Monday, 1/28/19

Another soup night. This one was from Food52 and has potatoes and roasted poblanos and not much else. I threw in spinach at the end, plus a can of hominy to bulk it up a bit. Nice flavors, and since it isn't pureed, it doesn't get that gloppy texture potato soup can sometimes have.

Sunday, 1/27/17

Chicken and sweet potato stew with red curry, from the NTY. I made this a few times a couple of years ago and remember really liking it. The only change I made from the recipe was using bone-in chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken. Added rice and some sauteed Chinese broccoli and called that a meal.

I couldn't get rid of that shadow.

Saturday, 1/26/19

Rare Saturday night at home. I spent the afternoon making soups for the week ahead, and then decided to make some cinnamon rolls, since Jason was napping and couldn't protest. For dinner we had sushi bowl with tuna, avocado, mango and cucumber. I had wanted to make sushi rolls, but my nori wouldn't cooperate and I gave up. Jason contributed a grilled flatbread with garlic, butter and parmesan. It was really tasty, but he wasn't happy with the texture (says he didn't make it thin enough). The cinnamon rolls (from the NYT) are good, but next time I would cut back or even eliminate the cardamom in the dough.

The pink and greens looked really pretty together, just not in this picture

Cinnamon rolls!

Friday, 1/25/19

Dinner with Jennie and David: bread from Jason, and a triple lemon bundt from me. From a book called "Rose's Baking Basics". It's fine, but a little dry. Slightly overcooked, I guess? Or maybe I should had used more syrup on it? Anyway, it's fine, but not as good as I was hoping.

Thursday, 1/24/19

Still grasping at straws, dinner-wise. So I made a potato soup as we had excess potatoes in the crisper.  Jason kindly made a loaf of bread, and we had lots of leftover cheese. Sadly, I put too much black pepper in the soup so it was too spicy for Carter. I always forget that black pepper can actually be spicy if you use enough.

Wednesday, 1/23/19

We didn't really do much meal planning for this week, so after staring blankly into the freezer, I decided to use up some leftover ground beef from steamed buns to make fried rice. This had the benefit of using up the overcooked broccoli AND providing Carter's lunches for the rest of the week AND Jason loves it. So that worked out.

Tuesday, 1/22/19

Jason dinner: hamburgers and tater tots. I insisted on broccoli to go with it, and then overcooked it. Yuck.

Monday, 1/21/19

Impromptu games and dinner with Jen and John. We came empty handed (since we had just come from our little vacation), but Jason made cookies and a big popover, and I helped with chili. Fun way to spend a chilly afternoon. Then I was so happy to conk out in my own bed.

Sunday, 1/20/19

Carter and somehow talked Jason into staying an extra night! I had hoped for BBQ from a place nearby that looked really good, but they closed for the snow. So Jason finished up our food from home, we got Carter some McDonald's, and I had Big Y sushi. Not very glamorous, but no complaints. It was almost too cold for the hot tub, we we were brave.

Saturday, 1/19/19

More Porches, more of the same, dinner-wise. I dragged Carter and Jason to Mass MoCa. They were not impressed.

To hell with you, Sol Lewitt

Friday, 1/18/19

Long weekend in North Adams! We just had dinner in the room: we brought bread, cheese, a chickpea salad, lots of chips, grapes and cookies. I splurged on a slightly bigger room and it was worth it. Carter is making the most of the hot tub.

Jason, enjoying the free peanuts and beating me at Scrabble

Thursday, 1/17/19

Just various leftovers. We are going out of town for a couple of days and needed to clear out some stuff.

Wednesday, 1/16/19

GIANT chicken potpie with a biscuit top. Good, but it took forever for the biscuits to cook through, and used pretty much every dish in the house. I used poached chicken breasts, some leftover chicken stock to make a veloute (and threw in some leftover gravy, too) and of course potatoes, carrots and peas.

Before

After

We also had a Caesar-ish salad. Lots of leftovers.

Tuesday, 1/15/19

No real dinner, since we were going to a little get together for my friend Allison, who is moving to New Zealand for 6 months. So we had (Jason) bread, cheese, olives and wine for dinner. Carter stayed home with macaroni and cheese with hotdogs and Fortnite.

Monday, 1/14/19

Spaghetti with (tiny little) meatballs, plus a simple romaine salad. I threw some shredded  zucchini into the meatballs, but otherwise pretty standard. Forgot to take a picture, but they looked like spaghetti with meatballs.

Sunday, 1/13/19

Dinner and Game Night at Laurie's, although we didn't get to play as many games as I might have liked (school night). Laurie made a cheese fondue (that was super fun), so Jason made a couple of loaves of bread, and I brought my good old brown sugar cake (from The Craft of Baking). It turned out better than the last time I made it; I attribute that to two things: my old batch of almond meal from Trader Joe's was unusually coarse (and the current bag is finer), and I was careful not to overbake. I had been hoping to try something new, but it's hard to argue with this cake.

Saturday, 1/12/19

Dinner with Jennie and David. Nothing new: bread from Jason, chocolate pudding ("Best Chocolate Pudding") from Smitten. I used the variation that subs in an ounce of unsweetened, and served it with whipped cream. Reliably delicious. I would be hard pressed to find a lot of people who don't like chocolate pudding.

Friday, 1/11/19

I have been wanting to try making steamed pork buns again, since we borrowed a steamer basket from a friend. I was too lazy to make the full on char sui filling again, and tried to streamline by just using ground pork with the char sui seasonings. I also forgot to let the filled buns rise before steaming them. So I found them a little disappointing---not fluffy enough and the pork filling a little damp. Oh well. Of course, Jason liked them but that isn't exactly a high compliment. I also made a batch of curried tomato-coconut soup (from the NYT) that I have made a few times before. I threw in some of the leftover (unloveable) steamed broccoli for texture and thought it was really good. Better than those stupid dumplings.

They look cute, anyway

Thursday, 1/10/19

Big Y is discontinuing their gold coins, so in order to use up our very last one, we got an ENORMOUS family sized pizza. Jason loved it, I thought it tasted a little like school lunch pizza. At any rate, there a plenty of leftovers. I also steamed some broccoli. Unexciting.

Wednesday, 1/9/19

I realized that: a. I had a lot of leftover rotisserie chicken and b. I didn't feel like making soup and c. everyone liked quesadillas. So, quesadillas it was, with chicken, black beans, cheese and a little canned chipotle sauce. I feel guilty about not having a vegetable, but there was guacamole, so....

Tuesday, 1/8/19

We had a special guest for dinner----Corrina! There was raisin/walnut bread from Jason, plus some leftover rotisserie chicken, cheese,various condiments (mostly for me), and cabbage sauteed with onion. Corrina pronounced the cabbage "inoffensive", which is practically a rave review from a non cabbage eater.

I am actually getting worse at photographing dinner.

Monday, 1/7/19

Vegetarian chili, guacamole, chips.Perfectly fine but as Carter said, "This is good but it would be better with meat". I'm with you, kid.

Sunday, 1/6/19

Dinner at Jennie and David's, so bread and an apple cake (from the NYT, a bundt with a bourbon glaze). The cake was, I thought, a bit damp. Apparently I have made a delicious apple cake before but didn't mention where I got the recipe. Dope.

Saturday, 1/5/18

Spent the whole day in Westford visiting Jeff and Sue. Big late lunch at an odd Asian/Italian restaurant in Lowell. It wasn't fusion; it was mostly Thai and Vietnamese food with the seemingly random addition of a page of Italian food. There must be a story there somewhere. Anyway, Jason made the best selection---spicy dry cooked tofu, I had a pho that was fine, but Carter didn't care for his Pad Thai, sadly. I think it was just a little too fish sauce-y for him.
Anyway, for dinner we just snacked on bread (from Jason), cheese, crackers, hummus and cookies. It was a really fun day, but the drive home (late night on Route 2 with freezing rain on the roads! Scary!) was rough.

I am not sure what Asa is eating here?

Friday, 1/4/18

Dinner was somewhat uninspired (especially for a Friday): rotisserie chicken from Big Y, mashed potatoes with gravy, salad (more faux Caesar dressing. Still tweaking it---the latest batch is less spicy, which is good).

So beige

Thursday, 1/3/19

Tofu, roasted with maple, sriracha and some mustard, plus fried rice with broccoli. We got the tofu from Mom's instead of Trader Joe's, and I liked the more delicate texture. Fried rice=good leftovers for Carter's lunch.

Wednesday, 1/2/19

Giant batch of macaroni and cheese, from SK. I added roasted cauliflower to round it out, plus we had a little salad. Carter was dismayed about the cauliflower, but as I promised him, it was not very noticeable.

The weird dark things on the salad are toasted salami. Crunchy and spicy!

Tuesday, 1/1/19

Surprise invitation to Jen and John's meant we were gone all day. So we made lunch (grilled cheese on Jason bread, a spinach salad from Laurie and champagne cocktails) AND dinner: two Blue Apron's. One was chicken soft tacos with roasted sweet potatoes and black beans and the other was gnocchi in a spicy tomato sauce with Calabrian chili paste, mascarpone and red onions. I would happily eat either of them again. Jen made some salted chocolate chunk shortbread and I made my David Lebowitz caramel blondies (brown butter variation). Fun day of playing games, snacking and hanging out.

Jenga almost as tall as Jen

Monday, 12/31/18

Quiet New Year's Eve at home this year; Carter went to a friends for a few hours and Jason and I stayed home and played video games.
After making stuffed mushrooms last week, I knew I wanted to try again with a few little tweaks. Nothing groundbreaking; I just sauteed the onions and garlic, omitted the vinegar, and added some romano cheese. Jason made us an EXCELLENT loaf of raisin/walnut bread that we had with cheese and butter, and of course I made another salad. The ersatz Caesar dressing is a little spicy, but I like it.

Sunday, 12/30/18

Jason had been threatening to make burgers for a while, and he finally got his way. Tots, too, of course. I (killjoy) made a salad to go with it.

Saturday, 12/29/18

Jennie and David: plain bread, butterscotch pudding. The recipe was one from SK (her "Luxe Butterscotch Pudding"); I used the browned butter variation, subbed in bourbon for rum and skipped the layer of salted caramel. We didn't miss it, but it would have been good. I was just too lethargic to bother.The only real problem was that it was a small batch and no leftovers. Maybe not really a problem?