Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

This year’s Father’s Day baked good is NOT as pretty as last year’s, I’ll just say that right off.

Rhubarb strawberry spiral biscuit cobbler

My 2nd helping – and a new experiment in lighting food – computer monitor light. I think good north window daylight still wins.

This year I was not trying to get the dessert baked in time to go hang out on the Terrace – instead, the cobbler was the main course for breakfast, a lighter version of our normal Sunday brunch, because the honored dad wants to be to taken to Lombardino’s for dinner. We had cobbler, fruit, a few strips of bacon, and some sausages. And the dinner out tonight’s going to fill in as a not-graduation dinner for our Japanese student. She not-graduated yesterday. In contrast to the AFS students we’ve had before, she did not get to walk, wear cap & gown, or be in the picture – she had to watch from the sidelines with us parents. I bought her a 2013 commemorative tassel, though. The honored dad got a tube of fancy shaving cream, from me, and a Starbucks card, from his kid.

I started writing this post while sitting in the cheap 2nd run theater waiting for Quartet to begin. The first of two movies this weekend. Last week, Mon – Thurs., was the Teaching Academy Summer Institute – I was a co-chair, and I think it went pretty well if I do say so myself. I was going to work Friday, but the only meeting I had got postponed to Monday, so I had Friday pretty much off, and I left this weekend open as well.

Good thing I did leave Friday open – I was toast. I got up and walked with Ann, came home and had a big breakfast of beans & toast with an egg. I biked to my office to return the loaner laptop from the undergraduate library, and inter-d a remote and a book back to someone, and planned to bike to the East side Willy St. to do a little grocery shopping. The corner of Park & Langdon, where my office is located (Helen C. White hall), is surrounded by construction – there’s a hole to China with a small bike lane, and as I was wending my way through the construction, I realized I forgot to wear my helmet. Fortunately I made it to the co-op and back home again without mishap.

I made this grape salad. I’m still on a quest to use up my extra Costco fruit – I froze the apricots & strawberries to make strawberry-apricot pie, for Debbie Cardinal’s annual pie party in August. This salad would be perfect Wisconsin potluck fare, where the table of “salads” might not include a single leaf of lettuce and instead feature marshmallows, whipped topping and jello.

Saturday we slept in, but I got the Smitten Kitchen big crumb coffee cake into the oven, so we could eat it when we got back from the market. It’s very good, but needs more rhubarb, or fruit. And I do like the sour cream cake part, a lot. I put the grape salad out, and I tried a bit of it – incredibly sweet – Mark wouldn’t even have a bite. This was one of those times when I have a little glitch in my thinking – I successfully use up some ingredients in a recipe, but the resulting dish is never eaten – so not so successful afterall. The grape salad went into the compost, after making a reappearance at Sunday breakfast, and again no one taking any.

I got my 2nd CSA box on Thursday, and it was one of those times where I already had some of a lot of the things I got, either exactly or sort of. Like I got cilantro, and I had a bunch of cilantro; I got romaine lettuce and I already had 2 bunches of softer lettuces, leaf & butter; I got spinach and bok choy and already had mustard greens. So, Saturday night I made spinach enchiladas with cilantro cream sauce. There were quite a few versions on the web – I used the one with bread crumbs in the filling, and mushrooms, from a kind of junior league of Dallas-type cookbook. The sauce was supposed to be heavy cream thickened with corn starch and cilantro and garlic powder or seasoned salt; I used half & half, and fresh garlic. I think these will get eaten.

Spinach enchiladas

Sunday morning I made breakfast pizza, my edits to the the Big Sur Bakery recipe – like I just bake it on parchment – I don’t have a pizza peel.

Breakfast pizza with bacon & eggs

Before the pizza, I walked with Rachael. After, took the clean laundry over to E. Wash, bought a new lawn mower, and saw What Maisie Knew.

Next up, finish the crumb cake, with ice cream and some extra rhubarb sauce, and season finale, Game of Thrones.

Big crumb rhubarb cake

I made a “bespoke” brunch this morning – that is, some friends wanted me to cook for their friends, so I worked with them to come up with a menu, and they did the invites. I like  doing this kind of pre-ordered event – I get to work with the people to come up with a menu they like, instead of me guessing on what’s a good date, and what’s a good menu, that will entice diners to come to a meal I’ve planned.

Anyways, they had upside down rhubarb muffins, cimmy buns – that came out really good – I will write the recipe down Real Soon Now™ and I made two loaves of the long rise, no knead bread – one plain wheat, and the other with walnuts & raisons. There were two mains: a sausage strata – Cowboy Christmas Breakfast, which I made pretty much as written, except I upped the amounts by half for everything except the green onions, and baked it in two casserole dishes. Which seemed to work perfectly, for a puffy tender egg bake. The other main dish was  eggs baked in piperade, a dish I had made for the New Year’s brunch in 2011, eggs baked atop a red pepper and tomato sauce. There were also roasted potatoes, that I made with garlic and rosemary, using some little red potatoes from the co-op, from CA; I think all the WI potatoes must be done til the new ones come in. These’re good, though, nice and sweet. I made an asparagus salad – I wanted a salad with goat cheese and bread crumbs, and I got the idea from this Oprah salad, 1st thing to come up in a Google search – but I tried it yesterday and didn’t like it. I think the asparagus doesn’t have enough natural sweetness to balance the lemon and goat cheese, so I used balsamic. The spears were also hard to eat, so I cut the asparagus diagonally into into lengths, roasted it, then added the balsamic. When I got to School Woods, I arranged it on a platter and sprinkled on the goat cheese & crumbs. I made a green salad  – but I way overbought on lettuce at the farmers’ market – I have a 2-gallon ziploc 2/3 full of washed greens, plus 2 smallish heads of un-washed. I went to the Hilldale market early, and one of the vendors couldn’t break my $20 bill, so I bought extra lettuce to make it easier. Yesterday was cows on the concourse, and Mark had an 8:00 haircut, so I thought I’d shop early at the little market, and then I could enjoy being a tourist at the big market more. The dressing was a variant of one of Terese’s – shallot, grainy mustard, white wine vinegar (that’s the variant part – she uses garlic, Dijon, balsamic) with raspberry jam, and olive oil. At least I have enough to go with the rest of the lettuce.  I also made a fruit salad, and I have tons of fruit, in part because I went to Costco for grapes & strawberries, but then the organic cantaloups from the co-op didn’t get ripe fast enough, so I bought  a backup from Sentry. And I bought a clamshell box of 21 apricots at Costco, not for the fruit salad; just because they were pretty.

I didn’t take any pictures – except the muffin ones – until the food had been picked over. One of the guests asked, “Isn’t that usually done [picture taking] when the bowls are full?”

Clean up took a little too long – I missed Ride the Drive. I didn’t get the last tray washed until 5:00 PM, but I got the leftover champagne, so it was a 2 Mimosa cleanup. I think I like the raison walnut bread the best of all the dishes.

Now I’m making an apricot tart with pistachio frangipane, that I realize is very much like a tart that I made for our first AFS student’s first dinner – that came out appallingly ugly. Now you can compare: 2013 tart vs. 2011 tart. I vote they’re both equally ugly but if my taste memory can be trusted – and I’m pretty good there – this year’s tastes better.

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Sunday: Trying to be lazy is not working quite as well today. I got out of bed at 6:45 & came downstairs, thinking I’d start the cimmy buns rising and crash on the couch in the sunroom with the cats. I fed them, but they were restless, clawing the blinds and the rug, and the white one found a little hard rubber ball to mess with, too, that made a lot of noise. They finally settled in with me at almost 7:45 and I’m getting up when the oven preheat jingle goes off – I set it on timer, and it should be any minute. I could’ve gone for a walk – which would’ve been smart – instead of feeling UN-rested, I’d be feeling exercised – but plenty of time for that later. Plus I think the Madison Marathon’s going by now.

Here’s the baked & frosted cimmy buns – sorry about the blurry picture last night. They looked – and smelled- so good, I wanted to capture them with my good camera, but the battery’s dead. So these are little camera, and of course there’s the iPhone version on Tumblr. I must have gotten my settings weird on little camera, though – these look oddly grainy.

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Brought it home on my bike this afternoon. Asparagus, 2 lb; Rhubarb, 2 lb; Potatoes, 3 lb; Two young lettuces, red leaf and green leaf; Arugula, 1 small bunch; Green garlic, 1 bunch; Radishes, 1 bunch.

1st CSA box contents – the jar is the green garlic dressing

The problem was, I had some of almost all of those things in the fridge already. Some steamed asparagus tips, lettuce, rhubarb, potatoes in the panty.

I made the green garlic into dressing; tried out a recipe from my neighbor’s recipe service, Local Thyme. I get a subscription as an added benefit, along with my CSA box – very cool. But the dressing came out kind of blah – as in fact every other green garlic dressing recipe has that I’ve tried. This one has good ingredients – lemon, white wine vinegar, honey, the green garlic, and olive oil. Also kind of a lot of water – half a cup – that I left out, all buzzed up in the blender or food processor. And I upped the honey –

I’m pretty much thinking the best way to use green garlic is to treat it like green onions, or cooked, like baby leeks. That’s how I’ve enjoyed it the most anyways. That means for the dressing, I would’ve minced the green garlic, and poured the vinegar and sweetening and salt & pepper on top, and let it marinate for a little while, then add the mustard and whisk in the oil.

Also inspired by the Local Thyme recipes, I made a roasted potato & asparagus salad. Roasted some of the potatoes I already had, not the ones from the box, and like 5 spears of the new asparagus. Tossed the lettuce I already had with some dressing I already had – that was just a kind of plain balsamic vinaigrette, with shallot, made according to the above procedure. Put the asparagus tips I already had in with the newly-roasted potatoes & asparagus, and drizzled the green garlic dressing overall. And then we ate it on top of the dressed greens. All put together like that, it was all good.

It’s nice to have a lot of rhubarb, too. I made a pie not too long ago. Maybe muffins, or coffee cake, or maybe I’ll try this big crumb rhubarb recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Maybe I’ll try the dread rhubarb custard tart again. And maybe just chop some of it to freeze for later.

I  think I’ll make asparagus pizza tomorrow.

So not a bad night, could be better. I pick up my box at somebody’s garage, and I sort of got yelled at by her. Seems I did not cross my name off the list properly – I crossed off the line where it says I’m an every other week member, instead of my name. Sheesh. I really appreciate her family providing the pick up spot, really I do – I know it’s got to be a pain to have all of us CSA-ers traipsing through their yard – but still.

Must be time for PJs and cuddle with cats – except, oh shit – there’s a sinkload of dishes to wash. Well, that’s better done in PJs than the work clothes I have on now.