liamsaunt

No pictures, my camera batteries died. Early Thanksgiving dinner with the family for my BIL, home on last leave before deployment: Brined herbed roast turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, spinach, butternut squash, cranberry sauce (yes homemade!), green beans, lots of gravy (two kinds: with or without giblets), and pinot noir (belle glos 2003, it was good). Mommom's apple pie.

OK, I have another one. This is arancini. Oozy, greasy, arancini. Only 600 calories per piece!

That skate looks delicious. The orrecchiette also. Now I am hungry...

My grandmother's dining room table had a drawer in it at my uncle's spot. He hated vegetables, so used to slide the drawer open and drop the veggies in when my granmother wasn't looking. He'd come back after she went to bed to dig them out and bury them in the trash, readying the scene for the next day. When I was four, my older sister snuck out of bed during our nap time and said she was going to bring me back a treat. She came back with a sundae dish piled high with fudge sauce and whipped cream. I took a big bite of the sundae, only to find that there was no ice cream--she had filled the dish with broken spaghetti. Mean sister.

I wear one of my old husband's t-shirts when cooking. If I wear something nice, it is inevitable that I will spill oil or red wine on it. I wear an apron when I am making something particularly messy. I always wear short sleeves because regular shirts are too long for my arms and the sleeves always unroll and get covered with food. I never wear anything with strings on it after catching a sweatshirt I was wearing on fire after the string dropped into the stove flame. On Sundays, when I cook with my mother and sister, we all wear iron chef t-shirts, because we think it's funny.

Yum, applesauce. We just made 20 quarts of it last weekend. I store mine in a stand alone freezer to keep it from discoloring. It does not seem to affect the taste or texture.

It was cold and rainy last night, so we had Marcella Hazan's chicken with two lemons, mashed potatoes, roasted beets, and broccoli. I made some gravy also, and we had a nice bottle of pinot noir.

A piece of toasted spinach-feta bread, a few almonds, and an apple. Giant glass of water.

The family all came over yesterday for all sports, all the time, so dinner was a buffet of antipasto items that could be easily eaten in front of the big TV: three kinds of fritatta (red onion, sundried tomato, and sausage) arugula salad with walnuts, parmesean, and lemon Roasted onion, red peppers, and basil salad cheese plate assorted meats and sausages plate crostini with two toppings (eggplant-tomato and fresh mozzarella, basil, tomato) lots of different kinds of olives, plus an olive spread for crackers arancini and of course, lots of wine! It was all really good, and tasted even better once we realized the Red Sox were going to win. The Pats, however...

I have a heavy cleaver too, but I really don't use it much. Hacking up chickens, yes. Sometimes attempting to hack frozen pieces of meat apart (not recommended). Hacking bones into smaller pieces for stock...that's about it. I will confess, however, that I am a little scared of my cleaver. I am very accident prone, and every time I use it I have visions of hacking one of my fingers off. Or dropping it on my foot blade down resulting in loss of toe.

leftovers from last night's dinner: rigatoni in a tomato-basil sauce from the garden (the last of my fresh basil and tomatoes), with garlic chicken sausage and parmesean.

Dinner last night: tomato mozzarella salad: and chicken with arugula salad:

Definitely Parsi dishes! My other two choices are Amish farm and breakfast. I am looking forward to this blog.

I took a picture of last night's dinner but it turned out so ugly that I think I am going to post the result in the other dinner thread! Roast maple turkey, mashed potatoes, roast cauliflower, bread dressing, carrots, and brussel sprouts. Today, for "linner," grilled salmon with dill-caper sauce, hasselback potatoes, green beans from the farmers market with basil from the garden, and eggplant sticks.

I am so jealous of your beautiful rosemary plants and herb garden! I have been spending today harvesting my basil plants. I don't think we will have more than a few weeks before we get a night cold snap here. A year-round garden would be nice indeed.

Pan seared veal rib chop, gorgonzola risotto, and broccoli. It was late and we were hungry, so I did not defat the sauce. Oh well, it still tasted good.

Roast chicken and bread salad from the zuni cafe cookbook. I made the mistake of pouring the arugula into the warm bread bowl instead of tossing the salad in a cool bowl, so it wilted a bit more than usual, but it still tasted good. I'm still working on my photo skills, obviously..

chicken tortellini soup, toasted spinach feta bread, and a diet coke.

Here is a picture of some spinach ricotta gnocchi I made last week. The gnocchi were very tasty and light, but I added too much sauce, and with the melting mozzarella, I don't know, it kind of looks like a surgical experiment gone wrong Somehow, I think more of my photos will end up here than in the nice "dinner!" thread... PS: First attempt at posting a picture, sorry if it does not work! edit: thanks Smithy for the posting tips!

Corn pudding. asparagus with lemon butter, summer squash with basil, and a tomato salad. Yum.

No eggs! No eggs! I hate eggs in potato salad. Dill, onion, mayo, scallion, mustard, parsely, all good. But slimy slippery rubbery eggs in my potato salad, yuck! But that's just my opinion...

This weekend we had a nice risotto with some fresh corn from the farmer's market, Just made a standard risotto, and added the corn raw at the end, cooked for a minute or two and threw in lots of fresh basil and thyme from the garden (along with lots of parmesean cheese). It was really good. Of course, just on the cob with lots of butter and salt is the best!

Another option for your stuffed chicken is to secure it closed with raw pasta instead of toothpicks--spaghetti or similar. It will cook along with the dish and not be noticable at the end. I may have gotten this trick from Cook's Illustrated.

The orange herb pot looks like it contains parsely, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Simon and Garfunkel! Am I right?

Of the three restuarants you are considering, Jiko is definitely my favorite. The only problem I see is that since you are staying at the Swan without a car you'll have to set aside quite a block of time to get to Jiko. The Disney buses don't run directly from resort to resort, so you'll need to transfer buses at Downtown Disney, or walk through Epcot (if you have a park pass) to the Future World gate to catch a direct bus to Animal Kingdom Lodge. The food is excellent though, and they have an outstanding wine list--it's worth the trip. You could also take a taxi.