With very few pictures.
Monday we had leftover lasagna, with salad & garlic toast on the no knead bread I made Saturday. I tried to go easy on the lasagna and eat a lot of salad, but Rach came back with Trader Joe’s chocolate and I had to have some. She quoted one her grandmas “Darling, you need the sugar to seal yer stomach” – spoken in good east coast old lady Jewish accent. I was also chasing the garlic taste out of my mouth.
On Tuesday I cooked the cover of a recent Bon Appetit. Kale (recipe calls for mustard greens which I like, but the co-op didn’t have any) & spicy ground pork over rice noodles. Used ground pork from the pig we bought from Waisman’s in November, and homemade chicken broth. We also had a big salad with reduced cidar & shallot dressing, using the reduced cidar that I’ve had in the fridge since like October. Really nice to have all that lettuce in the middle of the winter – thank you California. Rach wondered if we should wash it all, but in the end we ate all but a handful, that I put in my lunch next day.
Wednesday, we kind of had leftovers again – the last of the greens gratin I’d made for new years brunch, that’s a Laurie Colwin recipe that I’ve adapted. This time I used kale and collards as well as the spinach. A big pot of rice – I wanted to make brown, but all I had was a mixed rice blend, with wild rice and white rice and red rice and a little brown – so we had that. And leftover U.S. Senate navy bean soup (I used the Joy of Cooking recipe; a little different, but still thickened with potato) heated up to go over it all as sauce. Mark & Toni needed to be fed fast so they could go off and see Princess Bride on the big screen at Sundance, part of their classic movie series. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Princess Bride on the big screen, only on the little screen, on VHS and DVD and cable. And it is a great movie, but I just didn’t want to spend $10 to see it, again.
Thursday I made this Food52 celeriac and potato gratin (with less cheese and half & half, and less of it, instead of heavy cream). With sausages, bratwurst, on the side, so basically bangers & mash. And coleslaw that I’d made the night before, left the cabbage wilting while I was watching TV, and sorta forgot that I had to toss it with the dressing, and really didn’t want to at 11:00PM, but it was OK, went faster than I thought it would. It came out maybe a touch too sweet but that’s OK, too. Looks like I made the gratin last winter, in early February instead of mid-January. Not terribly photogenic, but super tasty.
Potato celeriac gratin
By Friday there was nothing much left for dinners except dribs and drabs of leftovers, leftover leftover lasagna, one brat, a small square of gratin. I wasn’t very hungry when I got home from work, anyhow – what I would’ve really liked is a sophisticated cocktail, and salty bar snacks, like olives and peanuts. There’s kind of a dearth of places to get something like that in college-town Madison, and with a non-drinking sweetheart, no one to go with. So I had some clementines, and a handful of nuts – Toni grabbed a few, too – and we went to see Her at Sundance. After, Toni & Mark went to the wood-fired pizza place across the way from the theater, but I didn’t even feel like sitting with them for a glass of wine. I came home and had a microwave s’more and hot tea with half & half and brown sugar. And went back and got them, when they texted they were finished eating. I was feeling like my tastes and Mark’s were completely outta whack for the night, at least on preferred selections for dinner and a movie (I wanted to see Inside Llewyn Davis). But actually, in the end it all worked out oddly perfectly.
Mandarin orange segments
Saturday morning it was too cold to walk, so Rach and I did some stretches, and then had poached eggs on toast with bacon and kale, a healthy breakfast to send her off for a day in airports and planes.
Saturday breakfast
