Friday October 24, 2008

I have a raging sinus infection. I'm miserable.

Yesterday Lulu had a playdate with her pal Benny and we made Challah. It got a little messy.

Now, some catching up:



Chicken Dinner


Leftover chicken with veggies in rice paper.



Peanut Butter Noodles



Putting cinnamon and sugar on fresh churros.

Thursday October 16, 2008

When I first moved to NYC in my very early twenties, I lived in a fourth floor walk up on St. Mark's Place between 2nd & 1st. The apartment had great light and a healthy population of cockroaches. During those few salad years, I survived on the following:

- food leftover after meetings in the conference room of wherever I was working at the time.
- pizza from the Albanian guys on St. Mark's & 1st.
- cheap Indian food from the place on 1st between 6th & 7th. West side, downstairs, not upstairs.
- fresh mangos and fig cookies from the bodega.
- burritos from San Loco (original location)

J was in the city today for a meeting and picked me up some San Loco. I used to be able to eat the "serious" ones, now I can only handle the hot.

He's OK.

Wednesday October 15, 2008

Breakfast for dinner. Chocolate chip waffles, cheese omelet, apples. Jason's stopping for a sandwich for himself. Whatever.

Tuesday October 14, 2008

Chicken noodle soup, made entirely from leftovers. With some warm crusty wheat bread, straight from the bread machine.

Monday October 15, 2008

It was just me, Radish and Lulu for dinner tonight. We spent a great afternoon hiking in the woods before D had to be at the rink, and I was too tired to prepare anything but peanut butter noodles. Luckily, Radish and Lulu are very helpful when it comes to peanut butter noodles.

Here's the recipe:

Not so spicy noodles with broccoli
1 package Udon noodles
2 cups broccoli florets
1/2 cup veggie or chicken broth
3 Tbs no sugar or salt added peanut butter
1 Tbs honey
2 Tbs soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp ground ginger
dash chili pepper

crushed peanuts (optional)
sliced scallions (optional)

Boil the noodles until soft. Strain and set aside.
Blanch the broccoli florets quickly in boiling water. Set aside.
In a small sauce pan, stir together the broth, peanut butter, honey, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and chili pepper. Stir over medium heat until the peanut butter has melted.
Mix in the noodles and broccoli, top with peanuts and scallions.

Saturday October 4, 2008

We had a houseful of friends for Rosh Hashana, which is just the way I like it. Unfortunately, with the exception of the photo above, I left D in charge of taking food pictures which he took to interpret as "take picture of your friends with food in their mouths". Not really the way you want to see my roast beef, is it?

Here's a written run-down of the menu, some of it brought by guests or bought at the kosher butcher: sweet challah, apples & honey, chicken soup with matzo balls, gefilte fish, chopped liver, green salad, roasted beets and eggplants, braised carrots, brown rice, potato kugel, roast beef, roast chicken legs, salmon, sorbet, cookies, brownies. The end. It sounds like a lot, but there were a lot of people here.

Since then, we've been scarfing down leftovers.

And churros.

Tuesday September 23, 2008

It was a soup kind of night. A little chilly outside, and many afternoon hours logged at the rink. D happily reported after practice that he and one other kid were the only ones that didn't have to do "suicides". I'm not sure what that means, but I'm glad.

This soup is potato leek. I cook leeks (the white and very light green parts) in butter until soft, but not brown. I use a nice chunk of butter and cook them on low for a long time so they get nice and gooey looking. Then I added in vege stock from the freezer and cubed potatoes, some thyme, salt & a healthy dose of pepper. That's it. Let it cook for about 30 min until the potatoes are soft and puree with a stick blender. You could add in milk or cream at the end, but I never do. I do, however, top it with shredded cheese, and for the kids, a few croutons.

We also made some lemonade cookies that were a semi-failure. I knew when putting the dough in the refrigerator the day beore that it was way, way too dry. But I was lazy and kind of hoped that just being in the cold would magically make the fat content increase and they would stick together. Didn't happen. Out of two logs I was able to form about 10 pathetic little cookies. I could have added more liquid, or more fat, but I was over the cookies by then and wanted to move on.

This is Monday night. Whatever.

Sunday September 21, 2008

Sort of leftovers. Baked chicken breasts with leftover pizza sauce from yesterday's pizza. I'm gearing up for another crazy week.

Saturday September 20, 2008

I finally got around to trying the Pizza Bianca recipe from Cook's Illustrated again. Delicious again. Our dinner guests canceled at the very last minute, but it was fine as the five of us scarfed down this entire pizza. This pizza dough is delicious. Delicate, airy, chewy without being gummy. Perfect. And easy. It's only about 15 minutes of active time, then let it rest.

Try it. Just try it. I'll come back and type in the recipe. I promise.

OK, here it is quickly:

Pizza Bianca from Cook's Illustrated
3 Cups AP flour
1 2/3 cups water, room temp
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast (I used my bread machine yeast and it was fine)
1 1/4 tsp sugar (I used agave nectar)
5 Tbs EVOO


Mix flour, water & Salt in mixer fitted with a dough hook for a few minutes on low, just to combine everything. Let dough rest 20 min.

Sprinkle yeast and sugar over dough. Mix on low speed, just to incorporate all the ingredients, scrape the bottom. Increase mixer to high for about 5 - 10 minutes (I only needed 5) until dough is smooth and glossy and pulls away from sides.

Coat a large bowl with olive oil, transfer dough to bowl, turn dough over in bowl so it's coated, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise at room temp for 2 - 2.5 hours. You'll see large bubbles and it will have tripled in size. Before rising, I put mine in the refrigerator wrapped, then pulled it out about 4 hours before I needed it to let it come to room temp and rise all the way.

Put a pizza stone in oven and preheat to 450. Let the over rest at 450 for a while, so the stone gets good and hot.

Rim a baking sheet with oil and turn dough out onto the sheet, stretching it with your fingertips. If it shrinks back a lot, let the dough rest for a few minutes and stretch it again. Let the dough rest in the pan until a little bubbly, maybe 10 minutes. Poke the surface with a fork all over, sprinkle with salt and bake until golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes.

Pull it out and top it with whatever makes you happy and put it back in the oven for a few minutes.

Thursday September 18, 2008

Yesterday we had chocolate chip pancakes. No excuses. That's all I could muster the energy to make.

Tonight it's just me and the little ones. I was meant to go to Radish's back to school night, but he came off the bus not feeling well and J's at the rink with D, so..... I get the night off. Yay.

Radish has rallied enough to ask if we could make a pound cake together, so we'll have peanut butter sandwiches and make cake! That's OK. Right?




Here's a link to the Fox News Piece, BTW. I couldn't figure out how to embed it.

http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/pages/News/Politics/Detail;jsessionid=AD4B83A7E6D32E37B79C36F05F680652?contentId=7460578&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.14.1&sflg=1

Tuesday September 16, 2008

Yesterday I used the "chili" from the other night to make these burritos. Turns out, as long as something is smothered in salsa and cheese, my kids will eat it. Except Lulu. She had a peanut butter sandwich on fresh bread from the machine.

Off to class. Which I'm feeling much better about after straightening out a few things with the Director of the program.

Monday September 15, 2008

Kind of a sad little dinner. I'm in kind of a sad little mood, so it's fitting. Chicken breasts baked in a panko crust. Green beans and fresh garden tomatoes.

On Mondays and Wednesdays I drive approximately 130 miles between school, babysitter and hockey. It's exhausting.

Sunday September 14, 2008

MYO Taco night. Woohoo! I'm torn about the Boca burgers, which we use instead of boca crumbles because they are much less messy. On one hand, they're not meat so we can use cheese and sour cream (it's a kosher thing), but on the other hand they are a super processed food. I know they have soy in them, but also probably a dozen other unpronounceable things. I'm almost afraid to look at the box.

So I won't. We had watermelon for dessert. A whole food. yay.

On a side note, a crew from Fox News was at the rink interviewing hockey moms about Sarah Palin today. When asked what Sarah Palin and I had in common I said, "We have nothing in common. Except we both have kids that play hockey and neither of us knows anything about foreign affairs." Then I laughed. I may have even snorted. I'm guessing it never airs.

Friday September 12, 2008

As I was making dinner tonight, I knew it wasn't going to work. We just aren't chili people. I want to like chili. It's such a fun, good-times-with-friends kind of food. To the outsider, we seem like a chili family. Casual, fun, sporty, outdoorsy. We could be in a campfire or Sunday football party ad for chili. We could be the chili poster family. And today was a perfect chili day. Rainy, a chill in the air, kids that played outside in the rain all afternoon and needed to be warmed up. Bring on the hot bowls of steaming chili!

All five of us find chili disgusting. Forget the kosher issue, which has me either making it with fake beef crumbles (disgusting), or with real beef and no cheese (no cheese = bad). There's the mess factor, which even on a regular weeknight isn't ideal, but on a Friday night white tablecloth is a potential nightmare. There's the fact that it looks, and kind of smells, like dog food. It's the color. Beans and meat? That's a lot of brown. And anything else you put in turns brownish too. And the texture. Too mushy. Everything gets mushy until you get to a weird crunchy thing and because of the color issue you aren't even sure what it is.

So, why did I make it? I do not know. I do not know.

Instead we're having turkey soup with rice noodles. Which was just supposed to be the first course. We'll have a lot of challah.