Thursday, 2/27/20

I guess I have a vendetta against Smitten Kitchen this week? I made her mini meatloaves, failed to read the second page, and left out milk, eggs and parsley. Oops. Luckily this did not really affect the outcome (although it is irritating that I had actually purchased parsley partly for meatloaf). I used mostly ground pork instead of all beef; that probably covers a lot of sins. Jason made mashed potatoes (fine), and I also made green beans with butter and almonds (that I re-purposed the next day into pasta with leftover egg noodles, chicken stock, soy sauce and spicy chili flake which was so tasty and I will probably never be able to reproduce). So now Jason has had the meatloaf he has been asking for.

Wednesday, 2/26/20

Dinner in Whately: Corrina had a Blue Apron with gnocchi and meat sauce (delicious) and we brought a bread and some brownies. The brownies ("My Favorite Brownies", from Smitten Kitchen) would have been better had I not failed to read the recipe well and used dark chocolate instead of the called-for unsweetened. They were actually fine, just very sweet and fudgy. I wonder if I have accidentally done that before? It wouldn't surprise me.

Tuesday, 2/25/20

Jason served us french fries and chicken nuggets. At least I insisted on some leftover broccoli to go with it.

Monday, 10/24/20

Got off work a little early, and it is a good thing, as tonight's dinner took longer than anticipated. I made baked chickpeas with pita chips (from SK) in order to use up some leftover pita Jason made. Well, then I ended up having to buy chick peas, parsley, cucumber and tomatoes to make the dish, so it was a bit of the tail wagging the dog. When I started cooking, I quickly realized that there were THREE sub-recipes. None of them took that long, but it adds up! A little tomato-cucumber salad (I added feta), yogurt with tahini and lemon, plus the pita chips. Other than that, this was really good! The chips get a little chewy/crunchy with the chick peas on top, and the salad  added a nice bright crunch. I sprinkled the pita with za'taar before baking, but I am not sure if you could tell, what with all the other flavors. Jason and I really loved this; Carter was only meh.

Sunday, 10/23/20

Egg noodles with chicken, broccoli and spinach, with a marsala sauce. I had been planning to make regular old chicken marsala, but this just seemed easier. This was...fine. Nothing special.

Saturday, 10/22/20

Dinner at Jennie and David's: Jason's bread was great, but my coconut cream puie gave me a little trouble. I am liking pate sucree for a crust, but the blind baking is spotty. The dough slides and slumps if you don't use weights, but then when when I did, the dough stuck to the tin foil and the results were not pretty. At least you couldn't tell once the filling was in there, and I do appreciate the crunchiness. For some reason, even though I have made this recipe before (from Classic American Desserts) I found the filling not quite sweet enough. No complaints, though.

Friday, 2/21/21

Jason made us a nice loaf of rye, so we had grilled cheese and tomato soup (no real recipe: I threw ginger, garlic, cilantro stems, coriander and canned whole tomatoes in the IP, and then blended the hell out of it). Classic combo.

Thursday, 2/20/20

An unexpected invitation to Jay and Jodi's meant no cooking at all! It felt weird to arrive empty-handed, but dinner was good: chapati-like flatbreads, lentil & chard soup, brownies with ice cream. Even Carter came along and was pretty chatty.

Wednesday, 2/19/20

Went to Whately for dinner. Corrina had a Blue Apron (salmon, carrots, zucchini and quinoa), and we supplemented with leftover burritos, a loaf of bread, and cookies. I made the Alison Roman chocolate-chunk shortbread, and we agreed that the batches I remembered to put big salt on were better. Also maybe a tiny bit overdone?

Tuesday, 2/18/20

I marinated tofu in maple, soy and sriracha (then broiled it), and made a pasta with broccoli, spinach, and Cravings sauce (sriracha, hoisin, rice vinegar, soy sauce, etc). Good but Carter found it to be on the edge of too spicy.

Monday, 2/17/20

Regular old burritos (beans, ground beef, etc) that I had been promising Carter. Always good, but not noteworthy.

Sunday, 2/16/20

Made grinders from the leftover eggplant parm. No complaints.

Saturday, 2/15/20

Dinner at Jennie and David's. Jason's large loaf of rye was delicious, but I had a dessert disaster. It had been so cold that I thought i could freeze the ice cream canister outside on the porch, but apparently, it wasn't quite cold enough, because my base just whirled around and around, stubbornly remaining a liquid. So we had to make an emergency stop at Trader Joe's for ice cream. Luckily my caramel sauce was beyond reproach (and peanuts were a good addition). I threw the uncooperative mix into the freezer, where it formed a tasty but oh-so-solid mass.

Friday, 2/14/20

Eggplant parm and shells.

Thursday, 2/13/20

Just leftovers. The fridge is just so, so full.

Wednesday, 2/12/20

Butter chicken in the Instant Pot, from The Essential Indian Instant Pot cookbook. I took my own advice from the last time I made it, and left boneless pieces of chicken breast pretty big, and then took them out and cut them up smaller---they stayed nice and moist that way. I also added some peas and spinach to make it a full meal. Jason made some pita in lieu of naan, so Carter was happy.
Except...my cayenne is unusually hot and even though I used half of what the recipe called for, it was still quite spicy. Sorry, kid.

Tuesday, 2/11/20

Jason made us pizzas, which were basically fine. One had some chicken that had been in the freezer forever, so while I applaud his using it up, it was a bit dry. The other had spinach and onion (plus leftover meat sauce). Carter and I both plead for plain cheese, but it falls on deaf ears.

Monday, 2/10/20

A very old-fashioned spaghetti with meat sauce, for Carter's sake. I didn't even use the pressure cooker, just my trusty old crock pot. Satisfying! Had an incongruous bowl of zucchini sauteed with onions and soy sauce alongside.

Sunday, 2/9/20

Still a lot of leftover pulled pork, so we had sandwiches again (actually, I had tacos on corn tortillas with feta and lime-marinated red onions, but the boys went with sandwiches). Plus the saddest salad ever. Never again will I make a 6.5 pound pulled pork.

Saturday, 2/8/20

Dinner at Jen and John's (chili). Jason made a rye bread (flat but good), we picked up a couple of boxes of Jiffy corn bread (so reliably good!) and I made some flourless chocolate cupcakes with mint cream from SK. I made them a few years ago, found them a bit dry, so pulled them a lot earlier. Still not quite the texture I was hoping for. Maybe doing a whole cake would be better. Really, I just want the mint cream.

Friday, 2/7/20

I finally got around to making a tofu and squash sheet pan dinner from SK that I had been meaning to try. I used her suggestion of freezing the tofu (and doubled it), and it certainly does give an interesting, spongy texture. Good for roasting. I didn't have acorn or kabucha squash, but butternut worked fine. Served with rice. I followed the directions and drizzled the ginger sauce over everything, but I think it would be better with more sauce, and tossed together for better coating. I also wasn't super hungry because I couldn't stop snacking on the crispex-togaroshi snack mix I made.

Thursday, 2/6/20

Chicken and farro soup, made from the leftover Big Y chicken, along with the last of the rain-walnut bread. Carter pronounced it very plain, but I thought it was fine. And doesn't farro sound so healthy and virtuous?

Wednesday, 2/520

So much leftover pulled pork in the house. So I made a big tray of nachos, using a few techniques from Serious Eats. I made a cheese sauce AND shredded cheese, plus I made a sour cream/cilantro/avocado salsa to go on top. Carter was a little put out by the cheese sauce, but Jason and I thought it was delicious.

Tuesday, 2/4/20

Jason declared that we had too much cheese and crackers and dips hanging around (he wasn't wrong). So that was dinner.

Monday, 2/3/20

Pulled pork made in the IP. Several problems: it was an enormous pork shoulder (almost 7 pounds)---I should have cooked only half of it, or at least cut it in half, and I should have listened to the warnings on the web that the IP slow cooker function isn't its best feature. 9 hours in, the pork was nowhere close to being done. So we had to pressure cook it anyway (for at least an hour) so dinner was quite late. Anyway, made into sandwiches with barbecue sauce and nice little brioche buns from Aldi, it was still pretty good, but I am irritated with myself. I also riced some cauliflower and sauteed it with garlic, scallions and lemon. Fine.

Sunday, 2/2/20

Jason made a batch of his Bubbe's stuffing, I made potato croquettes out of leftover mashed, and we picked up a rotisserie chicken from Big Y. Instant Thanksgiving! If only I hadn't overcooked the broccoli. Oh well, still good (except I don't know why Jason gets his feelings hurt that I don't want much stuffing, since I have never pretended to like it).

Saturday, 2/1/20

Jennie and David: raisin-walnut bread from Jason, and a repeat of t Still not good at rolling out that pate sucree.he banana cream pie from Pastry Love from me. I had better bananas this time---that helped.

Friday, 1/31/20

We took our dinner show on the road to Jay and Jodi's....lentil soup (from the NYT), pumpernickel bread from Jason, and I made a new kind of blondie from Smitten. This one had caramel and pretzels, so how could I resist? It was a bit fussy, since you make your own soft caramels, and the pretzels didn't really come through, but they are good, nonetheless. I would make them again, but maybe eliminate the pretzels and brown the butter.