What'd we do this summer?

You really want to know? Well, we...

Played on the big field at the End of Year Celebration:

Built some stuff downstairs:

Made and ate lots of yummy food like focaccia:

And veggie lasagna (okay, only I ate this):

Enjoyed the sights during a visit from Grammy and Pops:

Went to Boise and neglected to take any pictures...

Toasted marshmallows in the backyard on my birthday present:

Got all mossy:

Dried some fruits & veggies with our new dehydrator:

Visited with Nana:

Hung out with the cousins at Silverwood, again neglecting to take many pictures, just a couple:

And then went back to school. (The day got better :-)


Plus more cooking, a little knitting, a little quilting, lots of driving, many camps, and a whole bunch 'o work somewhere in there.

What I've been up to

Jogging - ran most of a 5k today after 6 weeks of ramping up to running again. Walked 7 mins, but am pretty happy about that because my longest run stretch so far this year was 25 minutes. Now to get up to the full 3 miles...

Guitar - started guitar lessons a few week ago, and yesterday, picked up this gorgeous thing off of a Craiglist ad:

Gyoza & Sushi party - hosted a party for fam & friends - great excuse to get our Japanese ceramics out of storage and set the table with a non-vinyl tablecloth!

Green Food

Oddly, I don't think I've ever done green food for St. Paddy's Day. But the little guy requested some, so in addition to our corned beef, we had green corn bread, green mashed potatoes, peas, and just for the orange side, carrots. The potatoes looked like playdough. Luckily they didn't taste like it.





In unrelated news... Here's what they did to our bush near the driveway to fix our very local power outage today. Ouch!

More food

Still working on random recipes from random cookbooks. Tonight's dinner, courtesy of Cooking Light's The Complete Cooking Light Cookbook (p 363):

Skillet-roasted lemon chicken with potatoes
I say yum, the rest say "ick", but I laugh last because I get the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

1 large lemon, sliced
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind
1 tbl lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp chopped fresh or 1/4 tsp dried rosemary
8 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
10 cherry tomatoes (I added more)
10 kalamata olives (pitted)
8 small red potatoes, quartered (1 1/2 lbs)

450 degree oven

Arrange lemon slices in a single layer on the bottom of an oven-proof 10 inch skillet.
Combine oil and next 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Add chicken, tomatoes, olives, potatoes and toss to coat.
Arrange chicken on top of the lemon slices, then arrange vegetable mixture over chicken. Bake for 45-55 minutes, until chicken is done (was 45 for me).

4 servings.

I made some couscous too, and had some crusty bread on hand, and I also sprinkled a little feta cheese on top. Yum for me!

Maybe I'll try the technique again (because it was super easy!) only with some onions & peppers on the bottom instead of the tart lemon, and skipping the olives & tomatoes (like I said, good flavor combo for me, not so popular with the rest of the house) to make it savory rather than bitter.

Recipe frustration

I kinda hate baking cookies. They take so long. And they're messy. But it's Christmas, and you do cookies at Christmas time. Colin's our cookie baker (and a fine one!), and he's got a list o' cookies he wants to do. But there are some specific cookies from way back in my past that I really am hankering to make and I'm not sure why.

Cookie #1 - back in the mid-70s, when we lived in Suquamish, Sunset magazine did it's annual cookie spread and mom and I made these brown sugar cutout cookies in the shape of pine trees. They were finicky on the cooking time - easy to burn. But were nice & crunchy if you got them right. Sort of like gingerbread, only not spicey. I remember we thought them rather bland at the time, but for some reason, I really want them! Mom has no memory of these cookies. Web searches have turned up nothing. Colin made me some brown sugar cookies from his 1001 cookie recipes book, and they're good. And he pressed cute little shapes into them, and they were pretty & tasty enough to give away. But they are tender, not crispy. So, not quite a match.

Cookie #2 - I want a round chocolate cookie with turbinado sugar around the edge. So, looking for an icebox/refrigerator/freezer type cookie that you roll into a log, roll the log into turbinado sugar, and then cut into slices & bake. I'm being finicky and not finding a chocolage refrigerator cookie that looks just right.

Plus, did I mention that I don't really like making cookies? So when I find one that's sorta close, I start gathering ingredients and then think "but it won't be quite right anyway" and wander off.

Hmph.

Supper Club?

On a recent trip to the library, when I'd looked at all I wanted to in the children's section, Max and I were making our way to Literature, when he pointed out the cookbook aisle. A book caught my eye as we zipped past and I brought it home: The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper. I catch The Splendid Table on the radio sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, so I thought it might be fun to read. And it was! The layout of the pages was really eye-catching. Not enough pictures for my taste, but really good design with words. Quotes from chefs and other food notables, and many many tips & explanations of techniques. The recipes weren't just "Ingredients/Steps", but a little story about why the recipe is a favorite or where it came from, plus detailed descriptions of how to do each step. I actually read through most of the book in an evening, skipping the recipe details and just reading it like a book. Fun!

Three recipes in particular caught my eye:

• Pasta with Chopping-Board Pistachio Pesto
• Crisp Brick-Fried Chicken with Rosemary and Whole Garlic Cloves
• Little French Fudge Cakes

I thought they'd make a super-yummy menu, but I didn't have time to try them all at once (and unless I've got people coming over, I just don't have the motivation to go all out like that), so they got split up over a few nights.

First came the chocolate, of course. I've always loved those little chocolate lava cakes, with the gooey chocolate center. This recipe made it seem fairly easy & straightforward. Bought myself a LOT of dark chocolate and gathered the ingredients, and made these little cupcake size cakes on Saturday. Lemme tell ya - super rich! Oh my. I followed the advice "For the kids add another 3 tablespoons of sugar." Whew. Can't imagine if I'd left it out! I ate one with a REALLY big glass of milk (so that's why they serve them with little pots of cream at the restaurants), Max tried a bit and went "BLEAH" and Colin just looked. Maybe he tried a crumb. Guess I should try again with milk chocolate for the sophisticated palates around here.

One of the fun quotes:

After eating chocolate you feel

godlike, as though you can
conquer enemies, lead armies,
entice lovers.

- Emily Lychetti, pastry chef and author

Next up, brick chicken! I've also had this at a restaurant (so long ago, I no longer remember where). The chicken gets a little bit flattened under the brick and develops a nice, crispy skin. Yum. And I love rosemary and garlic with my chicken. Didn't have a "brick", so again, their great instructions came with a recommendation: "use a heavy skillet, about 2 inches smaller in diameter than the skillet you are cooking in...Balance it on the bird and add heavy objects to weight the pan down, such as a can or two, or a 5-pound bag of sugar, or a rock."

I went with the pan and three cans of miscellany from the pantry.

The recipe calls for a whole bird, butterflied (with tips on butterflying a chicken). I went with chicken quarters, but I overbought and had 6 quarters and only room for 5 in the pan. So, I ended up with one on its own. This was not a good decision for the lone quarter - after it burned, I had to remove the "crispy/black" skin. Ah well. The rest turned out yummy, with crispy flavorful skins and meat nearly falling off the leg bones. Next time, I'm going for just thighs, they should flatten nicely and cook more evenly than a quarter or whole bird, even though they won't be as photogenic.

Finally, last night, I got around to the pesto. I'm not a huge pesto fan, at least not of the Cuisinart kind. But this "chopping-board" style looked yummy (I like "rustic"). You put a little pile of salt & pepper on a big chopping board, smash some garlic cloves into it, add some red & green onions, and basil and then start chopping it all up together (the onions are pre-chopped, but end up re-chopped). Finally, you add the pistachios and chop chop chop some more. Throw on some olive oil, warm it up a little, mix with pasta, toss in a little Asiago cheese, and you're done.

I loved the chop chop chopping. Way fun, and I liked the fresh bite of the results. Very green, very fresh, very light. Better eat it RIGHT AWAY though, because even 15 minutes later it's not as yummy. And, whoa, garlic! Plus red & green onions. Whew. Max dove in, 'cause Abbey's fed him pesto before, but this had a little more bite than he was used to and he passed on most of it. Colin gave it the fish eye but tried it and said it was good (but didn't eat much). I scarfed it down. Um, did I mention garlic? And onions? Whew. Sorry about the breath, folks.

I think it'd be even better with some red pepper flakes, but then, I don't know, would you explode when you ate it?

So, loved reading the cookbook, liked the recipes I tried, but out of the whole book, these were the only ones I actually HAD to try out, so overall I was glad it was a library book. I should try out some more. Who's up for a supper club?

A Valentine Treat

Personalized chicken pot pies!

Just a regular recipe of chicken pot pie filling, spooned into ramekins with Bisquick biscuits cut into the size of the ramekins, then baked. Also had some heart-shaped additional biscuits for fun.

For once, Max liked something new that I cooked. Only because "it tastes just like the ones we used to get and cook in the microwave, only better! I love these!" Nice to have a winner of a dinner for once, instead of a demand for something different. He also liked the salmon the other night, phew! Since it was Max who asked for it and I'm no fish fan, I was glad it got eaten.

(BTW - the cute tablecloth was a gift from Annzy. Thanks Ann!)

Max is sooooo into Encyclopedia Brown lately - Abbey found some books on tape/CD before Christmas and they've been checking them out from the library over and over and over. Inspiration struck, and he rearranged his room so he can have a detective desk. His rates aren't as reasonable as Encyclopedia's though. Guess a quarter doesn't mean as much anymore.

Lack of highlights lately, but Colin updated you on the Leavenworth trip and Lisa on the Spokane trip, so not much to say. Busy times, with computer time at home losing out to sleep, or reading (lots of reading of a pile of mysteries by Deborah Crombie, not to mention the rest of the Twilight series in January, thanks for the books Kris!), or watching ABC shows online, since DISH/Fisher-ABC are feuding in my area so I can't watch it on TV anymore. Sigh. I'm way behind on all my shows - I realized in December when they went off the air that I was recording 7 shows on ABC, and I just am not keeping up with them. How tragic, no? Well, no, not really :-).

Working on a sock in the knitting world. Donna & I challenged each other to try socks at the last Day of Crafts and Sewing. I was halfway when I got to DOCS, then ripped back and redid the heel and now I'm 3/4 of the way. Not a lot of progress. I should have picked a pattern other than plain stockinette - so dull. Plus, I really doubt I'll ever wear them, so the motivation is low. Could tackle another sweater, but must do math first. I sure hope I have a chance to relearn basic math while Max learns it the first time; I could use a little help.

Happy Valentine's Day everybody.

Veggie kid?

Max tells us that he doesn't want to eat "dead animals" anymore and wants to be a vegetarian. He's pretty earnest about it (although tonight when the veggie eggrolls were yucky and he knew that the chicken ones he had last week were yummy, he became practical rather than principled, and chowed the chicken ones). So, um, now what? I was always thinking "well, at least he's getting enough protein, even if he doesn't eat his veggies", but now what? He's snubbing all dinner ideas beyond ramen & spaghetti - hardly balanced & complete meals. He's not a tofu fan... Aside from his already-favorite and already-veggie corn dogs from MorningStar farms, what do I feed this kid beyond PB&J?

Any ideas?
Think it'll last?