Since today is Sunday of a three day weekend, we are being a little lazy. Waiting for it to warm up to pursue outdoor activities, and trying to activate an old iPhone for our student. Ethan got picked up at 8:00 to drive back to Minnesota and college with his mom. I folded laundry, and made cherry-stuffed French toast for breakfast. I’m going to have to do actual work work later today, setting up my online courses that will start on January 23rd while I am at the ALA conference. And of course, all Wisconsin is in anticipation for the Packers/Giants game this afternoon.

Beet & beef borscht - becoming less soup and more solid

Pumpkin-cranberry muffins

Streusel-topped apple pie - a little too much streusel

Breakfast leftovers: Cherry-stuffed French toast, 1 piece bacon, plain French toast

I made the last of the caramelized onions from the  galettes into onion dip with creme frâiche and sour cream – that was a success, and I made sure by tasting it on corn chips, honey wheat sticks, and wheat thins. (corn chips & wheat thins won).

I tried to use up more of the salad greens from Pie Palooza by making them into veggie broth – with squash and herbs, that woulda been good – but the greens turned the broth black, so in the morning I threw it out.

I made the leftover squash cubes, also from the galettes, into a gratin with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese. It was really good, I ate a big bowl of it for supper – the crumb topping was perfectly crispy, almost like those Parmesan chips you can make, frico, I think they are – in contrast to the soft squash. But Mark didn’t want any, and although I packed a serving into a plastic container for work lunch, in the morning I ended up pitching that, too – although I did wash out and save the container.

I had a really pretty head of red cabbage and a pound of Brussels sprouts in the basement fridge, from a CSA box a few weeks ago, and I wanted to make this slaw, that I had made for a dinner last winter. It has too many steps and ingredients, but it’s really good – disappeared in a flash at that past dinner, anyways. Another success, with cashews instead of pine nuts, and Farmer John’s Asiago instead of Parmesan curls, and still good for lunch without any cheese added at all.

And I made a batch of hazelnut & chocolate meringues, to send on the plane with Rach – she’s going to have Thanksgiving in upstate New York with her no-gluten-eating fiancé, and the rest of her family – and to use up the toasted hazelnuts that had been sprinkled in the salad on Saturday night. I usually make these for passover – it’s 4 egg whites, and about a cup of sugar, and about a cup of chocolate, and or nuts. These were a lot more chocolate-y and nutty, because I had close to a cup of the hazelnuts, and I used some expresso chocolate chunks that were lurking in the bottom of the baking bin, plus part of a bag of milk chocolate chips. Another success.

And I never got around to making that pear cake – to use up the pears – maybe I’ll do that tonight. It’s got a bunch of steps – marinate dried fruit in brandy, caramelize pears, make the cake itself – and it has a caramel sauce, but I don’t need to make that, because I still have some caramel sauce from the pumpkin sticky pudding, to use up.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Cabbage and Pine Nuts

Meringues

Meringues - the way the cookies reflect on the side of the plastic box is kind cool, I thought

Meringues

Pears and bananas

Pears with only a glimpse of the bananas

• Crostini with goat cheese, slow-roasted tomato, & pickled onion – homemade baguettes, and I used Heidi’s technique of pouring the oil (or butter) into a bowl and tossing the bread slices in and mixing it all up – more effective than brushing or spraying or drizzling the oil onto the bread – but I used a touch too much oil. Homemade slow-roasted tomatoes, too, and the pickled onions were a dark magenta hue I’d not seen before, tho it’s a recipe I’ve made many times. And I mixed the goat cheese with a dash of honey. I didn’t make the white bean crostini – so now I have a yogurt bucket of cooked white beans to use or freeze.
• Chicken salad with apples and walnuts – white meat chicken, toasted nuts and one giant, local Delicious apple. I didn’t make the crispy wonton cups to put the chicken in – it ended up being a chunky salad so it woulda been a pain to stuff into the cups. Instead, I made chicken salad canapes – the salad, mounded on buttered bread – and also put out a bowl of the chicken salad for people to eat however they wanted.
• I bought Carr Valley Mobay and Marieka Gouda with Fenugreek and Farmer John’s Asaiago and smoked Gouda – which was the crowd pleaser – more of that eaten than any of the others. I put the cheese out with crackers and fresh figs and pears and olive tapende (made by whirring up all old olives from the fridge with a small jar of purchased). There was also Jacque Pepin’s cheese spread – all the cheese ends, also whirred up in the processor, with butter. This one had some bleu, some cranberry cheddar, some orange cheddar, and some Parmesan.
• Vegetables and chips and dips. Dill dip, because I got a lovely bunch of fresh dill at the Wednesday market. Edamame hummus from the newest Martha, quite tasty – but a little pasty and thick because I cut back on the large amount of water called for, since, naturally, I thought it was one of those Martha tricks to insure that no one can make her food as good as her – but in fact somewheres in between the 1/3 cup I used and the 3/4 cup she said to use would be right. With blanched broccoli, beauty heart radishes, and carrot sticks. And a big bowl of these pickled veggies from Saveur – I left out the zucchini, and only used 1 jalapeno, but it was still a gigantic batch. I’ll be eating them for lunch all week.
• Cocktail meatballs & tofu balls – the standard Heinz chili sauce meatball recipe, using red currant jam and the last of a bottle of siracha along with the chili sauce, instead of the canned cranberry sauce or grape jelly (and packaged meatballs) specified in the original. The tofu balls are Mollie Katzen, from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest – I put them out with a bottled BBQ sauce, but, me, I preferred the fu balls dipped in the sauce from the meatballs.
• Sweets – mini pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, Heidi’s chocolate truffle cake made into cups which had to licked (or spooned out) and Dori’s jammers, a la me.

Goat cheese, tomato & pickled onion crostini

Last three of the chocolates

UN-color corrected radishes

Beaty Heart radishes

'Fu balls, trying to escape

"Fu balls contained

Jammers with American Spoon cherry jam

Pumpkin cupcakes

So, probably the funnest thing was Terese brought Janie, and these two women are my Ovens of Brittany cronies – friends from my years of restaurant work, 20+ years ago. Friday morning, I went for a walk with Rach, and she peeled off early, so I was doing the long last leg of the walk on my own. I ran into one of John’s friends from high school, Sam, unlocking his bike in front of his parents house – he has his own apartment, shared with a girlfriend downtown, but said he comes to his folks’s when he wants to study. Sam ate lunch at my house almost every day for four years in high school. So, anyways, Sam said he works at the Greenbush Bar, owned by another of my Ovens of Brittany pals, Anna. I said I used to work with his boss, Anna, and Sam replied, “oh yeah, the desserts at Greenbush are kinda like the stuff I used to eat at your house.”

On Saturday, I had scrambled eggs with tomatoes, onions & goat cheese from the crostini and broccoli, leftover from being a dip veggie.

Anyways, last night I made steak fajitas – I had a two-pound piece of flank steak that I marinated in cumin & garlic & lemon juice, and loads of peppers from my CSA – little orange ones, one reddish-orange bell, 1 long green frying pepper. Our student didn’t want to eat, so I cut the piece of steak in half, and froze one of the halfs. Then I broiled the rest under the broiler, and Mark and I ate it rolled up in flour tortillas with the peppers sauteed with some purple onion. With rice cooked in homemade veggie broth from Friday on the side. I was extra decadent and put a little butter on my rice.

Tonight I was going to make tomato tart, but again it seemed like I’d not have too many eaters, so instead I made some tabouli, using up the last few good leaves off a bunch of fresh mint that was lurking in the vegetable drawer, and a bunch of parsley I bought on Sunday when I had a vague notion of turning the flank steak into braciole. And one of the tomatoes that would’ve gone into the tart. And half a box of tofu, also found lurking the fridge, cut into little cubes and crisped up in a skillet in oil, and soy sauce and a sprinkle of brown sugar – Mark said the Italian girl wanted tofu, but I think he might’ve misunderstood. I ate the tabouli on a bed of greens, mostly a really peppery arugula, with a small roast beef sandwich on the side – even though it seems an odd side for tabouli – made from that too dry challah, and leftover flank steak.

Now I have a free form plum tart in the oven, made according to my own recipe for a peach version – pictures forthcoming.

Tabouli on a bed of argula

Roast beef sandwich on Rosh Hashanah challah

Plum tart

Pesto-ify

I made three kinds of pesto today: sun-dried tomato (no basil or cheese – the tomatoes, garlic, olives, fresh rosemary, almonds, olive oil); basil with pistachio nuts and the usual stuff – Parmesan, olive oil, garlic, and unusual – little bit of lemon zest; and basil with pine nuts, Parmesan, olive oil, garlic. There’s something wrong with Tumblr – my posts aren’t showing up. I posted these instagram pix to Twitter, instead. The Tumblr website says,

Known Issues

• 4 hours ago: A database issue is creating errors with posting, tracked tags, and group blogs. Our engineers are working quickly to resolve the problem.

Deconstructed tofu kabobs, crackers & cheese, cauliflower chow chow

For yesterday’s happy hour, I made the red pepper dip, muhammara. I like Heidi’s recipe, and she uses the muhammara as a “slather” for tofu kabobs. I thought it’d be nice to Deconstruct her recipe, and make broiled tofu sticks to dip in the muhammara. I got firm tofu, and then cut it in sticks and boiled it a few minutes to firm it up, and drained. Then I marinated it in sesame oil, tamari and black pepper, and ran it under the broiler right before serving with the dip. Yum. You can see it at the top of the plate.

I also made a bunch of pickly vegetables, refrigerator pickles, really, to go with cheese & crackers: pickled beets & eggs – the recipe in my newest Bon Appetit said to boil the beets & use star anise; I decided to roast them and use whole allspice. But I made the cauliflower chow chow and the pickled baby squash pretty much as is, except I used a mixture of summer squash and zucchini for the latter.

It was all still good for a quick dinner tonight, and then we went to see all-grown-up Harry Potter.

And speaking of the basement, the dehumidifier’s stopped working – I think it’s at least 6 or 7 years old – a.k.a. out of warranty. A new one is going to cost close to $200, I think. Shit. So it’s made me feel bad about carting more stuff down there but c’est la vie.

I’m doing pretty good at using up all the Memorial Day food, and my CSA box – Monday I made radish leaf pesto. Tonight I made a pasta with caramelized onions, the last of the white cheese blend I had made for the apps for Davy’s going away – mascarpone, goat & cream cheese – the radish pesto, and the last three green onions from the bunch i bought at the Saturday market, Oh and some chicken breast meat I  had thawed and roasted yesterday. I think at least that combo worked, as did the cat’s usual attempts to jump up and lick whatever she could get of the luscious cheese, meat & noodles.

Radish leaf pesto pasta

I think in Wisconsin we are in the food season that’s the equivalent of the brown matty grass and trash that’s in most people’s yards. Even my neighbors who have raked, while their lawns look a little neater, still suffer from the brown-ness. I remember this season from when I was a women’s dorm and sorority house cook. Heavy winter comfort food has lost its appeal; the girls  are all slimming, and the light fresh spring produce is not yet available. We all need a spring tonic.

All my food photos, taken indoors without enough light, seem to be suffering this malaise as well. I didn’t even try to capture last night’s dinner. Here’s the broccoli the day after though – looking pretty fresh & green. I think I’ll make it into broccoli fried rice for dinner tomorrow with the rice that’s been leftover from the free sample spinach strudels, made for the wedding party site scouting trip last Saturday. It’s short grain rice – not the right type for fried rice – but it was cooked in some really tasty home made veggie broth (lots of thyme & garlic), and I think it’ll work just fine.

"Jumped" broccoli - with red pepper flakes & garlic

I have a peach-blackberry-cranberry-blueberry crisp in the oven – maybe it will be more photogenic – you be the judge.

I told the kids I’d give them recipes with easy equivalents, so here goes:

Chilaquiles

6 – 7 cups chili – home made OR out of a can or jar
1 package corn tortillas, or half a bag of corn chips, unsalted if you’ve got them
1 1/2 cups grated cheese (I used cheddar, but pepper jack would be good)
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Topping:
4 oz. goat cheese
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sour cream
OR 2 cups sour cream and a little milk for thinning

If you are using corm tortillas, cut them into wedges and fry them in a little oil until crispy. Arrange them in the bottom of a big shallow baking pan (I used a 14-inch pizza pan). OR just dump in the corn chips. Top with chili. Top the chili with 2/3  of the cheese, and cilantro if using. Crumble the goat cheese into a sauce pan, add the cream and sour cream, and stir over medium heat until smooth. Pour this sauce over the top of the casserole. OR mix milk into the sour cream until it’s a pouring consistency, and use that. Top with the last of the cheddar and bake at 375°s until bubbling, about 30 minutes.