week in review

Monday I made spiced carrot soup with shrimp from CI's Restaurant Favorites, a first course I typically make into a main with a salad and bread; some of the shrimp I cleaned were mushy and kind of ruined the meal for me, because I was worried about their overall freshness (they were from Publix, which at least hasn't utterly scared me off from the seafood dept like Kroger has). Tuesday I made a rather nice salad, the highlight of which was a roasted garlic dressing that I wasn't anticipating would be so good. It's from CI's Best Slow & Easy cookbook, I think, and I had saved it on my computer back when I had it checked out from the library. So I poached some chicken for that and threw in carrots, pepitas, diced (roughly) hard-boiled egg, and bacon, the great salad enhancer. It was good and M approved it even as a main. For Wednesday I fell back on breakfast, as it was M's first day of evening classes: waffles, sausage and eggs. Not the healthiest but we don't eat like that extremely often. A guy who writes at Front Porch Republic has argued against breakfast because sleeping should not count as fasting. :D I agree, it's rather stupid that our bodies demand food as soon as we rouse ourselves from doing absolutely nothing. But makinig up for skipping breakfast by having it for dinner---I'm on board with that.

weekend cooking

Friday M went back to work and I had him home for dinner, but I don't remember what we did—something snacky as usual. I think I had cake for dinner. The Bundt cake actually got better with age, up until a certain point (like maybe 4 days). It had moments of tasting like a chocolate cake donut. That was a keeper for the make-ahead dessert file for sure.

Friday/Saturday I made bagels for breakfast, trying the cinnamon raisin variety for the first time. That batch of dough took much longer to pass the float test for some reason, and I had some difficulty mixing it the night before. I was kind of surprised the cinnamon went right into the dough when mixing it the day before, since I remember reading in the King Arthur baking book that cinnamon and yeast don't do well together (something about cinnamon having slightly antimicrobial properties that work against the microbes that make up the yeast). But both they and the plain ones came out very well indeed.

I made a quiche lorraine and roasted some frozen Brussels sprouts for dinner. Brussels sprouts make the house smell so bad, and I would definitely prefer making fresh over frozen, but they were pretty good roasted with a little bacon fat and olive oil mixed.

snowed in

M has been home all day all week because of the freak snowstorm, so I've been doing lots of cooking for us. It's been fun. Tuesday for lunch I made New England clam chowder, with some necessary modifications (didn't think to buy celery before the storm hit) and the last of the delicious frozen CI Anytime Dinner Rolls with a side salad (my boring old standby: red leaf lettuce, baby carrots, and sunflower seeds in a slightly variable vinaigrette). For dinner I made the Szechuan pork, red pepper, and scallion stir fry that I first tried in November and loved. This time it was markedly bland; not sure what happened. My garlic wasn't fresh so I didn't put quite as much in as called for, since peeling and getting the green sprouts out of the middle before pressing is not what I call fun. M still said he'd eat it again, even like that. It was healthy and something different at least.

Wednesday for lunch I baked a cheesy chicken bundle from the freezer (something we made at Emily's in November) and with it we had leftover tomato soup. I was busy making more pumpkin muffins and a light chocolate Bundt cake from CI's Best Light Recipe, which was featured in one of the ATK weekly newsletter things. It did not disappoint. Better chocolate flavor than many cakes I've made, and though it seemed a tad dry today, with whipped cream and cherries it's still great. I'll probably freeze half before it dries out too much. It's nice for once being able to leave a cake out at room temperature. And given that it is relatively light, and has no icing, it makes a very nice everyday chocolate cake indeed.

Today I served up the last of the clam chowder for lunch. For dinner it will also be leftovers, from last night's mediocre pasta meal. Mostly so because I used the Garden Delight pasta which needs a very strong and/or rich sauce to cover up the (obviously) vegetal flavor. However, since it is healthy M doesn't mind it too much, and said the same thing last night as he did about the stir fry—not going to win any awards, but perfectly fine as a home cooked dinner. The sauce was the simple meat sauce from CI, which I made exactly per instructions (and which I know I've made before), and I think it usually gets better with age. It's not bad at all as an all-purpose sauce; I'm just spoiled by the tomato cream sauce I've made from them, as well as (especially) the slow-cooked pork sauce with wine, which I need to make the next time pork ribs are even marginally on sale (not altogether rational, I know, but I have to feel like I'm being frugal most of the time...).