an excuse to eat and drink beer simultaneously

I'll be the first to admit that this post's title isn't exactly oozing class. Eat and drink beer all at once? I can see noses turning up at the idea. But, bear with me here, especially if you're a lazy and/or cheap cook, you like beer, it's kind of chilly out, and/or you like eating meals that can be prepared in one pan and consumed in one bowl. I happen to be all of the above, in addition to a PBR aficionado (look, my taste in beer knows basically no bounds, people). 

So, this recipe from a very, very old weight watchers cookbook has been in heavy rotation since the dark days of living at home while job searching, and cooking basically every night for my parents (dark days because I was nearly 23 at the time, not because my parents are lame). Prior to my stint as stay-at-home daughter and errands girl extraordinaire, I basically never cooked, so, I had to start simple. 

It doesn't get much simpler than this: the sausage (unless you go the fancy uncooked andouille route) is pre-cooked, the potatoes come pre-cut in a bag, and all you have to cut is the onion (unless you buy the diced potatoes with onions already included, in which case I just helped you eliminate the only semi-complicated part of this dish). You saute the pre-cooked sausage, you saute the potatoes a bit, then you pour beer and chicken broth in there, let the whole thing simmer, and bam, hearty, smokey, delicious, beer-y dinner in 20 minutes give or take. It's also highly adaptable, and tastes great with things like bell peppers thrown in there. Plus, you get to drink the leftover beer. Win, win, WIN.   

meat....sauce

Don't ask me why exactly, but it seems oddly appropriate that one of my first post-hiatus recipe recaps is basically about how I totally failed at recreating something seemingly simple. Probably a sign that Sunday is a night for either takeout or frozen pizza, and not something as ambitious as meatballs, especially when the ground beef is frozen solid, it's already 6pm, and you have two hungry, grumpy boys waiting to be fed. 

But of course I thought to myself I've been cooking up a storm lately. Meatballs? From a recipe that I've made before? Child's play. 

So off to a very crowded Harris Teeter I went with one of the aforementioned grumpsters (whom I love dearly, and who would also admit that he was grumpy, so I'm not exactly telling tales out of school here). We foraged for supplies. He talked me out of taking the time to make sauce from scratch. We braved the epic lines. I did my best to whip up dozens of meatballs in record speed. 

We ended up eating this: 

 

Do you see any meatballs? No, you do not. See, this overly confident girl got a little too frenzied in the kitchen (and some red wine on an empty stomach may also be to blame), and didn't fully braise the meatballs before they cooked in the store-bought sauce (note that I'm still shuddering at my lack of homemade sauce). So instead of being appropriately firm, the meatballs fell apart the minute you so much as touched them. Instead of trying to salvage them, I crushed them all up, and we had meat sauce instead of meatballs.

However, I can still wholeheartedly recommend this recipe, including the whole "make your own sauce" bit, because I whipped it up on Election Night back in November for sustenance as we watched the results trickle in.  I even forgot to add the egg to the meatball mixture that time, and they held up fine. So, follow the instructions and braise those babies. If you do, you'll get something much more like this: 

Note: grumpy, hungry boys, I learned, will eat either in mere seconds. So don't worry if you're as impatient and screw-up prone as me. 

marinating

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I now love, or even like, to cook on a regular basis. I dread it more often than not, and I still have my fair share of ramen noodle nights. But there are times I just really want to cook for people, and that usually tends to coincide with wanting to try a new recipe or series of recipes. There generally isn't a whole lot of in between, though. I'm either dreading walking in to the kitchen, or can't keep myself out of it.

Being sick for so long has put me firmly in the "dreading it" camp for nearly the entire month. There was a brief moment of adventure when I decided to try and fry tofu for the first time ever, but that's pretty much it. 

Today, though, is one of those weird in-between days (and by "weird," I mostly mean "bad"). And let me just tell you, I do bad days 110%. I'm not one of those graceful people who excels at turning an unfortunate series of events in to some sort of Pollyana positive bender. I genuinely wish I were. I think those people are evolutionarily superior, honestly, because life is full of bad days. But I'm not. 

My own version of trying to turn a bad day around is actually to just totally marinate in the ick. Mentally kick that copy machine that isn't working. Throw an elbow right back at that aggressive person on the metro. Inhale some mini chocolate bars at the pity party for one at my desk. Just stinking own the sheer force of the wrong side of the bed on which you awoke. 

So, I'm cooking dinner for a friend and I tonight (which she graciously agreed to reschedule from last night when work took over my evening. Again.). And between my nagging exhaustion and the whole marinating in the bad day business, I cannot call to mind a single new thing I want to cook. Dinners with good friends are the perfect opportunity for experimenting, because typically they're pretty receptive to the whole "I'm just going to try this out, we might be ordering pizza" mantra. 

But today, I just can't. So instead, I'll be doing two totally uncreative things. One: I'm making ice cream from a starter kit (which was a Christmas gift from my sister, and which sounds completely sinfully delicious). Two: I'm making a form of pasta that's been made for me many times before by others (although I've never made it myself). It involves boiling pasta in water for a bit, then in wine. It works with both red and white wine, but tonight I'm going for white. 

I'm not using a recipe, just going to wing it, so if it's anything resembling a success, I'll post more details tomorrow, at which point I will hopefully be fully recovered from the bad day marinating process. 


For now, though, it's time for eating ice cream with teddy grahams, and watching the State of the Union with friends. 

   

risotto & gingerbread

Last week, Sophie came over, and I made the really disjointed dinner/dessert combo of red coconut curry noodles and apple cobbler. When I invited her over for dinner this week, I didn't intend to follow that same illogical pattern, but it happened anyways. This is what happens, I think, when you know you're going out of town soon, and don't want to go to the grocery. Whatever's in the house gets cooked up, and it's pretty bare bones. 

Luckily Sophie is pretty understanding when it comes to my completely eccentric kitchen behavior, and didn't really blink when she arrived and found out we'd be eating spinach risotto followed by gingerbread cookies and ice cream.

sugar, spices, butter, evaporated milk, and molasses.

my dough probably could've used a little more flour

things came out a little...stretchy

the risotto recipe i used suggested you "pat" the spinach dry. disaster.

it still turned out ok-looking though

disregarding the totally loopy shape of my gingerbread man, they were tasty!

I got home from work and decided to whip up the small batch of the gingerbread cookies. Sophie had sent me the recipe a while back, billing it as the best she'd ever had. I meant to make them for the holiday party Neha and I co-hostessed this past weekend, but it didn't quite come together at that point, so I had the ingredients sitting in my kitchen. And I didn't have bread, salad, or appetizer fixings to serve to Sophie with the risotto, so I felt like I had to provide something other than just rice.

The batter came together fine, if a bit sticky. Getting the shapes from my counter to the cookie sheet, though, was a comical experience, as you can see from the pictures above. Those were my best shapes, too, resulting from a couple of "oh screw it" moments in which i balled the dough back up and started over again. When I saw the sad little misshapen men on the cookie sheet, I couldn't help but laugh at their disproportionate little limbs/heads. 

While they cooled and Sophie made her way to my apartment, I geared up for risotto. I had all my ingredients measured and chopped, and had patted the spinach as dry as humanly possible. Side note: have you ever tried to pat spinach dry? "Pat" is not an aggressive enough word to articulate how much effort it takes to remove water from cooked spinach. I think I used a roll of paper towels, and I wouldn't call the end result "dry," either.

After the spinach drying debacle, I got ready to actually start cooking the rice/broth. And my stupid stove wouldn't light. After successfully lighting to bake the cookies and steam the spinach. Seriously, people, they just fixed the burners LAST time I cooked for Sophie (a week ago exactly, mind you). 

After several very frustrated attempts at igniting the burners, I called the front desk, which promised to send up a technician. Of course I couldn't just be patient and wait for the dude, so I kept trying, and eventually got the right two burners to light. And promptly accidentally turned one off. Which led to several more minutes of angry yelling at my stove. I have no idea what happened, but miraculously it decided to ignite, and dinner was only slightly delayed. Again, Sophie should be thanked for her patience with my crazy self and even crazier kitchen.  

We agreed that both the risotto and the cookies were a success. Nothing in the knock your socks off territory, but a really solid Monday night dinner. Then again that could be the bottle of wine talking... (but really, I say both recipes are worth trying!) 

curry & cobbler

I had a bit of a seesaw weekend. Parts were great, parts I'd rather forget. But it ended on such a high note, I can still hardly get over it. My friend and I bought tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra's Christmas concert on a whim. It featured the Washington Children's Choir and the Canadian Tenors.

Neither of us had a stinking clue who the Canadian Tenors were, and we were both utterly exhausted from the weekend's adventures. We honestly thought about throwing in the towel all together. 

The minute the show started, though, we were awfully thankful that our guilt complex about already having paid for the tickets prevailed. It was incredible. The choir, the tenors, the symphony music. It was perfect. I couldn't even come close to describing it properly, but just know that a lot of heart squeezey moments were experienced by Neha and I.

Monday morning, though, my Christmas spirit was totally railroaded by the realization upon arrival at work that I had left at home my ID and my computer access card. I knew I couldn't do a thing without them, and ended up having to go home at lunch time. When I got home, I promptly realized NONE of my stove burners would light. Which was an issue considering a)I was starving and b)I was supposed to cook dinner for a friend later in the day. 

Thankfully the handy man in my building restored the stove, and thus the LKTC, to full capacity (which was actually an improvement over the fact that only two burners have worked for months now). My plan to make red coconut curry noodles wasn't foiled after all, which was good news for the pre-prepped ingredients hanging out in my fridge (and my sour mood). At the last minute, I decided to use a few apples that were approaching their expiration date to make cobbler, which I based on this recipe (from my often-baked peach variety). Very non-congruent, I know, but once I get an idea in my head...  

not sure exactly what happened to this butter, but judging 3/4 of a stick was interesting

unexpected afternoon off of work = plenty of time for detailed prep work

coconut milk cream + fresh ginger + red curry paste + onions

with chicken broth, coconut milk, cilantro, and Thai chili sauce added

plus noodles and red pepper

finished product!

mini apple cobbler + vanilla bean ice cream

So, there's a little up-front investing to be done for the curry noodle recipe, namely in the form of the Thai chili sauce and red curry paste, but nothing was prohibatively expensive. And aside from a bit of chopping (red peppers and cilantro) and grating (ginger), the prep work is easy, and everything gets cooked in the same pot, which I love. And Sophie and I agreed that it was pretty good for a one dish meal, even without the chicken that the recipe suggests. 


And I am happy to report that the apple cobbler turned out beautifully, despite the whole odd shaped butter quandary. I love dessert, but rarely crave anything fruit-based, so I'm happy to report that this oddly hit the spot. There's just something so simple but perfect about ice cream on top of steaming hot cobbler, no?  


Oh, and I got to give Sophie her present, which helped reinvigorate the previously bubbling Christmas spirit that had been compromised thanks to my severe case of the Mondays.

angry paella

Once upon a time while living in Italy, I got so mad that the only thing I could channel my energy in to was cooking. I've never enjoyed cooking, but I fired up the gas stove in Casa Artom and made what will forever be known as angry paella. 

I can't remember where I found the recipe, but I tried in vain to lay my hands on it for months after I got back from Venice, because it was really, really good. Prior to that point, I'm honestly not sure I'd ever cooked a meal, not to mention a good one. 


Eventually I found a recipe that I think gets pretty close to the original. I can't remember where I found that one either (noticing a pattern here?), but here it is, fresh from my recipe box on the ever-useful Epicurious site:


-1 garlic clove, minced
-1 TBS olive oil
-1/2 lb hot or sweet Italian sausage (w/o fennel seeds)
-1/2 lb skinless chicken breast, cut in 1 inch pieces
-1 c (arborio) rice
-1 c onion, chopped
-1 1/2 c chicken broth
-1 (8oz) can stewed chopped tomatoes
-1/2 tsp sweet paprika
-1/8 to 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
-1/8 tsp ground saffron
-1/2 lb medium shrimp
-1/2 c red bell pepper strips
-1/2 c green bell pepper strips
-1/2 c frozen green peas


1. heat the garlic and oil in a large skillet.
2. remove the sausage meat from its casings. add the chicken and sausage to the oil and stir until browned (about 10 min)
3. spoon off all but 1 TBS drippings from the skillet. add the rice and onion. cook, stirring until onion is transparent and rice is lightly browned (about 5 minutes)
4. add the broth, tomatoes and their juice, paprika, red pepper, and saffron. bring to a boil; reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.
5. add the shrimp, red and green pepper strips, and peas. cover and simmer for 10 minutes, or until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed.


I've never actually made it with sausage, chicken, and shrimp all at once. Normally I just make it with chicken and/or shrimp. And although the recipe doesn't specify, I take the chicken out after it's cooked, but before I put the rice and onions in. Because chicken isn't greasy like sausage, I normally splash a little more olive oil in there pre-rice/onions, too. I've often forgotten the tomatoes, sometimes forgotten the garlic, and never have found sweet paprika. What I'm saying here is that it's a pretty forgiving recipe, so long as you get the rice toasting/cooking part right. 


Anyways, I made angry paella last night not because I'm particularly angry right now, but because one of my coworkers wanted to learn how to make it. I also happened to need help moving a new piece of furniture from my car to my bedroom. So, after work, a few coworkers caravanned back to my apartment. We moved furniture, then the boys watched tennis while I taught my friend how to make the dish (and I realized that I make a terrible instructor). 


During last night's paella lesson, I tried a combination of regular and smoky paprika in lieu of sweet, and while I liked the flavor of the smoky paprika, I was a little too heavy handed with it. I also forgot the garlic. What can I say?...I never cook both quickly and well. Regardless, I think the best paella is truly born out of anger, but there were clean plates all around the table, so I'm proof that it's worth giving this a shot, even if you aren't ticked off. 

spring (errr, summer) time risotto

It's funny, most people are excitedly gearing up for a long weekend right about now, but I'm sitting here wondering how my unexpected week off is nearly over. With Monday devoted to my drive back to DC, it doesn't much feel like a holiday. As much as I like being home, it will be nice, I suppose, to fall back in to some sort of work routine, and more blog-worthy, some sort of LKTC routine. 


Reading The China Study really got me thinking about my diet, which, I imagine, would be assessed as "bad" by any diet guru, doctor, or nutritionist. Despite having contemplated following the book's "no animal protein" mantra, even just for an experimental month, I've been doing anything but that since I've been home (cough cough trip to Five Guys with my parents cough). 


I thought I'd be doing more cooking at home, given the more spacious, better-equipped kitchen at my disposal (and my mother's reaction to my coming home for a week: "Jenny's coming home! She'll cook for us every night!"). But we've been super busy, so one of the only meals I've thrown together was Monday. 


I completely arbitrarily decided to make risotto, and settled on this recipe from Williams Sonoma. I cut the rice and liquid in half, and it was still more than enough for three people. I skipped the peas (Mom hates them), the mint (didn't seem to fit), and the cheese (I hate it), and added asparagus instead. This part of the process felt very healthy. 

I could even convince myself that the tomato, basil, mozzarella appetizer was a semi-healthy move (although the half off special on mozzarella went a long way in persuading me to throw the package in my basket at the grocery). 

I was apparently feeling guilty and economical, because I refused to let the little loaf of (approaching stale) sourdough on the counter go to waste (nevermind that I wasn't the one who even purchased it), so I slapped some olive oil and minced garlic on it and threw it in a 350 degree oven hoping for the best. I'd say it looks pretty tasty, and the parents at least pretended to agree when they ate it. 

The risotto turned out pretty well, if a touch wine-y (isn't that supposed to evaporate, at least a little?). I think it looked very summery, if a bit monochromatic. (PS-cheese lovers, I know you're still stuck on that "I skipped the cheese part, but the parents and I are here to tell you that it was still perfectly creamy). 

There aren't any other major meals on the agenda for the remainder of my mini-vacation. We're going in to the city tomorrow to celebrate a family friend's birthday, and I basically insisted on bringing the dessert. I'm dying to take a second stab at the chocolate peanut butter squares that I made a few months ago (trying to compose a better crust this time). On top, we're going to scoop dark chocolate gelato with, wait for it!, mini milk chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's (which reminds me, they're hiding in the fridge and I need to...sample....a few). I know everyone loves Trader Joe's, but I think it's actually a land mine of cheap booze and sugar, which are two things over which I am apparently physically incapable of exercising any sort of self-control.  Proof:

Ok, just kidding, that's all of the wine for a huge charity dinner my parents are planning for our church.  But still, TJ's is dangerous, people (she says, as one hand is in the container of mini milk chocolate peanut butter cups). 

oh, meat

Last week, before I fled DC for home, Sophie came over for dinner, and I basically forced her to eat steak since it would otherwise go bad during my extended trip. Because I didn't want to face packing, I decided to search for a good marinade recipe.  Many of the options google presented me with involved balsamic (I'm not a fan) or some other steak-type sauce that I don't own.  So I cruised over to Dinner: A Love Story (which is quickly becoming a go-to after Epicurious and food network), and found their seemingly simple recipe.


I didn't have scallions and I skipped the hot sauce (Sophie doesn't like spicy food), but it came out pretty well nonetheless. It didn't have an overwhelming flavor, but wasn't too plain and boring, either. 


The steaks, however, were definitely overcooked, and I blame George (Foreman).  See, George and I are still getting to know each other.  He seems to be pretty old, and is entirely lacking in any sort of options. You plug him in, and that's it.  So I'm not quite sure when it reaches maximum heat (or what that temperature is).  Nor am I sure of the average cooking time for various foods.  So what I'm saying here is that it's a bit of an experiment every time. 


The first time I checked the steaks, they were practically still raw, so we let them cook for what seemed like a reasonable extra amount of time. And then they were far too done for our medium (or medium-rare) preferences. But Sophie was a good sport and pretended it was perfect. They at least looked pretty...

On the side we had roasted baby potatoes with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary (aka the convenient, long-time pinch hitter in my family's dinner arsenal), which were perfectly crisped (I'm allowed to have a moment of selfish gloating over the potatoes, right? I mean, I totally bungled the steak temperature). We skipped the wine thanks to my weird esophagus pain, which was so bad that night that I only ate because Sophie practically forced me to do so. But I made up for it by offering her a dessert sampler of all the ice cream flavors in my freezer at the moment. 

bottom left: chocolate with crushed red pepper, top: salted caramel, 

bottom right: jacked up cookies and cream

I think it was a hit

After dessert, Sophie gamely offered to do the dishes. While she scrubbed everything else, I used the little scraper tool that comes with George--easily the grossest part of the whole process. When I popped the grill plates off for Sophie to scrub, I noticed (and pointed out) a tiny pool of grease on the counter.  


"Oh, meat," Sophie said. Oh, meat, indeed. I couldn't help but think of her matter-of-fact statement the entire time I was reading The China Study. I first heard about the book on the CNN Health site (probably one day when I was a little on the bored side at work). Dr. Gupta briefly described the study, explaining that there's a whole slew of physicians and researchers who believe we can eradicate heart disease and drastically reduce instances of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and other less-severe health issues by eliminating animal protein from our diets. I realize it sounds drastic, and probably hard to buy in to (especially if you're an enthusiastic meat-eater like me), but the wealth of evidence the authors presented is staggering to say the least. 


I'm not saying I'll be an overnight vegan, or even vegetarian (in fact, I made risotto with chicken last night).  But the information they presented was eye-opening and hard to ignore. I'll definitely be thinking about making some changes in the LKTC...

playing tennis

Last night's full moon has nothing to do with my dinner, I just thought it was beautiful

I haven't actually been playing tennis, I just look like I have. See, I really love spicy food.  Really really spicy food.  So you'd think I'd be able to tolerate it gracefully, right?  


Not so.  Instead, I get all flushed and break out in (what I like to think is) a subtle sweat.  It looks, a coworker once told me in the middle of a spicy Chipotle lunch, like I'd been playing tennis. 


Tonight I made this Bombay curry from a Cooking Light recipe I tore out of the magazine mom left behind last month.  If you read it, you'll see it calls for both curry powder and red pepper.  The curry powder in my pantry is, naturally, super hot.  Add that to the red pepper (and the heat that builds in the LKTC when the stove is on) and it sure looks like I got my exercise today. 


Before I even sat down to eat, I was already a little flustered.  I think I could say that every time I cook, really. I always start out with great intentions and some dedicated prep work.  Something always goes awry.  Sometimes it's just a little something. Tonight, not so much. 


It started out well enough.  Onions were diced, chicken was sliced, spices were set near the stove, oil was heating up in the dutch oven, and water was poured into the secondary pan for rice.  


Except then I realized it was supposed to be coconut milk in the secondary pan for rice.  No big deal, I just needed to open the can of coconut milk.  As I was measuring it, I couldn't figure out why it looked so...watery.  Oh, sldjkfklsj, I forgot to "shake the can vigorously."


So I spilled coconut milk everywhere pouring it back in to the can.  Having forgone the ability to shake the stupid can, I resigned myself to stirring it with a spoon.  Back in to the pan it went. 


From there it was just comical.  I was inhaling curry powder, slipping on chicken juice, frantically adjusting burners when the coconut milk boiled over, and spilling carrots and peas all over the floor.  Some day I will accept the fact that I'm just not a level-headed, unflappable cook.  At least I make disaster while wearing a cute apron. 


This curry, I thought, had better be amazing. But...it looked nothing like the picture...

It ended up being pretty delicious, despite the less than magazine-worthy appearance. Nothing about my kitchen, on the other hand, is at all photograph-worthy right now. 

  

what do you think happens in the fridge, jenny?

surprisingly, this is not how it's meant to open

I didn't plan on eating at home tonight. I was supposed to go from work to a grad school fair.  And then I had an allergic reaction to the thought of networking.  I hate networking on a good day.  I loathe it after I have spent the past week meeting new people at a new job. So, I hemmed, I hawed, I called my parents to have them talk me out of going.  I chatted with a new coworker for almost an hour to just plain avoid going.  


So by the time I headed home, I wasn't just hungry, I was really mad at myself.  I had absolutely no excuse for not going.  And yet I still didn't. So I refused to let myself buy dinner.  No rewarding slacker behavior here (err, at least not today, that is). 


Instead I came home, and forced myself to cook.  I have a few bags of pasta sauce frozen for nights when I'm starving and either don't have time or don't have energy to cook, but pasta sounded terrible. I really wanted, I decided, a steak.  As the steak was defrosting, I debated a side dish.  I couldn't really stomach another round of plain pasta or rice, so I dug out my recipe binder that I threw together when the Lent adventure was gearing up. 


I realized that this would be the perfect time to use up a bag of spinach that was nearly expired in my fridge.  See, I have this irrational preoccupation with expiration dates and spoiled food.  I always hesitate to so much as touch expired anything, and I won't eat leftovers that have been in the fridge more than a day, maybe two.  My friend/former coworker Allison found this so stymying that she finally asked me "what do you think happens in the fridge, Jenny?"


I think things go bad, that's what!  So, this spinach was a ticking time bomb in the LKTC, and using it in a couscous recipe was the only way to defuse it without totally wasting it.  I got the garlic minced and the olive oil heating up, and went to open the couscous (which has been sitting unopened on my shelf since, oh, February).   I broke off a little tab...and nothing happened.  I pulled, I tugged, I tried to use a knife for leverage (I get a little irrational when I'm especially hungry).  No dice.


I thought about just reverting to plain rice or pasta, but then I got all Catholic guilt-y on myself. You can't just give up on everything today, Jenny.  So I attacked the plastic lid of the couscous with the scissors.  I'm sure the neighbors were concerned, as it sounded a bit like I had shot something.  Then again they spend 90% of their time yelling violently at each other, so, I like to think of this as inadvertent payback. My brief fit of rage against the couscous was a success, and I managed to whip up a surprisingly delicious complement to the steak. (I say surprisingly because I had never even tried couscous before tonight.  I have a lot of lost time to make up for). I can't say the PBR added much to the meal, but I've had a case of it since well, I won't even tell you what month (not to mention year), and the slowly dwindling supply of cans has been mocking me from the refrigerator for ages. 


I made enough couscous that there are, ironically, leftovers.  I'll be sure to eat them within 24 hours, don't worry, Allison!


ps-in case I left anyone particularly curious, the sweet potato biscuits were pretty good.  The girls at Sunday dinner were awfully effusive.  Then again they were probably just being overly polite to spare my feelings.  


pps-the couscous I now find myself borderline obsessed with is of the Israeli variety, and I think I will prefer it to the much smaller (regular) couscous. I say this like I have any idea what I'm talking about.  I don't. 

cooking outside the LKTC

As I mentioned, I'm spending a little less than a week at home in between jobs.  For a while, when I would come back to the Lake, there were a few neighborhood places I insisted we visit. Then two of my three favorites closed.  So we've done more in-house cooking/eating.  A beyond-familiar concept to many, maybe, but not always for us.  


But what better day to turn out a southern meal and have friends over than Memorial Day?  Mom and I woke up and decided we just had to have pulled pork, which, because pork takes 8 to 10 hours in a slow cooker, demanded an early morning covert trip to the grocery in baseball caps (hey, when the entire small town knows your dad as being one of the only male teachers at his school, you are often accosted at the grocery, whether you look like you just woke up or not). Standing in line for Starbucks while Mom paid for the pork, I ran in to our good family friend.  More accurately, our good family friend had to shake my shoulder to snap me out of my Blackberry coma to say hello.  Details.


Luckily their family had also been thinking of throwing a pork in the crock pot and having people over, so we joined forces.  Before we went off on yet another (non-grocery) shopping adventure, Mom and I tossed the giant pork in a spice rub, put the crock pot on low, and hoped it'd cook in time.  When we got back, the true adventure began.  (Note: more accurately, Mom did the pork handling and I observed, for I have an irrational fear of raw meat)


I decided to try and recreate a barbeque sauce originally published by the Pioneer Woman, but introduced to me by Allie at one of our weekly dinners.  When Allie made it, I merely looked on as she fought with the chile peppers in adobo sauce, and silently patted myself on the back for volunteering to make the (easy by comparison) mac and cheese and peach cobbler.  This time, I'd be the one doing everything from onion dicing to pepper fighting. And I had also promised to help mom try a new potato dish in lieu of the now-tired mac and cheese dish.  


We didn't exactly get off to a promising start.  See, Mom received this recipe one day in a Williams-Sonoma store.  Much like other W-S recipes, it looks simple enough.  Then you read it.  And even then it doesn't sound so challenging.  Until you get to the part where you bake potatoes, then refrigerate them overnight, then grate them, skin and all.  


Wait, you refrigerate them overnight?? I stopped Mom as she was ticking off the steps.  We both shared an "oh crap" look, and Mom made the executive decision that we were not the kind of women who hand grate refrigerated potatoes.  We were the kind of women who laughed at the kind of women who grate refrigerated potatoes....as we sliced open a bag of pre-grated "Simply Potatoes." 


And that's just what we did.  So after I got the barbeque sauce going, I poured 2 bags of simply potatoes in a dish along with an obscene quantity of white cheddar, shallots, sour cream, and the bacon we decided to add (really, what doesn't taste better with bacon?).  I'll spare you the description of what it feels like to mix that with your hands.  Instead, I'll just tell you that it turns out deliciously, although we recommend going lighter on the shallots and heavier on the cheese and bacon (we call this the southern-ized version).  I will also spare you the detailed description of the two of us trying to drain the boiling liquid from the crock pot with the pork still in it. I will just tell you it wasn't super graceful. 


And despite my issues peeling an onion (see proof below) and straining adobo sauce away from peppers, the Pioneer Woman's sauce turned out as smoky and rich as I hoped it would be the second time around. Even the cobbler turned out well even though I was making it basically from memory and letting an intrepid 7 year old do all the work.  


I'd call it a successful Memorial Day impromptu dinner party all around.  I'm no Pioneer Woman, but I do a pretty good job of following directions, and I'm getting better at improvising when life just needs a little more bacon.  

(peeling an onion pretty much always goes this poorly)

(getting all the sauce ingredients lined up and opened)

(this doesn't really do the sauce justice, but really you must try it)

(improvising in action)

(gratin pan purchased just for this occasion)

(the spread, minus cobbler)

leana's low-rent pasta

So, I think I mentioned that the LKTC hasn't gotten much love lately.  I haven't been ignoring it just so I can eat out all the time (although that's certainly happening more often that it should...).  I've also had some good friends (who are great cooks) make me some amazing meals.

In addition to the brilliant new tradition of Sunday girls dinners that Allie, Leana, Alicia and I started, Leana and I have initiated "Glee Tuesdays."  (Yes, I watch Glee...I mean, there's far worse on tv than that)  It's pretty fantastic--we watch Glee and mock certain characters, Leana makes dinner, and I do the dishes. Note to future roommates/husband: I will always always always do dishes in exchange for a meal.  

One of our first Glee nights was experimental--Leana needed to test out a steak- recipe.  Being from the south and far from vegetarian, I will never turn down a steak, even an experimental one (but it was a great success). The following week, Leana made white wine pasta with pancetta and asparagus, an adventure modeled after an amazing red wine pasta Allie has made us before.  She jokingly refers to it as "low-rent," but there was nothing cheap about the taste.  Last week Leana made fried rice, and in what is also becoming a tradition, I left for the third week in a row with leftovers for my lunch the next day. 

Last Tuesday, a coworker also made dinner for a few of us from the team. I went home painfully stuffed, but, I could totally get behind two-dinner Tuesdays.   My clothes may not fit any longer, but by God, I'll be well fed.  

Despite reveling in being cooked for, I need to get back in the habit of cooking for myself.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit I haven't set foot in a grocery store since, oh, Easter.  I'll get right on that...after I get back from North Carolina in a couple weeks.  

ps-I promise to do more justice to my friends' culinary skills in the future.  Like when I've fully recovered from my 25th birthday party. 

progress

(can you tell I love peas?)

I'm currently being knocked flat by a sudden allergy to all of DC, it seems.  After acclimating to the extreme pollen situation in North Carolina, I considered myself evolutionarily superior when I didn't experience any related symptoms thus far this spring in DC.  


And then I started walking to and from work every day.  And then I went to Gold Cup on Saturday and spent all day outside.  

(No, really, I did.  I even actually watched the races)

So now I feel like I drank a giant cup of pollen with my breakfast of dust.  And I guess my body isn't used to experiencing allergies, because I feel like I'm actually coming down with something (headache, exhaustion, loss of appetite).  But don't worry, I popped some motrin, claratin, and took my temperature with the handy thermometer my mom put in my stocking the Christmas after I came down with a vicious case of bronchitis and refused to see a doctor initially. (No fever, score). 

The very very last thing I wanted to do was cook dinner.  But my incredibly guilty conscience was nagging me. If you aren't going to sit here and actually, seriously focus on your GRE book, you could at LEAST cook real food for dinner. And that chicken you defrosted isn't going to stay good forever.  And you already paid for it.  And some protein some time within a week is generally a wise idea. And..

Fine, fine, FINE, conscience.  You win.  

So I shuddered through slicing up the chicken (seriously, touching raw meat is an issue), and threw some of Trader Joe's garlic naan in the oven.  Just so the garlic wouldn't feel bad about being the only overwhelming scent in the meal, I generously coated my chicken with the spice mix I first used for Moroccan spiced shrimp.  Just to make things really...fragrant...I tossed the peas in olive oil and curry powder.  Hey, you have to take advantage of living alone and being single while you can, right? 


I've always been guilty of giving in to laziness or exhaustion and skipping over legit dinner-prep in favor of something easy but empty (i.e. a box of Kraft mac n cheese or take out), and while I was better during Lent, I fell back in to my old habits after Easter.  So I'm happy that even as I was half-asleep on the couch daydreaming of ordering in, I managed to get up and cook something well-rounded and not repulsive (unless you consider garlic, Moroccan spices, and curry powder repulsive, and then we just can't be friends). Progress!


Now, I haven't exactly progressed to eating at my dinner table just yet (the ottoman works just fine, thanks.  and eating at my table alone seems sad), but at least we're past the days of eating mac n cheese directly out of a saucepan (yeah, that happened...it was called college...don't judge).  

a dinner-time miracle

(this was staged--kudos if you can figure out why)

Lately, I feel like I'm not doing much well. I'm slacking on GRE study planning, compelling myself to go to work each day knowing I have nothing to do is getting more difficult, and I have been totally neglecting the LKTC.  Just a garden variety post-Lent rut, it seems.      


So tonight when I didn't finish with a post-work thing until 7, and didn't get home until nearly 8, the siren-song of the restaurants in Courthouse were hard to resist.  I don't know how Thai at Corner manages to get the wind to blow the scent of drunken noodle in my direction every time I walk past, but it is a highly effective "marketing" ploy. 


But I decided that the LKTC was feeling a little lonely, and settled on eating at home, even though I hadn't defrosted anything pre-emptively.  Trying to shake myself clear out of that rut and all.  And to not go broke.  Minor considerations, really.


When I got home, in what is becoming a tradition, I stood in front of the fridge dumbly looking at the collection of PBR and various types of cheese (cheese?? I don't even EAT cheese! why do I have so much cheese??), and wondered what in the world I would eat for dinner.  I was suddenly regretting passing up Thai. 


I resorted to the freezer.  Maybe I could eat the leftover ice cream from Saturday's peach cobbler?  And then, under a few frozen bananas (you know, some day they'll make great smoothies or banana bread...), I spotted the evidence of some forward thinking that must have struck me back when this adventure first got started. 


In a stroke of (dare I say) genius, I froze quart-sized baggies of homemade pasta sauce with ground turkey, and I froze them flat to make defrosting a quick little trick.  I didn't start making pasta sauce myself until around the time I moved to DC, and I have no idea why I waited so long (and especially why I didn't take advantage of the super high-quality ingredients when I lived in Italy).  I pretty much cringe at the sight, scent, and taste of bottled sauces now.  


Anyways, I grabbed one of these brilliant little single serving size baggies of sauce, and tried to figure out how to extricate the deliciousness. I realized it was frozen flat, but somehow not frozen to the bag itself, so it'd peel right out of there.  Hence the super-surgical scissor attack on the bag, and the giant flat sheet of sauce snapped in half in the pan in the photos above.  


The whole thing felt a bit like cheating, so I exploited the ONE grocery-bought basil plant I've managed to keep alive (the ratio is not great, in case that wasn't already obvious), and sprinkled some fresh basil on the top.  Somehow that made me feel like less of a sham.  


And now I'm going to get to that leftover ice cream.  

happy state of denial

(sunrise cheese grating)

(amazing bbq sauce)

(they only look harmless...)

(I could dig in to this with a big spoon.  I restrained myself)

(bubbling hot, topped with vanilla ice cream-heaven)

I don't think I mentioned that I registered for the GRE a few weeks ago.  Probably because I'm avoiding it.  As we've discussed, I excel in employing creative methods to avoid things I really would rather not do.  


I kept telling myself I would officially start studying in May.  Well, hello there May, I'm not ready for you.  


You'd think that after my workload shift, I'd have hammered out a study plan with some of my free time in the office.  But that would mean I wasn't existing in a happy state of denial regarding looming ego-crushing standardized testing.


So naturally I sat down this weekend to work out a strategy, right?


What, do you think I bought the dinner in those photos at Harris Teeter?      


Instead of cracking the spine on the GRE book that's been on my table since early April, I went to a royal wedding party in my old prom dress (and a recently acquired tiara), lost some of my sanity to the DMV the next morning, recreated one of my favorite Venice house dinners last night, and spent 3+ hours exploiting the unlimited brunch at Masa 14 this morning. 


Even though the royal wedding party kept me up late (I must say, wearing my senior prom dress the second time around was far more fun than the first, which could have something to do with NOT having the stomach flu this time), I was up at 6  yesterday morning.  My internal alarm clock is insane (and the flights that take off over my apartment starting at 6 don't help).  


So I prepped the mac and cheese ingredients for last night's dinner.  What, you don't grate cheese at 6am? After some cheese grating and bread crumb making, Sophie and I embarked on the DMV adventure. 


After we got lost trying to find 395, we finally found the DMV.  Along with the 8,947 other Virginians who also needed the fine services of the DMV on what is being called the nicest day of spring.  Two and a half hours later, we left with "VOID" hole-punched through our soon-to-expire NC licenses and at least half as much mental stability as we had when we first arrived. {New VA licenses arrive in a week...fingers crossed for a good photo}


Luckily Allie and I were hosting this week's Sunday dinner (on Saturday), so I had mac n cheese and peach cobbler to distract me from the DMV trauma.  Allie made bbq sauce and handled the chicken (touching raw meat still freaks me out a bit, and our dinners tend to be a collaboration).  Andy and Leana took turns bartending, mixing up strong batches of Arnold Palmers made with firefly vodka.  We soaked it up with a line up of cornbread, mac n cheese, bbq chicken, and peach cobbler with ice cream.  


Not that I had a huge brunch ahead of me the next day or anything... 


Except that I did.  Sophie's birthday is today, so we made reservations to try the brunch at Masa 14.  They offer an unlimited brunch, meaning you can order any item on the brunch menu, in any quantity, including drinks like mimosas, lemonade lager, and bacon bloody marys. Sophie and I devised a two-prong attack strategy, much like our Georgia Brown's adventure.


At Masa 14, the small plates come to the tables as they're ready, so we had a nearly constant barrage of little brunch dishes.  Everything was amazing, but I hit a bit of a wall shortly after we started the lunch round.  I don't think the bottomless mimosa thing helped my cause, not that I'm complaining.  No one is allowed to complain when bottomless mimosas are involved.


Maybe 3 hours after the birthday brunch kicked off, we reluctantly rolled out of our comfy booth and dispersed for an afternoon of general lethargy brought on by borderline gluttony.  It was glorious.


Thank goodness I had to squeeze in to my old prom dress before today.