by popular demand

whilst in atlanta, i had a number of people request i post links to the food i talk about in my facebook statuses. today's list is too long for a facebook status, so - egads! - i'm updating my blog. and i completely admit i am taking the easy way out by only posting in regards to today's projects, entirely ignoring the past 2 months of food, events, and the atlanta trip. deal with it.

bryan started the day by making one of his lovely chicken stocks. for those not in the know, we almost exclusively use homemade chicken stock. because it is so easy. after we have a roast chicken, we toss the carcass in a freezer bag, along with vegetable scraps - the ends of onions, carrots, celery, whatever. after we have a few carcasses, we make stock. which consists of peeling the frozen hunks of chicken and veg bits out of their bags, covering with water, and slowly simmering for a few hours. once the mix has reduced nicely, we cool, strain, and freeze off in 1, 2, and 4 cup measurements. couldn't be easier. and it tastes roughly 400 million times better than store bought. cooking all day, leaching the bones of all nutrients leads to an incredibly rich stock - at room temperature, it is solid, like jelly. i call it chicken jello. appetizing, no?

i finally decided to tackle some of the giant cuts of pork we have in our freezer from our whole pig. i started with the easy route - wet curing 3 huge ham steaks. after a week or 2 in the brine, i will bake one as is, and slow smoke the other 2. i was reading my Charcuterie book, which started getting me very, very excited for doing more. i plan on doing a dry cured (salted and hung) ham, as well as a blackstrap molasses country ham. this excites me. it's practically naughty.

i also prepared a sirloin tip roast for roast beef with yorkshire pudding, which we'll have monday or tuesday. i seasoned the roast with salt and pepper, and rubbed it with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. it smelled heavenly. i am planning rocky road bars for dessert, because only chocolate and red wine can follow beef like that.

bryan is working on a potato and leek soup for consumption and freezing sometime this week.

and we're not even eating any of that today.

tonight we're having chicken fried steak and celery root and squash gratin with walnut-thyme streusel, a dish which sounds fancy and time consuming, but is a breeze to make.

enjoy!

time keeps on ticking

it seems the older i get, the faster time flies, and the less time there is to do things. surely i'm not the only one who notices this. if only there were a few more hours in the day. of course, i'm usually too tired to do much in the evenings anyways, so i'm not sure it would matter. too bad i don't drink caffeine. perhaps that would help. i did get a large hot chocolate the other day, and i swear that had me buzzing and jittery, so i'm not sure what a cup of coffee would do to me. anyways. onwards.

way back on monday november 3rd, we had daal for dinner. bryan added chiles, so it was a bit too spicy for oliver, but boy did we ever love it. with some sour cream, lime, and cilantro to tame the heat, and puffy pita bread, it was a delicious dinner. definitely one we'll add to the menu to keep our bellies warm on these cold winter evenings. perhaps next time we'll do one less spicy, because i have the sneaking suspicion that oliver would love lentils.

friday november 7th, bryan came up with an on the fly dinner to use up some things we had in bulk. he made a deconstructed chicken cordon bleu, using chicken breasts, fresh mozzarella, some muenster, and ham. he served that with sauteed yellow summer squash, and potatoes. a hearty and satisfying meal. oliver enjoyed some leftover ground beef and beans instead, since we ate later than he needed to.



that saturday, the 8th, i made posole. oh posole, how i love you. pork, green chiles, bryan's homemade chipotles, onions, beer, hominy, oregano, cumin, bryan's homemade chicken stock. topped with sour cream, shredded lettuce, radish, sweet golden tomatoes, and a squeeze of lime. fantastic.

that sunday, mom and dad came over for dinner. in addition to bryan's traditional aztec squash (with zucchini, yellow summer squash, tomatoes, and epazote), he made a variation on sopa seca. i wasn't able to find the rice vermicelli noodles, so we adapted and just used rice noodles. instead of smoked turkey, we used leftover shredded chicken. it was a big hit. a very satisfying, comfort meal.

the weekend itself was fairly normal - running errands and hanging out. i got a cute new hat at target, so i can be a hip urban mom.


monday the 10th, we had a scrumptious pork tenderloin with maple mustard sauce, smashed red potatoes, and bryan's carmelized brussel sprouts with toasted bread crumbs. would you believe oliver enjoys brussel sprouts?

a few cute pictures of him being a ham that day:


why, no, mom, i'm not squishing my potatoes on the back of my chair, why do you ask?

look ma, no hands!

the next day, tuesday the 11th, we had - wait for it - chicken fried rib eyes (inspired by kristi's brother). why bother to chicken fry a rib eye, you may ask? because it's out of this world delicious, that's why. definitely better than the traditional cube steak, i'm not sure we can do it any other way now. we had that with some simply blanched carrots, mac and cheese, and of course, white pan gravy.

saturday the 15th, we got around to picking up some chicken wings so we could try them with bryan's homemade super spicy hot sauce. definitely hotter than normal. bryan liked them better than wings with his normal hot sauce, and they were quite good, but i like the normal hot sauce better - with less spice, it's more flavor.

last week sunday, the 16th, we started out the day right. i made breakfast sandwiches of waffles, grilled with ham, cream cheese, and apricot jam. everyone loved them. bryan and i indulged ourselves with some mimosas. our realtor had given us a bottle of champagne when we bought the house, but as i was pregnant, we stashed it. so we celebrated making it through the first year, just a little late. oliver tried to celebrate by stealing my orange soda, but too bad for him it was empty.


here's a random cute picture of ollie napping - he crashed out for a seriously LONG afternoon nap, which he wasn't too thrilled about being woken up from.


we used the leftover champagne tuesday, with some tuna steaks we had bought at trader joe's. bryan's champagne buerre blanc was spot on, but the steaks were a little dry and could have had better flavor. now we know not to buy cryo-vac'd tuna from there again. brown rice and carmelized turnips rounded out the meal.


we introduced oliver to peanut butter and jelly this past week. he's a fan.


friday, bryan had the day off so at&t could come and install new tv/internet/phone. day care had the day off, so oliver was home as well, and i worked from home to help out. for lunch, i gave oliver a bean burrito. at no point did it occur to me that this would be messy. i'm not sure why. but, he had fun eating it, and he loves beans, so i guess it worked out in the end.

that night for dinner, i made crock pot lasagna, which was an interesting concept to me. i had decided to use the crock pot a lot this winter, and wanted to branch out beyond roasts, soups, and stews. i didn't have very high expectations (it is lasagna in a crock pot, after all), but this turned out really delicious. i used a spaghetti sauce i had already made, and froze, with ground beef and italian sausage. the ricotta fluffed up, the cheese melted and even turned golden around the edges. definitely adding this one to the permanent roster. i picked up a rosemary herbed ciabatta for garlic bread, and made one of oliver's favorites - cauliflower.


oliver has been sick. it started last weekend with a runny nose, to which a dry cough soon added itself, which has turned into more of a hacking cough. friday i was worried he had pink eye, as while we were at target shortly before bed time i noticed his eye was weepy and a little goopy. saturday morning it looked much better. he's still feeling pretty crappy, though. he wouldn't eat much for breakfast or lunch yesterday (he did much better with dinner). he went down for his afternoon nap yesterday early. i thought we would sit and cuddle in the rocking chair, read a few books, but when we sat down, he simply curled up close to me, hugged his blanket tight, and immediately started to doze off. it breaks my heart to see him feeling so terrible. we picked up some hyland's homeopathic honey cough syrup for him, which seems to be helping. hopefully today he'll continue to feel better.

many new pictures have been added to the november gallery, including some cute video of him walking around.

the plan for today is to lay low at the house. bryan and i are going to marquette university this afternoon to see a play, chekhov's the cherry orchard. mom has graciously offered us 2 tickets and her babysitting services. we're pretty excited to get out of the house and take in some culture together. tonight, mom and dad will be joining us for dinner. bryan is making souvlaki (pork kebabs with cucumber–mint yogurt sauce), one of his favorite greek dishes. we have some pita bread, beans, and i'll be making some delicata squash fries, one of our favorite sides. the pork has been marinating since yesterday. it should be absolutely delicious!

we hit up the outpost yesterday to do some of our shopping for thanksgiving. they were having a sample day, with thanksgiving foods. so there were a lot more people there than usual, which i wasn't too happy about, but i did get to delight in feeding oliver tastes of things you'd never expect a 1 year old to like - such as wild rice, and leek stuffing. that's my boy! shannon arrives in town late wednesday night, and katie and kevin are flying in that night as well. unfortunately adrianne's car broke down, so it looks like she won't be able to make it. i'm really excited for the food; i think we have a pretty good "new american" (if you'll excuse me using that silly term) menu:

Waldorf Salad, which will be prepared by shannon

Salted Roast Turkey with Herbs and Shallot-Dijon Gravy, which is bryan's project

Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Bread Crumbs, to which we'll add some bacon (only because the brussels will carmelize better in pig fat, i swear), also to be prepared by bryan

Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding, which will be a joint effort between shannon and bryan

Green Bean Casserole, using a slightly different recipe than you usually see (no cream), which shannon will make

bryan will make his corn budin, of course (else i probably would make him sleep on the couch)

aunt debbie will be bringing a sweet potato dish of some kind

mom will of course bring her delicious yeast rolls

and for dessert: i'll be making my apple and fennel pie, debbie is bringing brownies with apples, caramel, and snickers, and shannon will be making a dessert as well

yummy, no?

11 months

last monday, bryan made that slow roasted moroccan chicken for dinner, with roasted tomatoes, chickpeas with raisins, and a salad of cucumber, tomato, and lemon balm. it all turned out very tasty. oliver *loved* the chickpeas, and those became a great dinner time item for him all week!

wednesday, our neighbor john brought over his heavy machinery, and he and bryan ripped out the tree in our front yard. i didn't mind the tree so much, but it was keeping sunlight from bryan's roses, so out it came. bryan and dad spent a good amount of time sawing it apart, and bryan made i don't know how many trips to the yard, as evidenced by the size of the darn thing:











for dinner, we had chicken fried steak with home fries. breaded and fried steak, with cream sauce? hello!! guess how much i love this dish. we had the cube steak on hand, and after reading about kristi's brother's chicken fried rib eye, we decided to have the original for dinner. not that we're not going to attempt that rib eye, mind you.

i spent that evening chasing oliver around the house. he likes to put a toy in his mouth, just like a dog. i kid you not - he will growl, shake his head from side to side, and crawl around the house as fast as can be. he must have learned it from the dogs, although they don't do it that much anymore (they spend a lot of their time looking at us woefully, as if to say, "remember when you loved me, too?"). that evening, we took a family walk to enjoy the GORGEOUS weather we'd been having, and the stuffed dog came along too - in his mouth of course. i swear he didn't chew on it the whole time.

thursday was csa day. we got, among other things, delicious radishes, brussel sprouts, green beans, and some kick ass carrots (in shades of purple, orange, and white). more tomatoes, too, of course, but i can't get enough of those sweet golden ones, so i was happy.

that night for dinner, i don't remember what we had planned (i blame mommy brain), but whatever it was didn't work out so we made what i will heretofore refer to as left over nachos. we used left over taco meat, and bryan made a pepper jack cheese sauce to mix that into. we also used the leftover home fries. put that on the remains of our tortilla chips from the previous week's nachos, along with lettuce, tomato, and sour cream and - ta da! left over nachos. :) they were delicious and i was too stuffed for ice cream.

friday, bryan made moussaka. normally, we make moussaka with ground beef, but as i have been liking lamb lately, we decided to try with half ground beef / half ground lamb. turns out i don't like ground lamb. i ate around the meat as best i could (and i did try to eat it - but just couldn't!), and filled up on ice cream afterwards. i was sad - i love moussaka, and bryan did a great job!!

saturday, i tried a new experiment: homemade sauerkraut. now, the old fashioned method of making sauerkraut involves a bucket, a basement, and a lot of salt (and perhaps 25 pounds of cabbage, depending on where you look). we decided that it wasn't worth it to do this with one head of cabbage (but just wait until next year). so instead, i packed sterilized jars full of raw, shredded cabbage and filled them with a simple brine of water, white vinegar, and mustard seeds, including a sprig of dried dill (from our garden) which had gone to seed, at the bottom of each jar. i processed the jars in the canner, and they're now hanging out in our basement. we'll see in a few weeks how that worked out. i made 8 jars, so hopefully it turned out well. :)

bryan picked me some gorgeous roses from my favorite rose bush in the back yard. this bush has the biggest, most beautiful, most fragrant flowers i've ever seen. and it keeps blooming! that bush won't quit. which is fine by me, because it keeps my house smelling like roses.

after oliver's afternoon nap, we headed to the zoo to kill some time. we went through the aviary. oliver had never been in that building before. he *LOVED* the penguins. he was so excited by them swimming and playing - he was jumping around in his stroller, flapping his arms, and talking excitedly to them. too cute!!

a few random pics from that day (hey, he's really cute, i take a lot of pictures, k?):

my boys, working hard:




his, "ooooooooooooooohhh, that's silly" face:


throwing a fake fit when i wouldn't let him do something (like chew on a laptop power cord, or climb the heating vent into the bay window):


hanging out at the zoo:





that night for dinner, bryan used the leftover cabbage to make a slaw, and served that with burgers and homemade potato chips. his burgers were outstanding, as usual, with cheese and that yellow tomato i love. the chips were thin, crispy, and the best ever. who knew i could be wooed with hamburgers?

sunday, the day started out great, but took a turn for the worse when oliver decided he didn't need an afternoon nap. it wasn't that he was cranky, but since we had dinner plans, i needed him to nap so as to not have a meltdown at 5 p.m. no such luck for momma. i thought about selling him back, but wasn't sure if i could get good money for a sweaty baby who wouldn't nap and was probably teething.

sunday night for dinner, we headed over to gram & gramp's house. gram made pot roast, mashed potatoes, and a cauliflower and broccoli bake with cheese and bread crumbs. i love gram's pot roasts!! for dessert, she served ice cream, which included a homemade lemon ice cream. i had that *with* a scoop of chocolate, because i know how to get down. oliver had a blast exploring a new house and charming gram and gramps. gram brought out a box of little toy cars and trucks, which oliver marveled at - they rolled! i know what he's getting for his birthday! for skipping his afternoon nap, he was in a great mood. i was duly impressed, and decided to love him again.

yesterday, day care had the day off, so i worked from home. bryan and i split caring for oliver so we could both get some work done. oliver was incredibly well behaved; played nicely and napped well. after we shut down work for the day, i shoved some food in oliver's mouth, and then we ran off to target to get that errand out of the way before the weekend. dad dropped by so he and bryan would work on the tree stump some more (and determined that due to random pieces of metal being embedded mysteriously throughout the stump, bry will have to pay the city $25 to pick it up rather than ruin 18 chain saw blades trying to cut it down). oliver took his sweet time going to bed, so dinner wasn't until after 8 p.m., but it was so delicious that it made up for it being so late. bryan seared steaks on the cast iron, for which i made a quick mustard horseradish sauce. he also braised swiss chard from the csa along with garlic, yellow tomato, and a pepper from our garden. so flavorful with just a little bite. we also had the green beans from our csa. dessert was butter pecan ice cream. we watched heroes, then i crashed in bed.

oliver is 11 months old today! i can hardly believe it. he'll be 1 next month - totally crazy. where did all the time go? oh, yeah - sucked into a vacuum of sleep deprivation, that's right. i'm pretty excited for his birthday!

bunch of random new pictures in the september gallery.

WFD: if bryan gets a chance to finish the prep, it'll be pastitsio. pastitsio is a greek pasta dish, traditionally made with ground lamb (ours will be beef), tomato sauce, cheeses, and a bechemel sauce. in short, most of the things i like, all in one place. if that doesn't work out, it'll be organic frozen ravioli, with ground beef and a sauce of some sort. either meal calls for wine, me thinks.

pizza, beer, and homemade organic baby food (not all together, of course)

spending the past 2 days at home with the munchkin were nice, and fun (i can't get enough of those giggles and cuddles), but it is good to be back at work as well. all in all, he did very well schedule wise, so i was able to get some work done. i'm definitely looking forward to getting him back to our normal schedule; hopefully it helps with his night sleeping as well. he has definitely been off for the last week or so; he has been getting up a LOT (last night being the worst yet). he just seems restless, and he does eat... but we need to get better about keeping him away from the bottle at night to regulate his feedings. he needs to eat during the day!! bryan and i discussed this morning how we need to solidify our approach and communicate to each other better. we tend to not alert the other to his last feeding, so when he wakes and it's the other's turn to get up, we just go ahead and feed him... plus after being up and down 5 times by 3am, memory becomes pretty fuzzy. so we've devised a plan, and starting tonight, will be better about putting it into action. hopefully oliver complies. :) it will take a period of adjustment, i am sure, but he is a good baby so i think we'll be ok.

tuesday night, bryan fulfilled a fantasy of mine and made me homemade pizza. while he is normally afraid of all things flour, his pizza dough recipe is perfected, and to be coveted. light, fluffy, incredibly flavorful - it is the stuff of dreams. topped with his tangy, rich tomato sauce, perfectly bubbled mozzarella, and some pepperoni, it's hard not to devour the entire pie (we didn't bother trying to resist). i had the new glarus hop hearty I.P.A. with it, and while i probably wouldn't pair that beer with pizza again, it was pretty delicious. in true pizza house fashion, i cavalierly skipped my vegetables. aren't hops a plant??

after bryan and i wrapped up work yesterday, we bundled the baby up for a short walk. the weather had warmed up into the 40s, so we figured it would be good to take advantage of it. ollie was a bit fussy as we were getting set to go, but as soon as that stroller started moving he calmed down. the sun and wind were a bit much for him (he's still not used to that yet), but he seemed to enjoy it anyways. he ate a big bottle and took a really good nap once we got home.

last night for dinner, i took some flat iron steaks we had from peapod, and made a rub/marinade with ground chipotle peppers, smoked paprika, hungarian paprika, oregano, salt, dark brown sugar, fresh crushed garlic, olive oil, and cider vinegar. cooked these off (medium), and sliced them thin; laid them in warm corn tortillas, topped with shredded red cabbage, thinly sliced tomatoes, and pickled red onions. bryan also put some of my homemade bread and butter jalapeno pickles on his; i skipped that extra heat. the steak was phenomenal. so tender and juicy, and very flavorful. i have added 4 more to my next peapod order. :) i think the tacos would have been better on flour tortillas (the recipe i based the idea on called for corn; plus, that is all we had) and with some mexican crema. still, not complaining. :)

eating solids has been going fairly smoothly all week. we feed oliver a bottle an hour or so before cereal time, so that he is not super hungry and thus less likely to get frustrated. he does seem to get a little frustrated, though, in that he is used to a constant stream of milk and with the cereal, he has to wait for me to load up the spoon and feed him. so perhaps feeding him cereal sooner after his bottle would work better. he does seem to gobble it up pretty good; far less than half ends up on his face. :) i'm hoping that as we increase the amount he gets, he gets more used to spoon feeding, and less frustrated. and hopefully, more sleepy at night. wish us luck tonight.

this weekend, we plan on buying a new [much needed] mattress. bryan is set on getting a king size, which i suppose makes sense (it'll fit more kids than a queen). i'm definitely looking forward to hitting up the outlet mall, at least. we're also attending a csa open house, sponsored by slow food wisconsin. we loved our csa in atlanta, so we're really looking forward to buying a share here in wisconsin. although, i have been choking on my tongue a little when looking at how much it will cost us. the ones here are far more expensive than what we paid in atlanta; then again, the ones here are run by the farms themselves and are leaps and bounds more organized (our atlanta one was run by a flaky guy who had never done anything like it before and had, often, to supplement from the farmer's market and god knows where else). we'll probably buy half a share, in hopes that we get our own garden in this spring as well (which, in all reality, we better get moving on the plans for). we'll see. we may end up with a mountain of vegetables. i can always make my own baby food with the extras, though, so i'm excited for that. homemade, organic baby food - is he a lucky little devil or what?