Ham

Tonight's Menu

• ham steaks on the grill pan
  
• crescent rolls (the doughboy kind, low-fat)
  
• fresh baby spinach sauteed in EVOO
  

Ack! I know! I have been a bad, bad food blogger for not posting in ages and ages. See, we haven't been having anything new for dinner AT ALL. Everything we've been eating, I've already told you how to make. We are SO BORING over here. And tonight is no exception. See?

But I will try to post more often. Even if it's boring.

That's not a promise. It's A THREAT.

Triple Layer Brownie Cake

As promised, here is the recipe for the boy child's birthday cake, which he made all by himself with very little help from me. It's from an old issue of Taste of Home magazine.


Cake:
1 1/2 cups butter (no substitutes)
6 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. salt

Frosting:
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) semisweet baking chocolate
3 cups whipping cream
2 milk chocolate candy bars (1.55 oz. each), shaved

Melt butter and chocolate together in a microwave or double boiler. Stir in sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla, flour and salt; mix well. Pour into three greased and floured 9-in. round cake pans. [NOTE: Do NOT think that if you are using nonstick pans, you can just spray them with baking spray and be done with it. You really do need to grease and flour the HELL out of them if you want the cake layers to release at all. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.] Bake at 350 degrees F for 23-24 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (The cake layers will be thin; they don't rise much while cooking.) Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For frosting, melt chocolate in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Gradually stir in cream until well blended. Heat to a gentle boil; boil and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours until mixture reaches a pudding-like consistency, stirring a few times. Beat until soft peaks form. Immediately spread between layers and on top and sides of cake. Sprinkle top of cake with chocolate shavings. Store in refrigerator.


This cake is SO GOOD and so unbelievably rich. You seriously need to serve it in like half-inch slices or smaller because it's like mainlining fudge. We made it one evening, refrigerated it overnight, and served it the next afternoon and the brownie layers and frosting just kind of fused together into a solid slab of chocolatey perfection.

I think I need another piece RIGHT NOW.

Skewered

Tonight's Menu

• souvlaki-inspired pork kebabs
  
• potato-artichoke salad
  
• fruit salad
  

We had our annual Double Birthday Blowout today for DH and the boy child, whose birthdays are five days apart. It was windy and chilly but sunny enough to grill out, thank goodness!

For the kebabs, I combined a bunch of minced garlic, fresh lemon juice, fresh (not dried, but feel free to use that instead if you want) oregano, EVOO and freshly ground pepper and poured it over two pork tenderloins that had been cut into sizable chunks (I'd say about 1.5-inch or so cubes). I let it marinate for several hours in the fridge before assembling on skewers with yellow, orange and red bell peppers, onions and giant mushrooms. Just before grilling I brushed them with a bit more EVOO and sprinkled on a tiny bit of Jane's Krazy Salt. It took a while to get them done because of the freakin' 40 mph winds cooling down the grill, but they came out SUPER yummy.

The potato salad is my favorite summer salad from last year. It goes really well with any sort of grilled meat. Just cut some tiny red-skinned potatoes in half and simmer them in water until they're tender but not mushy. Let them cool, then toss in a bowl with halved cherry tomatoes, little balls of fresh mozzarella (use the cherry-tomato-sized balls, or larger balls cut in half or in wedges), and a jar of marinated artichoke hearts. The marinade from the artichoke hearts is your dressing, so you don't have to drain them, but if you like you can pour out the liquid into a little bowl or cup and then add it back in (so you don't accidentally use too much). Sprinkle on some freshly ground pepper and a chiffonade of fresh basil and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours before serving to let the flavors meld a bit.

The fruit salad is the same super-simple one I always make. Just combine halved strawberries, green grapes and a can of mandarin orange segments (you DO want to drain these) in a bowl. That's it -- no dressing, no sugar, just fruit. It makes for a really tasty combination of flavors and textures, and it's really pretty! Very refreshing with anything grilled or spicy.

This being a birthday celebration, we also had two kinds of cake for dessert. German chocolate (from a mix) for DH, and triple-layer brownie cake for the boy, who actually made his own cake from scratch with very little help from me! It's absolutely delicious, too. I'm too exhausted to dig up the recipe tonight, but I'll post it tomorrow, I promise!

Bread, glorious bread!

Tonight's Menu

• ropa vecchia
  
• herbed peasant bread
  
• big-ass salad
  

Tonight's main dish is courtesy of my pal Joke. I have made it before; my kids love it and have taken to calling it "meat spaghetti". It is way yummy.

The first time I made bread dough with my then-brand-new KitchenAid stand mixer, I immediately put my bread machine in storage. And then gave it to my brother and his wife not long afterwards. The thing that always killed me about making bread by hand, with my fibromyalgia and joint pain, was the stirring and the kneading. The KitchenAid does all that for me, so all I have to do is let the dough rise, punch it down, shape it, etc., none of which is any big whoop as far as I'm concerned.

Today was cold and rainy and generally crappy, weather-wise, so it seemed like a good day for a hearty meal with some homebaked bread. This is my go-to recipe. It's adapted from a recipe I found in Taste of Home magazine.

Herbed Peasant Bread

1/2 cup chopped onion
3 Tbs. butter
1 cup plus 2 Tbs. warm milk (120 degrees F)
1 Tbs. sugar
1-1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried dill
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp. dried crushed rosemary
1 pkg. (1/4 oz.) active dry yeast
3 to 3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
melted butter

Saute the onion in the butter over low heat until tender, then remove from heat and cool 10 minutes. Place onion mixture in the bowl of a stand mixer w/dough hook attachment, adding milk, sugar, salt and herbs and mixing well. Mix in yeast and 3 cups of flour, scraping down bowl as needed. Continue mixing and kneading with the dough hook, adding additional flour as necessary, until dough is smooth and elastic. Remove dough from bowl and hook and place in a greased glass bowl, turning once to coat. Cover and let rise until doubled. Punch dough down and shape into a ball on a greased baking sheet (or silpat). Cover again and let rise until doubled. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with melted butter.

Variation: after the first rise, punch down the dough and form into a braid, pinching the ends together and tucking them underneath. Do the second rise as above, but brush the dough with egg wash before putting it in the oven (and omit the melted butter afterwards). Tuck a few sprigs of fresh rosemary into the braid and it makes a lovely gift, or a nice addition to your holiday table.

Fajitas

We had fajitas for dinner tonight. I made the meat in the usual way -- skirt steak rubbed with prepared fajita seasoning, marinated in EVOO and fresh lime juice, then cooked 4 minutes per side outdoors on a screaming hot grill. I didn't have room for the veggies to grill alongside the meat, though, and I was trying to hurry so I tossed them (onion wedges, orange and yellow bell pepper strips) with EVOO and grilled them indoors on the Foreman. They came out OKAY, I guess, but it was not ideal. Still, the meat was yummy stuffed into whole-grain soft tortillas with cheese, sour cream and salsa. In fact, we ate all the meat and ended up with tons of onions/peppers left over. Hrm. Maybe I should make sausage sandwiches soon.

Meanwhile, I need a bigger grill!

Gumbo!

Okay, so this was weird: yesterday at my sucky supermarket I picked up, totally on a WHIM, the makings for seafood gumbo. I didn't want to make it yesterday because we had just had fish the day before, so I decided that tonight would be Gumbo Night. And then this morning, I opened up the paper to find that the food section was doing a HUGE article on guess what? Gumbo! I KNOW! I swear to you all, I was planning this before I ever saw that. I WAS! Shut up!

Anyhoodle, I do not by any means claim that my gumbo is the be all, end all of gumbo recipes. I have no ego invested in this crappe, y'all. I just know mine tastes good, and that's all I care about. So here's how I made it tonight, and keep in mind a lot of my cooking technique has to do with the fact that I have a teeny little stockpot and not a nice big one.

And you know what? I'm not even going to do this as a recipe. Because I didn't really bother to measure anything. Sorry about that. Hopefully if you REALLY want to make it the way I did, you can figure it out from the following.

Okay. So I took half a stick of butter (that would be 1/4 cup) and melted it over medium high heat, then I dumped in half a cup of flour. Which was too much, so I added a little olive oil to loosen it up. I stirred the hell out of it forever until it took on a color somewhere between butterscotch and caramel. I lack confidence in making a dark roux. I'm afraid I'll burn it. So, light-medium roux it was.

Then I added 1 medium chopped onion, two chopped celery sticks, one small chopped green bell pepper, one-half chopped yellow bell pepper, and three large-ish chopped garlic cloves. Stir, stir, stir. Then I dumped in 12 ounces of chopped andouille sausage. Stir, stir, stir. Then I stirred in two cans of vegetable broth, some oregano, some thyme, some freshly ground pepper and two bay leaves. Bring to a gentle boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer for 45 minutes or so. You want the veggies tender. No crisp-tender in gumbo, yo!

About 15 minutes before serving, I stirred in about a cup of sliced okra. I used frozen which I thawed in the microwave before adding to the gumbo. You could use fresh, but you'd want to add it a little earlier in the cooking process.

Five minutes before serving, I stirred in a small can of crab claw meat (you could use lump or jumbo lump but it's WAY more expensive) and a pound of peeled raw shrimp. As soon as the shrimp curls, take it off the heat and remove the bay leaves. You're now ready to serve this puppy up over rice.

It's so damn good, y'all. Seriously. This made a ton so I froze some of it for a day when we're in need of comfort food.

Go forth and gumbo, y'all!

Flank steak and a treatise on grilling

Tonight's Menu

• garlicky grilled flank steak
  
• Parmesan couscous
  
• steamed broccoli
  

Okay. Way easy dinner tonight.

The flank steak was made the usual way. Because my whole family loves this version of it, and because it is SO EASY it should be illegal.

The couscous was from a box. I KNOW. I was in a HURRY, okay?

Broccoli was done in the microwave on the "smart" setting for fresh veggies.

Too damn easy.

About grilling, though ... I live in the 'burbs and on any given evening you can walk outside and smell someone grilling something. I LOVE that about the 'burbs, but it always hits me with a pang of hunger followed quickly by a pang of jealousy, especially if I've planned something non-grilled for dinner. What is that? It smells so good! I WANT SOME!

And so, when I DO plan something grilled for dinner, I get a vicarious thrill out of being the one to fill the neighborhood with the delicious aroma of grilled whatever. Yeah, that's MY DINNER, BITCHES! I get to eat that! Suck on it!

So yeah, that's really all I wanted to say about grilling.

Hey! Can you tell I had three glasses of wine with dinner tonight?!

Oh well

Tonight's Menu

• rockfish in foil packets
  
• chuffed potatoes
• leftover roasted asparagus
  
• leftover big-ass salad
  

My supermarket had rockfish, which I think is maybe a type of cod but I'm not 100% sure, for cheap today so I thought I'd try it. Aaaaand ... I don't think I'll be trying it again.

I cut it into serving-sized pieces and layered them in foil packets with paper-thin onion slices, thyme, salt, pepper, EVOO and some white wine. It was flavorful I GUESS, but I didn't care for the texture. Maybe the bastardized en papillote thing was a bad idea, I don't know. But all things considered, I'd rather have had salmon. I am a fatty fish kind of gal at heart.

Asparagus season!

Tonight's Menu

• spiced pork tenderloin
  
• roasted asparagus
  
• big-ass salad
  

I made the pork tenderloin my usual way, because that's how the boy and I like it.

The asparagus was roasted alongside the pork (in a separate pan, though) with EVOO, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, then drizzled with just a smidge of fresh lemon juice after cooking.

Yum!

Still in a rut

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless pork chops
  
• cabbage sauteed with bacon
  
• the last of the leftover green beans with onions and bacon
  

Yep, it's a rut all right.

Pork chops were sprinkled with garlic pepper and Jane's Krazy salt before grilling, like usual. (They were delicious, though. They were super thick so I did them for about 6 minutes per side and they were cooked through but REALLY juicy and tender. Yum.)

Cabbage was half a head roughly chopped, two slices of bacon chopped, stir stir stir, season with salt and pepper, done.

Sigh.

Oven brisket

Tonight's Menu

• oven-cooked brisket
  
• tiny red potatoes, parboiled then chuffed up in a hot pan with butter
  
• fresh green beans with onions and bacon
  

I was kind of scattered/spastic this evening so THANK GOD I didn't fark up the brisket. I rubbed it with a mixture of brown sugar, dry mustard, salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder and dried oregano, then whomped it into a roasting pan and cooked it with the lid on for 1.5 hours at 300 degrees F. But then I kept turning it down -- first to 250, then to 200 -- during the next 1.5 hours because I was afraid it was getting too done. Miraculously, it turned out tender and delicious. I have no idea how that happened. I think it was pure luck.

The boy made the potatoes. He's getting quite good at it! This time he got to do the prep and parboiling as well as the chuffing.

I made the green beans the only way I know how*. Snap off the stem ends and wash, then set aside. Chop some onion and bacon and start the bacon in a hot pan until it's about halfway cooked (half the fat rendered; starting to brown and curl just a bit). Then add the onion and cook until the bacon is crisp and the onion has gone translucent. Add the green beans and enough water to just barely cover them. Stir in a tablespoon of brown sugar, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for about 20 minutes on low heat. Strain off and serve. Yum!

*This is a lie. I know other ways. I just like them like this.

Busting out of my potato rut

Tonight's Menu

• grilled ham steak
  
• chili-garlic potatoes
  
• raw baby carrots w/ranch dip
  

I'm trying to break out of my chuffed potato rut, even though they are SO YUMMY. So tonight I cut some tiny red potatoes into quarters, tossed them in a pan with some EVOO, salt, pepper, chili powder and garlic powder, and baked them until tender and golden. They were really good, and a nice change. But I still loves me some chuffed potatoes!

Brushes with celebrity chefs. Or their aunts, anyway.

My parents live in a small town near Austin and they eat out frequently. One local restaurant has become a favorite and they eat there for lunch or dinner at least once a week (I am not typing the name here; email me at badgermeetsworld at gmail dot com if you really want to know).

Today they took me there for lunch, which was delicious, and while we were there a very nice lady came by our table and started chatting up my parents like they were old friends. After she left, my mom said, "That's the owner. Her nephew is a chef, too. He's that guy who just left the Driskill."

I think I may have dropped my fork. "David Bull?" I squeaked. "David Bull is her nephew?!"

And indeed, he is. We chatted a bit more with the owner. She said Chef Bull might be stopping by the restaurant now and again, since his new schedule will leave him with a bit more time to spend with family.

And apparently, he is really fond of pizza.

Who knew?

Spring has sprung, apparently

Tonight's Menu

• tilapia with mango salsa
  
• leftover quinoa
  
• leftover big-ass salad
  

The ataulfo mangoes have arrived at my local supermarket, and that means one thing: MANGO SALSA. Oh HELL yeah, bitches.

2 mangoes (ataulfo if you can find them, but the regular ones will do), diced
1/2 small red onion, diced
2 serrano peppers, minced (seeded or not, depending on how hot you like it)
fresh cilantro
lime juice

Combine the mangoes, onion and peppers in a non-reactive bowl. Snip some fresh cilantro into the mix (how much is up to you because some people love it and some people hate it -- I use maybe a tablespoon) and sprinkle on a bit of fresh lime juice (the juice from one small lime should do it). Toss to mix and refrigerate for a couple of hours to let the flavors blend before serving.

(Incidentally, if you've never worked with fresh mango there is an easy way to dice it. Just cut it in half vertically, working around the thin but wide pit in the center, so that you have two halves. Discard the center section with the pit. Then take each half and cut a crosshatch pattern through the flesh but NOT through the peel. Run a spoon between the peel and flesh and it should scoop right out in nice little cubes. Sometimes it takes a bit of practice, but it's about a thousand times easier than trying to PEEL a mango and then cut it up.)

It's weird -- I don't like mango by itself, but I LOVE mango salsa. In addition to tortilla chips, it goes great with grilled chicken, pork or fish. Tonight's fish was just seasoned with salt and pepper and then sauteed in EVOO (SO quick and easy!), but that worked fine with it, too.

Vinho Verde was a great accompaniment to this meal!

Yummy chicken

Tonight's Menu

• Nigella's slow-roasted chicken with garlic and lemon
  
• quinoa
  
• big-ass salad
  

Yes, I made Nigella's chicken again. It's SO DAMN YUMMY. This time I used thighs and drumsticks. DH had leftover meatballs.

Badger's manifesto on picky eaters

I've been reading with great interest this Bob del Grosso post (and the resulting comments) over on Michael Ruhlman's blog. Not the stuff about haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy, because I couldn't care less, but the bits about finicky kids. Del Grosso writes that when his kids were babies he just pureed whatever the family was eating rather than feeding them typical "kid" food, on the theory that they would develop a taste early on for the good stuff and thus be less finicky as they got older. With his daughter, it seems to have worked. With his son? Not so much.

I was fascinated and a teeny bit thrilled to read this because, as you know if you've been reading this blog from the beginning, finicky kids are the whole reason I started the Make Your Own Damn Dinner project in the first place. I've had a lot of people (usually people without kids, or people who raised their kids in a different generation) tell me over the years that the reason my kids are/were picky is because I fed them special "kid" food instead of whatever DH and I were eating. I used to think this was true, but I don't anymore, so it was interesting to read the experience of a professional chef who also happens to be a dad. Here's a guy who's an excellent cook, putting all sorts of enticing stuff on the dinner table every night, and his kid won't eat it! While I have nothing but empathy for his situation, what a relief to hear that maybe I haven't permanently screwed up my kids' palates with my short-order cooking after all.

I've thought a lot over the past year about how I went off the rails and started feeding my kids "kid" food instead of regular food in the first place. It really kind of happened without me noticing it, but looking back, I can kind of see the genesis of the whole thing. I'm documenting it here for other parents who might be asking themselves how THEY ended up in the same place, and for childless folks who might be baffled as to how in the world this could happen to an otherwise mostly rational adult. (Remember, all of us parents were childless once, too. WE were the ones saying, "When I have kids, I'll never xyz!" But then, you know, we actually HAD kids, and ... things changed.)

It really kind of starts when they're born, doesn't it? When you* take your newborn in for well-child checkups every couple of months, the doctor asks you how often he/she nurses and for how long, or how many bottles he/she drinks and how often. They give you guidelines to make sure your kid is eating enough, but not too much. Food is a big focus during the early toddler stage, too -- you come home from the pediatrician with all sorts of information on when to start solids, which ones to try in which order, how to document your child's reaction to each new food that's introduced, how much to give at each serving, how often the child should eat, etc., etc. You get programmed to focus on how, what and when your kid is eating. Along with that are the growth charts -- is your kid growing okay? What percentile is he/she in for weight? Has that percentile changed at all since the last checkup, and if so, does it mean he/she is eating too much? Too little?

It becomes an obsession. There's PRESSURE, okay? Seriously. I don't know if it tends to affect moms more than dads, but I can tell you that most moms I know would cut off their own arm and feed it to the kid IF THE KID WOULD ACTUALLY EAT IT. If your toddler is rejecting his broccoli, and you know he's hungry, and you know he likes crackers, and you just want him to eat so he will GO TO SLEEP ALREADY, you give him the crackers. That's how it starts, and it just kind of goes from there. I'm not saying it's a GOOD thing, and I'm not trying to make excuses for it. I'm just saying, IT HAPPENS, and that's pretty much how. You take the path of least resistance, because you want the kid to EAT. While logically you may KNOW your kid won't starve him/herself if food is available, when it is your own kid, the kid you are supposed to be KEEPING ALIVE, you eventually fall into the habit of feeding them what you know they'll eat. So then their percentages on the charts won't be wonky, and they won't pitch a fit in the restaurant, and they'll go to sleep at night, and all will be right with the world.

Okay! So back to me and MY kids, and fast-forward to now. We have been operating on the Make Your Own Damn Dinner principle for nearly a year, since the kids were 8 and 10 years old. The rules are this: Mom only makes ONE MEAL for the family for dinner. There is enough food for everyone. If you don't want to eat it, you don't have to. You're not REQUIRED to try anything. (But if you do try something new, you get MAD PROPS whether you end up liking it or not.) Hell, you don't even have to eat dinner at all if you're not hungry. However, we offer dessert (usually just something small) every single night, and if you want dessert, you have to eat a specified amount of protein and fruit or veggie for dinner. Grains are optional, because the girl child in particular would happily eat nothing BUT grains, so it's never a struggle to get any into them. If you don't like the protein and veggie I made, you are welcome to MAKE YOUR OWN.

The result of this has been that the boy child now eats the dinner I cook at least 80% of the time. He has tried a ton of new foods and has liked most of them. The girl, on the other hand, eats my food maybe 20-30% of the time. Most nights she makes herself a sandwich consisting of a seeded hamburger bun and a slice of American cheese, and some raw baby carrots. Some nights she'll eat the grain I make (she loves quinoa and nearly any sort of bread) and maybe the veggie (if it's broccoli or salad) and she'll have a piece of cheese or deli turkey along with it.

The boy's diet is now richly varied; the girl's diet is still EXTREMELY limited. I made them the same foods when they were babies/toddlers/preschoolers, and I offer them the same foods now. It's PERSONALITY, people. Maybe body chemistry has something to do with it, I don't know, but I am now convinced that some kids are just picky no matter what you do. I do think kids go through stages as far as what they're willing to eat, but I don't think there's a damn thing parents can do to control this other than enter into a battle of wills with the kid(s) in question. I do NOT want food to be a weapon in my house. Now that my kids are older and I'm not all hung up on growth charts and guidelines, my policy is to make healthy food available to them (remember, I've stopped buying fruit snacks, chicken nuggets and fish sticks along with a few other processed foods) and turn 'em loose. I do worry like hell whether the girl child is getting a balanced diet when some weeks it seems like she LIVES on cheese sandwiches and carrots, but I no longer worry about whether she's getting enough to eat. Because she knows where we keep the food, and she has access to it, so if she's hungry it's her own damn fault.

And that's all I have to say about that.

FOR NOW.


*Please don't anyone get all snippy with my use of the pronoun "you" in this piece. I'm not talking about YOU SPECIFICALLY. I'm talking about the GENERIC you. I KNOW some parents, many parents, manage to avoid this little trap I'm illustrating here. And if you have, well, good for THE SPECIFIC you. You have my undying admiration.

Meatballs

Tonight's Menu

• "cocktail" meatballs
• steamed basmati rice
  
• steamed broccoli
  

Ack! Sorry for the dearth of posts last week. I'm feeling totally uninspired, food-wise. Grilled burgers and chops, sauteed trout, and various leftovers made up the bulk of our dinners for the past week.

Tonight, however, I was in the mood for my mom's cocktail meatballs. If you grew up in the '70s, particularly in the midwest, you have no doubt eaten this exact dish -- meatballs in a sauce made from grape jelly and bottled chili sauce. My mom usually made this in the crockpot on "card club night" and served the meatballs/sauce on their own, but you add a little rice underneath and that's a MEAL, baby!

Incidentally, if you want to make meatballs from scratch but are afraid it will be a huge pain in the ass, fear not! The way I make them is dead easy. Just take a pound of ground meat (I use beef, but you could do turkey or whatever) and mix it up with the usual breadcrumbs, egg, seasonings, etc. I use a gallon-sized plastic zipper bag to mix everything -- just dump in the ingredients, press out the air (very important!), seal it and knead the hell out of it until all the ingredients are mixed. Then I use a little cookie scoop thing, like a miniature ice-cream scoop, to form the mixture into balls right from the bag. Line a baking sheet (one with a rim around the sides) with tin foil, shiny side DOWN (or use Reynold's Release -- I freakin' LOVE that stuff), stick the meatballs on it and bake them in the oven at 350 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes. Super easy with no messy hands or grease spatters from a skillet! You can make these way ahead of time and freeze them for later use, if you want.

The sauce, as I said, is just grape jelly (6 to 8 ounces) and a bottle of chili sauce (like the Heinz stuff they sell next to the ketchup). Heat them together in either a large pot or a crockpot until the jelly melts, dump in the meatballs and heat them through, and you're done!

Meat and potatoes and THAT'S ALL

Tonight's Menu

• NY strip steaks with whiskey onions
• tiny red potatoes, parboiled and then chuffed up in a hot pan with butter
  

That's right, bitches! Tonight we had meat and potatoes and THAT'S IT. Who needs vegetables, anyway? (Okay, fine. It was a crazy evening, dinner got started later than I had planned, and I couldn't be arsed to figure out what sort of green stuff to have along with. Happy now?)

The whiskey onions were dead easy. Ideally I would have made them in the same pan in which I cooked the steaks, to take advantage of the fond and whatnot, but I did the steaks on the grill pan and it doesn't lend itself well to anything saucy. SO. Instead I cut a large sweet yellow onion into wedges, stuck it in a high-sided skillet with a couple tablespoons of butter and let things caramelize a bit. I added a little bit of white sugar for good measure, then poured in about a quarter cup of Maker's Mark and let it get nice and saucy. Season with salt and pepper and serve with the meat. YUM!

Cooking disasters: tough ribs

Tonight's Menu

• oven-barbecued pork spareribs
  
• salad of tiny red potatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, fresh mozzarella and tomatoes
  
• leftover fruit salad
  

Oh, y'all. I am so disappointed in these ribs. I cooked them on a rack, tightly covered, at 200 degrees F for 3 hours before bumping them up to 400 for 30 minutes or so and slathering with sauce. Turns out I probably should have cooked them on the low heat for more like 5 hours, or else started them at 250 instead of 200. They were TOUGH. And unfortunately, being tough made it difficult to carve them even though I was using a wicked sharp knife. So I ended up with lots of oddly shaped "riblets". So disappointing! Maybe I can salvage them on the re-heat. They were tasty, despite being tough as old boots.

At least the salad was good. This is my favorite warm-weather salad that I made all the time last summer. Just quarter some little red-skinned potatoes, simmer until tender but still firm, drain and let cool. Then toss them in a bowl with a small jar of marinated artichoke hearts (don't drain them -- the marinade forms the dressing for the salad), some fresh mozzarella (the little balls packed in liquid), cherry tomatoes or tomato wedges, and a chiffonade of basil. Season with salt and cracked pepper to taste and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving. Yum! This is perfect with any sort of grilled meat.

Burgers and fruit

Tonight's Menu

• grilled hamburgers w/fixin's
  
• multigrain tortilla chips
  
• fruit salad
  

I have dozens of recipes for fruit salad in my recipe file, most of them calling for some sort of sweet dressing. Our favorite version, born out of laziness like so many of my recipes (and this one hardly even qualifies as an actual recipe), doesn't have any dressing at all.

I just take seedless green grapes, halved fresh strawberries, and a small can of mandarin orange segments (drained) and toss them together in a bowl. That's it. The flavors/textures compliment one another very well, it'll keep for a couple of days depending on how ripe the berries are, it's plenty sweet because the canned oranges usually have some sugar added, and it's much more refreshing on a hot day than salads with goopy dressings.

Um, and also I'm lazy.