Thanksgiving plans

Things have been busy enough around here I feel like we haven’t been cooking that much. I did make some apple chutney with all of the apples we’re collecting from our farm share box. We cracked it a few nights ago to have with some chicken curry and it was absolutely wonderful. I have pics and will sit down and blog about that soon-ish.

Our Thanksgiving tradition is to cook something nice for ourselves. I hate traveling over the holiday and Steve doesn’t have the cultural background for Thanksgiving. So we hole up with each other and make ourselves a very nice dinner and spend some time together.

We’ve been poking at recipes today and I think we’ve decided on a menu. Most of the sides are based on the abundance of veggies we’ve had from the veggie box.

Starter of butternut squash soup.

Main course consisting of:

Roast pork loin stuffed with apples and cornbread. (From The Big Book o’ Pork).

Braised greens (we have broccoli rabe, baby collards and dinosaur kale)

Apple chutney (mmmm… apple chutney)

Roast sweet potatoes

Gravy

Dessert: apple crumble? pie? stilton and port?

So I’m going to start today or tomorrow with cooking. I need to make a brown pork stock (yum, stock), and some cornbread. The butternut squash needs to be roasted and dessert needs to be decided.

Just a little traveling

I logged into my orbitz account earlier this week in order to get a copy of a receipt. This is what I saw for “past trips”

• Philadelphia 10/25/09 ( Sun, Oct 25 – Wed, Oct 28 )
• Atlanta 8/24/09 ( Mon, Aug 24 – Wed, Aug 26 )
• Minneapolis 6/26/09 ( Fri, Jun 26 – Mon, Jun 29 )
• Leeds 6/4/09 ( Thu, Jun 4 – Sat, Jun 6 )
• Amsterdam 6/1/09 ( Mon, Jun 1 – Fri, Jun 12 )
• Las Vegas 4/3/09 ( Fri, Apr 3 – Mon, Apr 6 )
• London 12/16/08 ( Tue, Dec 16 – Tue, Dec 30 )

It doesn’t show the upcoming trip to my parents.

Just a wee bit of traveling this year. But a bit of a mix between fun, family and business traveling. The nested trip to Leeds was really nuts, but I’m glad we made it to the wedding.

Home from Philly

I got home late last night from MAAWG. The weather in Philly was horrid and the airport packed with cranky people waiting for late flights. I’ll give United props, though, the staff was friendly, helpful and patient. They kept us up to date on what was going on with our flight (we were waiting for our assigned plane to make it through the landing delays). My last few flights on United were icky, but this one… I’d willingly fly United again.

I also like United because they let you listen to the air traffic communications. I am *sooo* much more relaxed about a flight when I can hear all is well in the cockpit. I also learned a new thing: mountain wave turbulence. There was a big patch of it around Lincoln, NE last night and there was a lot of ATC chatter about it. Our plane missed the moderate turbulence that other planes were experiencing but I swear I could feel the plane “surfing” on waves. Of course, it could always be my overactive imagination.

The conference was pretty good. My session went well and I’m more ready to tackle this project I’ve taken on. The other sessions I went to were interesting, and some a little scary.

Al, Mickey and I ducked out to Pat’s for cheesesteaks at lunch on Tuesday. I was quite impressed. The bread (yes, really, the bread) was chewy and soft and actually was one of the better parts of the sandwich. I had a regular cheesesteak wit and with cheese wiz. The meat was tasty and well seasoned, onions cooked perfectly and then a hefty dollop of wiz. Yum.

I’m very, very glad to be home, though. I slept like the dead last night, and woke up with a cat on my feet and another between my knees. I think they missed me. And, I was lucky enough to leave before the 1:30 am false fire alarm in the conference hotel. It’s very possible some drunken conference attendee pulled the fire alarm (either on purpose or by accident). I hope it wasn’t, though.

Heading out

I’m leaving tomorrow for the MAAWG conference in Philly. Just me, this time. Steve gets to stay home and feed cats. I think the conference should be OK, and my session is coming together better than I’d hoped. A bunch of folks I haven’t seen in a while are going to be there and I’m looking forward to seeing them.

Steve’s making beef in red wine sauce with anchovy scones for dinner. Num. The house smells so good I may not be able to contain myself for the next hour and a half before it’s done.

Comfort cooking

I’ve been marginally out of sorts for a few days and have tried to make it up by cooking some comfort meals.

We finally finished the chicken we roasted a couple weeks ago, so yesterday I made chicken stock. It makes the house smell so good. All that’s left to do is strain, defat and store it today.

Last night we made pizza with some of the roasted vegetables I made a few weeks ago. I used frozen whole wheat dough. The sauce was simply mashed up roasted tomatoes. Then I topped that with roasted onions, red peppers (both sweet and spicy), and roasted garlic. For a little protein, I added some chopped deli ham and seasoned the pizza with some capers, oregano and olive oil. Fresh mozzarella finished it off.

Once the pie was out of the oven we grated some aged cheese on it.

It was a tasty, healthy, easy dinner.

Today we’re making something Indian with chicken and the fresh yogurt we picked up from the farmer’s market. I’m probably going to make some naan and possibly raita. Pepper potatoes as a side and I think it’s dinner. Probably dinner a little light on the vegetables, but hey, we ate mostly vegetarian yesterday. It all balances.

Tomorrow I’m pondering some roasted corn (roasted this summer on the grill, stripped from the cob and frozen) and chicken soup. The broth just smells so good, we have to make something nice with it.

Welcome to winter

Today was the first day of rain here in the Bay Area. It was cold and grey and miserable. The antidote to winter is: soup and bread.

I made pea and ham soup and fresh biscuits. For the biscuits I used Alton Brown’s Ma Maes recipe. I used self rising flour, so I left out the baking soda and baking powder and cut back the salt a bit. Really good biscuits those.

For the soup I first made a ham stock with lots of aromatics.

1 ham hock
1 carrot
1 rib celery
1 onion cut into quarters
4 sprigs dried thyme
10 – 15 pepper corns
3 dried chili peppers
2 bay leaves
water to cover

Bring to a simmer and cook for 3 or so hours. Remove hock and let cool. Strain out all vegetables.

Soup:

1 onion chopped relatively fine.
1 garlic clove minced
2 or so tablespoons of oil (today I had some bacon fat, but neutral oil works as well)
2 cups peas
shredded ham from hock
fresh ham stock (should have 6 – 8 cups)

Sweat onion and garlic in oil until translucent. Add peas and coat in oil. Then add shredded ham and stock. Cook for 2 – 3 hours until peas have melted into soup. Season with salt and pepper if needed. Serve with warm bread.

Making the stock heavy on the aromatics, gives a deep and complex flavor to the soup. I’ve also done the soup with aromatics (carrots and celery) in the soup, but the vegetables distract a bit from the velvety peas and chunks of ham. By putting the aromatics in the stock, I got the flavor without the distraction.

Overall, it was a very good meal.

Experimental fall cooking

The weather has started to turn here in the Bay Area. We finally shut all the windows a few days ago and there is a definite nip in the air in the morning. It’s not the exactly the same as the falls of my childhood, but it’s close enough to bring out the same feelings. I want to make stews and soups and warm, filling food. I want to curl up with hot cider and a good book. I want to take stunning pictures of hills covered in bright colors. That last one doesn’t work so well around here.

We’re still eating the chicken I roasted last weekend, although I think we just have enough chicken for one more meal. Tonight I roasted tomatillos and peppers and made chicken enchiladas with fresh salsa verde. A good first pass, but I think I’m going to have to keep working on it for it to really be more than a good, solid meal. While the oven was on, I roasted some whole heads of garlic, some red peppers from this week’s vegetable box, some onions and some hot peppers from the farmer’s market.

I also roasted tomatoes. The idea was I would use those as the basis for a roasted salsa. But after I tasted them, I decided they would be much, much better in an Italian dish than a Mexican one. So I have a couple cups of fresh roasted tomato sauce in the fridge.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to catch up on some work, but will also be looking at making some infused vodkas (pepper, vanilla and cucumber). We bought a big bottle of Stolichnaya today to use as the base for some infusions.

We also have a quart of fresh yogurt and some red pepper chevre from the market as well. I’m pondering some indian later in the week. Or just fruit with honey and yogurt. Yum.

Chicken, chicken and more chicken

We bought a chicken from the farmers’ market this weekend. 6 and a bit pounds, organic and free range. I roasted it last night and I expect we’ll be eating chicken for the next lots of meals.

Sunday night: roast chicken breast, blue cheese polenta, wine braised leeks. Dessert was cooked apples and cinnamon over vanilla ice cream.

Monday lunch: roast chicken breast wrapped in tortillas with mayo and salt.

Monday dinner: roast chicken breast with dressing (made with leftover braised leeks from Sunday), gravy and roasted beets (roasted Sunday, peeled and warmed tonight).

Later in the week: chicken and cheese enchiladas. That should use at least 1/4 of what we have left. Probably more sandwiches (need bread). Maybe soup? Curry chicken tacos?

It’s really good chicken, though.

Sleeping cat

Momma Cat is notoriously hard to photograph. She runs from the camera when she sees it come out. This is why most of the shots I have of her show her sleeping.

The other night she curled up on the chair across from me, offering me the perfect opportunity to get some photos of her.

Sleeping and doesn't notice the camera

I also took a few shots of Grover, who’s been fighting off another abscess the last couple days. A good flush and some antibiotic cream seem to have given his immune system enough of an edge that he didn’t need the vet or oral antibiotics.

Another head shot of Grover

Without power

We’re in the middle of a wind advisory:

Statement as of 6:37 PM PDT on October 03, 2009

… Wind Advisory remains in effect until 10 PM PDT this evening
for coastal sections of the San Francisco Bay area and the North
Bay mountains…

Wind gusts of between 40 and 50 mph have been reported near the
ocean… near San Francisco Airport… and in the North Bay
mountains since mid afternoon on Saturday. Northwest winds of 15
to 30 mph with gusts to 45 mph will likely continue in the advisory
area through much of the evening. Winds will gradually diminish
overnight.

Precautionary/preparedness actions…

A Wind Advisory means that winds gusts of at least 45 mph are
expected. Winds this strong can make driving difficult…
especially for high profile vehicles. Use extra caution.

Which resulted in us losing power for about an hour.

It’s funny what you do when there’s no power. We were lucky in that it wasn’t dark out when the power initially went out, so we had some daylight to see by. But, it was pretty clear to us that power was going to be out for a while so I went to go find some candles. On my way to finding the candles I attempted to turn on the kitchen light in order to see while I was looking for candles since the power was out. Totally automatic, totally inappropriate.

Power was only out for about an hour and we’re now back. Probably headed upstairs to watch top gun on the big TV.

Edited: One of the funniest things was loading mail and seeing all the neighbors who were mailing the neighborhood mailing list from their mobile devices saying “anyone know when the power will be back on?” I can admit I didn’t mail the list, but did use my iPhone to check the PG&E website to see if they had any info about the outage.