Sometimes all a girl wants is a nice, simple, dinner-in-a-bowl. I have a lovely bowl my cousin Elizabeth made for me many years ago, during her pottery stage, and it’s the perfect single-chick-dinner-alone bowl. Tonight, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. There was a leftover chicken breast in the fridge, there were plenty of lamb chops and salmon steaks in the freezer, but none of that was what I wanted. The weather has been odd here lately — mostly unseasonably warm, but after a very windy day, the skies got gloomy and the temperature dropped some, and suddenly, that…
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In the freezer there was both ground lamb and ground elk (thanks Parks!) and after Maryanne and Jimmy’s magnificent dueling sauces for our Soprano’s-spaghetti-and-meatball-dinner on Sunday, I was inspired to make meatballs. I do not come from a meatball people, so meatballs are one of those things I come to late. In fact, I’m not much of a ground meat kind of gal, but when you buy (or are given) meat by the animal, you wind up with ground meat. So, I decided to do meatballs. Because I had lamb in the freezer, and because I made some really yummy…
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I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those fancy-pet-food people, but over Christmas Hope and Matt turned me on to this stuff called the Missing Link. It’s a supplement for dogs and for cats that’s full of omega-3 oils and freeze-dried liver and things. Because everyone was having issues with their coats, I switched all the animals from Science Diet to California Naturals, which Hope and Matt also raved about. Then I bought some Missing Link as well — and I discovered that they also have a formula for cats.The dogs have hair issues sometimes — Raymond is nervous…
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So, I’m starting to cook again, which is a relief. Although the Albertson’s frozen lasagna and mac-and-cheese did see me through the worst of it, I always liked cooking, and not being interested was strange to me. Last weekend I made a soup (I blogged it but then lost the entry in a small snafu) from leftover duck stock I found in the freezer, lentils, sausage and a mix of kale and turnip greens (also from the freezer and last summer’s garden). It was great — the unctuous duck stock is the perfect foil for the slightly bitter turnip greens,…
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I’ve fallen in love with cooked greens — thank goodness I put so many of them up last summer. But I am running into leftover issues — I made beet greens for dinner with Bill and Maryanne and Jim last week, and had a bunch left over. They’d already been cooked just about to death, so I didn’t want to eat them the way they were again, so I made a sort of crustless quiche with them. I beat three eggs with about a cup of cream and a nice grating of nutmeg, then put the lefotver greens in my…
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This is in the pot-roast family of foods that are good for times when, shall we say, one’s energy levels might be uneven. When you’re having an up afternoon, you can do the cooking, then those other times of the week when you’re not feeling so swell, you can simply reheat. I adapted this from Nina Simonds book Asian Noodles — her recipe is for Cinnamon Beef Noodles, and what I wanted was something more pot-roasty. So, here’s what I did: I chopped up a handful of scallions, a thumb-sized hunk of ginger, a handful of garlic cloves and sauteed…
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Last night I roasted a chicken while watching the Cubs break our collective hearts again. Those of you who have been reading for a while may know that my feelings about the magical restorative qualities of a roasted chicken run right up there with the ability of cake to cheer people up. My faith may waver in many things, but never in the power of a roasting chicken to bring a house back to life. So I ate a little chicken, with some rice and beet greens from last summer’s garden. There are many good things about a roast chicken,…
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Ordering a Lamb Well, I ordered a lamb yesterday. It “won’t be ready” for a couple of more weeks, which means it’s still out there at the Schilling’s ranch, eating and growing and being a lamb. Which not only doesn’t bother me, it reassures me. It’s a happy lamb. It lives in my neighborhood. It’s being raised by responsible ranchers. And it’s a meat animal — that’s its purpose, so I’m not sad it’s going to die. I’m just relieved to know how it lived. When it’s big enough, about 60 pounds, it’ll go off to Big Timber to the…
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Box of Fish Yesterday I bought 25 pounds of salmon from a guy on the other side of town. He fished for it himself, in Alaska, and then had it processed, boxed, and shipped home where he sells it out of his house. I love buying food from the person who actually produced it. I paid six bucks a pound, which seems like a bargain to have one of your neighbors go to Alaska and catch wild salmon. So in my basement freezer is now enough fish for a year. Clean, wild, sustainably harvested salmon — salmon that never lived…
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Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwiches It’s that time of year — there are ripe tomatoes in my garden, which means, it’s time for BLTs. Because what’s the point of a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich that isn’t made with a real tomato — a tomato grown locally, a tomato grown to ripeness and juicy perfection? A BLT made with a supermarket tomato is a travesty. It isn’t a BLT at all, it bears the same relation to a real BLT as silicone breasts do to real ones. It is a Bad Thing. Whereas a real BLT, made with a real…