Friday, 12/29/23

 Dinner with Jay and Jodi....Zac and Sam made a really nice pasta with fresh mozzarella, basil, mushrooms and jalapenos. Jason brought bread, and I made a carrot cake (since Laurie sent us off with two bags of carrots Tuesday). I used a recipe from SK, with a couple of minor changes: I made it in a 9x13 pan (instead of two round layers) and made half of the frosting (shocking, right??). I also used a little less baking soda than was called for and think that was a mistake, but then again, carrot cake isn't known for it's light and fluffy crumb. The other problem I had was that the cream cheese frosting recipe called for mixing everything together all at once: this left me with little blobs of cream cheese that refused to incorporate. I even painstakingly ran the whole mess through a sieve, leaving me with at least smaller globs. Should I make this again, I would thoroughly beat the cream cheese and butter before adding the powdered sugar. Also, I don't even like cream cheese frosting! Fortunately the end product was good, moist and spicy. I think people liked it.

Thursday, 12/28/23

 Dinner at home! We had the tabled spaghetti and meat sauce. This seemed like a good meal, but as we were eating, we all noticed a strange taste, sort of an odd spice I wasn't expecting. Carter assumed that the sauce had gone bad and that we were poisoning him, but then he sniffed the actual noodles and realized that that was the culprit. I wrote it off as maybe it was a brand we hadn't tried before, but upon reflection, I remembered that the last thing we had cooked in that big pot was cinnamon popcorn. Well, I guess the pot didn't get cleaned enough and imparted a little zing of cinnamon to the spaghetti. Mystery solved, but what do we do with the remaining pound of weird tasting pasta??

Also, we had a salad.

Wednesday, 12/27/23

 Another last minute invitation, this time from Jen and John. So we scrapped our dinner plans (barley and broccoli bowls), Jason whipped up a batch of his garlic flatbreads, and off we went. 

John was inspired to make a dish from the NYT---creamy chicken with spinach and artichokes. I admit I was dubious when I saw the ingredients on the table: marinated artichoke hearts, cream cheese and celery?? But it was good! A little creamy, and tangy from the artichoke heart marinade, with a bit of heat from crushed red pepper.  John made some rice to go with it and I would call this a 100% success (we collaborated on it). There were leftover cookies for dessert, and a trivia game after (John and I creamed Jen and Jason. No surprise there).  Another fun night with friends...we are very lucky.

Tuesday, 12/26/23

 I made some meat sauce in the crock pot before work, but then we got a last minute dinner invitation from Laurie, so we left it to Carter (who apparently ate nearly a pound of pasta. Impressive) and headed to Sunderland, experimental bread in tow. We helped Laurie eat some of her leftovers, played a couple of games and generally had a very nice time. Jason is working on some kind of garlicky pull-apart bread that looks like a giant cinnamon roll. It was pretty good for a first effort.

Monday, 12/25/23

 Merry Christmas! Early dinner and games at Corrina's (extra fun with a toddler underfoot). We had cheese and crackers, garlic flatbread, brownies, sesame sticks, fancy tater tots and prosecco. OK, sure, it was a lot of starches and no vegetable to be seen, but it made for good snacking. I kind of love our tiny Christmas.

Sunday, 12/24/23

Dinner at Goten with Liz, my dad, Corrina, Zac and Ramona! It's a very fun way to spend Christmas Eve, and I unironically like the food. Ramona was impressed by all the ruckus, too. An excellent evening.

Saturday, 12/23/23

 Roasted tofu, rice and spinach. I marinated the tofu with soy sauce, maple syrup and chili crisp and I thought it turned out particularly well. I also tried out a peanut sauce from the NYT that claimed to be so good you would want to put it on everything. It was fine, but certainly nothing special. Maybe I will add a little tahini to the leftover to punch it up a bit. The spinach was a Korean side dish from Maangchi and I really like it....just blanched and then tossed with sesame oil, scallions, garlic and a little soy sauce.

Friday, 12/22/23

 Pizza night! Plain cheese for Carter; ours had ricotta, provolone and mozzarella, plus caramelized onions and cherry tomatoes. This was an ad hoc combo that I thought of in order to use up the ricotta, but it was surprisingly good. I bet a little bacon wouldn't hurt, either. For dessert I made a batch of caramel matzo crunch (from SK) to use up some ancient matzo (it never goes stale since it tastes stale from the get-go). We were a little shy on matzo so I added some saltines....they were so good! I thought they would be soggy but they are actually crispier and better than matzo. So I suspect that's how we will make it from now on.

Thursday, 12/21/23

Pinto beans and rice (pinto beans in the Instant Pot; came out perfectly) . Jason made corn tortillas, and I made some pickled red onion and jalapenos. Also had cheese and cherry tomatoes to round things out. Very tasty!

Wednesday, 12/20.23

 Just leftovers, Nothing to see here,

Tuesday, 12/19/23

 Broccoli cheddar soup, more or less from SK (nice but maybe would have been nicer with the 1/2&1/2 instead of milk but milk needed to be used up). I asked Jason to make this pull-apart rosemary garlic bread that I saw online somewhere. It was good but somehow too salty. Maybe skip the parmesan? I liked it fine, but prefer his dinner rolls.

Monday, 12/18/23

 Persian chicken and celery stew that I made on Sunday. From "The Bottom of the Pot" and as delicious as I remembered. Also a great way to use up a LOT of celery. We didn't have fresh mint, but I think the new dried mint that we bought added a lot of flavor (maybe our old jar was past its prime). We ate this with the leftover pita from Saturday and a cucumber-tomato salad. Carter had nothing to say but he ate everything.

Sunday, 12/17/23

 Delayed pizza night. A return to mushrooms and pepperoni for me and Jason (greasy but good), and a plain cheese for Carter. Jason is trying to make the pizza more to Carter's liking; Carter grudgingly agreed that it was "a little better". Charming boy.

Saturday, 12/16/23

 Crap Day! Corrina and I made various versions of rice krispie treats, including festive add-ins. There wasn't as much baking as there has been in the past, so I only came home with a few pizzelles and some cocktail mixers. But it was a really fun day; having Ramona for part of the time was so delightful! Lunch was snacks and dinner was grilled cheese (Jason remembered at some point that he had made a loaf of bread). Glad I took tomorrow off to recuperate from all this socializing.

Friday, 12/15/23

 Latke party at Jay and Jodi's! We used 10 pounds of potatoes and managed to eat them all. Jason's parents also brought donuts from Atkins, which was a real treat. We just brought some booze for Jodi.

Thursday, 12/14/23

 We picked up Carter from his dorm and had dinner at the DC. The sushi rolls were great, and the nachos were fine. Plus a little pad thai, I think? A weird blend. Welcome home Carter!

Wednesday, 12/13/23

 I just didn't feel like making rice and beans, so we just had cheesy tater tots and a salad.

Tuesday, 12/12/23

 A pasta dish from Ali Slage (author of my beloved "I Dream of Dinner") via the NYT. I was excited by what sounded like such a simple and delicious mix of brown butter, pasta and parmesan, but it didn't wow me. Maybe it's because I also added a whole bunch of broccoli? Anyhow, I concluded that if we are going to have pasta with broccoli I will stick to my Smitten Kitchen version.

Monday, 12/11/23

 A creamy chicken dish with a ridiculous name (Marry Me Chicken) from the NYT. Nothing revolutionary happening here: chicken breasts, cream, tomato pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic  and oregano. I did not garner any proposals, but it was pretty good, in a rich way. I added most of a bag of baby spinach and should have used it all. I liked it quite a bit the first night, but it didn't reheat well. I served it over rice, but polenta or orzo would also have been good.

Sunday, 12/10/23

 Leftover cheese and crackers from Saturday night, plus pears from a gift box.

Saturday, 12/9/23

 Jason and I have been saving up found money and rolled coins for a while, with the idea of using that money for something fun. We decided to splurge on making ourselves a fancy dinner. So we picked up some (excellent) kielbasa from the BBA Market, a pack of hard cider for me, a Porterhouse steak and a few cheeses. I also made roasted potatoes (following the Serious Eats technique) and a salad. Fun dinner--the only disappointment was the cheese. Big Y used to have a really good selection, but now it is pretty lackluster so my choices were nothing special. I should have insisted on Whole Foods!

Dessert was some semi-failed cookies. They are supposed to be molasses thumbprint cookies with caramel filling, but I think I overmixed the cookie dough and they all turned out flat; there was no way I could fill them with anything. So now we have a lot of merely serviceable molasses cookies which isn't the worst thing in the world.

Friday, 12/8/23

 I went to the town holiday party (at Ginger Garden) and Jason grabbed dinner with Carter at the DC. I think he got the better deal, although talking to my co-workers was fun, and I won a door prize (a bottle of merlot that is almost certainly nicer than the stuff I usually buy). The food wasn't bad, but they aren't exactly bringing out the interesting stuff. Think crab rangoon and fried rice.

Thursday, 12/7/23

 Another Thursday, another pizza. This time we tried a white pie with ricotta (Jason punched it up with lemon zest, garlic and crushed red pepper), provolone, mozzarella and a little parmesan. To add some flavor we topped it with cherry tomatoes and roasted red peppers. I really liked this one! It's a little heavy, but not overly so. I would maybe add a few more cherry tomatoes; sun-dried tomatoes would also be good.

Wednesday, 12/6/23

 Tofu rice bowls, with carrot, cucumber, avocado and two sauces (sweet-spicy gochujang and ginger-scallion vinaigrette. I just free-styled them this time). I used some of the gochujang to marinate the tofu and it turned out really well. A favorite dinner of Jason's.

Tuesday, 12/5/23

 We celebrated the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition with a cocktail and then just had leftovers for dinner. The lentil-barley dish was not bad with a little tinkering.

Monday, 12/4/23

 Baked ziti from the freezer which heated up surprisingly well. It had spinach and mushrooms and sausage, so it seemed like enough of a meal unto itself.

Sunday, 12/3/23

 Soggy, cold Hot Chocolate Run in the morning. Picking up trash in the rain by myself was not super fun, but it's for a good cause! Then brunch at Jen and John's...I made the Richard Sax coffee cake that I have made a billion times and for the second time I wasn't thrilled with it. I may have overcooked it a little?

Dinner was saag paneer (from Indian-ish) that I prepped on Saturday afternoon, along with some pita that Jason made. Good, if a little bit too rich somehow. Anyway it used up my homemade paneer and some queso fresco that was in the freezer. Jason was worried because he accidentally used some rye flour in the pita, but if anything it was an improvement.

Saturday, 12/2/23

A recipe from the NYT for farro (I used barley) and lentils baked in a tomato sauce and then topped with feta cheese and broiled. Obviously I cannot resist a recipe that calls for broiled feta. This took so, so so long to cook (90 minutes, maybe?) and a lot more water that called for. It was good enough, in a Moosewood Cookbook kind of way. The cauliflower that I served with it added a necessary crunch (thanks to toasty panko and parmesan). I don't think I see this going into rotation....too monotonous and heavy.

Friday, 12/1/23

 Dinner with Jay and Jodi. Jason made corn tortillas for black bean tacos, and I made a flan. Jodi of course spurned dessert, but the rest of us managed to polish it off.

Thursday, 11/30/23

 Pizza with BBQ chicken (I froze some from our last Costco chicken), red onion, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and smoked gruyere. Jason's crust was unusually good this time.

Wednesday, 11/29/23

 Leftover hash brown casserole. Oddly enough we thought it was even more delicious reheated (I would not have predicted that).