Thursday, 9/18/25

 Dinner with Jennie and David; bread, cheeses, tomatoes, nuts. Had a nice time visiting with them and came home and polished off the apple fritters.

Wednesday, 9/17/25

 Over the weekend I chopped up an eggplant and threw it in the Dutch oven along with a lot of garlic and the rest of the cherry tomatoes that were in the fridge, looking a little sad. Cooked it down to a tasty but unattractive sludge; we tossed this with pasta shells and cubes of feta for a quick and tasty dinner. Good warm or cold.

Tuesday, 9/16/25

 Since we bought the giant crazy box of meat from Aldi, I needed a recipe to use up pork chops. Enter Pork Chops with Carrot and Habanero-Honey Glaze. Well, jalapeno honey, anyway. This was pretty good, but I wish I had made more carrots and more glaze, and brined the pork chops (they were a little too tough for me). Good flavors and I would make this again, possibly with chicken.

Monday, 9/15/25

 Leftover pizza, as the fridge is too full to add anything else. I put some pickled peppers on mine to good effect.

Sunday, 9/14/25

 Another farm dinner; smaller group but good food. Ate some potato salad, more eggplant, basbousa and a really good tomato-mozzarella salad. The tomatoes were slow roasted in some way, and I wish I had cornered whoever brought them and demanded the recipe. Jason made pita to go with some kofta that his farm pal Iman made.

Saturday, 9/13/25

 In a moment of weakness, I agreed to bread and fry all the eggplants Jason brought home. Panko and flour were everywhere, he was out on the porch frying for seemingly hours...I think in total I breaded 75 slices of eggplant? Ridiculous. And we ate maybe 7? I guess it will be worth it to have them in the freezer in the coming months. I also made apple fritters (a Serious Eats recipe that was probably needlessly complex) with a little maple glaze. Delicious but lacking in crunch. I would try another recipe but we still have a bunch of those leftover, too. And who knows when we will be able to even look at the deep fryer again.

Friday, 9/12/25

 Pizza night, but our Margherita pizza with grilled eggplant was only...fine. Not sure why. Maybe it is because Jason only reluctantly uses fresh mozzarella on a pizza and his resentment seeps into the dough? Personally, I thought it needed more tomatoes. He is afraid of a soggy pizza; he's not wrong but that is kind of how a Neapolitan pie turns out.

Thursday, 9/11/25

 Dinner with Jodi and the boys.  Jason made a couple of quick loaves of bread and we employed one panini press and two waffle irons to make many, many grilled cheeses. Had various condiments: pesto, tomatoes, pickled peppers. Messy but good.

Wednesday, 9/10/25

 Since the farm tomatoes are so plentiful, we did a reprise of the NYT tomato-dumpling salad. Nice ripe tomatoes bring it to another level, and Jason always appreciated a meal with no leftovers.

Tuesday, 9/9/25

 Beef fried rice, from the NYT. One doesn't actually need a recipe, but I was interested in their technique of velveting the beef. Worked really well, as the meat was tender and pretty flavorful. Pretty standard, otherwise (peas, onions, peppers, egg). Finished the apple cake.

Monday, 9/8/25

 Dinner with Jay and the boys (minus Carter); Jason made cranberry-walnut bread, and I made an apple cake (apple bundt with brown sugar glaze) from Sally's Baking Addiction that I may have made before. People really liked it. Dinner was a tofu and vegetable stir-fry, plus a surprise entree: smoked duck! Jay must have picked it up at Pekarski's and Zack warmed it up in the oven with lots of fresh herbs. I have never been served duck at someone's house before! I don't love it, honestly, but in smoked form it was quite delicious.

Sunday, 9/7/25

 A pasta from the NYT, featuring cherry tomatoes (super plentiful at the farm right now), turmeric, garlic and feta cheese. Oh, and quite a bit of butter. Pretty quick and very good. Jason was feeling experimental and made an olive focaccia that I was dubious about, but it was great, actually.

Saturday, 9/6/25

 Dinner with Jen and john 9plus Carter as a bonus). One deep dish pizza, and one of their big sheet pans with half goat cheese/onion and half margarita. Their oven gave Jason trouble as usual, so he was disappointed with the margarita (it was a bit soggy, but tasted so good). I made an apple pie using a pie dough recipe from Dory Greenspan (nothing innovative but it did turn out really well) and a filling from Sally's Baking Addiction. I always forget what a pain it is to make apple pie; especially since we used apples from a friend's trees that were a bit misshapen, sometimes small, and slow going to peel and slice. It is a damn good pie, though.

Friday, 9/5/25

 Farm Dinner in South Amherst. Jason made bread yet again, but there were only a couple of scraps left so it went over well, at least. Potluck meant lots of fun things, using a lot of the farm produce (a couple of great eggplant dishes, some pico de gallo, egg tarts, pulled chicken sliders and who knows what else). 

Thursday, 9/4/25

 A recipe from the NYT that could not be easier: chick peas, coconut milk and cauliflower  get unceremoniously dumped into the slow cooker with some lemon peel and turmeric and left alone for hours. And yet. I asked Jason to check on it for me, and he assured me that the chick peas were done. They were, but also all the liquid had evaporated, laving an unpleasant looking sort of sludge. I guess I thought it was obvious that it was supposed to be a stew, but maybe not? After stomping around in a snit for a little while, I just served it forth anyway over basmati rice. It actually tasted great, and I just added some water to the leftovers and voila. Would absolutely make again, with more water (and supervision). The lemon peel added a lot of flavor.

Wednesday, 9/3/25

 Corn chowder and some leftover cranberry-walnut bread, plus tomatoes and watermelon. The chowder is good, even though the corn is somehow almost too sweet? No real complaints, though.

Tuesday, 9/2/25

 Angel hair pasta with pesto and tomatoes, a Jason request. Ugh, even though I tried to follow a recipe, I was not happy with my pesto. I blame the late season, straggly basil. I also had trouble getting said pesto to cozy up to the noodles. It wasn't terrible, but I am always left feeling that store bought pesto is actually better. Finished up an SK strawberry cake that I had made earlier in the week (with truly subpar strawberries but it doesn't seem to matter much).

Monday, 9/1/25

 I had to work in the morning, than we decided to go for a hike to try out Jason's new trekking poles (mostly successful, although he is still pretty shaky on rocky terrain). Then we decided to go to Chicopee to get gas and olive oil, then we realized we had forgotten to get a watermelon from the farm....we didn't get home til after 6 and dinner still had to be made. I tried another eggplant dish from the NYT  (gochujang glazed with fried scallions and scallion oil). I overcooked the eggplant to it just sort of fell apart, and I thought it was a bit too oily, but those things were my own fault. The flavors were good, though, and Jason liked it. I would just be more careful next time. Also had rice and tomatoes on the side.

Sunday, 8/31/25

 Dinner with Jason's parents, plus Jodi, Sam, Zack and Carter. Jason made many many pizzas (the margarita seemed to be the favorite) and Beverly made chocolate crinkle cookies. It wasn't as fun as being at Jay and Jodi's but it was OK.