Tuesday, 10/29/24

 I had been planning to make Salisbury steak but realized that Hamburg gravy would be even easier, especially since I was making mashed potatoes. My mom used to make it and I never asked her how, but it's pretty basic: hamburger, onions, mushrooms, beef stock and flour. It tasted a lot like hers! I knew Jason would like it and he did. Roasted broccoli on the side.

Monday, 10/28/24

How could I resist a title like "cheesy white beans with chili crisp"? I couldn't. Very quick and easy with canned beans . Some commenters felt it was bland, but I say: that's on you. I added a bunch of spinach to round it out and we ate it over rice. Delightfully cheesy. Much more appropriate for a weeknight meal.

Sunday, 10/27/24

 Well, that is the last time I make potato pancakes on a work night (let alone ~35 of them). Didn't sit down until almost 7:30! Plus Jason made me fry on the cold, dark porch. AND I oversalted my roasted cabbage so a lot of sorrow all around. At least the latkes are good.

Saturday, 10/26/24

 Saturday night at home! Bread and cheese (brie and sharp cheddar) and apples. For dessert I made the latest SK recipe: what she called an apple cider donut cake. This was a perfectly nice cake, but it in no way reminded me of a cider donut. Too many spices (glad I omitted the clove and allspice) and a cider glaze made it just into a nice spice cake (sadly the glaze caused the whole thing to get soggy as the days went by). If I were to make this again, I would omit the spices in the cider reduction altogether and dust the cake with cinnamon + nutmeg sugar instead of glazing it. I did appreciate its light texture and the fact that it is vegan, especially since eggs are so expensive.

Friday, 10/25/24

 Dinner with Jay and Jodi....more pizza. It doesn't turn out as well there (pans? Oven? Timing? Not sure). My favorite was the dessert one with pears.

Thursday, 10/24/24

 Pizza night and it was a good one. Potato pizza with three cheeses (provolone, mozzarella, cheddar), red onions and pickled peppers. The lack of sauce means that it comes out very light and crispy. One of my favorites (and it's a good thing since Jason inexplicably bought us 10 pounds of potatoes).

Wednesday, 10/23/24

 The last of the leftovers: chana masala for me, pork stew for Jason. And now the fridge is delightfully (if temporarily) bare.

Tuesday, 10/22/24

 Tonight was leftover green chili pork stew, now with the rest of a sad looking bag of spinach added to it. Somehow we finished the rest of the flan. It doesn't stick around long in our house.

Monday, 10/21/24

 Jason ate the leftover tofu and noodles while I went to a potluck baby shower. The food theme was 'taco bar' and I made a flan. The people who tried it seemed to like it (and bonus: I made an extra one for home). The taco bar was excellent and I successfully avoided doing crafts.

Sunday, 10/20/24

 I vowed that we would have leftovers all week. Night one was pizza. I like the sloppy joe well enough but am looking forward to something a bit lighter.

Saturday, 10/19/24

 Dinner with Jay and Jodi---we weren't really hungry (lunch at Priya), but gamely ate rice and cabbage and oatmeal cookies anyway. When I made oatmeal cookie dough on Friday, I baked some and added raisins to the rest and stored it. Jason baked these up and they turned out better. I knew that refrigeration (or lack thereof) was my problem.

Friday, 10/18/24

 Dinner with Jen and John. Bread from Jason, iced oatmeal cookies (SK) from me. I feel like my cookie making skills have atrophied: burnt peanut butter last week, and today my oatmeal cookies spread like crazy. At least they were salvageable and tasted fine. I blame not giving the dough time to chill. Anyhow, dinner was two Blue Aprons: a chicken with couscous, carrots and kale in sort of a harissa-apricot sauce and salmon with pinto beans, cabbage slaw and salsa. As usual they both turned out well.

bonus: chilly enough for a fire!

Thursday, 10/17/24

 Because of a series of really good sales, we have quite a bit of ground beef in the freezer, so we debuted a new pizza: Sloppy Joe.  I think I got pretty close to the sort of Manwich flavor (green peppers are key) but I think my dislike of catsup as an ingredient holds me back. Topped also with cheddar and some banana peppers. Plus a spinach salad since I had accidentally bought spinach two weeks in a row.

Wednesday, 10/16/24

 By this point in the week we had quite a lot of leftovers, but Jason suggested (insisted?) that we go ahead and have the planned tofu anyway. Nothing fancy: roasted broccoli and tofu on a sheet pan, served with noodles. The key to the whole thing was a nice, spicy peanut sauce. This was quick and felt nice and healthy, so no regrets. But there will have to be a leftover reckoning at some point.

Tuesday, 10/15/24

  Pork stew with green chilis? Posole Verde? Not sure what to call it, but it was pork shoulder, various green chilis, onions, zucchini and hominy.  No real recipe, just lots of time in the Dutch oven. I think potatoes would also have been good in there, but it was still great as it was. Served with tortilla chips and what may have been the last farm tomato of the season.

Monday, 10/14/24

Dosas with two fillings: cilantro chicken and potato. The dosas themselves turned out really well: Jason has really perfected the batter, but since he cooks one and fills it right away, and then they aren't great if they sit around, it ends up being sort of chaotic. Ideally, we would need a chef cooking two at a time for us so we could sit down together. The potato filling wasn't my best work, but overall it's still great that we can now make dosas at home. Carter stopped  by and had one with potato, but I don't think he was blown away.

Sunday, 10/13/24

 Spent the morning cooking for the week ahead. Dinner was an inexplicably large pot of chana masala (from Made in India) with the addition of a ton of spinach, plus rice and naan. This was the first batch of naan that Jason has made that was really good (soft and fluffy). I also made an oatmeal cake with penuche frosting (from Simply Recipes). As you might expect, it wasn't exactly light, what with the oatmeal, and the penuche frosting is quite sweet, but I thought it was a nice snacky kind of cake. The only thing I changed in the recipe was adding some nutmeg along with the cinnamon because I believe nutmeg is always a good choice.

Saturday, 10/12/24

 Dinner with Jay and Jodi; two regular pizzas (eggplant and cheese) and one dessert pizza with apples.  The apple one turned out better than I expected, especially with some nice sharp cheddar. Except for chopping things, I didn't contribute much.

Friday, 10/11/24

 Jason , Jen and I had an exciting day going to IKEa, and then we all had dinner at 60 North. Since Carter and Gus were both there, I made THREE Blue Aprons (well, one was actually a new service they are trying called Green Chef). This required a fair amount of concentration (with everyone blabbing and drinking around me) and a lot of dishware. 

#1: Lemon-pepper barramundi with brown rice and Brussels sprouts (the fish was pretty good, the rice was fine). This was the new kit.

#2; Sheet pan chicken with red peppers and potatoes (John subbed in chicken thighs for the breasts, so that was good; you sort of roasted everything and topped the chicken with a cheesy breadcrumb mixture)

#3; Udon noodles with pork (my favorite and the easiest; wished we had had twice as many noodles)

Jason made some chocolate cookies while all this was happening. So three at once is doable but messy fun it was a fun challenge.  I didn't notice a big difference between the two companies. They both have a lot of fun flavors and easy prep.

Thursday, 10/10/24

 Pizza night, with a promising concept (eggplant Parm) but I had just come from the dentist and was still pretty numb. So it was difficult to eat, I bit my lip and was generally not happy about the whole thing. Maybe I will like it better in reruns.

Wednesday, 10/9/24

 The words "cauliflower piccata" caught my eye in the NYT. Pretty much what it sounds like; I didn't have any wine so skipped that, and skipped the chick peas as well. Tossed the cauliflower and sauce with some pasta and added some Parm blend. Jason added some leftover sausage to his but I am a purist. This was good, as anything with plenty of butter, lemon and capers would be.

Tuesday, 10/8/24

 Filed under very weird reasons to make pancakes: we had some leftover corn from making soup, and Jason's mom apparently always put corn in their pancakes growing up and he thought we should give it a try. We also had a tiny bit of frozen blueberries so those went in, too. I can say that it didn't really bring anything to the party, but it wasn't unpleasant. Also had some breakfast sausage. My feelings on breakfast for dinner are well documented so I will leave it at that.

Monday, 10/7/24

 We had leftover roast beef from weekend sandwiches, so grinders for dinner. The Aldi roast beef is nothing to write home about, so I dolled mine up with plenty of tomatoes, pickled peppers and chili crisp. A quick if uninspired dinner. 

Sunday, 10/6/25

 I very uncharacteristically took a Sunday off so we could go to an Ultimate tournament up at Williams College. Well worth it! Beautiful day, beautiful drive, the team won all their games and Carter was pleased to have us there. We stopped for pizza in Pittsfield on the way home; our first stop on Try a new Pizza Place Every Month Year. South Street Pizza was okay but not amazing (good sauce and cheese, undersalted slight cracker-y crust). Still, we managed to finish a large cheese (our default for comparison purposes). Then we rushed home for a game night with friends in Hadley....I had made my brown sugar cake from The Craft of Baking. I think people liked it? I hope so, anyway. Fun, fun day!

Saturday, 10/5/24

 Guess what? Back to Jay and Jodi's! Jason's parents brought Beuno y Sano for Jay's birthday (chicken burrito bowl for me). We naively assumed they would also bring a Costco cake since they are known for it, but alas, no. So I had to eat burnt cookies when I got home.

Friday, 10/4/24

 Dinner with Jay and Jodi (with special guest: Carter!). I executed Jodi's idea of rice noodles with lots and lots of chard from their garden (also onions, garlic, soy sauce and sesame oil). Jay also fried up some pork ribs but I didn't try one so I can't speak to it. I made my usual (SK) peanut butter cookies to bring; somehow I burned the entire first batch (sadly, the big tray). I am not sure how it happened, but I think I probably undercooked the second batch to compensate. Most were at least salvageable but I was pretty grumpy about it. And yes, Jason made bread.

Thursday, 10/3/24

 I forget why we did basically the same pizza as last week. To use up sauce or salami, maybe? Anyway, we had almost no provolone, so added a sprinkle of parm blend instead. Also used homemade pickled peppers as we were out of pepperonci. We'll try something new another night.

Wednesday, 10/2/24

 While I was home for lunch, I very quickly made a broccoli-cheddar quiche (I had chopped up the broccoli and made the pie crust earlier, so it was pretty easy). So we had that and a salad (with a nice herby vinaigrette ).  No real recipe, just loose guidelines from SK's spinach quiche.

Tuesday, 10/1/24

 Poor man's soup, a childhood staple. I don't know if I actually ever asked my mom how to make it, but in any event mine tastes pretty close. Jason made a loaf of rye bread to go with it so that was a very pleasant dinner.

Monday, 9/30/25

 We had a lot of noodles with spinach left from last week, so we turned it into another meal, with a side of seared tuna. No complaints. Well, a small one: I should have started thawing the tuna steaks a little earlier, as they were a bit frozen still. 

Sunday, 9/29/24

 Dinner with Jen and John. John bought a propane attachment for his Ooni, so we gave pizzas another shot. Still a few bugs to be worked out but progress was made: par-cooking the dough helped, and JAson now agrees with me that heating up the sauce is a good idea. Also: thinner pies. I made a lemon Bundt from the NYT that people seemed to like, but I found it only pretty good. The crumb was nice and plush, but the glaze wasn't lemony enough and too sticky.  Still better than no cake, though.

Saturday, 9/28/24

 There was a surprise birthday party for Jason's aunt at Garcia;'s, which translated into a late (and large) lunch. I had the chicken mole (fine) and Jason is now in love with chimichangas. So anyway, we were too full for dinner.

Friday, 9/27/24

 Jason requested (demanded?) that I make a repeat of a roasted and fried eggplant dish from last week. I wasn't super enthused but what the heck. Sadly, one of the eggplants was a little bigger than the other two and ended up a bit undercooked. Overall, he didn't like it as much as he remembered (I swear I was doing my best!). I also made some roasted broccoli and honestly, it was my favorite part of dinner.