What's cooking this weekend?

[Jenise]

I have no idea what I'm doing this weekend. I've been totally focussed on tonight, which is a wine and cheese tasting for 70 where I'm doing ALL the food. As soon as I get my head cleared from this, like tomorrow, I have to start on a Celebration of Life for a friend who passed away a few months ago. I'll be feeding close to 70 people at that one, too.

Tonight it will be Haddock a'la Creme with rice and peas. Will wash it down with an oak free Chardonnay.

Jenise, you are a glutton, etc. etc.....
I'm armpit deep in toll house cookie dough. Preparing the goodie boxes for my MIL's 90th b'day celebration tomorrow. Need to have cook bags for 150 to include in the box with a 1/2 pint of milk and a peach. Dough is in the fridge for first two (of four) double batches. Will start the baking rotation after I return from the nail salon. I'm planning to be done with all by 6pm! We'll see.

[Jenise]

Jenise, you are a glutton, etc. etc....|

Said the beggar to the thief. I just got back from the clubhouse where I unloaded the 54 bottles of wine we're serving tonight, and stopped in at Jim and Carol's to check on the construction of the center pieces. As soon as I stop procrastinating, I'll start slicing meats.

What a lovely thing you're doing. Is your MIL in a nursing home?

Parsley soup!

Okay, Celia, what on earth is parsley soup?

Um...soup made with parsley.

It was delicious too - leek, potato, parsley and chicken stock, cooked down and pureed. Loved it, huge amounts of parsley. Anders mentioned nettle soup and I've been craving green soup ever since.

What a lovely thing you're doing. Is your MIL in a nursing home?

No, she actually lives with us in a MIL unit above our garage.

Now I'm trying to make Portuguese feijoada! And Lebanese Man'oushe - za'atar pizza...

No idea how either are going to turn out..

Jenise, you are a glutton, etc. etc.....
I'm armpit deep in toll house cookie dough. Preparing the goodie boxes for my MIL's 90th b'day celebration tomorrow. Need to have cook bags for 150 to include in the box with a 1/2 pint of milk and a peach. Dough is in the fridge for first two (of four) double batches. Will start the baking rotation after I return from the nail salon. I'm planning to be done with all by 6pm! We'll see.

Jo Ann, She may or may not remember meeting me and Gail, but please give her our Happy Birthday wishes!

Pizza party for our good friends and neighbors with their two kids. I fashioned 11 smallish pizza crusts and a simple tomato sauce (pureed pomodoros with salt and oregano) and let everyone assemble their own. Put them in our convection oven set to 550°F with a baking stone and cooked them to doneness in under 5 minutes. This was the closest I've yet come to NYC-style pizza. Washed it all down with a 2001 Ridge Lytton Springs and a 2008 ESJ Bone-Jolly red. Life is tough!

Mark Lipton

I was primed for summer weather and summer type cooking when we turned into Oregon. Rain, mornings into the 40's, windy, and this is supposed to last maybe 2 more weeks. So today, after the Farmer's Market I went looking through the freezer and found a brisket round. OK, that sounded good. I threw it into the microwave to defrost a bit. Gene cut the fat cap off for me while I heated the Crockpot, threw in onions, garlic, leeks, and some Hatch Chiles. I have the Crockpot on high right now. I'm hoping it will tenderize by dinner time, if not I'll order a pizza and we will have it tomorrow night. Mother nature sure threw us a curve.

Just finished the arepas, which will be served with a little goat cheese/sour cream on top. Along with them, we'll have shrimp (might as well get the fresh Gulf shrimp while we can) sauteed and served with pesto and a light aioli and orzo with lemon, peas, and reggiano. My wife's just getting going on a raspberry betty for dessert.

Grilled andouille sausage was the menu feature today.

-Paul W.

Today's lunch on pentecost sunday
Starter: Artichoke Salad with strawberries and Basil leaves seasoned with balsamico cream and topped with fried shrimps saffron tempura
Second course: Creamy celery soup with white tomato espuma
Main course: Lamb in coffee crust with apple potato mash on Orange-Coffee-sauce
Dessert: Crème brulée parfumed with lavender.

[Jenise]

What a lovely thing you're doing. Is your MIL in a nursing home?

No, she actually lives with us in a MIL unit above our garage.

How wonderful that at her age she's able to do so. Go mama!

[Jenise]

Just finished the arepas, which will be served with a little goat cheese/sour cream on top. Along with them, we'll have shrimp (might as well get the fresh Gulf shrimp while we can) sauteed and served with pesto and a light aioli and orzo with lemon, peas, and reggiano. My wife's just getting going on a raspberry betty for dessert.

Sadly, we've been buying shrimp with the same thought in mind.

[Jenise]

Parsley soup!

Okay, Celia, what on earth is parsley soup?

Um...soup made with parsley.

It was delicious too - leek, potato, parsley and chicken stock, cooked down and pureed. Loved it, huge amounts of parsley. Anders mentioned nettle soup and I've been craving green soup ever since.

Sounds very very good--I love parsley and think it gets short shrift as a garnish, at least in most American cooking. It fares better in other cuisines, like the Arab-style tomato and parsley salad I made for dinner last night.

[Jenise]

Today's lunch on pentecost sunday
Starter: Artichoke Salad with strawberries and Basil leaves seasoned with balsamico cream and topped with fried shrimps saffron tempura
Second course: Creamy celery soup with white tomato espuma
Main course: Lamb in coffee crust with apple potato mash on Orange-Coffee-sauce
Dessert: Crème brulée parfumed with lavender.

Heinz, what a menu! Could you provide more detail on the lamb main course? The orange coffee crust is very intriguing.

We are trying to smoke a turkey on our Big Green Egg for the first time ever. I slathered it with oil and a good dry rub this morning. It will go on in a few hours.
I'm going to make French Potato/Green Bean Salad and probably some spicy baked beans of some kind.

Count me in with you guys who love the taste of parsley ("It's more than just a garnish.) I chop it and add to a lot of my finished dishes...in fact sprinkled some on our veal with peppers pasta dish just last night.

[Jenise]

We are trying to smoke a turkey on our Big Green Egg for the first time ever. I slathered it with oil and a good dry rub this morning. It will go on in a few hours.
I'm going to make French Potato/Green Bean Salad and probably some spicy baked beans of some kind.

Count me in with you guys who love the taste of parsley ("It's more than just a garnish.) I chop it and add to a lot of my finished dishes...in fact sprinkled some on our veal with peppers pasta dish just last night.

Let us know how that turns out! Mmmmm re your salad. I suddenly want that with my dinner, too. I have the ingredients and it should work--I'll serve it as a first course, and put wilted black kale which I have to tear out of the garden today anyway with the lamb shanks I'm planning to roast. (I made a thing of beef/red wine reduction a few weeks ago and want to get that container out of the fridge, so it will provide the braising liquid for said meat.) I'm backing into this dinner, in other words, and that's unfortunately fairly common at my house.

And Lebanese Man'oushe - za'atar pizza...

I make that almost every week. Buy or make pizza dough, roll into flat round circles, add zaatar and olive oil, put in oven, nothing is easier.

Parsley soup makes me think of "moloukhia" that amazing Egyptian dish. I need to make it again.

We are trying to smoke a turkey on our Big Green Egg for the first time ever. I slathered it with oil and a good dry rub this morning. It will go on in a few hours.
I'm going to make French Potato/Green Bean Salad and probably some spicy baked beans of some kind.

Count me in with you guys who love the taste of parsley ("It's more than just a garnish.) I chop it and add to a lot of my finished dishes...in fact sprinkled some on our veal with peppers pasta dish just last night.

Let us know how that turns out! Mmmmm re your salad. I suddenly want that with my dinner, too. I have the ingredients and it should work--I'll serve it as a first course, and put wilted black kale which I have to tear out of the garden today anyway with the lamb shanks I'm planning to roast. (I made a thing of beef/red wine reduction a few weeks ago and want to get that container out of the fridge, so it will provide the braising liquid for said meat.) I'm backing into this dinner, in other words, and that's unfortunately fairly common at my house.

Hi Jenise -- the salad was not my best effort. Unfortunately I over-cooked the pototoes, so when I tossed them with the dressing and green beans, they sort of turned into "mashed" potatoes. If there were such a thing as colcannon made with green beans instead of cabbage, I could have changed the name of the dish and considered it a success... Oh well.

The turkey was a huge success, however. As I think you know, I am not a fan of brining. That said, every recipe I found for smoking a turkey on a BGE said to brine. I still didn't want to. (You can call me stubborn.) So, mentioned above, I slathered the sucker with canola oil, then generously rubbed with our favorite rub and put it back in the fridge. The salt must've drawn the moisture out of the bird a bit because even though I dried it first, it ended up creating quite a bit of liquid in the pan. Well, this actually worked to my advantage. I had turned it breast side down and the breast "brined" in this liquid for about five hours until we put it on the smoker.

It was a 13-pound generic frozen grocery store bird that I think I bought for $4 (one of the store's holiday lost leaders during Thanksgiving). It had been in the freezer since November. We smoked it for about 6 hours at temperatures ranging from 225-300, with some hickory wood. Mostly it hovered around 250 degrees. We cooked it for five hours breast side down, flipping it over for the last hour. We rested it for 15 minutes and let me tell you, this was one wonderfully juicy bird. We frankly were shocked at how moist the breast meat was. Can't wait to have the leftovers at lunch today. Here are two photos.

Smoking Turkey 1.jpg

Smoking Turkey 2.jpg

[Jenise]

Looks beautiful, Carrie. Turkey smokes beautifully, though I've only tasted other people's work and have never done one myself. Interesting results too--I'm thinking that those cheap supermarket turkeys are probably particularly well suited to this kind of task, because they're plumped full of moisture to survive fairly long stays in the freezer--that bird was likely, um, 'processed' months before he got shipped to the market you bought him from.

Looks beautiful, Carrie. Turkey smokes beautifully, though I've only tasted other people's work and have never done one myself. Interesting results too--I'm thinking that those cheap supermarket turkeys are probably particularly well suited to this kind of task, because they're plumped full of moisture to survive fairly long stays in the freezer--that bird was likely, um, 'processed' months before he got shipped to the market you bought him from.

Meant to ask how your French Potato salad starter came out....? Wonderful I"m sure. Also, I can relate to how you "back into dinner" most nights. That's what I usually do, but it's kinda fun that way. (We are probably a part of a small contingent who "can" do this! Along with the rest of these FLDG participants.)

[Jenise]

Meant to ask how your French Potato salad starter came out....? Wonderful I"m sure. Also, I can relate to how you "back into dinner" most nights. That's what I usually do, but it's kinda fun that way. (We are probably a part of a small contingent who "can" do this! Along with the rest of these FLDG participants.)

Oh, well, that's the unfortunate part of how I "back into dinner". The results are always good and the challenge is enjoyable (I'd always rather be challenged than not), but I wish it didn't have to come about because I have a tendency to overshop. Meaning that the green beans turned out to be older than I remembered, purchased at a regular grocer and supplanted in fascination by the amazing local stuff brought home from the Farmers Market a week ago Saturday which I have not used up as quickly as I thought I would, and were, therefore, muerto. So instead we had a salad of watercress, raw mushroom and pepitas, and I served the lamb on some pan-fried potatoes with shallots.