So much for committment, eh? Also? Apparently, I can not spel.

Wait.  Did I spell committment right?  Committment?  Comittment?  Commitment?  Ah shite.  Hang on.

Fook.  New laptop.  Doesn’t have Word yet.  No spellcheck.  Damn.  Maybe I should retitle this entry and skip the whole thing. 

Blast.  Carrying on.

Yeah….I had planned in writing here daily but then I kinda….didn’t.  Those (few) of you who have been reading me in one place or another for years (many!) aren’t surprised.  But…..see…um….I has reasons!  Monday I had major major family drama go down and by the time I got home and cried to hubby it was too late to write and then Tuesday I gots my new laptop set up but I was still familiarizing myself with it and the different feel to the keyboard and you know how when a keyboard is all new to you it’s real awkward and I just didn’t feel like writing extensively under those circumstances and again, some of you know that I rarely write in anything less than extensive fashion and WEDNESDAY I was crippled with a mega migraine that had me 1) leaving work early and collapsing on the couch and 2) worried that said migraine may have been caused by some lack of ergonomic ease with said new laptop or maybe monitor issues and I tried to change the refresh rate but apparently since this is an LCD screen that doesn’t apply but THEN Jack pointed out that said headache was probably due to withdrawal from teh Vicodin which I have stopped taking.

Whew.  Now THAT was a run on!

 But today!  I feel mostly fine!  Huzzah!  I am sitting here sipping on my beer which is a very tasty Lagunitas (spelling?  again!) Lucky 13 Red Ale and is very very tasty.  Over the past several months I have been journeying into the world of craft beers and really liking most of what I find and fine tuning what I like and what I don’t like.  It’s been really interesting and aided by the fact that my husband works at one of the best beer bars in Canton and I’ve joined their 100 Beer Club (I’m at 62 now!) plus I’ve found some really good beer stores in and around Columbia (which is where I grew up.)  The other night, following my blowout with my aunt, I enjoyed a big ol’ bottle of Dogfish Head Black and Blue (malt beverage brewed with blackberries and blueberry puree) which knocked my socks off but which also threw me for a loop because of it’s high alcohol content.  If you saw my MySpace bulletin that night, you know what I’m talking about.

Last night I made one of my favorite comfort meals – chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and corn.  I’ll admit to taking shortcuts because the potatoes came from a box and the corn came from a can, but the potatoes were enriched with a little bit of goat cheese (just enough to add some tang, like sour cream would have if I hadn’t been OUT OF SOUR CREAM thanks to my teenage daughter CONSUMING all of it on her tacos last Saturday), plenty of parm and of course lots of butter, cream, salt and pepper (I said it was good, I didn’t say it was good for you – bonus points to whoever recognizes that quote) and the corn….well, it was corn.  But the steaks…..OMG they were good.  Pan fried till they were golden brown and delicious (another quote!) and I made a cream gravy (duh!) overtop.  Yum-O!  (SHUT UP!  I love Rachael)

Tonight, I’m making chicken breasts and I’m making a glaze with peach preserves and jalepeno pepper.  It’s a riff on a dish from Rachael Ray (again with the Rachael) that I made a few weeks ago.  THAT dish was a chicken sandwhich with sliced peaches and an aioli made with pickled jalepenos.  There were other items on that sandwich as well, including, I think, cukes and radishes.  I decided that it was just a bit much and I wanted to try it with just the peach and jalepeno.  So I’m going to make a sauce and serve it atop sauteed breasts.  I’ll try to remember to update tomorrow.

Okay, I’m off to finish my beer.  Ta, y’all

PS:  Courtney?  There’s another clue for you up there. 

All hail….

Soooo….a few weeks back, I was blearily watching TV in a Vicodin induced coma (DAMN YOU DENTAL SURGERY OW OW MOTHER F***ING OWWWW!) and saw the ubiquitous ad for A-1.  You know the one I mean, the one with the two guys dining separately, and the one guy puts A-1 on the other burger and the other guy questions him on this and then asks to borrow it and of course the one guy assumes he means the A-1, but no, of course, he meant the burger.  Comedic hijinx ensue.

That ad.  You know you’ve seen it.  Incidentally, hijinx?  Hijinks?  Hijincks?  Whatev.

So…..something about this ad, combined with the Vicodin, set off my artistic juices and I decided I wanted to create a burger.  I wanted to do something I had never seen before.  I decided to evoke the flavors of Ceasar salad in a hamburger.

I discussed this idea with my husband the chef who initially thought I was proposing to put this burger on the menu at his restaurant.  I said, “No, no, this is something I want to try myself.  For, you know, US.”  Although I told him if it worked he could certainly run it as a special.  He’s done that a lot.  Taken my dishes for his restaurant.  Few weeks back, he called me while I was at a baby shower and left a message.  Said he needed to know how I’d done the pineapple rice from the night before.  Of course, given that I was AT A BABY SHOWER!!! I didn’t get the message until after the dinner rush had started.  I called him back and he said that he’d had to come up with something else.  WELL, THAT’S WHY YOU’RE THE CHEF, ISN’T IT????

But I digress.

So after a few weeks of mulling this over, I actually made said burgers tonight and they were good.  I meant to take a picture but when it comes to anything getting between me and my dinner…well, I fail.

(Sidenote – I’ve also been failing at keeping this blog up to date.  That is going to change.  I have made a Half Year Resolution to write here everyday.)

Onward.

I decided I didn’t want to do too much to the meat itself.  When it comes to making burgers, the less you handle the meat, the better (heh heh…I said handle the meat).  So I just salt and pepper’d and mixed in a little bit of Worcestershire and lightly formed ‘em into patties.

I chiffonaded some leaf lettuce (shut up – chiffonaded is TOO a word) and set it aside.  The plan was to dress said lettuce with Caesar dressing but not until right before service.  I made up an aioli with garlic and anchovy paste (to taste).  I’d never used anchovy paste before and really had no clue what it tasted like on its own.  I was surprised.  It really added something to the mayo/garlic mixture but didn’t taste anything like itself once it was mixed in.  Neat.

So I grilled the burgers on my handy dandy grill pan and smoked up the house in the process.  I spread a little butter on the buns and toasted them up.  Then, assembly.  Bun, burger, aioli, dressed lettuce, generous grating of parmesan and fresh ground pepper, eat it up eat it up yum yum yum.

I was pleased.  Husband was pleased.  Grill pan is still smoking.  Someone call the fire department.

Need I remind anyone?

Season four of Top Chef begins tonight!  Party time!

I’d never seen this show before I met my husband.  Husband, in case you don’t know, is a professional chef so he of course is very into Top Chef.  Matter o’ fact, he’s on the sofa now, watching the marathon on Bravo.

I didn’t tune in until midway through the second season and was instantly hooked.  The show often enrages me, especially the cheftestants who rant against other cheftestants for not being “team players.”  Uhhh…excuse me, this is a competition.

I’m sure this is true for most “reality” shows but since this is the only one I watch, I wouldn’t know.  The only other reality show I ever watched was the very first season of Survivor and I remember then how hated Richard Hatch (the eventual winner) was…but I also remember how well he played the game and how really, he deserved to win BECAUSE of his cunning and deviousness.

 Seriously.  This isn’t a family game of Monopoly.  This is a cut-throat competition.  Sure Marcel and Hung were assholes….but they played the game.  I still believe Marcel should have won over Ilan.  (Although Sam should have won over all of them)

 To be fair, I do understand that to be a real chef, leadership and teamwork are essential.  And that’s why Top Chef has many team competitions.  But at the end of the day, each chef is being judged individually.  Tom Colicchio even said (in response to Elia’s season two whining), “We don’t care what goes on in the kitchen”.  (I may be misquoting slightly but you get the drift.)  It’s all about the food.

So bring it on, Chefs.  Show us what you’ve got.  I’ll be the one on the couch, drooling.

30 Minute Meal?

So, as previously stated, I love me some Rachael Ray. I know she has her detractors (See here Or better yet, don’t). Yeah, she abuses culinary terms like nobody’s business. (Tonight’s episode featured a “pesto” of feta cheese, parsley and walnuts. But then again, pesto literally means “to pound”, yes? So just because the term pesto denotes a specifc cheese, herb and nut combo, that doesn’t mean a pesto MUST have those specific elements. I think. But I digress)

Anyway. I just love her bubbly and upbeat personality and her can-do approach. Many have said that Julia Child made French cooking accessible to mainstream America. I might go so far as to say that Rachael Ray has made everyday cooking accessible. But then again, I might get tarred and feathered for comparing Rachael to La Julia, so let’s not go there, hmmm?

She just makes it seem so easy and do-able.  So the other night, I decided to put one of her 30 Minute Meals to the test.  The menu I chose featured Sole Bonne Femme with sides of spinach topped with prosciutto and an herb-garlic bread.  I decided to give myself FORTY minutes because 1) I don’t have her knife skills and 2) I don’t have a teleprompter or cue cards to guide me step by step through the recipe.

As I was talking to my husband about this challenge to myself, he pointed out, “She also has a professional kitchen and a prep team.” I dismissed this though. My kitchen is mostly as good as hers. (Except I highly covet a grill pan) and I am convinced she does her own prep on-screen. The only pre-show prep I’ve seen is just making sure that all her ingredients are clustered together so she doesn’t have to hunt for them. Believe me, if I went to my pantry to pull out, for example, thyme, oregano and garlic powder, I’d be searching for a while, but on the show, everything is right there.

So that was the only prep work I did. Making sure that my ingredients were all together and that I had all my equipment clean and ready to go.

Working through the recipe was fairly simple. I only had a couple of hiccups. First, trying to separate the slices of prosciutto was next to impossible. Yes, they were packaged with thin paper between each slice, but each slice overlapped the edge of the papers so I STILL had to peel apart each slice to separate them. And then, for some reason, I could not get the carton of cream opened. And finally, in my rush, I forgot one basic skill. I spent much longer than I should have in trying to peel the garlic because I forgot that all I really needed to do was give it a whack.

But all in all, my experiment was a success. I finished in 37 minutes and am convinced I could do it in 30 if I had a telepromter or someone (HELLO, Husband!) to read the recipe to me as I worked.

As for the recipe itself? Wellll…..I would have used substantially less breadcrumbs than what was called for (probably half a cup instead of a cup) and would have sprinked some lemon juice atop the scallops once they were done. And do NOT salt the spinach at all. The prosciutto added plenty of salt once it was crumbled in.

Oh! And one other thing Rachael has that I don’t. A cleaning crew.

In keeping with the emerging custom….

Herewith, a list.  With a twist.  As this is to be a mostly food blog, so shall be the list.

1. I love reading menus.  I will rarely go out for dinner without pulling up the menu for our destination online.
2. I’m a sucker for anything with cranberries, goat cheese, pistachios or beets.
3. One of the great sadnesses in my life is that my husband does not like root vegetables.  No carrots, no potatoes, no beets, NO SWEET POTATOES! 
4. As for myself, I can’t say that I’ve ever met a vegetable I dislike
5. Beans do not count as vegetables.
6. Having said that, I am a steadfast carnivore.
7. I love Food Network
8. In 1995, while in Rochester NY for business, I had the opportunity to visit Niagra Falls with some coworkers.  Instead I choose to stay in my hotel room and watch Food Network because at the time, it was not available to me at home
9. I’ve been watching cooking shows since I was wee.
10. Julia Child, Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet), Justin Wilson (“How y’all are?) and Martin Yan (Yan Can Cook) were my idols growing up
11. I dreamed of one day going to culinary school and imagined an audition of sorts.  My nine year old self thought I would blow them away with my Chicken Tetrazinni recipe
12. My Chicken Tetrazinni IS darned good, y’all.
13. Growing up there were a lot of foods I thought I didn’t like, but I found out later that I was prejudiced by my parents’ dislike for those foods
14. Among them were sour cream, whipped cream, mayonaise, cream cheese (courtesy of my dad) and lamb (courtesy of my mom)
15. I’m still not overly fond of mayonaise.  I always ask for the thinnest smear.
16. I love lamb but I DON’T like lamb with its traditional accompanyment of mint jelly
17. My first taste of smoked salmon was at my aunt and uncle’s house following my grandmother’s funeral in 1996.
18. I still love a good New York style bagel with smoked salmon, tomato, onion, capers and cream cheese.
19. When I watch TV, I keep notes on recipes that I want to try and add them to my online recipe box when I get to the computer.
20. On tap for next week are recipes from Sandra Lee and Rachael Ray
21. My husband thinks Sandra Lee looks like a Barbie doll
22. I don’t much care for her but I do think she has some clever ideas.
23. Rachael, on the other hand, I adore.
24. Especially her giggle.
25. Lately, I’ve been testing my willpower by keeping a jar of Nutella in the pantry.
26. I allow myself one spoonful per day (about 100 calories)
27. My rationale is that one spoonful of Nutella is the equivalent of those 100 calorie packs, and I don’t feel guilty about having one of THOSE per day
28. But I can’t have a 100 caloire pack AND Nutella in one day
29. My other indulgence is the Bacon Chocolate bar from Vosges au Chocolat
30. Hey, don’t knock it until you try it.
31. Smoky salty bacon + deep milk chocolate = divine indulgence
32. My love for food combined with my love for fashion have forced me to the gym
33. Because I just can’t find cute clothes in my size
34. I’ve been going for a month now.  I get weighed and measured on Wednesday. 
35. My home scale is broken because I dropped it so I have no idea how much I weigh
36. But I think I’m doing well.  I’ve gone from a size 20 jean to a size 16.
37. Admittedly, the size 16 is a little tight but not too bad.
38. I’m not actually dieting though.  Just practicing moderation
39. One thing that is helping is I’m not drinking as much beer.
40. I used to have three per night from my husband’s nightly 12 pack, but he is not drinking as much these days, so I am not drinking much either
41. I DO like beer though.
42. And Irish Mist
43. Last weekend, my daughter made a batch of iced tea.
44. Later that evening, she came into the kitchen as I was making dinner and asked whether she could have a snack
45. I told her no, that I didn’t want her to fill up before dinner
46. She said, “But you’re filling up on my iced tea.”
47. I started to say, “No no, that’s not iced tea, that’s Mommy’s booze”
48. But it was too late.
49. She’d already taken a swig
50. And immediately spit it into the sink

Next entry, my experiment with making a 30 minute meal….in 30 minutes.