around with a recipe for candy corn popcorn. I had tried some from Trader Joe's and it was so good that I hoped it was reproducible. The recipe I found isn't quite that good, but it was tasty enough, quick and cheap. Just candy corn, melted with a little brown sugar and butter, tossed with popcorn. It certainly looks festive:

Tuesday, 10/2/18

Jason night: burgers and sweet potato fries. Turns out everyone here loves burgers but not so much sweet potato fries. At least not these ones from Aldi, baked. I prefer the kind with the spicy coating so I guess we are back to tater tots.

Monday, 10/1/18

Hits and misses....I made a batch of chili that turned out fine (I never knew that Jason's family never ate chili when he was growing up. I wonder why not?), Jason made a very nice loaf of bread with sesame seeds (that we ate with avoocado), and roasted acorn squash. I was in a hurry, so the squash wasn't as done as I would have liked. But, thanks to the butter and maple syrup, Carter actually liked it. Squash season is much less fun than zucchini season.

Sunday, 9/30/18

Simple dinner: ravioli (not homemade) with tomato sauce, sauteed spinach. I felt like it wasn't my best sauce and I'm not sure why. Too thick, and too much basil? Anyway, we all like ravioli. I remember when I was a kid,  it could be hard to find frozen ravioli in the grocery store. Hard to imagine it as an exotic item.