Friday, 12/30/22

 Pizza night at Jay and Jodi's. They came up with a lot of fun toppings: broccoli/onion, pineapple/fake bacon, mushroom/garlic. We made six smallish pies and had almost no leftovers. I am definitely thinking we should add broccoli to our pizza rotation.

Thursday, 12/29/22

 Jason's parents gave us a Channukah present that included a lot of dried fruits, nuts, salami and some dubious cheese. We rounded that out with more cheese and some crackers and called that dinner. News flash: I like dried apricots and dates, don't see the point of dried peaches.

Wednesday, 12/28/22

 Bagels (from the freezer, what else) with cream cheese and smoked salmon. I also roasted up some sweet potato wedges to round things out.

Tuesday, 12/27/22

 When Jason was fixing the freezer the other day I noticed that we had a forgotten bag of leftover falafel up there. Since we already had pita and hummus on hand, it seemed like a great dinner plan. I made mine into a sort of salad and it was a nice quick and tasty dinner. Since I didn't really do much planning for this week, I guess it's good that our freezer is like a Pandora's box of leftovers.

Monday, 12/26/22

 Another cold cold day. Sushi bowl for dinner, with  couple of new additions: edamame and some avocado that I marinated with lime, cilantro and red onion. Otherwise all the usual players. Another Carter favorite so that was nice of me.

Sunday, 12/25/22

 A very unstellar Christmas. It was super cold and Jason was feeling stuffy and grumpy. At least I made a delicious batch of chicken sausage gumbo, using the Serious Eats recipe and my own notes. Bah, humbug.

Saturday, 12/24/22

 A very very nice evening of baby, snacks, games, and presents at Zac and Corrina's. We kept it pretty simple with cheese and crackers, chips, pita and hummus, plus some chocolate chip cookies (that Corrina made more festive with mini M&Ms). An enjoyable Christmas Eve.

Right before the new shoes went into the mouth

Friday, 12/23/22

 Potato pancakes at Jay and Jodi's. We got there a little early and all bolted down some very strong mojitos so everyone was feeling pretty mellow through all that grating and frying. Sadly we now know that one bag of potatoes is NOT ENOUGH. A group this size could have eaten double that. Jason and I brought our cookies from Crap Day. They froze and thawed beautifully so that's good to know,

Thursday, 12/22/22

 Regular pizza. Jason made two: goat cheese and onion (at my request) and one with pepperoni and, oddly enough, some leftover brussels sprouts. It was better than it sounded, luckily. I am still not quite ready for a return of the pan pizza, but these were nice.

Wednesday, 12/21/22

 Jason and I had a long day going to Stamford and back. The good news is that we got one last lunch at Hope Pizza; the bad news is that we didn't know they are only doing take-out. So it was lunch in the back of the car! We ordered a large pizza and a Greek salad, but upon finding that we had somehow eaten the whole pizza, we saved the salad and that was dinner.

Pour one out for Bubbe

Tuesday, 12/20/22

 Jason wanted to make crab rangoon for some reason, so why not? We also made pork and cabbage dumplings. A lot of frying! I admit I was loath to try the rangoons because the cream cheese is super off-putting to me, but I was surprised to find that they are actually pretty good. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised because fried=tasty.

Monday, 12/19/22

 Spaghetti and meatballs, courtesy of Aldi. Well, I made the sauce, Aldi made the little meatballs. While I didn't like them quite as much as homemade, they were certainly good enough and so, so easy. We also had some brussels sprouts from the air fryer. Some of them tasted a little too cabbagy-y for me, but Jason (of course) ate them uncomplainingly.

Sunday, 12/18/22

 Our freezer is (AGAIN) utterly overstuffed. In an effort to start using up stuff, we had potatoes patties with cheese and gravy. Shameless. Also had salad, though so at least there was roughage.

Saturday, 12/17/22

 Crap Day in the morning meant I sort of snacked all day and we didn't really have dinner, just more snacks. This makes for some very tasty foods but is oddly unsatisfying.

Friday, 12/16/22

 Carter was here working on physics, so we drove him back to campus and had dinner at Berkshire. High point was some stirfried noodles and a sort of maple pudding. Low point was I accidentally grabbed some lamb.

Thursday, 12/15/22

 Leftover stromboli and leftover cake. Too, too filling.

Wednesday, 12/14/22

 Jason made us buy another giant ham (why???) and I got home from work a bit early so I made some biscuits and some cooked carrots to go with it. For some reason Jason didn't want glazed carrots (it was quite a kerfuffle) so they were very very plain. Also, I don't really like ham all that much. The biscuits were the bright spot. Thank you Sally's Baking Addiction!

Tuesday, 12/13/22

 Not technically leftovers, but leftover adjacent: Jason used up all the leftover calzone fillings to make an ersatz stromboli. Not so radically different from the calzone, but pleasant enough. I am growing weary of the whole pizza related family. How I long for a fresh vegetable.

Monday, 12/12/22

 Yes, more leftovers. We are up to the calzone.

Sunday, 12/11/22

 Leftovers: rye bread and baked ziti (now mercifully gone, except for the giant portion in the freezer). I had also made a box yellow cake with boring American buttercream (basically at Jason's request). I feel like I am being baking deprived! I was trying to be efficient so threw the cake in the oven along with some tomatoes I was roasting....it gave cake the cake an oddly steamed texture (but luckily not a tomato-y taste).

One more night of leftovers!

Saturday, 12/10/22

 After an afternoon of homework with his dad, we swapped Carter a ride back to his dorm for being swiped into the dining hall. We are learning not to stuff ourselves, so that's a plus. I had chana masala and some really good Korean noodles with beef and black beans. Jason ate primarily french fries.

Friday, 12/9/22

 Poor Roxanne has COVID and couldn't go to the town holiday party, so in what can only be a dream come true for Jason, he got to go instead. A buffet at Ginger Garden with a bunch of people he doesn't know?? Heaven!

Anyway, the food was good, and I maybe won a prize? But I gave it to Roxanne. The pre-gaming at home before the whole thing probably increased our enjoyment.

Thursday, 12/8/22

 I graciously allowed Jason to make calzone, even though we are still swimming in leftovers. We made them pretty small, with a bunch of mix and match fillings: spinach, ricotta, mushrooms, onions, pepperoni, sausage and roasted red peppers. This was honestly more effort than I wanted to put in after a week of work, but it went pretty quickly. They aren't classically pretty, but they do taste good (except for the ones that are too spinachy. Bleh).

Wednesday, 12/7/22

 Leftover biryani, plus we shared a toasted bialy. Toasting + butter made Jason warm up to them a bit.

Tuesday, 12/6/22

 I had made a giant pan of baked ziti (well, cavatappi) the previous evening, and Jason made us a loaf of bread. The pasta could have used more sauce and salt, but it was fine. We are NEVER going to run out of various leftovers. It seems like every time we get a handle on things I go crazy and cook too much again.

Monday, 12/5/22

Tofu, and some egg rolls from the freezer. I thoughtlessly hogged the taco-style ones, leaving Jason with the inferior rice noodle version. The tofu was blah; it needed more roasting time but I felt like Jason was in a hurry. A merely serviceable dinner.

Sunday, 12/4/22

 Hot Chocolate Run! This meant a big lunch at the Brewery (nachos and chicken fingers, as is Corrina's and my tradition) and no real dinner. Jason had some popcorn and I had a little leftover biryani. It was a super fun event, though!

Ramona was very interested in the Brewery!

Saturday, 12/3/22

 Chicken biryani, from Indian Instant Pot. Delicious (again) but makes so, so much. A really ridiculous amount. I also made a batch of bialys (from SK), but Jason was not satisfied. Since I don't think I have ever had one from a bakery, I am not sure what was missing. Maybe he doesn't know either...

Then dessert at Jay and Jodi's: we had ice cream sundaes and I brought a batch of peanut butter sauce. It was from Spruce Eats---so easy and a big hit! I knew Jodi would like it.

Friday, 12/2/22

 Dinner and haircuts in Whately....pizza and baklava from Holiday. And more time with this little nugget:

Thursday, 12/1/22

 Nothing much to say about pizza night, except that I think I have convinced Jason to try calzone next week. Stay tuned! Not even any interesing desserts because we are trying to use up one of our many boxes of Biscoff cookies.

Wednesday, 11/30/22

 Potato patties (in lieu of tater tots) with cheese and gravy. At least we had a batch of cauliflower to go with it. The air fryer is the perfect appliance for a single serving of roasted vegetables, as it turns out.