New Year's at Home

For dinner, I had leftover chicken and apple sausage, with a side of glazed carrots and a glass of cava.



Jon is still in Florida, and most of the people we know are still out of town. Despite a fleeting desire to check out roller disco, I decided to stay home and hang out with the dog for the night. I planned on roasting a chicken and making ratatouille, but I lost my appetite after making these cookies. Not because they're bad, but because they're so full of butter I felt stuffed after two cookies (and some cookie dough....)

I don't really like carrots, but I happened to buy some the other day. I blame this. I used it merely as inspiration, because I was feeling too lazy to make a production of glazing carrots.



I melted a little butter, tossed the carrots around for awhile (hoping to brown them a bit, which did NOT happen), added a little water, and tossed them around a little more. Drizzled in a little lemon juice, threw in some thyme, salted, and done. I didn't add any sugar, and I wish I hadn't added any thyme, which was too heavy. They were still ok.

My new favorite thing: the multi-pack of herbs. Pretty cheap, lasts for weeks.







The cava was likewise ok.

I prefer big, manly red wines, but go for silly girly whites when I drink them. I love a good vionier. Vinho verdes are nice, but that is about as sparkly as my tastes get. Next time, I'll be less festive and get something more exciting.



And no, I don't own champagne flutes. I don't even own glasses for white wines anymore. Sorry.

Light Snacking at Home

For dinner, I had some chicken and apple sausage from Trader Joe's, with a glass of red wine. I've been grazing all evening, so I guess "dinner" also includes some pfeffernüsse cookies, some maple yogurt, some pasta sauce (I snack on it sometimes like soup), and maybe even the roast beef I snacked on as a late lunch. I am currently snacking on more (addictive) pfeffernüsses. Damn you, TJ's.

In other news, I just got back from a week in Florida, and a week in Houston before that. While at the in-laws' house in Florida, I devoured their large stack of Cook's Illustrated magazines. Great articles, but I found myself losing patience with a certain bow-tied individual's overly cutesey-folksy introductions. My grandfather was born in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Vermont, then raised by a single mother there during the Depression. I'm just as bitter about the encroachment of rich New Yorkers and loss of community as he is. If anyone would appreciate his brand of cutesey, you'd think it would be me. But no. It grates.*

However, I think his introductions would make a great drinking game for wonky cooking types.

Take a drink every time he mentions:

-charmingly rural townsfolk by name (+1 if it is one of the "old" families)
-maple syrup (+2 for sugaring stories)
-a cute story about one of his kids
-hunting (+2 if he smugly refers to the cycle of life or the thriftiness of rural folk)
-"hardiness"
-his childhood (+1 for missing the old days; +3 if it involves outhouses or a lack of electricity)

I'm sure I'm missing a lot. Any suggestions?


*Which is not to dis the man. I hear he is incredibly nice, and I love bowties. And New England.

Pizza at Home

For dinner, I had pizza and a glass of malbec.

Pizza is a great way to get rid of lingering leftovers. Plus, I'd heard good things about Trader Joe's pre-made pizza dough and wanted to try it. I chose the whole wheat dough- my whole grain obsession rears its head once again- and paired it with garlicky, herby olive oil. I'm not a huge fan of tomato sauce. I added some chopped roasted red pepper, black oil-cured olives, goat cheese, parmesan cheese, and spicy italian-style chicken sausage.

The toppings were good, and the dough didn't stick to my pizza stone as much as I thought it would. But the dough was barely ok- really dense and grainy. Moreover, it smelled like wet paint when I first removed it from its plastic bag. Too much fermentation? I'm curious to try their white flour dough, but I can make tastier whole-wheat pizza dough at home with my white whole wheat flour.

The malbec was La Finca, also from TJ's, $3.99. There are a lot of gorgeous Argentine malbecs in the $7-10 range, and next time I might just spring for one of them. The La Finca wasn't bad, but it was watery and undistinguished. It reminded me of bad California Pinot Noir.

In other news, I ordered a DSLR. It should arrive tomorrow. I have high hopes for more impressive food photography, and hopefully fewer battery issues. It's used, but 6.2 megapixels is still a step up from 3.1 megapixels.

Spaghetti at Home

Tonight for dinner, I had whole-wheat spaghetti with red sauce, arugula, vegetarian Italian "sausage", and some leftover Nero d'Avola.

All of the components were better together. I was particularly happy with the veggie sausage from Trader Joe's. I used it in the other night's pizza, and was thoroughly unimpressed, but here the pasta sauce disguised its texture so effectively I could *almost* pretend it was real. The sauce was TJ's "rustico" sauce, chosen for its imported Italian tomatoes. I know that sounds snobby, but I really can tell the difference, and I prefer the Italian ones for their lower acidity and more plummy, round flavors. This particular sauce had the mellow acidity I like, but was quite overshadowed by red pepper flavors when eaten alone- which I do, often, as a weird snack. So it was a nice surprise to discover that the whole-wheat pasta and arugula (which I mixed into the sauce) balanced the sweet pepper flavors perfectly.

A note on Trader Joe's. I had never seen one before moving here, despite wishing for one for the last five or so years. I had expected something resembling a Whole Foods- a traditional grocery store model, turned organic- but cheaper. TJ's, with its emphasis on prepared food components, pre-made meals, and house-brand staples, is not at all what I expected, but I'm still finding its presence has completely supplanted my Whole Paycheck fixation. I haven't set foot in the local Whole Foods in my entire month here, even though it's less than a mile from TJ's. It just seems TJ's has almost everything I'd want from that sort of grocery store, and other things are best purchased at the ordinary market. My only complaint so far is that, while TJ's makes a delicious-looking array of granolas, NONE of them have less than 10g of sugar per serving. I hate sugary cereals. Otherwise, good job TJ's.

Guinea Pig Weekend

No, I did not eat cuy this weekend- Jon would never forgive me...

Our friend Charlie bought a smoker, and wanted to get the hang of using it by experimenting with different meats and smoking chips. We were very, very happy guinea pigs all weekend long.

Friday night, he smoked chicken breasts, bratwurst, and some sort of spicy crawfish sausage, all from Pete's Fine Meats. I've always noticed the shop, but never checked it out. My mistake. It all took about two hours to cook in the smoker with some relatively light chips (peach and pecanwood, I think), and turned out great. We supplemented it with beans, potato salad, and a wide variety of Mexican and American beers.

Charlie's Saturday project was baby back ribs. He rubbed them with a pretty typical spice blend- brown sugar, salt, chili powder, and some other stuff- then let them smoke for hours on end in mesquite and hickory. He finished them with some honey bbq sauce at the end. Best ribs EVER. They were nice and crispy-sweet, with incredibly tender meat inside. I could hardly stop myself from eating the bones.

That dinner was accompanied by the same sides, more beer, and some ice cream I made. It was loosely based on this recipe for brown sugar & sour cream ice cream. I really wanted to make creme fraiche ice cream, but creme fraiche was super-pricey, and I mistakenly thought I could make it with sour cream. Turns out, creme fraiche is buttermilk + cream, NOT buttermilk + sour cream. Hence, the weird ice cream. I added a pound's worth of pureed and strained strawberries to the recipe, along with a little corn syrup. I froze the blend in my ice cream maker, then left it in the freezer for almost three hours. Happily, it didn't over-freeze (the sour cream probably helped; more fat=softer ice cream). It was refreshing and delicious, but tasted like frozen yogurt because of the tangy sour cream.

My biggest mistake of the weekend was not bringing my camera- we had a lot of fun, and it was so very Texas. I'm sad I don't have photos of Charlie, in his "Keep Austin Weird" t-shirt and UT hat, tending the smoker. Maybe next time. I like being a food guinea pig...

Sausage at Home

For dinner, I had boiled sausage with baked acorn squash and a glass of vinho verde.

The sausage came from the meat section of Central Market, and was chosen for its bizarrely tasty-sounding composition- chicken, kalamata olives, and feta. We chose to boil them to prevent the cheese from leaking out of the casing upon melting. They were surprisingly yummy, in a strange sort of way. The feta added a peculiar tang and good texture, while the olives added moisture and a nice saltiness. The chicken was on the dry side; ideally, the ratio of chicken to olives would be dialed down a little to improve texture.

The squash had been lingering around the house, one of my sad attempts at pretending it is fall despite the temperature outside. I baked it, cut in half, cut side down in a pan of water for about 45 minutes at 400 degrees. Every internet source I found said to cook it for an hour, but it was on the overdone side after 45 minutes. Slathered in butter and fleur de sel, it was still awesome.

The wine was decent- Famega vinho verde, about $7. Aveleda is still my favorite vinho verde, but this was better than Casal Garcia, and about on par with La Santola. It is relatively dry and tastes primarily of apples.