tammylc

Rachel - thanks for the link and the tips - I haven't had a chance to look yet, but I will this afternoon. Danielle - Arbor Farms is even better now that they've moved a block down and taken over what was once a Farmer Jack. Much larger and much better selection than in their tiny old space, and it just gets better every time I visit. Since calipoutine has mentioned Canada, I'll use that as an excuse to talk about my little mid morning snack, which was a bag of Kernel's Double Butter Popcorn. I'm originally from Canada and we went back this weekend to visit family for Easter. Kernel's is a gourmet popcorn shop that is a mall standby in Canada. I worked there back when I was a teenager, 15 years or so ago, and it's one of the foods of home that I always try to pick up when I visit. I ate my dill pickle popcorn while I was still over there, but we brought a big bag of Double Butter back with us and I've been bringing a bit of it to work each day this week as a little snack. (Double Butter is their name for a caramel corn made with all white sugar.) Mmm, mmm good. I've also stolen a couple of chocolates from the dish my coworker keeps by her doorway. I'm usually a chocolate snob, but Hershey's Special Dark is acceptable in a pinch, and the Hershey's milk chocolate nuggets with toffee and almonds is one of the few forms of milk chocolate I'll bother with. But it's all about the toffee, not the chocolate. But I finished those snacks a couple of hours ago, and I'm getting peckish for lunch, so I'm going to go off to Zingerman's Bakehouse to pick something up. Back in a little bit.

Danielle, there are two operating cohousing communities in Ann Arbor, plus one under construction. I live in Great Oak. Sunward is the original community and has been up and running for about 6 years. I use the Super Baby Food book a little bit, and got some recipes from another book from a friend. Re. economic concerns about meal planning - I appreciate you guys having my pocketbook in mind, but you'd be surprised how cheap it can be to feed this many people - the economies of scale are impressive. So don't necessarily restrict your ideas based on what's the cheapest. I typically can pull off an entirely organic meal for under $5/person. Some of the things I've done in the past include jambalaya, roast pork loin, pasta with italian sausage, ham and stuffed squash, moroccan stews, etc. Obviously I'm not going to do steak for everyone - I tend to treat meat as a condiment rather than the centerpiece - but *interesting* and good is my number one criteria for meal planning, and then I figure out how to make it work with my budget. I mostly shop at Arbor Farms, which is a local natural foods supermarket. Think Whole Foods but cheaper. They often have organic produce for the same or less money than conventional equivalents. I'll splurge on selected items from Zingerman's, like good bread.

That's an interesting suggestion about the spring rolls, Therese. I'm going to ponder that further - it's got a lot of potential. I'm thinking BBQ pork for the meat eaters and tofu for the veggies, along with all the other fillings. A nice spicy peanut sauce, for sure (I just made one for a Thai meal last week - easy and wonderful). I usually like to serve family style meals rather than buffet - families in particular prefer sitting down and being able to serve at the table, rather than having to wait in a line and juggle food for multiple kids. But that said, "assemble your own..." meals are popular and lend themselves more to a buffet format. I made tortilla soup last month and it was incredibly popular - people liked being able to doctor their own soup with all the different garnishes. Letting people soften their own rice paper rolls would take to long, I think - could they be soaked in advance?

So in my intro post I mentioned that I live in a cohousing community. Cohousing is a form of intentional community that combines private homes with lots of common spaces. We've been living here for about a year and a half now. One of the greatest things about cohousing is common meals, which are optional shared meals offered 5 nights a week (Sunday through Thursday). Teams of community members take turns cooking, and teams include a head cook and two assistants. The head cook does the menu planning and shopping, and the assistants just show up on the day of the meal to help. Menus are posted at least a few days in advance, and people sign up if they want to attend. Meal costs are split between everyone who signed up, and you get a bill at the end of the month. A typical month for me and my husband costs around $150. Average attendance at meals is around 30-40 people, including children, teens and adults. Attendance varies based on the menu, the cook, and the day of the week. For the most part the cooks are good - some very good - but there are some who aren't especially inspired. Last night's meal of rice with broccoli, chicken and cheese was perfectly adequate from a nutritional perspective, but lacking a certain pizazz, for example... There's almost always a vegetarian option, and vegetarian meals are not uncommon. Organic produce and natural meats are encouraged, while at the same time there's pressure to keep meal costs low - a typical meal costs between $3-$6 per person, and people (especially familes) will start to complain or avoid certain cooks if they tend toward the higher end. I've been cooking at least twice a month since our meal program started last year, and I've documented most of my meals here on eGullet. My meals tend to be very well attended and I've received lots of compliments on my cooking, so it's a very rewarding job! My next shift is this upcoming Sunday, and I'm feeling bad because I haven't posted my menu yet. But I thought I'd wait and solicit some suggestions from my foodblog readers. Left to my own devices, I'll probably do a variation of the Middle Eastern meal I describe in this post, but I'm interested in your suggestions and ideas for something else. I need to decide by the end of today so I can post my menu this evening. So eGulleteers - what would you like to see me cook?

I'm Tammy. This is Liam: Some of you may remember my foodblog from October of 2003, when I was pregnant with Liam and eating every 2 hours to stave off morning sickness. Well, the little guy's not only been born (April 26, 2004), but is eating food of his own now, so it seemed like it would be a good time to blog again. I know my teaser said "babyfood blog" but that will just be a small part of the week's activity. I will be blogging his meals as well as my own, but I'm taking advantage of my week of foodblogging to do some other fun stuff too. I don't do much cooking these days because I live in a cohousing community where we eat meals with our neighbors several nights a week. (I'll be posting more about that in just a little bit.) But I do make most of Liam's baby food myself, since it's cheaper and better tasting than the jarred stuff and I try to cook organic for him as much as possible. I'll share a recipe for baby food that - mixed with a little salt and lots of lemon juice - would make a lovely dip for pita chips. :-) Later in the week I'll be attending a cheese tasting at Zingerman's, a pretty famous deli/specialty foods store here in Ann Arbor, MI. And we'll seek answers to my weekly challenge of finding a restaurant that can accomodate 8 to 10 adults and an equal number of babies, most of whom need high chairs. Liam started his day off with his favorite beverage - mama's milk, straight from the tap. I work 3 days a week and on those days (Monday-Wednesday) it can be a challenge to get out the door and to daycare and work on time. So Liam goes in his high chair and I give him some finger foods to snack on while I get his bottles and lunch food ready. We're pretty much creatures of habit at breakfast time, so today's breakfast was mostly the same as yesterday's - half a banana, half a piece of wheat toast, and 2 ounces of plain organic whole milk yogurt. He starts with the banana and toast, and then when I sit down to eat my breakfast I feed him the yogurt - he's not so good with spoons yet! But he ate really quickly today and I needed time to finish this post, so added a special bonus to his breakfast - Cheerios! (Well, Purely O's, the organic equivalent). Breakfast for me today is a bowl of frosted mini wheats with skim milk, which I'm eating while I'm posting this. Now it's off to work - I'll be back in a little while, looking for your advice on what I should cook for 30 or 40 of my neighbors on Sunday night.

That's great news. My visit to mk was disappointing, except for dessert, which rocked, and had me wondering if I could go back just for dessert some time. Nice to know I don't have to. (Not that I get to eat in Chicago much at all, but a girl can dream.)

The menu is the Thai Beef Salad for the meat eaters, Tofu Satay with Peanut Sauce for the vegetarians, and then a vegetable curry with rice for everybody. I want to do sticky rice with mango and coconut milk for dessert, but it seems like sticky rice is tricky to cook, so I might just do some mango ice cream or sorbet or something (store-bought).

I'm planning to make Thai Beef Salad this weekend. In looking at recipes, it seems that there are as many ways to make it as there are cooks - anyone want to share your favorite recipe so I can figure out the similarities and differences? Thanks.

So Thursday I recapped the jambalaya I described earlier, and it was even better than last time. I'll share details later, but right now I have a request. My assistant cooks and I are planning a Thai feast for Sunday's dinner, and I'm looking for your favorite recipes for Thai Beef Salad. It seems like one of those recipes that has tremendous variation from cook to cook, so I'd like to see where the similarities and differences lie.

Agreed. I was really annoyed by his inability to improvise. Running out of time? Fine - abandon the pasta and redeploy the assistants to something else - at least get something done! I have to guess that he just totally didn't get it. Disappointing. And embarassing. Laboratorio has been on my to-eat list for a while, and it's still there, but only because I've heard so many good things from people I trust... Watching him on ICA certainly wouldn't inspire me to seek hiim out.

If anyone's coming in to Ann Arbor for a Zingeman's trip (or anything else, for that matter) - feel free to PM me - I always love to give the foodie tour of the town.

Our website is at www.gocoho.org. Feel free to PM or email me with questions. I see you're in the neighborhood, so if you want to come by for dinner and a tour some time, just let me know!

Tortilla Soup Another spin through the common kitchen. When I made this soup for dinner with friends a few weeks ago, I immediately began plotting to cook it for common meal, it was so good. The recipe is from Cook's Illustrated magazine. This ended up just a little more expensive than my usual meals. I lay the blame on buying 10 quarts of organic chicken stock at $3 per package. It would certainly be way cheaper to make the stock myself - but there's just not time. Not to mention that the chicken was free range and almost all the veggies organic. And I'm still probably less than $5 per person, so I'm sure I'm the only person who cares (I like to keep it around $4 if possible). I had 26 meat eaters and 6 vegetarians, plus 8 kids. The original recipe serves 6, so I multiplied it by five for the carnivores and did a single modified version for the veggies. My shopping list, with notes for next time: For the soup: 7 lbs chicken (bone in thighs and breasts, fat and skin removed) 10 quarts chicken stock 2 quarts veggie stock 8 large white onions 12 tomatoes 2 heads garlic 1 bunch cilantro 1 pkg fresh oregano 1 can chipotles en adobo The garnishes 2 pkgs corn tortillas (6 dozen) 2 pkgs grated cotija cheese (really wanted about 4 pkgs, but this was all they had at the Mexican Market) 1 1/2 lbs montery jack (because I didn't have enough cotija) 6 limes (didn't need that many) 1 bunch cilantro (needed more - 2 next time) 8 avocados (these were pretty small, and I should have had more - but you can never have enough in this crowd) 3 jalapenos 2 16-oz pkgs sour cream 2 lg bags mixed greens 2 pkgs grape tomatoes Dessert 4 lg pkgs instant chocolate pudding (probably could have gotten by with 3 or even 2) 1 gallon milk 1 sm carton whipping cream Making the soup is a multi-step process. But one of the nice things about it is that there's almost no chopping - you do a lot in the food processor. First, enrich and flavor the packaged stock by bringing it to a boil with 3 onions (quartered), 10 whole cloves of garlic, 1 bunch of cilantro, the oregano, and the chicken. Bring it to a boil and then lower the heat and cook until the chicken is cooked through. Strain the stock and reserve the chicken. Puree the rest of the onions, as well as the tomatoes (cored and quartered) the rest of the garlic (12 cloves or so), and just two chipotles until smooth. This is way less chipotle than the recipe calls for, but I pureed the rest of the can and put it out as a garnish so that people could spice up their bowls as desired. The two that I added were enough to provide some flavor and depth to the soup without any heat, so I guessed right. The tomato puree gets cooked over high heat in a frying pan until it darkens in color (about 10 minutes) - I had to do it in three batches, then gets added to the soup and simmered to blend the flavors. While that's simmering, the chicken gets shredded into bite-sized pieces and gets added back into the soup for a few minutes before serving. For the vegetable version, I enriched the veggie stock in the same way, just leaving out the chicken. I usually try to have a veggie protein source, but I figured the cheese garnishes would fill that gap. And then I split the tomato puree between the two pots. The veggie version was no where near as good as the chicken, but after the garnishes, I'm sure it was still very tasty. The tortilla strips are just done in the oven. Slice the tortillas into strips, toss them with a little oil, spread on a cookie sheet and cook them in a 425 degree oven for 7 minutes, toss, then cook for another 7 minutes (several batches, obviously, to crisp this many chips!). I usually serve my meals family style, but this one really did lend itself best to serving buffet style, so that's what we did, complete with little instruction signs: Step 1 - Put chips in bowl, Step 2 - Add one ladle of soup, Step 3 - Garnish! As noted in the ingredients list, I didn't have enough cilantro and avocado, and too many lime wedges. Did a quick salad on the side, because it's nice to have something green. For dessert, I doctored up some instant chocolate pudding. For half of it, I added just a tsp of cinnamon - good for the kids and the timid. For the other half, I added a tsp of cinnamon and about 1/4 tsp of cayenne. Both got topped with a little whipped cream sprinkled with cinnamon. The spicy chocolate pudding turned out nice, although it had perhaps a little bit more heat than ideal (didn't stop me from eating 3 bowls, though!) Another well received meal. Tim, who was sitting next to me, had 3 bowls! It's nice because it's so customizable - people like being able to add their own toppings. And pretty quick to make - it took 3 of us just 2 reasonably easy hours. I think this will go into the rotation.

Thanks - after annarborfoodie mentioned Dearborn I was looking around at the Metrotimes reviews and saw Crave. Sounds interesting, although also like I might get sneered at for not being hip enough. Has anyone been?

Well, How was it? ← Still don't know. We weren't up to making the 45 minute drive in freezing rain (would have been twice that long anyway), so we bailed. I can report that Dema, the restaurant in the airport Westin at the new McNamara Terminal is decidedly mediocre, though. On that note - a question - is there anything interesting with 20 minutes or so of the airport? Anything worth eating in Romulus? Not that we would have ventured out in that weather anyway, but it's likely to become relevant to me again.

The biggest reason not to cook the Beef Burgundy the day before is that I don't have any assistant cooks that day! If I want to do that, I'd either have to do it all myself (ugh) or make special arrangements with them. Plus we only have a standard refrigerator, so making space to store it overnight could also be an issue. For the Morrocan chicken I used "pick of the chick" packs of cut up pieces, so thighs, legs, breasts and wings.

Okay - all up to date now. I'll try to remember to cross post in the future, so I'm not doing it all at once!

Stuffed Squash, redux (01/30/2005) Cooked common meal again on Thursday, and decided to bring back the stuffed squash meal that earned me raves in October. This time I made stuffed squash for everybody and just got a little bit of ham for the obligate meat eaters. And to help with the oven crunch, we made mashed potatoes instead of scalloped potatoes. I'll probably do this meal once a season in the winter months - it's really easy, especially given how much people like it. It's kid-friendly, so I don't have to do anything special for the kids. And it's cheap - well under $4/person, even buying all organic produce and way too expensive ham (because that's all the grocery store I was at had, and I didn't have time to go to another one). Speaking of buying - I bought every single acorn squash in the grocery store, and ended up having to buy a few small butternut squashes to make up the difference. Pound for pound, this is probably my heaviest meal. Notes to myself for next time: In October we made 15 lbs of scalloped potatoes for 60 people and had lots of leftovers. I only had 50 people on Thursday, but knowing mashed potatoes would go over better, I made 15 lbs of those. Which was not enough. I need to make 20 lbs next time. As mentioned above, the only ham the store had was expensive, and in these little tiny Black Forest Ham "nuggets." Which were actually nice in that they didn't take much time to heat up and were easy to carve and portion. In October, without the squash for everybody, we went through an 8 lb ham no problem. This time, I bought 3 of the little hams, with a total weight of about 5.5 lbs, and there were tons of leftovers. I probably could have got by with 2. But people took the leftovers, so it was no big deal. I did cookies for dessert this time, since I would have had to go to a different store to get pies, and I was worried about the cost because of buying the organic produce (needlessly, as it turns out, as I could still have turned out a $4 meal even buying the pies). Cookies worked just fine, but it is worth noting that there is lots of slack time in this menu (we sharpened all the knives in the kitchen and started doing the dishes), so there is time to make something more elaborate. As long as it doesn't need to be cooked in the oven.

Beef Burgundy (12/30) Long, busy day today. The baby and I went to playgroup this morning, then for lunch with the other moms, then came back here and started cooking. I had decided to make Beef Burgundy and written it in the book, without thinking that stew needs to, well, stew, and that takes time. Usually I start cooking between 3 and 4. My assistant cooks don't come until 4. But I needed to get the stew stewing by 3:30 so it would be done by 6. And before that I had to brown the meat, etc. I started at 2:30. A sequence of neighbors and friends took turns looking after Liam all day, but he didn't get enough naps and was quite pooped by the end of the day. I feel bad. I should not have gone out for lunch and instead come home and given him a nap, as was my original intention. Bad mama. Dinner turned out really excellent. I had never actually made Beef Burgundy before, but I did a bunch of web research and ended up preparing something that was a slight variation on the Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen version. I had 24 meat eaters, 5 vegetarians, and 12 kids of assorted ages. I started by cooking some bacon, then browning 12 lbs of cubed beef chuck in bacon fat. Chopped up some onion and carrot and put those in the pot with the meat, plus a bouquet garni of parsley, thyme, garlic and bay leaves. Then I melted some butter and added flour and cooked it until it was a brown roux. It was very nearly a black roux, but I managed to save it before it burnt. Put that in the pots (I was making two pots at once) and added a bottle and a half of $7 Pinot Noir from Trader Joes to each pot. Apparently Beef Burgundy is actually improved with better wine, but I was on a budget. Then onto the stove to stew by about 3:45 - not bad. When my assistant cooks arrived I assigned one of them to make "Beans Burgundy" (a vegetarian variation I found online) while the other one and I did various things like setting the tables, slicing fruit for dessert, etc. She had to run out to pick up her son from daycare, which was handy because I'd forgotten to buy the bread, so would have had to send someone out for it anyway. Meanwhile the stew stewed away. Near the end we cooked some pearl onions and browned some button mushrooms and added them to the stew before serving. Dinner was: Beef or Beans Burgundy, salad, peas, and baguette, with baked brie in puff pastry with apples and grapes for dessert. I also bought a better bottle of wine (actual Burgundy) and gave people the option of signing up and paying me separately for wine. I had three takers in addition to my husband and myself, and a couple of other people brought their own wine with them. It was really, really tasty. Rich, flavorful, hearty, warm - perfect food for a winter day (ignore the fact that it's 50 degrees in MI today). It got lots and lots of raves - this was probably the meal where I had the most people commenting on the food. The vegetarian version was also really good - two people were fighting over the leftovers at the end of the night. A couple people mentioned that they always try to make sure to sign up for my meals because they know they'll be good - that was very nice to hear! It's nice to be appreciated. It went over so well that I feel like I should do it again sometime. But I'd have to find a way to make the timing work better. Do a little bit of prep the night before, maybe - I could have chopped all my veggies and gotten the bouquet garni ready - although really, I just worked on those things while the beef was browning, so it wouldn't really gain me anytime. Get my assistant cooks to come early, if possible. Figure out how to get it done the night before, maybe. If I do it again I'll do it on a Sunday so that Liam can be with his dad, who'll make sure he gets naps as needed.

Moroccan Night at the Common Kitchen (12/27) Last night I reprised my Moroccan theme meal from my first month of cooking, with a few new twists. I kept the Chickpea and Carrot Stew (still a huge hit, and oh-so-easy) and the Cabbage and Orange Salad, and added some chicken, some tempeh, and some Moroccan cookies. It turned out really well, was pretty simple, and people seemed to really enjoy it - I think I'll put this on a once every couple of months rotation. I was especially pleased with the chicken. I had promised "spiced baked chicken" on the menu, but hadn't really decided what to do until yesterday. I looked up a bunch of recipes online for ideas and improvised some really tasty chicken. I sliced onions into thin semi circles and spread them over the bottom of a baking pan greased with a little olive oil. Then I took chicken pieces and placed them on top of the onions. I sprinkled cumin, cinnamon, salt, pepper, and paprika over it all. Then I placed lemon wedges between the pieces of chicken and baked it in the oven until it was done (about an hour at 375). To serve, we put the chicken on platters, scooped out on the onions and lemons and some of the collected juices and dumped those over the top, then garnished it with some nice green olives and some chopped cilantro. It was really quite tasty. Next time I'll use more onion and lemon, as the lemony chicken-fatty onion bits were my favorite part and there really weren't enough of them. The cookies were also really good. It was a simple sugar cookie recipe with ground almonds and cinnamon sprinkled on top. Tasty, and just different enough to be interesting. Note to self - next time, don't make so much couscous.

Baby and cohousing are both going wonderfully. Sorry I didn't see your posts earlier - I think I wasn't getting notifications for a while, and baby means I'm not on the board as often. Participation in the meal program is still great. And I've been getting lots of great feedback - people telling me that they make a point of signing up for my meals, etc. So that's nice. I've made a few things since I last posted to this thread - I wrote most of them up for my LiveJournal, so I'll just go ahead and crosspost them for the record...

Cooks post their menus as far in advance as they are able. People sign up if they'd like to attend. Sometime before the meal, usually the night before, the meal is "closed" to further sign up and the cook goes shopping for the number of people who have committed. Receipts are submitted and food costs plus a 12% "pantry fee" are divided up amongst the people who signed up. Adults are charged for a full portion, teens 3/4, and kids 1/2 price. They get a bill at the end of the month with all their bills on it. Cooks can choose to be reimbursed, in which case you get a check in a couple of days, or to have the balance applied to their meal account. There's no set budget to work from. But people will vote with their pocket books - if you consistently make $6 or $7 meals, some people will stop coming. The sweet spot seems to be between $3.50 and $4.50. But people are always pleased when a meal comes in low - especially if it's a really good meal. I usually don't have a problem meeting that - as you mentioned above - I actually tend to underspend. As for kitchen stocking - we've got a bunch of pots and pans, some pretty good knives (especially since I sharpened them last time I was cooking - they're probably due for it again). We killed our first big rice cooker and had to replace it - hopefully this one will do better. There's a small crappy food processor and a random blender. I bring my Kitchen Aid food processor over when I need one, and we are investigating purchasing a new one for the common house - the difference in price between good household and commercial is huge, though, so not sure if we're going to fork over the $1000 for a commercial one. There's also a KA stand mixer. Tonight I'm revisiting the very first meal I made - pasta with italian sausage marinara sauce. I'm really glad that I've been recording some of my meals here, because it made it easy to devise my shopping list!

There was ample hot sauce on the side. And the andouille I used had a bit of bite to it. I do try to keep things on the mild side, since it's easy to make things hotter at the table, but impossible to tone them down.

Thanks Devilkitty. I've read the critique about the tables before. My hope is that since they've just started being open on Sunday nights, it won't be quite as busy as it might have been otherwise. Unfortunately, Tribute, Emily's and the Lark are all closed on Sunday. I was lucky to be able to find anything interesting that was open!

I'm going to Jeremy (in Keego Harbor, a Detroit sub) next weekend - anyone have anything good or bad to report, or am I the front line? Here's the mini-review from the Freeps Top Tables 2005: JEREMY | Keego Harbor With its eclectic décor, bare black tabletops and savvy young waitstaff, chef Jeremy Grandon's eponymous little place in Keego Harbor catches first-time visitors by surprise with its cool, contemporary feel and modern, innovative approach to food. Grandon prefers the fresh notes of vinaigrettes, herb oils and broths to the heaviness of traditional stocks and cream-based sauces, creating dishes that sparkle with clean, bold, distinctive flavor. From the winter menu, don't miss the fabulous butternut squash and apple risotto with leeks, chestnuts, pancetta and pumpkin sauce. Equally delicious is the pan-roasted Maple Leaf Farms duck breast, above, with creamed Swiss chard, roasted root vegetables and a grainy mustard sauce. Though the menu is brief -- four or five salads and soups, four appetizers and a half-dozen entrees -- it is well balanced, offering outstanding fresh fish and vegetarian choices in addition to beef and other red meat. The wine list offers more than 150 choices. Jeremy was the Detroit Free Press Restaurant of the Year in 2004.