Winter Term, Day Twenty Five: A Dinner at the Hark

A momentous day: nothing cooking planned at Slapdash house, because Ardea and Oliver invited me to Harkness for dinner! I spent most of the afternoon with Harris, at the public library and in my kitchen talking about food and drinking tea with Yoshi.

They made a coconut cauliflower curry and white rice topped with toasted coconut. There were roadkill/squashed toad cookies for dessert (a hearty flat chocolate chip and oat cookie that I found a reference to on the Fern Country Store website, billed exclusively for pre-teens) and two kinds of bread: sourdough baguettes and cinnamon swirl bread. So much deliciousness.


Thank you for the invitation, guys. :)

Winter Term, Day Twenty Four: Pan-tastic Pan-Asian

Another West Side Market and Trader Joe's trip, with an added stop at Seoul Korean Market as well (I got a crushed pear drink as well as pickled daikon and dumpling wrappers).

Tonight's meal was a Pan-Asian selection of goodies:

Curry udon with beef, carrots, onions and potatoes by Michael
Tteokbokki (a Korean chili stew) with whole hard boiled eggs, garlic chives, daikon, and Korean rice cakes by Eliza
Mushroom broth by Amanda
Tuna, pickled daikon, lettuce, carrot, avocado, cucumber and green onion sushi by me (More than half the green onions came from the ones growing in my kitchen... I'm impressed!)

Chris got her adorable rice bowl sans nori, and Yoshi and Mike helped us devour all things on the table, but we had enough food to feed twice as many people, even after we stuffed ourselves.







Also, I only really seem to be painfully stuffed after Asian meals. I do love them so. Everyone else was stuffed as well, so before we cleaned up, we watched Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death. A good humorous lull in the evening.

Winter Term, Day Twenty Three: Dough Day, Pizza Day

Epic dough meant epic baked goods: Pizza, a loaf of bread, a loaf of garlic bread, and rolls. What a pleasure. Chris punched the dough for me, just like freshman year.

Toppings for this week:
Basil tomato sauce
Cheddar alfredo
Fresh sliced tomatoes
Roasted red peppers
Sauteed mushrooms
Sauteed spinach
Minced onions
Pepperoni
Mozzerella

Winter Term, Day Twenty Two: Nacho Thursdays

What do you call cheese that isn't yours? NACHO cheese. Thank you, Chris.

Jamie was leaving on Friday and we decided to give her a break on tortilla making. We had nacho night instead of taco night this week.

The menu:

Slow-baked chicken by Eliza
Ground spiced beef by Eliza
Seasoned crumbled tofu by Lady Jamie
Cheddar cheese nacho sauce by me
Peppers and onions by Amanda
Guacamole by Amanda
Black beans, cilantro, minced onions, sour cream, tortilla chips, salsa (pico de gallo, mild and super spicy)
Black bean and corn soup by me

Other dinner attendees included Yoshi, Chris, Mike, and Michael.

Winter Term, Day Twenty One: Sheppy Shappy Happy Shepherd's Pie

Sam Abrams came over for tea, complimented me on my food blog, and I invited her to dinner (it works out well :P). Together we made shepherd's pie, a big dish made with ground beef and veggies, and a mini lentil and veggie pot pie for Sam, who is vegetarian. We also put our projector to good use, and Sam invited over her friends Patrick and Laura to watch A Serious Man. I bowed out and ended up talking to Aries and Yoshi instead of watching the movie, but it was still a very good evening.

Winter Term, Day Twenty: Dumpling House

Despite the two photoshoots earlier in the day, I really needed a time consuming and involved dinner for the evening. Amanda and I talked a bunch and rolled out dumpling wrappers for pork and green onion potstickers (or gyoza, or dumplings... it really depends on how I feel for what name I use) and as Amanda fried/steamed/boiled them, I made a veggie and noodle stirfry. Yoshi got so excited about dinner than he yanked the silverware drawer so quickly it ended up on the floor.








I am so proud of these dumplings. They're totally gone, too, by the way. Dumplings don't last long around me.

Winter Term, Day Nineteen: Julia Child's Kitchen

Despite its perceived difficulty, I decided to make coq a vin tonight. The recipes, at least that I found online, aren't that consistent, so I went with a logical flow:

Rendered the pancetta, took the pancetta out, sauteed the onions, added butter since there wasn't enough fat from the pancetta, took the onions out, cooked the mushrooms, added more butter because mushrooms drink butter, took the mushrooms out, cooked chicken legs (still connected to the thighs) until golden, tossed the cooked veggies plus carrots with flour, added the veggies to the chicken, added two cups of chicken stock and a cup of merlot. I added bay leaves, thyme, salt and pepper, and cooked until the chicken was falling off the bone. I then added a bit more flour to thicken the sauce and served it over egg noodles topped with chopped parsley.

My house will smell like this for at least another day, but that's a-okay by me. It's absolutely delicious.




Then later Lady Jamie came over to unload some cinnamon rolls... she apologized for the toasty bottoms but honestly, the burnt sugar tasted like campfire marshmallows. Delightful.

Winter Term, Day Eighteen: Turkish Delights

Spent some time catching up on things, starting my day with cleaning and such and then making a turkey-munster-spinach-tomato-sweet-chili sandwich.




For dinner I made a Turkish inspired meal... lamb meatballs seasoned with crushed red pepper, sumac, onions, garlic, and parsley, sauteed zucchini, sauteed tomatoes, basil herbed couscous, and pickled onions.