Yummy Yucky

Moo Shu Dinner

The fact that I actually cooked something for dinner -- and something new at that -- should not be post-worthy. But, sadly, it is these days. FS and I had a date night Wednesday night like the old days. It's been forever since we've eaten alone together after kids are in bed - partly because we go out on real dates at least once a month now, and partly because bedtime for Son1 is 8, but really by the time you're done reading books it's 8:30.

But FS had a 5:30 conference call (again) on Wednesday, so I fed the kids and waited. Then I made Moo Shu Pork from January's Everyday Food. It was really easy and pretty good. And as I was chopping vegetables I remembered how much I actually liked cooking and how wonderful it is to eat a meal without two kids screaming at you.

Tonight: Real date. A special Valentine's Day dinner at the little French place around the corner.

News and notes

- I made the Buffalo Chicken Dip Thursday night. I did not make it to the inaugural first friday happy hour thanks to a very fun 24-hour stomach bug. Others reported the dip was good. Sigh.

- Inspired by merseydotes' recent fancy dinner, I decided to at least make an attempt to make something other than takeout or chicken nuggets for dinner. I made the Brown-Rice Bowl with Shrimp, Snow Peas, and Avocado Sunday for dinner. Super easy. A little fancy (well, super fancy compared to nuggets). I really liked the avocado with the rice and shrimp, but both FS and I found the sauce to be a little off. Too much vinegar? Too much sugar? I even used the very mild rice vinegar.

- It's Fausnacht Day! (You can also spell it Fasnacht, but FS and I used to live on Fausnacht Dr., so that's how I spell it.) If you're not familiar with this fabulous day, it's the Pa. Dutch equivalent of Mardi Gras, but being Pa. Dutch, that means they just eat donuts. I'd rather have the drinks, etc., but the eating donuts part I can get behind.

Oh, shit ... It's Thanksgiving

The past few weeks have totally zapped me -- working some nights, additional turmoil at work, sick children. It was enough that this past Saturday was "oh fuck, I haven't shopped for Thanksgiving yet and I'm supposed to cook dinner for 9!" Very un-Yum of me. Completely against my list-making Virgoness. Let's not even speak about Christmas cookie lists yet -- which I usually start Nov. 1 and have baking underway by now. (My Xmas cards did hit the mailbox today in one small triumph of organization.)

This year I'm hosting the in-laws (grandmother-in-law, MIL, her husband, his parents and sister). Last year for both Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas brunch I spent a lot of time hand wringing (surprise!) about making things everyone would like. This year I've pretty much said "fuck it" (sorry, Yum the potty mouth version). I'm cooking and this is what I want to cook.

So here's the 2007 lineup:

- Maple-glazed turkey with cider gravy
- Andoille sausage and cornbread stuffing
- Camembert Mashed Potatoes
- Baked sweet potatoes
- Brussel sprouts with brown butter and pecans
- Green Beans with Bacon
- Canned (jellied) cranberry sauce
- Cranberry Grape Compote - I made this the other day and it was super easy and very delicious (though I thought it needed closer to 30 min on simmer, rather than 10-15)
- Pecan-topped Pumpkin bread - I also have this done already. One loaf is put away for tomorrow; the other we've been eating for breakfast. It's soooo good.

Others are bringing:
- Rolls
- Some kind of salad
- Pies (probably pumpkin and pecan)

And we're serving it all with either Ravenswood Old Vine Zinfendel or a Gewurztraminer (whose label escapes me right now)

(Strike up the Unsolved Mysteries music:) UPDATE

Recipes and restaurants

Continuing my quest to actually do some cooking, I've made two new dishes in the last week:

1. Beef Daube - a "best of Cooking Light" recipe and what I think I'm making for Newcomer's progressive dinner in two weeks. The recipe was easy enough, crock pot friendly and delicious! My only complaint was that it wasn't quite as thick as I would have liked. I think I'll drain the tomatoes a bit and leave the crock open for the last few hours of cooking so it has a chance to cook down a bit. My plan is to serve it over noodles, with a side of really good bread and a green salad (probably with gorgonzola and pecans). Suggestions? Advice here? I can't really explain how daunting the task of cooking for random strangers is. And I'm trying to come up with a backup plan in case I end up with a vegetarian. My thought was to get a really good jar of pasta sauce from Trader Joes and have that at the ready to go with the noodles. Again, thoughts?

2. Yesterday, with much help from Son1 who has a love of the food processor, I made Cooking Light's Baked Louisiana Dirty Rice and Beans. Wow! I loved this dish. And so did Son1 who had two helpings! (As an aside, I wonder too if helping to make the dinner made him more into eating it.) I went light on the red pepper to make it more child friendly, then served it with hot sauce on the side. And, a bonus for me, it's only 5 points per serving (for the Weight Watchers illiterate that's about the same as one of those stupid frozen meals).

On other food fronts, FS and I went to Cafe des Amis for dinner Saturday night. The place is usually only open for breakfast and lunch M-Sat., but he's been hosting these special limited seating dinners. Fix price, set menu (at most two choices for a course), four courses, byob. Another amazing meal: an amuse-bouche of salmon-wrapped mango, cold cauliflower soup and a crustini topped with a goat cheese/cream cheese mix; an appetizer of escargot with mushrooms over puff pastry; main course: roast beef with fava beans and roasted tomato; dessert: apple tart with vanilla ice cream.

On DC, weight loss and pulled pork

I went to DC last week for a quick 3-day work trip, and unfortunately, it was not the fabulous eat-a-thon that trips past had been. I had a disappointing experience at Matchbox (although the company was great - yea Prurient and Emma Peel). I ordered the Fire and Smoke pizza only to get something that was too damn spicy to even eat. Luckily we had mini-burgers as appetizers and Prurient kindly shared some of her pizza with me. Aside from that I had an uninspired lunch at Cap City (soup and salad), and an OK lunch (crab cake) at Old Ebbit. Being at Old Ebbit always makes me wonder why it's a mob scene. The food is descent and we picked it because it's basic American food; but I always forget that even if you have a reservation (we did) you have to wade through the crowd at the door and wait 15 minutes to even get to the maitre de.

The saving graces of the DC trip (food-wise) were the panang gai (chicken in coconut peanut curry sauce) from Haad Thai for lunch and a great assortment of Asian food from Cafe Asia for dinner Tuesday. Some friends and I ordered takeout and got a wide sampling to share: sushi (salmon roll, eel, California rolls, spicy California rolls), seaweed salad, sesame cole slaw, spring rolls and pad thai. Everything was yummy - especially the sushi, which I don't get often enough in these parts.

The upside of the not-so-hot food in DC was that I did not gain any weight. I'm down to 152 -- a loss of 14 lbs so far! I've still got 13 to go to hit my goal, but I'm more than half-way there and chugging along. I'm averaging a pound a week and I find the Weight Watchers plan really easy to follow. I've also gotten to the point where I can't really each too much or I feel sick. Frankly, I love that. It's like an un-vicious circle. I'm sure I could break it given a week or two, but I'll stick with the less-is-more thing for now.

And I have been trying to cook more. Despite the weather, I made pulled pork fajitas on Friday (also ate them yesterday and probably will be eating them for days to come because the recipe made so much). It's a bizarre recipe from a slow cooker cookbook that involves ketchup, salsa, coke and rice vinegar. And yet the results were unbelievably good. I used a bone-in pork shoulder (because I couldn't find boneless). It left more fat to skim in the end, but I think yielded even juicier and more tender meat. (See recipe below) Oh, I also left out the liquid smoke and the red pepper flakes -- just because.

For dinner

Made this recipe for Chicken and Root Vegetable Pot Pie for dinner Monday night. I couldn't find the parsnips (gd Giant Eagle), but I did find the celery root. Never cooked with it before and it did add something subtle to the mix. Quite tasty. I'd definitely make it again. I may play with the veggie mix, though. Carrots would be good in it, too ...

OMG Brownies

I had to bake cookies for a bake sale this weekend, so I dug through my recipes and found one for "peanut butter and fudge brownies with salted peanuts" from Bon Apetit. Thank God I had to give them all away (except the 2 I ate, plus bowl lickings); cause they would for sure set me back the entire 9 1/2 lbs I've lost to date. Basically it's a brownie base with a buckeye on top. It's God's gift to the brownie world.

Cookin'

Now that the holidays are over (well, all except FS Jr's birthday, which might as be the 12th day of Christmas), I've finally started doing some cooking again. Nothing too elaborate or high-end, but yummy, none the less.

- Thanks to the WQED Cooks cookbooks FS bought me for Christmas: Pasta with Peas. Recipe is easy-peasy (bad pun intended): Sauté some onions in a good amount (1/4 cup) olive oil, add a little garlic, some salt, pepper and oregano. Add 1 lb frozen peas and a cup of chicken stock -- cook five minutes. Toss in some tubular shaped pasta (about 3/4 box). Top with freshly grated Romano cheese. Super duper delicious and mildly healthy.

- Burritos. Which are simple to make but I always have a hard time remembering to carve out a chunk of time for the assembly process.

Tonight is just frozen ravioli and maybe some garlic bread (yea carbs!). But I've got my eye on a beef goulash recipe from Cooking Light.

Cookie list 2006

I have finally made my annual cookie list. Since I didn't even start the list until the week before Thanksgiving and the status of my kitchen is up in the air, I decided to try to cut back to 6 kinds of cookies. What I ended up with is 7, but close enough. I'm striving for a mix of old favorites (mine and FS's) and new recipes that caught my eye. And, I've decided to lighten up a bit this year on my Gestapo monitoring of the cookies before Christmas. I'm trying to be more generous about setting portions aside to be enjoyed now, instead of immediately tossing them all into the freezer.

I've also been tending toward bar cookies, brittles and barks that are fun and easy to make, rather than an involved process. My MIL makes sugar cookies (and wants to make them with FS Jr.), so I'm relieved to skip those. And I used to make these tiny little almond pretzel cookies -- an almond dough that you hand rolled into the shape of a mini-pretzel then dipped half in melted chocolate. They were good but took hours and hours to make, and I just don't have the patience for that. Maybe someday again when I've got more time on my hands. But at this point, I need something I can make with FS Jr. on a weeknight; and have completed, cooled, bagged and in the freezer in time to get my butt on the couch for "Heroes."

This list (below) is mostly from my favorite ever cookie recipe book (Joy of Cooking's Christmas Cookies), plus a few goodies from magazines.

Holiday tradition

The Holiday Season brings with it much preparation, all of which I revel in -- I love it all from the Christmas cards (which I always psychotically put in the mail the day before Thanksgiving) to the Christmas shopping (about 2/3 done now) to the decorating (I've got a deep love for live pine on mantels) and especially to the baking. I'm significantly behind this year on my cookie baking. Haven't even started. But I have made my grocery store pilgrimage to buy all the ingredients for the 6 (significantly paired back from my usual list of 10-12) types of cookies I want to make and I hope to start tonight (expect a post soon on the 2006 cookie list).

But this year brings a new tradition: Nut Roll. Both my grandmother and FS's grandmother (and I suspect many, many other Midwestern grandmothers) make nut roll every year. It's a yeast dough filled with a sweet nut filling, kind of a cross between a cinnamon bread and a jelly roll. My grandmother's is pretty good, but I have to admit that FS's grandmother's is better. Unfortunately she doesn't have any real bakers in the family to pass the recipe on to and, despite good health, has taken on some disturbing "if I'm not around next year" attitudes. Enter: Me. I spent 5 hours at her house on Sunday learning at the hands of the master. It was my first experience with yeast (which I've had an unexplained fear of in the past) and it went pretty well. We followed her recipe, inherited in two parts (bread from one friend, filling from another) and full of scratch-outs/modifications and then verbal cues ("Oh, I don't do that part"). I learned about how warm the water she uses for the yeast is, how long she kneads the dough, how risen she considers risen and how to use the hand crank to chop the 1 lb of walnuts (note to self: I will use the food processor for this). While we waited for the rolls (recipe makes 2) to bake, I transcribed her notes into my own copy of the recipe (see below).

Can't wait to dig into these on Christmas morning (warmed and with lots of butter)!