Sunday, 5/30/21

 Pan Bagnat (or...sandwiches) loosely adapted from a Smitten Kitchen recipe. Ciabatta rolls, smashed chickpeas (with olive oil, lemon and mint), condiments: cucumber, tomato, capers, olives, hard boiled eggs. More olive oil. You are supposed to wrap these up tightly and let them meld for a while, but I didn't bother. Very tasty; I bet they will be even better when summer tomatoes roll around. They felt relatively wholesome after all the pizza and brownies* we had at lunch in Whately. I also roasted some asparagus to go with it; trying to make the most of the season.

*Cocoa powder brownies from SK that were better than I remembered. This batch was a little underbaked, so definitely on the fudgy side.

Saturday, 5/29/21

 I tried a recipe from Bon Appetit for "Salt and Pepper Pork with Rice Cakes". While it didn't scream Authentically Korean, it did look good (and easy) and I do love Korean rice cakes, so we gave it a shot. Couldn't be easier: soak the rice cakes while you saute pork, ginger, garlic and scallions; season with a little soy sauce and sesame oil, add the rice cakes and that's it. I did add some broccoli to make it a full meal (spinach or asparagus would also have been good). I also added a little sriracha and a tiny bit of brown sugar. This was so good! Even Carter (begrudgingly) said "that was actually good, Mom". Coming from a surly teen boy, that's a five star review. The rice cakes were perfectly chewy and I don't know if it makes a difference that we grind the pork ourselves, but I like to think that it does.

Friday, 5/28/21

 Simple dinner, simple dessert: burritos and tacos, plus a coffee cake (from Classic Home Desserts). It doesn't matter how crappy a job you do mixing it,; that coffee cake is always delicious. Maybe it's all the sour cream and brown sugar.

Thursday, 5/27/21

 We went to Jennie and David's after work (with bread from Jason); enough snacking happened that no other dinner was required.

Wednesday, 5/26/21

 Sushi bowl, with all the regular stuff:  tuna, surimi, cucumbers, avocados, etc. I forgot to pull some mango from the freezer, and the fresh mangoes at the store didn't look great, so i diced up some pineapple very small and tried that instead. Success! It helped that this was an especially delicious fancy pineapple.

Tuesday, 5/25/21

 Jason made a loaf of bread; we had a nice Gruyere, a mango-chile goat cheese, deviled eggs and salad, plus watermelon. a nice summer-y dinner. I was reading up on deviled eggs (trying to improve my recipe) and saw the idea of adding butter. Tried it but didn't really notice any positive effects. I think adding olive oil works better. Maybe I just wasn't heavy-handed enough but since all the eggs got eaten I am not too worried.

Monday, 5/24/21

 The fridge was positively groaning with leftovers. So leftovers it was.

Sunday, 5/23/21

 The good news: Goten-style noodles that didn't exactly taste like Goten but were tasty nonetheless. The meh: tofu and Chinese broccoli. Two (dumb) mistakes: I should have marinated the tofu as it was super bland, and I should have blanched the greens from the broccoli and squeezed them out, to cut down on the overall wateriness (which also contributed to the blandness). Jason doesn't care, and Carter and I dutifully ate ours, as it was at least inoffensive. It never fails to surprise me that I can make such errors, after all these years!

Saturday, 5/22/21

 Jason has been toying with this idea of a pizza made with a french fry crust, and while we didn't do that precisely, we basically had french fries for dinner. Jason fired up the deep fryer, and then layered the fries in a skillet with mozzarella cheese and threw that whole thing into the grill to get nice and melty. I had a little bit of gravy hanging out in the back of the fridge so that went on there, too. Not quite poutine but obviously delicious! I made a cherry salad that is more like a salsa: fresh cherries, jalapeno, lime, cilantro and olive oil. I loved it, but next time I go blithely throwing a couple of pounds of cherries into the old shopping cart I will be more careful: this was a nearly $10 salad! Why are cherries so spendy??

Dessert (I made dessert!) was a Boston Cream Pie, from David Lebovitz. I followed the recipe exactly and have no regrets. As Jason pointed out, it has the flavor profile of an éclair, but much easier. This one is a keeper!

Friday, 5/21/21

 I don't know why, but somehow dinner wasn't ready until after 7:30? And all it was was chickpea biryani? Oh well, it was a nice evening to be sitting on the porch, drinking a glass of wine. The rice (from Ministry of Curry) is fine; I added a bag of green beans for vegetables and made it in the Instant Pot as to not overly heat up the house.  Somehow, the chicken biryani is just so much more flavorful. And I also realized that I really like all the various condiments and things that we serve with Indian food, none of which I had. So at any rate we have a LOT of leftovers

Thursday, 5/20/21

 While I was at work Jason made pita and hummus; I made a batch of curried tomato soup with coconut, plus a warm grilled zucchini salad (just with mint, lemon, olive oil and feta). Nice quick dinner for this unusually warm spring day. My only sorrow is that we are out of the rhubarb cobbler.

Wednesday, 5/19/21

 I made (kind of accidentally) a riff on bahn mi, using rolls from Aldi, ginger-scallion meatballs (from SE*), with a mix of condiments: quick pickled shredded carrots, Maggi sauce, hoisin, mint, cilantro, thinly sliced jalapenos, and mayo for the boys. Even though the last time I made bahn mi it was much more elaborate (apparently I pickled carrots, daikon, AND shallots, plus braised tofu) these were still really fun and tasty.

*I made them with ground pork instead of chicken, and eliminated the step of rolling them in sugar and re-sauteeing

Tuesday, 5/18/21

 Corrina and I had a slightly belated Mother's Day dinner at Highbrow Pizza, in Northampton. They have turned a little alley into a sweet outdoor dining area. The appetizers were all excellent (a sesame crusted tuna, meatballs with polenta, and fried goat cheese balls). The pizza was good, but the fig jam and caramelized onions overpowered the duck and arugula to the point that all you really got was sweetness. And the drinks could have been better balanced : mine was very sweet; Corrina's not quite sweet enough (they would actually have been pretty good mixed together). But overall great and a lovely time! We strolled around Northampton a little after dinner and then got some ice cream from Herrell's.  A super nice evening.

Monday, 5/16/21

 I took the rest of the roasted asparagus and made it into a pasta with lemon, goat cheese, peas, onions and mint. So good! I toasted panko with garlic and served it on top and it added a really lovely crunch and flavor. One of the best things I have cooked lately; of course Carter didn't care for it. So he had grilled cheese instead.

Sunday, 5/16/21

 Roasted chile-lemon chicken, from the NYT. This sounded so good: marinate bone-in chicken with lemon, lots of garlic, rosemary and chili flakes, then roast with more lemon and feta cheese. For one thing, it took twice as long as the recipe said, and the flavors really weren't that pronounced. Also I am coming to realize that roasting just isn't my favorite chicken preparation. Oh well, it wasn't bad, per se. We also had grilled asparagus and another loaf of bread, since Jason is still tinkering. For me, the highlight was dessert: Pioneer Woman rhubarb cobbler with hard sauce. Thanks you, David, for the rhubarb, since the little ones we planted probably won't be harvestable for a couple of years.

Saturday, 5/15/21

 Went to Jennie and David's for snacks and drinks. Snacked heavily enough so that no real dinner when we got home (just a little more snacks). Jason is still tinkering with bread and wasn't happy with this one.

Friday 5/14/21

 Just leftover pizza. Our refrigerator is finally clearing out a bit.

Thursday, 5/13/21

 Jason made us a lot of pizza: one plain cheese, one with pepperoni, one with goat cheese and caramelized onions, and a new entrant: ham and pineapple. I only agreed to that one because I knew Jason would like it, but it was actually pretty good (sweet/salty; duh). also it used up some of the ham in our freezer, so that was good.

Wednesday, 5/12/21

Pulled pork nachos. Obviously this was an easy and super delicious dinner, if not the most well-rounded, nutrition wise. I served them with a mango-pineapple salsa I had made earlier in the week, and that provided a really nice bright counterpart to the richness of the pork.

Tuesday, 5/11/21

 I made chicken stock from our chicken on Sunday, so used that to make a simple chicken soup (carrots, onions, celery, garlic, egg noodles and a little lemon). Served with the last of the dinner rolls and a little parm on the side. I remembered that in my last round of chicken soup the vegetables were unpleasantly crunchy, so made sure (for Carter's and my sake; Jason doesn't care) that didn't happen again.

Monday, 5/10/21

 After the enormous meal we had Sunday, the fridge was stuffed to the gills. So leftovers.

Sunday, 5/9/21

 Carter didn't have to work today, so I decided it was time to roast a chicken. And also: stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, sweet potatoes, rolls, and gravy. Hey, we love a Thanksgiving. The rolls were from Jason, of course, and the stuffing was a doctored up box from Aldi; I didn't have the ingredients for green bean casserole, so made a different kind with broccoli instead (basically macaroni and cheese, except broccoli). Way too much food, but I will take any excuse to have gravy.

Saturday, 5/8/21

 We had a late and enormous lunch (BBQ in Millers Falls: excellent) with my dad, Corrina, and some of Dad's friends. It was so filling that we never ate dinner at all. Just a little ice cream (and honestly, I wasn't even hungry still).

Friday, 5/7/21

 Cocktail hour in person at Jennie and David's! Well, outside, anyway (a little too brisk for it, but baby steps). Jason brought bread, and we snacked a little. Enough to not really want dinner when we got home, so just more snacking. SO nice not to be Zooming.

Thursday, 5/6/21

 Pizza with Jason's parents. We brought the halvah brownies, and I was worried that they might be too odd, but they were a hit. Good to test them out on someone else!

Wednesday, 5/5/21

 I somehow managed to produce the most boring tofu and noodles ever. Had both plain and Chinese broccoli, plus a lot of garlic, soy sauce and chili crisp, but it was just kind of bland and watery. I guess it was inoffensive? I did make an interesting dessert, though, from Dessert Person: white chocolate halvah blondies. More or less basic brownie procedure, with melted white chocolate, brown sugar and butter, plus a little tahini. Then you fold in chunks of halvah. I was intrigued when I read it, and the picture looked so pretty, with the sesame seeds on top. Anyway, I didn't bake it long enough, but it was good! will definitely try again, and bake it a few minutes longer. She was so bossy about not overbaking that I panicked.

Tuesday, 5/4/21

 Grilled cheese on Jason bread, plus a strange soup that I picked up from Aldi during their German Week. It was lentil and chickpea, but the fine print indicated that it also had raisins and apricots? It seems like it was more Moroccan than German, plus it needed a fair amount of punching up. The grilled cheese was good, anyway. For dessert I tried another thing from Dessert Person: white chocolate-halvah blondies. Interesting recipe: you melt white chocolate with tahini and butter, and fold in the halvah at the end. The top is sprinkled with sesame seeds and a little salt. I liked these pretty well, but wish I had baked them a little longer. Her instructions scared me into pulling them out a bit early. Anyway, they have a pleasant sesame flavor. The book hasn't exactly blown me away, though.

Monday, 5/3/21

 Pulled pork (made in the slow cooker, with onions, bourbon, a little brown sugar and some liquid smoke), made into sliders on those Hawaiian buns that Jason is so crazy about. Jason and I also had cauliflower, roasted with cumin and tossed with queso fresco and some diced prunes (OK, it was a little weird. But not bad!). Carter has Ultimate practice until 6:30, so I have to kind of make two dinners for the next month or so.

Sunday, 5/2/21

 Dinner with Jen and John, and no Blue Apron! Jason made a giant pizza (half taco, half goat cheese & caramelized onion), and I made cupcakes to atone for forgetting then  a month ago. Stupid box mix again (yellow this time which is in my opinion a little better), and Smitten Chocolate frosting. I told Jason it wasn't enough frosting and that I must have scaled it up last time, and sure enough, 6 cupcakes went unfrosted (and left at home). So note to future Lace: use 1.5 of the recipe. As it was, I was out of unsweetened chocolate, so it was kind of a moot point. But don't tell Jason.

Saturday, 5/1/21

 Aloo chaat: potatoes, chick peas, mint/cilantro and tamarind/date chutneys (full disclosure: I was out of dates and made it with prunes), lots of other toppings, plus I picked up a box of frozen medhu vada (little donut shaped lentil thingies) to go along with it. I really miss our favorite Indian buffet and will be glad when I don't have to re-create all this food myself.

Friday, 4/30/21

 So we just grabbed a pizza from Big Y for dinner. So what. It was on sale.

Thursday, 4/29/21

 Just spaghetti and meatballs (no recipes) and another little Caesar-ish salad. Not exciting, but delicious nonetheless. And since I actually got off the couch and made them the night before, it was a quick dinner.