Wednesday, 11/28/18

Biscuits with hamsteaks & red pepper jelly, plus a salad. The biscuit recipe came from here:  https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/flaky-buttermilk-biscuits/. They were super successful, and I am not sure if it is the recipe, the fact that I actually had butter milk on hand, baking them in a cast iron skillet, or dumb luck. But they were flaky, rose well, and tasted great. I don't love ham, but with the jelly (and on a biscuit) it was fine. I also made another romaine salad, figuring we would know by know if we had e coli. This time I tried to make it a little more interesting (the last one I made was kind of blah), so I added some dried cranberries, grated pecorino, and chick peas. Much better!

Tuesday, 11/27/18

Jason made pizza for dinner, but held himself back and only made two modest sized ones. One Sicilian with cheese, one with pepperoni, mushrooms, onions and peppers.
I also made a quick coffee cake in the morning (from my book, Classic Home Desserts). Irushed it with too cold butter, so my crumb topping wasn't it's best, but the cake itself was delicious. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to use up a half gallon of buttermilk, but I keep finding uses for it.

Monday, 11/26/18

Chicken cutlets with panko, to please Carter, and quinoa with mushrooms, garlic, spinach, lemon and olive oil, to assuage my slight nutritional guilt. Bonus: the leftover quinoa makes excellent work day lunch leftovers.

Sunday, 11/25/18

Dinner at home, just the three of us! David sent me home with his turkey carcass, so I had some shredded turkey and a lot of stock. I made a creamy turkey dish with mushrooms, broccoli, white wine and some cream, and served it all over egg noodles. I had originally planned on soup, but I think this was a more popular choice.

Saturday, 11/24/18

Mike, Kristen and Mercer came for dinner. Kristen and I made a whole lot of pork dumpling: some were what she called a "nurse's hat" shape (they looked a bit like tortellini to me)----Jason fried those. Then, with a different shaped wrapper we did the more traditional pleated half moon that we pan fried/steamed. Kristen was the boss of the filling: it had pork, cabbage, carrots, ginger, garlic, soy, rice vinegar and maybe sesame oil?) Fun project, tasty, and leftovers to boot! We also had bread (Jason) and cheese (Michael), and Mercer played happily with carter's old Cars cars. Overly chocolate-y fudge for dessert (Carter and I made a double batch using a recipe that called for marshmallows, evaporated milk and 1.5 pounds of chocolate! Will stick to Pop's recipe next time).

Friday, 11/23/18

Nachos for lunch, Whately Inn with my parents and Kevin's family for dinner. It was nice to see everyone; my chicken was good, as was Jason's steak. Most of Carter's steak came home, but we can always figure out what to do with the leftovers.

Thursday, 11/22/18

Happy Thanksgiving! We had two engagements: late lunch at Jay and Jodi's house with Jason's whole family. Jason made a loaf of bread, I made squash. Whatever. My heart wasn't in it. Actually, it wasn't even squash, it was sweet potatoes because that's what I had in the fridge. They were fine. Jay grills his turkey, and I must say that produced a fine bird. Carter and I sorely felt the lack of mashed potatoes and gravy.

Carter modeling the bread, his cool new hat from Aunt Yoni, and the beautiful basket that Aunt Margie made for us

At Jennie and David's later, we gamely ate another meal. Jason made another loaf of bread, I made a pumpkin pie (at Jennie's request). It was good but not terribly exciting. Maybe I just don't like pumpkin pie that much anymore?

Wednesday, 11/21/18

Dinner with Jen and John and Laurie. Jason made pizza, I baked the rest of a batch of coconut/brown butter cookies I had in the freezer (from Smitten Kitchen, I believe). I don't know what I did differently, or if freezing was somehow beneficial, but these were tastier than I remembered. Even coconut-averse Jen liked them.

Tuesday, 11/20/18

I had planned to make a Caesar salad, but was too lazy. So I made a lame salad with romaine, carrots, beets and red pepper. The only exciting part was that just today the CDC strongly warned us not to eat romaine because of an e coli outbreak. I actually wasn't sure if we should take the chance. We'll see!

I also made deviled eggs (with Frank's Redhot for a Buffalo wing take) and some cheese straws from SK.

Monday, 11/19/18

A curried potato and carrot soup, with chickpeas. I just made this up as I went along. Used up some coconut milk., lots of ginger and garlic and onions. Jason made us a nice loaf of bread to go with it and there you go, quick dinner.

Sunday, 11/18/18

Broccoli pasta from SK, which I have made so many times I don't need the recipe anymore. I decided that that would be enough dinner. After all, it is mostly broccoli.
It must not have been quite enough because I had to feed Carter a tamale later.

Saturday, 11/17/18

Our usual Saturday evening plans got cancelled, so we have a late and large lunch with Jason's parents at Bombay Royale.  So for dinner we just had eclairs, because I had already started making them. Healthy!

Friday, 11/16/18

ANOTHER recipe from the second Cravings book, pork and glass noodles. I didn't, as it turned out, have all the ingredients (no celery leaves or tomatoes), so mine was less salad-y that hers and more noodle-y, but the flavors were the same (a spicy garlic-lime dressing was key). I used baby bok choi and mushrooms instead. Another good meal, if not as popular as the fish cakes or chicken sandwiches.

Thursday, 11/15/18

Exam night for Jason, Big Y for me and Carter. Sushi, chicken tenders, some sald bar stuff and Doritos. No pretense at good nutrition. The boneless wings were a little dry and disappointing, the sushi as pretty good, and I don't know how they make those marinated white beans but I love them. We tried to watch "Halloween", but surprisingly, found it boring. I was so scared by it when I was his age! Probably because I watched it with a bunch of other 13 year old girls and not my mom....

Wednesday, 11/14/18

Another Chrissy Teigen recipe, pulled chicken sandwiches. Boneless chicken thighs, braised in a quick barbecue sauce with chilis in adobo (spicy!). The only thing I changed was adding a little liquid smoke. Served on little brioche buns (Carter's favorite part, I think, although he was an overall fan). Carter had plain steamed broccoli, and Jason and I had broccoli roasted with garlic and lemon.  Another win for "Cravings 2".

Tuesday, 11/13/18

Finally made the twice postponed Thai fishcakes (from the new Chrissy Teigen book). Easy to put together mixture (I used haddock), with chilis, cilantro, cornstarch, garlic and lime. The mixture looked oddly runny after I pulled it out of the fridge, so I threw in a little panko as a binder. They fried up beautifully, and had a nice flavor. they are served with a spicy peanut sauce (which took some tinkering: I think my coconut milk wasn't rich enough, and at first it was too lime-y, but finally got it balanced). The side dish, riced cauliflower with lots of garlic, is also from the book. Delicious, and made an excellent lunch for the the next day.

Monday, 11/12/18

Work was very tiring today, so I didn't feel like cooking the dinner that I had planned (those poor fishcakes keep getting deferred), so we just had bean and cheese quesadillas and some roasted Delicata squash. Trying not to let the last of the Farm Share vegetables go to waste, but I haven't been super inventive about it.

Sunday, 11/11/18

Had lunch in Longmeadow, for real this time. Then we had only a little time before going to Jennie and David's house for dinner. Luckily, Jason had already made his (excellent) bread and I had already made a flan. No surprises, no complaints.

Saturday, 11/10/19

We THOUGHT we having lunch in Longmeadow for Jason's grandmother's 100th (!) birthday, but we somehow had the date wrong? So we trooped back home and had a late lunch (finally finished the split pea soup!) and consequently I didn't feel like cooking the dinner I had planned. So I cooked up some frozen ravioli and tomato sauce for Carter and I, and made a salad. Not innovative, but good.

Friday, 11/9/18

To start, we had some of these Parmesan cheese fondue things we bought (I am ashamed to say) in Canada. They were vacuum packed! they were fine! They are kind of like cheese souffle type things? Anyway, I served them with some tomato sauce and they were pretty good. We also had beef/zucchini meatballs with a tahini sauce plus  a cabbage slaw from a book called "Now and Then", by Julia Tershen, who I really like. These individually were really tasty and interesting: the zucchini made the meatballs nice and moist, and the slaw had fennel seeds and cumin seeds, which was very unusual. But they were somehow less than the sum of their parts. we also has rice, and everything was just fine. Not exactly disappointing, but not as good as I hoped. Maybe if I had panfried the meatballs instead of baking them?

Thursday, 11/8/18

Just leftovers. A week of cooking left us with a full fridge.

Wednesday, 11/7/18

I made a couple of dishes from a cookbook I brought home, "Fresh India" (from the author of "Made in India). One was supposed to be butter paneer masala, but I didn't get around to buying paneer, so I used chicken instead. And I didn't have peas, so in went a lot of spinach. And who has fenugreek leaves? So I played fast and loose with the recipe. It was still great. Carter was very excited about it, but in reality he was mostly enthused about the garlic butter naan I made. And who could blame him? Warm puffy bread dripping with garlic butter is hard to resist.

Tuesday, 11/6/18

Jason night. He gave us a break from hamburgers by making a few pizzas. One Sicilian, one with peppers, onions and pepperoni, and an experimental one with sesame seeds on the crust. They were all so, so good! Maybe because he made them in the oven instead of trying the grill? Anyway, really tasty meal. I think sesame crust pizza should be more of a thing.

Monday, 11/5/18

Meat, the gift that keeps on giving. Today I used up a ham hock from my mom to make split pea soup. I didn't have quire enough split peas so threw in some red lentils (worked fine). The problem was that we all are a little tepid about split pea soup. I was, however, very excited about the cheese bread that Jason made.  It was quite delicious.

Sunday, 11/4/18

Still working through the gift of meat from my mom. I made a big pan of baked ziti with Italian sausage and some kale. And that was dinner! I figured it had everything in there so didn't serve anything else. I love baked ziti almost and much as stuffed shells; Carter thought it was "fine".

Saturday, 11/3/18

Dinner at Jennie and David's...bread from Jason, S'Mores cupcakes (Smitten Kitchen) from me. I have made them a few times before and they are always good. Even Carter liked them and shocked me by eating two! I spent over an hour Saturday afternoon pondering cookbooks and websites, trying to think of the perfect new thing to bake, only to come back to a staple. Oh well.

Friday, 11/2/18

Dinner with Jen and John. We had a Blue Apron meal of black beans and rasted sweet potato tacos (Jen bought extra ingredients to bulk it up) , Jason made a loaf of bread, and I made a grasshopper pie (from a Gourmet cookbook I found on the sale shelf at the library). The pie was nice, although I don't think it's for everyone. I used the Oreo crust from Cook's Illustrated and that always comes out well, but I thought the pie could have been mintier. Also, I shouldn't have eaten a big piece when we got home...

Thursday, 11/1/18

Meatloaf (from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook), mashed new potatoes, and roasted acorn squash. The meatloaf comes courtesy of my mom, you gave us a LOT of meat. We are slowly working through it. This produced 3 little meatloaves; Jason and I liked it, but Carter was neutral. He was really only there for the potatoes.

Wednesday, 10/31/18

Roasted eggplant (sadly, I burned some), plus buckwheat noodles with ground pork, mushrooms and baby bok choy. I used the chicken-lettuce cups sauce ecipe from my Cravings cookbook, which is always delicious, so matter how I tweak it.

Tuesday, 10/30/18

Jason night, so burgers and tots again (we are mercifully out of both), plus I made a salad (largely ignored except for by me, which is too bad because it was great).