Everyone who regularly dines with me is, I hope, hitting the gym more, because this site makes me want to cook up all manner of mischief in the kitchen. Fortunately, this also runs up against end-of-term paper crunch time, so they are not in too much danger of expanding waistlines. Alas for all around, I tend to survive off of 1-2 cooked meals a week and a lot of take out, turkey sandwiches, pizza, and bowls of cereal for the first three weeks of December.
If the plans hold though, tomorrow upon my return I will be making:
- Fried Sage Leaf Pork Chops
- Yams Baked with Cranberries and Pecans
- Sauteed Squash in Lemon Basil Butter
- Apple-Cranberry Cobbler
Yes, for a casual Monday night meal. Everything is so much more impressive when you Type Things Out With Capital Letters, but really, everything above is very easy and cooks all at the same time, it's only a lot of chopping. And my poor knife technique is at least getting more efficient. We've been eating a lot of chops lately (pork, lamb) because they cook quickly right before serving, a bonus when I'm coming home from a long day at school and The Dude's coming in from a long day of "real work" and a commute. Recipes and pictures will be posted the next day.
For Wednesday, I plan to make my Big Pot of Awesome Chicken Soup and chocolate chip cookies. Comfort food for a cold night that will last me through a weekend dissertating alone--at least my belly will be warm.
But now that I have learned about this blog, I am going to have to make:
- All of these cookies (chocolate chip for Wednesday very definitely, eventually molasses and chocolate)
- Pumpkin Bread Pudding (awesome)
- A Galette (replace the nectarines with pears, and you have a winter galette, also the empanadas look awesome)
- Pecan Bars (aw, yeah!)
- Pumpkin Muffins (my favorite gourd!)
- Mexican Wedding Cakes (one of my favorite cookies in the world)
- Homemade Oreos (but I'll replace the filling with mascarpone cream)
- Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble (because I want to give rhubarb a second chance)
Savory recipes are lacking on this blog, but I'm sure I'll figure something out with my freezer-full of 5 lb. pork roast, pork chops, and 12 lbs. filet mignon steaks.
I like this blog because of the very good pictures (appealing without being food porn), the snappy writing (again, descriptive without being salivatingly sexed up, no use of "voluptuous" to describe beets for example), and the fact that they road test recipes from TV and magazines and say which ones work and which don't. It's "real": home cooks trying to make do and make good, and sometimes your pate brisee breaks and so your galette bubbles and leaks. Right now I'm eating Cheetos, which means I fail the foodie test and should have no pretenses of being a better person/cook than I really am.
I also like how the snappy writers and commenters acknowledge universally known truths: Rachel Ray is f'ing annoying with her acronyms and hybrid neologisms and nicknames for food ("stoups" = stew-like soups; "sammies" = sandwiches), too loud, too stupid, too easy. But there is nothing wrong with a 30 minute meal (see above menu for tomorrow, even though it's more like 1 hour of prep + cooking and doesn't include half of the bake time). And at least she's a better cook and person than Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade Craptastic meals.
Seriously, what would explain the chutzpah of a WASPy Aryan Stepford wife coming up with something as offensive (and DISGUSTING) as a "semi-homemade" (even an idiot can use a can of store-bought frosting on a store-bought cake) "Kwanzaa Celebration Cake" using Cornuts?! WTF?!
At any rate, stay tuned and add this blog to your RSS feed for more recipes and fun. Just don't expect me to bake a Kwanzaa Cake.
1 comment:
We had the suite - voyage en chine - absolutely the best room ever!. Enjoyed eveything and my son was smitten when he received a cake (compliments from the kitchen chef) on his birthday. Enjoyed staying at the hotel more than any sight seeing in Hue. do you know more please visit our online booking.
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