liamsaunt

I like your espresso cup, little miss foodie. I almost always eat the same thing for breakfast--buttered toast and a cup of tea. Creativity comes post-caffiene for me.

I like to bake a pan of popovers to go with soup, especially fish chowders. Tomato soup with buttered bread is a favorite also.

I will confess to having a freezer full of novelties as well. I have a second freezer in the basement, and it is well stocked with ice cream treats. Current inventory: klondike regular and crunchy, m+m cones and sandwiches, snickers ice cream bars, hoodsie cups, ice cream sandwiches, fudgescicles, drumsticks regular and caramel, chocolate covered ice cream on a stick, sprinklers, and peanut butter flavored mini popsicles. The stash is for my niece and nephew, who are over every weekend. They like choosing from all of the pictures on the boxes. It's their personal ice cream truck!

Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy Roast cod with potatoes Lasagna Big trays of mixed roasted root vegetables Coq au vin Pommes Anna Applesauce Fish chowder and popovers Fondue Gingerbread

Carmelized onions and mushrooms, topped with a sort of fondue like gruyere-wine sauce, on crusty bread. My husband hates this dish, so I just make it every time he is out of town.

Last night: giant popover stuffed with wild mushrooms, sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes. Tonight: unfortunately for me, dinner in front of the television as the semi-dreaded football season starts again so, pizza with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil from the garden. At least I know the food will be good. I think.

I like fruit but do not eat as much as I would like to. It is really hard to find decent fruit to eat out of hand. Most fruits (especially stone fruits) from the grocery seem to go from rock hard to rotten. Even if a fruit is in season, it never seems to be available ripe, or even from a regional producer, at a grocery. When the farmers market I go to in my city is open, the fruit is pretty limited, though the vegetables are great. The only fruits I remember from last season were plums, peaches, and occasionally raspberries and blackberries. The quality was mixed. In addition, there were tomatoes later along, and then apples (fall). Overall, my favorite fruit is lemon, because I use it so much in cooking!

My first meal for my now husband was really bad, I admit. Hey, it was a long time ago, and I was really young, so please don't make fun of my menu! I had extremely limited cooking experience, so I just picked a menu from one of the cookbooks I owned at the time, and prepared the entire suggested menu. I now own about 300+ cookbooks, but I have always kept this book, one of the first I bought, because it reminds me of the first meal, bad as it was, that I cooked for him. Here is the menu: Split Pea and Rice Soup: Well, he ate it with a smile, despite the fact that it was underseasoned and undercooked. What a sport. Romanian Marinated Mushrooms: seemed fine Fettuccini with Creamy Gorgonzola Sauce: sounds good, right? I guess I have to admit that neither of us had ever had gorgonzola before, and we both found the taste overwhelming. He still ate it. Good man. Also, I suppose I should mention that I undercooked the pasta, and also did not know the trick of thinning sauces with pasta cooking water. Fassoulia (green beans). Fine. Dessert: Trifle. This he ate a lot of. Oh well. I think the 'experience' of this meal helped us both become much, much, better cooks. Believe me, the meals are 'much' better now!

I have always kept my paprika in the freezer too, without really knowing why. Now I know! I have been lucky enough not to have had my spices infested (knocks on wood), but I remember my Mom's stories about her rice being infested with some maggoty bug when she lived in Plilly. She said it would look like simple rice, but when she put it in to the hot water, the bugs would come'a calling! Generally speaking, I keep all of my spices in a seperate cabinet, tightly sealed, which seems to prevent infestation.

Well, I am in the process of hosting a house full of NE Patriots fans, all of whom are experiencing indigestion from the way this game is going! Menu: we all ate earlier this evening, to get ready for the stress of this game! Striped bass with garlic-basil sauce, tuna with spicy shallot sauce, potato gratin, roasted asparagus, seared spinach with pine nuts, cornbread (as a nod to the panthirs). That was this afternoon. With the game: all the usual football food: nachos, buffalo wings, various chips and pretzels, pepperey popcorn, and of course, lots of beer! Go Patriots! Is it too early to say Go Red Sox? Probably...

pasta

thursday: spaghetti and meatballs.

I am not sure about the butter patch thing. Cold butter makes my teeth shiver. One of the best things about toast is the fact that it is warm! I like to apply the butter to my almost perfectly toasted toast in thin pats, and then put it briefly back into the toaster oven for melting and final perfect browning of the bread, which, after spreading the melted butter, results in a very thin even spread of butter on hot crispy toast. Mmmm...toast.

Wednesday: cassoulet. I made it Sunday while snowed in, and just reheated it today after work. Last night we went out to dinner (too sore from shoveling to cook!). Monday: Roast butternut squash lasagna, brussels sprouts shredded and seared, pinot noir.

I will never again wear a sweatshirt with strings dangling from the front while cooking on a gas range at high heat. One evening, I removed a large pot of pasta from the stove while the burner was still on, and caught the string of my sweatshirt in the flame. Not that I noticed at the time. Oh no. Instead, I thought to myself, "hmm...something smells burnt. How could I possibly have burnt pasta on to the bottom of this pot?" Followed by "hmm..neither the pasta nor the pot are burnt, and yet, something in this house is burning." Folllowed by "hmm..I am feeling somewhat warm in the chest region." After placing the large pasta pot on the counter, and getting a full view of the situation, this was followed by "Agh! my shirt is on fire!" Thankfully, it was a very thick and apparently pretty fire-resistant sweatshirt. I used the big pot to smother the flames, and all was well.

I have 347 cookbooks at the moment. I have not had a chance to count my food related books yet. What cookbooks are on people's wish lists for the holiday season?

I am not sure if this would qualify as the worst meal I ever had, but my mother used to make this absolutely disgusting stew thing with alarming regularity. It consisted of canned tomatoes, sliced zucchini and summer squash, and chunks of ground beef--no additional seasoning, all dumped into an electric frying pan and cooked until the beef chunks turned grey-brown. I believe american cheese was added at the end. It was truly awful--watery, greasy, and bland. Funnily enough, my co-worker also lists this dish as the worst thing her mother cooked too, so the recipe for it must have appeared on the back of the can of tomatoes or something. I am happy to report that my mother's cooking has gotten much better over the years.

Wednesday: wild mushroom risotto, arugula salad, wine Thursday: So much food. Two turkeys roasted with stuffing, another stuffing, sausage based, baked outside the bird, buttercup squash puree, mashed sweet potatoes with pecans, green beans with almonds, mashed potatoes (yes, lots of mashed vegetables here), roasted cauliflower, homemade bread, cranberry sauce, pinot noir, two kinds of gravy. For dessert: apple pie, pumpkin cheesecake. I think everyone except for me is already asleep from all of this food!

roasted salmon in a honey mustard garlic marinade, green beans with almonds, rice pilaf, sweet and sour carrots, chardonnay.

Friday dinner: Roast rack of lamb crispy herbed spaetzle winter squash puree brussels sprouts with brown butter and garlic red wine (cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot blend)

I always start with a clean kitchen, and if it is going to be a big meal with lots of guests, an empty dishwasher. When it is just the two of us, I cook and hubby cleans up. I always clean as I go, mostly because I have a limited amount of space in my kitchen. If we have big gatherings, we clean up together, in shifts, though often cleaning is put off to spend more time with friends. We usually try to finish cleaning up before bed. Best case: I go to bed, hubby cleans up!

I love to cook with my Mom and with my sister too. I am lucky in that everyone in my family gets along, live near to us, and we all love to spend time together. Also, all of the inlaws and extended family people get along as well. This means that most weekends we have a meal together on one afternoon/evening, depending on schedules. My mom usually calls my sister and I on about Wednesday to see what we would like to eat, and we assign dishes, or one person (usually me) cooks the menu for all. Since we all live close to each other, it is easy to share cooking duties and equipment. My mom is a great cook, but since my sis and I love to cook as well, she often acts more as a "consultant" these days, walking through and inspecting our dishes. Of course, she will never say that we are doing something wrong (smart woman!). We joke that everyone has their role: I cook, Mom and sis help, my husband is the wine person, and my Dad watches the grandkids. All other guests are exempted from duties (other than keeping me company in the kitchen). I have great memories of cooking with my Mom when I was a kid, especially baking biscuts and chocolate cakes. Now, she is baking the biscuts with her grandson. (unfortunately for her, at 6 AM on the weekends he stays overnight!) In my completely unbiased opinion, my Mom makes the best biscuts ever.