What's Cooking (Take Three!)

[Jenise]

Larry, sorry you're dealing with so much. I hear you on the doctor's appointments. I'm fine, but my husband has potentially serious issues (surgery coming up Thurs), my brother's cancer is back only two years after radiation and he finds out today what's next, and my best friend is getting operated on a week from today. Not ready to sign up for Lawrence Welk, but man the golden years aren't that golden, are they.

Larry, sorry you're dealing with so much. I hear you on the doctor's appointments. I'm fine, but my husband has potentially serious issues (test #2 coming up Thurs), my brother's cancer is back only two years after radiation and he finds out today what's next, and my best friend is getting operated on a week from today. Not ready to sign up for Lawrence Welk, but man the golden years aren't that golden, are they.

No, they aren't. And I even left out many of my problems. But as long as I'm not in the obits, I'm okay. (I am missing some friends, though, that did make it to the obits.)

I was telling my friend about how when you get older, it's harder to hold onto things. Your skin is drier, your skin is thinner, and your fingerprints aren't as grabby. Just today when I was mixing dough for an Italian sourdough semola bread, the jar of ascorbic acid flew out of my hands and landed in the unmixed dough. It's magic!

Anyway, a friend used to listen to me complain about that, but it didn't hit home until recently. Now in his early '70s, he's starting to experience the same thing.
'

Baked a couple of Italian sourdough semola breads today. Came out nice, with a distinct sourdough* taste.

*Fed my half-dozen starters this weekend, and I used my Tennessee starter.

{M}y Tennessee starter.

That's an old Linda Ronstadt number, right?

I think it was a Connie Francis Tennessee [something].

Last night the last of the Costco rotisserie chicken went into Fuchsia Dunlop's Cold Chicken with a Spicy Sichuanese Sauce (liangban ji). This has a hot-and-numbing (mala) character as opposed to the strange-flavor sauce, which is more sesame-based. I served it with Sichuanese garlicky smashed cucumber on the side.

-Paul W.

Edie and I were treated to a free V-day dinner after my gig tonight at a French restaurant. We had an amuse bouche, escargot, chicken tarragon, and a creme caramel. The escargot was delicious, but I've never seen it prepared before with sliced, cooked potatoes and lots of garlic and butter. Sounds strange, but it really worked.

Had a bit of a craving for Middle Eastern food and I have an abundance of parsley, mint and lemons.
Adds up to a selection of mezze. Tabbouleh, baba ganoush, hummus, olives, fried haloumi and grilled flatbread.
I made rather a lot of tabbouli, baba ganoush and hummus so there will be more grazing changed up
with the addition of different dishes, perhaps hamine eggs, certainly something with spinach as there’s plenty of that in the garden

[Jenise]

Yesterday we went out for lunch at a local resort and had horrible food. Just for instance, the "roasted pablano chiles" we paid $2 extra for on our burger was actually just a few pieces of stir fried green bell pepper. We were so put off by the whole experience that I didn't feel like cooking later. Dinner was a box of low-salt Triscuits.

I'm not joking, that's ALL we ate.

I'm going to make up for it today. Lunch is going to be roasted zucchini with spaghetti with garlic/olive oil sauce. Dinner is finally going to be that moussaka I've been threatening to make. Will follow a recipe that recently appeared on Leite's or F&W, but will vary it to reduce the meat by half while keeping the eggplant portion intact. Just part of our general trend to eat less meat, more plants.

[Jenise]

Wednesday night's moussaka never happened. Our dear 23 year old cat Marley entered the final phase of life and that displaced all other plans. We ate apples.

Then yesterday Bob had surgery, a non invasive hospital procedure under general anaesthesia in which shock waves blast large, impassable kidney stones to bits. He had four such critters. On the way home, I asked him what he would like for dinner. He could have anything. Woozy from Oxycontin and oblivious of the logistics of such a request at 3 in the afternoon, he said "Thanksgiving dinner".

Well, he got it. I bought a small rolled turkey breast and put it straight into the oven when we got home after running it under long enough to pry the bag of gravy off and lathering it with butter. A small sage and onion bread pudding was easy to throw together and eventually a cream gravy and smattering of peas finished the dish. A guest popped in with a bottle of Tavel, so that was our dinner wine.

Tonight? Not sure yet.

Glad to hear Bob is woozy, I mean, well.

You've got some kind of ongoing relationship with small turkey breasts. I think it's your go-to emergency meat purchase.

[Jenise]

Not true! This is the first one I've bought since the last, or first, time I did the cordon bleu stuffed version.

It did bring back long, long ao memories of buying frozen boneless turkey period, a mix of white and dark meat, Butterball brand most likely, that I really liked. Really helpful for a single girl's lunch box, just whack off a few slices and add some lettuce--LUNCH! Would have hoped for that again but now that dark meat is politically incorrect it's all white, all the time.

...but now that dark meat is politically incorrect it's all white, all the time.

Sorry, that went over my head. If you want dark meat you need to buy thighs and legs, right?

[Jenise]

What I was referring to are, or were, these little boneless turkey roasts that I used to buy--frozen and netted from the Butterball people, about the size of a football, which had both white and dark meat. Those are gone--Butterball still sells frozen and netted boneless turkey roasts, but they are strictly white meat now.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Funny about netting... I see netted ham and netted lamb but no netted birds anymore.

[Jenise]

I don't see anything much netted anymore. A store I used to shop at would net two portions of pork loin together to sell them as one big roast. Hilariously, a friend who didn't know one thing from another bought one and used it in a recipe that presumed you only had the standard single thickness loin and which specified the total cooking time based on that vs. a minutes-per-pound thing, cuz who would guess. Anyway, big dinner party; and she served a half-raw roast.

Those nets are hard to remove after cooking, btw. Not that in this case I had a choice.

Bringing fresh coriander chutney and yogurt, cucumber with mint raita to a dinner where takeout from and Indian restaurant will be served for celebrating a friends birthday. The person of honor loves this restaurant.

[Jenise]

How nice to have good Indian take-out nearby!

Yesterday was a weird day. Bob, on pain meds, slept until 2 p.m. We had a late lunch, like 3:00, so I wasn't even sure dinner was going to be needed and I didn't plan anything. When it turned out Bob was hungry after all, I threw together some club sandwiches made from Thursday's leftover roast turkey breast. And at 8:00 he went back to bed. Good pivot.

Today: no plan yet.

Club sandwiches ftw! I recall a trip to France with a friend, big excuse to spend a week in wine country eating and drinking. And yet... when we got to the hotel-near-the-airport for our flights home, I was so grateful to sit in the hotel restaurant and have a simple club sandwich for dinner.

[Jenise]

I get it! I normally don't serve sandwiches for dinner, but this hasn't been a normal week.

Tonight's looking a little more like it because I found super thin cut pork chops at the market this morning. That's a treat I rarely see any more. They're marinating in soy sauce, maple syrup, vinegar, chile oil, sesame oil and rosemary. I'll fire them on the indoor grill and serve them over rice with stir fried red bell peppers/green onions.

They're marinating in soy sauce, maple syrup, vinegar, chile oil, sesame oil and rosemary. I'll fire them on the indoor grill and serve them over rice with stir fried red bell peppers/green onions.

Dang! I think I want that marinade over rice!

Regarding sandwiches for dinner, I had BLTs for dinner last week. Tonight's dinner is Sichuanese chao larou--stir-fried bacon in Sichuanese bean sauces. It's the same dish as twice-cooked pork except that it uses smoked bacon instead of fresh pork belly. Because the meat is already smoked the first step of the twice-cooked process--simmering the meat--is skipped.

-Paul W.

Ooh, I don't undertake BLTs unless it's summer and I can get really good tomatoes.

[Jenise]

Dang! I think I want that marinade over rice!

It's really good. Lightly sweet, hot, tangy and savory--ticks all the boxes. No recipe, I just pour things in a Ziploc and taste with my finger, but you can't go wrong mixing those items together.