Recipes
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Meatless Monday
Photo and recipe from Ambitious Kitchen I was talking to our next door neighbor the other day, and the conversation turned to Thanksgiving. These neighbors are vegetarian, but their family that will be in town visiting are not, so I asked what she is planning to make. She said they would make a turkey for the meat eaters, and she was thinking about a recipe she saw online, for stuffed acorn squash. We have Thanksgiving with Ted’s family, and his mother is vegetarian (really, pescatarian), so I thought perhaps I would look at this recipe and see if it seemed like something she would enjoy. The neighbor sent me the…
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Roasted Branzino
A few weeks ago, OK, maybe 6 weeks ago, I was lazily watching cooking shows on PBS, and a French chef who has restaurants in Las Vegas, Hubert Keller, was making a poached Branzino. It looked really good, though to be honest, I didn’t have the equipment to poach it, and thought I might prefer to roast it instead. So I poked around the Internet, and found a recipe that looked good on a blog, Girl and the Kitchen, here. It looked delicious, and I decided to give it a try the next time Maya would not be home for dinner (she’s not a big fan of fish). I followed…
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Winter Squash Soup
I have a fondness for cooking shows, especially those where they show you how to cook something interesting. Most of the cooking shows I watch currently are on PBS, but I also enjoy watching Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa. A few weeks ago, she made a delicious looking soup, with butternut squash and canned pumpkin. I thought it looked like a good dinner to have on Halloween, considering it was orange, so I made it. It was delicious, and I will definitely be making it again. I made a couple of changes to Ina’s recipe. First, I cut up the butternut squash, then roasted it in the oven until it was…
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Cooking for One
Later this month, Ted and Maya will be in the UK, with a brief trip to Paris, visiting Ted’s extended family. His mom and brother are going as well, and aside from the time in Paris, they will be staying with family. I elected to stay home and hold down the fort, take care of the dog, etc. I would like to go to Europe sometime in the not-too-distant future, but I think I’d prefer it to be just the three of us, though I do adore my MIL and BIL. I hope they have a fabulous time. I was thinking about it, and I realized that I don’t think…
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Blueberry Pancakes
(Gorgeous photo and recipe found here) It’s ridiculous how long I’ve been gone, I know. When you’re in the blogging rythem, and you blog often, everything seems like good blogging material. When you’re not, nothing seems like it would be interesting to your readers, so you don’t bother. Don’t bother often enough, and the next thing you know, it’s been over 10 weeks since your last post. Ugh. So I decided that I would just find something in my brain, and bring it here. So what you get is yet another recipe. I’ll try to come up with something NOT recipe related soon. Ted’s schedule varies a lot, which means…
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Birthday Cake
Maya requested carrot cake for her birthday party. She loves carrot cake and chocolate cake about equally. Last month was her Uncle Steve’s birthday, and as Steve had chocolate cake, she wanted carrot. I thought about buying one at the bakery, but decided the best way to go was going to be homemade, because there is THE family carrot cake recipe. This is what we call “Mother Thomas’s Carrot Cake”, because it is the carrot cake made by Ted’s Grandmother Thomas. It’s from a cookbook, which I believe was part of a woman’s auxiliary, and that’s all I know. My ‘chili relleno’ recipe is from the same cookbook. I was…
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Bitter
These were supposed to be our victory cookies, based on a recipe from the 1992 Presidential election, when Hillary Clinton made a comment on the Today show that she supposed she could have stayed home and baked cookies, but instead she continued her law career. She was slammed, with the assumption being that she held contempt for stay-at-home moms, that she thought their life was simply baking cookies and drinking tea. She quickly fell in line, doing the politically expedient thing and entering a cookie recipe in the Family Circle baking contest, a First Lady challange that survives to this day. I decided it would be symbolic of how far we’ve…
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Eggs in Pepper Boats
One of my Christmas gifts this year was a lovely cookbook, Heart and Soul in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin. I’ve tried a few recipes from it, with various levels of success. This recipe I consider an unqualified success, because it’s super delicious and relatively easy. You cut a poblano pepper in half, simmer it a bit to soften it, then fill the cavity with a little cheese and an egg, and cook it (covered) until the egg is set to your liking. It’s really good. Depending on how hot the peppers are, it’s either spicy or not. Poblano peppers are not terribly spicy anyway, but I’ve made this twice…
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Failure and Success
Tuesday was Maya’s 20th Birthday, and also Spring Break for the elementary school where she works, so she didn’t have work that day. Spring Break at her college was last week, so she did have school, but she decided to play hooky and spend the day with us, her loving parents. I love this kid. (Not a kid at 20, but still MY kid) We recently watched the movie “Chef” on HBO. Have you seen that movie? It’s really cute, about a chef in Los Angeles who is working for a restaurant that is uninspired and doesn’t allow him to showcase his creativity, and he ends up quitting his job,…
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Braised Short Ribs
Two recipes in two days. Sorry. I like to keep a lot of recipes here, in addition to printing them up, so I can find them when I need them. The thing with America’s Test Kitchen recipes is that only the current season episodes are free. For past seasons, you have to pay for a subscription. So there’s a time limit on them. Best to write it down somewhere. For me, that’s here. I saw the cooks on ATK make this beef stew the other day, and I was intruiged. I am not a big fan of beef bourgenion, or coq a vin, so I don’t know why I wanted…
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Onion Burgers
photo from Cook’s Country website, because I neglected to take a picture of ours. A few years ago, we tried a hamburger recipe that was inspired by an episode of Man vs Food, Louis’ Lunch Burger. In that recipe, a bit of onion is smashed into the burgers before cooking, and then they are grilled on an antique grilling machine. We don’t have an antique grilling machine, just a grill, and when we made it, most of the onion fell between the grates, which was a shame because they looked good. This weekend, Cook’s Country (do you watch cooking shows on PBS? I love them) had a similar burger , which they…
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Friday Randomness
[youtube]http://youtu.be/C7l3y7LOzLc[/youtube] Have you seen the beautiful tribute to my first husband, David Bowie, at the BRIT awards? This is the entire thing, I think, including a tribute by Annie Lennox, a tribute by Gary Oldmam, and a song by Lorde, backed up by performers who had worked with Bowie in the past. I’ll confess, Lorde’s song brought me to tears. I miss David Bowie being alive in the world. It was a better place with him here. Coming so soon after the Emmy awards, which included a tribute by Lady Gaga, of course invites comparison. I’ll chime in and say that Gaga’s tribute left me feeling cold, didn’t move…
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Leftover Turkey Chili
We were lucky enough to have some leftover turkey after Thanksgiving. We had some delicious turkey soup one night, a few turkey sandwiches, and last, some turkey chili. I had considered turkey chili for dinner, and the recipe I generally use is good, and calls for ground turkey. But Ted suggested we might make a recipe with the leftover roast turkey. That seemed like a good idea to me, but I wasn’t sure the same recipe that starts with raw ground turkey would work well with roasted turkey leftovers. So I found this recipe on Foodnetwork. I measured and I only had 1 1/2 cups of turkey left, so I…
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Giving Thanks for Cranberry Sauce
I’ve spoken here before about Thanksgiving, about how as a child, it was my least favorite holiday of the year. (I should clarify that I am only talking about the years when I was in California…I don’t remember much about Thanksgiving in Alaska, but I’m sure it was lovely and fine.) My entire family (on my mom’s side) is obsessed with weight. My grandmother decided at a young age that she was NOT going to be fat like her parents and aunts, and pretty much has been on a diet ever since. To the point where now, at age 92 and weighing in at about 88 lbs, she will still…
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Thai Chicken Salad
Gorgeous photo found here, along with the recipe. On a lighter note, thankfully, after the sadness of last week, I think it’s time for a recipe. One item I like to order when we go out to eat is either a Chinese Chicken Salad or a Thai Chicken Salad. I like the crispy crunchiness of it, the sweet and tangy and (sometimes) hot of it. Delicious. The other day it was 102 degrees, so the idea of a salad for dinner appealed to me. I’ve tried to make an Asian chicken salad once before, but it sucked. It was too sweet, kind of gloppy, all around wrong. I’m not a…