Hi all,
It seems as though we've all hit a hiatus with the blog these days. I just wanted to drop by to say hello and keep this baby alive!
We had a wonderful thanksgiving full of way too much food in San Diego. Now, it's Christmas crunch time for me. I've got my huge winter concert two weeks from today and about 7 other gigs with my chamber group between now and Dec. 19. This is [one of] my ridiculous time of year, so I probably won't be trying anything just too clever or creative in the kitchen.
I just hope I have some time on the weekends to make some cookies - cherry winks here I come!! One nice thing about teaching and having a small choir with a lot of gigs, is that I always have someone to eat my cookies. Turns out that I like baking cookies and eating the batter more than I like eating cookies. Thankfully, my kids just like eating anything I bake. It's a good relationship...
Anywho, just wanted to check in. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Molly
Well, we have not really done anything creative cooking-wise recently having just got back from a week in CA and then done TG week - turkey, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut (not homemade, wasn't ready yet), gravy, pumpkin pie, etc. Made a killer turkey rice soup from the carcass, always one of my favorites this time of year but I didn't really keep track of exactly what went in, just cooking from the hip, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't been crushing it either, though I am excited to try a quiche with the emperors forbidden black rice as the crust. The coolers went out at the grocer the other night and it was GAME ON at the dumpster. I crushed it. Over $300 worth of organic meat, still frozen (cause its cold out here) and not even close to expired (which is really an overly conservative suggestion anyway.) So I had friends over for all the NY strip ( I just can't eat that much red meat these days). Threw it down with some of Steve Raichlen's lone star rub. Awesome. I would recommend that book for any aspiring meat cookers. I've been playing around with a Jamaican jerk spice and paella. Still wondering what to do with the $150 (no exaggeration, the prices are still on the packaging) of lamb legs that I scored. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Also if you haven't yet, check out the movie Dive, and then go try it, it IS the real deal, and the adrenaline rush is pretty awesome.
ReplyDeleteStill waiting on snow. Hopefully soon
Andy
Wow. I looked at the trailer for Dive which actually gives a pretty good synopsis of the message; haven't seen the whole movie yet. One of the nice things about living with a vegetarian is all of the really cool vegetarian dishes you get to try. On the flip side, there's not that much opportunity for working up cool meat dishes and if you do there's no one to help appreciate it, so I haven't really gotten into the rub thing. Leg of lamb is good just roasted with browned potatoes; something like rosemary would probably be good on it. Make a gravy from the drippings. Also, if you cut the meat off the bone in stew chunks there is a whole world of lamb curries to explore. Plus you might look up middle eastern/Mediterranean cooking to see what you can find; generally when their recipes say "meat" it means "lamb", I think, and they have some very interesting spice combinations.
ReplyDeleteLife's funny, ain't? I go for decades with my life un-impinged by leg-o-lamb and suddenly they're comin' at me from every direction. Yesterday, Kanga asked me to go to the store to get, among other things, 4 lb of lamb stew meat, which, it turned out, they did not have. So I bought her a 4 1/2 lb leg of lamb. I sliced off about 6 cutlets and about 2 lb of trimmed stew cubes. The meaty bone and all the trimmings went into the soup pot. Today, I picked the soup and gave the pickings and bones to the dogs. I don't much care for the smell of boiled lamb while it's in progress but the broth tastes like it will make a really good barley soup. I am planning to add a couple of sprigs of rosemary from the herb garden.
ReplyDeleteJust made the barley soup from the lamb broth for dinner tonight. I added sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme, a bay leaf, dried mustard, crushed red pepper, salt, pepper, about 4 cloves of garlic for seasoning. In the garden I found a few flavorful celery leaves, some kale, and a handful of broccoli florets from side stem growth, plus a few baby new potatoes from the store room. Some white mushrooms chunked into quarters, sliced carrots, and one stalk of sliced celery all from the store filled out the bill. Oh, also a cup of pearled barley. Tastes good. Serving with salad made with a few new sprouts (mung bean), pickled pepperoccini form the summer garden, olives, sliced mushrooms, celery, spinach and lettuce with home made tarragon vinaigrette dressing (my current fave). Oh, plus a couple of Kaiser rolls from the bakery warming in the oven. Ready to eat as soon as Mom gets home from the chiro...
ReplyDeleteOK, dinner's over; the soup was awesome, I thought. So boil up all of your old lamb bones... and turkey bones... and chicken bones... I guess it's time to start a home-made soup post and thread.
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