Deb's Lunch ... and dinner and breakfast too » TV

Raw and cooked

DebS — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:55:02 +0000

Raw potatoes with thyme, to be roasted

Roasted potatoes with thyme

We had potatoes for breakfast again today. Then we went to see Rossini’s Cinderella, staged in 1930s Hollywood – so Cinderella and the ugly stepsisters were trying to parts in a movie. Snacked on some party leftovers, and now it’s time for dessert – maybe trifle, or I still really want rhubarb bars and vanilla ice cream – and game of thrones.

Crunched for Time

DebS — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:19:03 +0000

My winter break got cut short by my unhappy discovery that our syllabi for spring term classes are due Jan 10 – I was operating on the blissful assumption that I had till the 17th.

So I’ve spent way too much of the weekend on the computer, trying to get the syllabi for my two courses written. They’re courses I’ve taught before, but I always want to update and add new material and readings … sometime I wish I could be one of those profs that just teach the same thing year after year …

I got out for a walk this morning with Rach – high 30s and sunny, no snow anywhere – it’d be just right if we were in Colorado, like in Boulder, NOT in the mountains. john posted a sleepy cat picture – wish I coulda spent more of the weekend like this, but I guess I did spend a lot of last night on the couch with cats holding me down. I watched the movie about Valerie Plame and only tuned into Saturday night life for a few minutes to hear Kelly Clarkson sing ger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” – which I guess was her first number. She’s not really my kind of thing, politically OR musically, but definitely one of those ear worm kind of songs – here’s the link to see her on Hulu, courtesy Rolling Stone.

We had a scrambler for breakfast, sweet potato, onions, Matt Smith’s spinach, Boursin (leftover from the cookie party), along with bacon and fresh bagels that I brought back from my walk.

Mark’s making soup for dinner – Ovens of Brittany Spanish Country Soup. It smells good. I made cup custards to eat with the last of the Moravian ginger thins – and Downton Abbey season 2 first episode. I seem to have gotten the custards out of the oven on time – they’re just the right jiggly-ness. Wish I could photograph the smell.

Cup custards cooling on a towel

I really don’t care about the lawn

DebS — Mon, 24 May 2010 00:46:37 +0000

We had our first 90-degree day of the summer today. I made brunch for a big crowd – 21 full size humans plus 8 or 9 little kids ranging in age from about 2 weeks to 10 years. It was one of my picture-less ones, but a nice menu:

Jazzed up potatoes – Mexican fried potatoes – from Mollie Katzen, with onions, garlic, cumin & red pepper flakes, tomatoes, cilantro, black olives, and fried torn up corn tortillas, topped with a squish of lime juice & melted cheese; shirred eggs, baked with a splash of cream and chives and parmesan; custard-filled corn bread, and a really tasty gluten free version with cinnamon and green chile. I also made a big spinach salad with a red dressing, and water chestnuts, mushrooms, and sunflower seeds – with and without bacon. For dessert, fruit crumbles: rhubarb-strawberry, gluten free, with almonds & pine nuts for extra crunch, and cranberry-raspberry with regular flour streusel. Since it’s brunch, and early in the day, I put out Greek yogurt with honey for topping instead of whipped cream or ice cream.

I got home a little before 3:00, and completely forgot that I was planning on mowing the lawn. I took a bike ride to return a library book, and I’ve settled in on the couch with all the Sunday papers and cable TV shows, vampires and Treme and Tudors.

I had the last of the spinach salad for dinner, with some of the leftover egg sliced up on top and a piece of the skillet corn bread, toasted. All the custard-filled got eaten at the brunch.

I feel a little guilty about not mowing but it’s not too bad. I just might have to eat the last of the cranberry-raspberry crumble, specially because I can have it with ice cream since it’s evening now.

Recipe work

DebS — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:31:09 +0000

Reading this article by Marcelle Richards of Gastroapocalypse Test Kitchen, on working up a recipe for parsnip-pink-peppercorn cake, inspired by carrot cake, made me realize that I haven’t been working on recipes much recently. I’ve been making little tweaks, but not putting a couple of patterns together to come up with something new. Maybe the last time was the turkey meatballs, that were a merger of matzoh balls & meat balls, and then I put them in the broth for Ovens of Brittany Turkey Almond Soup.

I am feeling kind of tired and uninspired. Work has been just way too busy, and I don’t feel like doing much when I get home. The joy of the just-finished dinner series has been more in creating menus, putting dishes together, than in developing recipes for the individual dishes.

Tonight’s a case in point. I’m home alone, with Mark & Ethan off to Badger hockey, Al at O’Hare waiting for a flight to SF, John in Milwaukee, and the new foster kid at a friend’s. For early dinner with Mark & Ethan before the game, I made chicken bbq sandwiches, with meat I cooked in barbecue sauce yesterday, shredded and with a bit of added ketchup, honey, and salt. I made salad with John’s dressing – but that’s just the Good Seasons mix, made with sesame oil, soy sauce, cidar vinegar, and brown sugar for an Asian flavor. I made some chex mix, to use up that giant Costco bag of nut & rice crackers munch mix and some rice chips that fell off the top of the fridge so they were busted up just right, according to mom’s rules – no seasoned salt, fresh garlic and real butter, and I do put in the Worcestershire sauce even though she didn’t like it. I threw in some Wasabi peas, but I already tried that in a prior batch of chex mix – we liked it – so not that innovative. Old standbys, all.

I could get my tax stuff together. I could make enchilada sauce or do some other cooking and photograph it. I could read and make notes for the literary awards committee I’m on. But I think I’m going to take a shower, and watch TV, and maybe have a scotch. I have this movie called A Slipping Down Life about a musician and his wigged out fans, and I think there’re a couple of Robyn Hitchcock songs in it.

Superbowl food, one day old

DebS — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:52:05 +0000

My plan for superbowl food this year was Buffalo chicken tenders and baked beans. I made the beans overnight in the oven on Saturday, and thawed out the two packages of tenders I’d had in the bottom of the freezer for who knows how long. But best laid plans … I had to attend the Willy Street Grocery Co-op Board retreat, an annual, all-day planning event, and they gave us so much food that I didn’t need dinner when I got home. And I missed most of the superbowl commercials that I wanted to see; the one I liked the best that I did see was the new any VW counts as slug bug one:

especially the Stevie Wonder & Tracy Morgan ending. I haven’t had a chance to go looking for more online; John said there were an awful lot with middle aged men in briefs.

Instead, I ate my superbowl feast for Monday night supper. The beans, since I originally cooked them covered, came out a little soupy – I reheated them for an hour uncovered, and they were delicious, but not terribly photogenic.

The tenders were so easy, it made me wonder why I had ever messed around with actual wings. Pan-fried, finished in the oven, then tossed with melted butter & Frank’s hot sauce.

I even had bleu cheese dressing to dip them in – I bought a piece of Farmer John’s gorgonzola at Joe’s when I was walking home from the Badger outdoor hockey game Saturday, and crumbed it and mixed into some ranch dressing that was lurking in the back of the fridge.

Yum.

BTW, the game was fun, but hard for me to follow – I left after the 2nd period. I have trouble seeing the puck anyways, and was too far away in the football stadium. Plus there was no sound, or not much – no pucks whacking a stick, or a players hitting the boards. Maybe they shoulda miked the ice …

At home Friday night

DebS — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:28:47 +0000

Last night I lazed around at home and watched the 2-hour premiere of Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica – I was never a Battlestar fan, so this is all new to me. I was having trouble deciding if I thought it was actually good or not, but it sure was pretty to watch. I missed part of the end, so I just might watch some of it again tonight. I dozed off during the news, and missed the weather – we are in the midst of alternating freezing rain, rain, maybe snow, and then it’s supposed to get really cold next week – so of course, boring middle-aged person that I am, the weather was one of my concerns. Notwithstanding the fact that I have about 17 other ways to get weather from the Internet & my phone, besides network TV.

At 10:30 it was time to watch the last Conan. Mark slept through Neil Young’s Long May You Run, but at least I stayed awake for that, and we both watched the Will Ferrell all-star band do Free Bird. we are still debating who all was in that band, for sure Ben Harper & Beck & Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. And all of Max Weinberg’s band who’ve been with Conan all along. I guess Ferrell’s pregnant lady friend was really his wife, Viveca Paulin. Mark asked if the dorky guy with the hat & glasses was Elvis Costello – I didn’t think so, and evidently this is being debated on the Internet – but since Costello’s not out on tour in the US at the moment, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him.

For dinner I made a vegetarian Primanti Bros. sandwich with Swiss cheese, mustard and horseradish sauce, on my home made sour dought bread – which turned out to be softer and better for the sandwich than I thought it would be. I’m trying to use up the coleslaw from dinner on Thursday. Enjoyed with a rolling rock, while Caprica got started.