Journal

2021 - Week 28 Cooking Results

Endive, Soft Egg, Bacon

Jennie described a salad like this. I don’t think I got it right, but it was still pretty good.

Bangers and Fingerling Potatoes

Delayed!

Pork and Sugar Snap Pea Stir-Fry

I had some snap peas in my CSA share, and bought more at the farmers market and then put this together. I added probably double to triple of the chili garlic sauce, swapped the ginger for dried ginger. It ended up pretty good. I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. Quite delicious. I even put the peanuts in it (which I normally wouldn’t do, since Shannon isn’t a fan).

Breakfast Burritos with Poblano, Beans, Corn, and Crispy Potatoes

Probably the most healthy of the set of these. Still pretty good. I upped the chili powder.

Hot Dogs

These turned into brats, since I couldn’t find the hot dogs I thought I had.

2021 - Week 27 Cooking Results

Hamburgers

I was planning to make this on the 4th, but it was still a bit icy, so We had it it for lunch on Monday. I started making shortly after I got the Bo Ssäm in the oven. Lucky George beef. Delicious lunch.

(local) All beef hot dogs

I got these on a whim from Ebersole Cattle company. They have been partnering with Blue Gate and Lost Lake to do a non-market pickup (though Ebersole and Lost Lake are still at the market). The hot dogs themselves are pretty good. We had them on the 4th for dinner.

Bo Ssäm

So this was delicious. I used the last of the spicy seasoned salt and it was relatively easy to put together and lent itself well to a lazy July 5th. Occasionally getting up to baste or re-sauce from time to time. Savory, sweet, spicy, and with the sauce a bit acidic. I served them on buns and they were delicious. I ate leftovers for days afterward, mostly on sandwiches, but the second to last day in a nacho, and the last day, just by itself. Good stuff. I’ll have to make this again, but I’ll have to order more Spicy Seasoning.

Hearty Green Salad with Spicy Peanut Chicken

I riffed this a bit. Made the barely picked Serranos and shallots, made the sauce, but used spinach instead of watercress, skipped the mango, and other modifications. All in all quite good. Probably better had I found all the ingredients and followed it more closely. Though I’m not sure I’ve seen a mango around here.

Breakfast Burritos with Chorizo and Crispy Potatoes

Another not good for you, but delicious meal. I reduced the time on the tots by a bit, and got them nice and crisp, without overcooking them. Relatively quick, and good.

Chicken Parmesan Meatballs

I gave Shannon a choice, and this sounded a bit heavy to her, so I ended up making chicken burgers (salt, smoked paprika, ground chicken) and fresh from Grade A Gardens, sweet corn, with buns from a bakery in Ankeny. I used the Lola’s spicy seasoning on 2/3 of my corn cob halves. Quite good. I’ll have to save the meatballs for a time when it’s a bit less hot and humid out.

2021 - Week 27 Cooking

Since I have no particular desire to create an incentive for companies to have workers work on a holiday, I made an effort to get all the planning, shopping done on Saturday. This made for a busier then normal Saturday. Yesterday was a Blue Gate day, but I wanted a Wabi Sabi Shirt, so I headed down to the market, picked up a couple of things, got a Venezuela style Arepa from Arepa DSM (pretty good), headed to Daisy Chain coffee to hang out for a bit

I med a good dog named Yoda (white bulldog like), who was clearly interested in attention from a rotating set of people coming in and out of the shop (he got lovins from me a few times). It was nice to site back, sip a latte then a cold brew, while listening to the conversations of the people passing through.

Then I headed over to Peace Tree to pick up eggs and etc from the Blue Gate pickup and headed home, then to the Grocery store to finish out the trip.

Which led to a Sunday of sleeping in pretty late (8 hours and 4 minutes per my CPAP machine), which has made me feel better then I have in a while. Now I have two days of little responsibility outside of cooking (I did do some work today, but voluntarily, because after a 6 month back and forth, having a goal 10/11th accomplished feels good).

2021 - Week 26 Cooking Results

Bangers, Potatoes & garlic scapes

New potatoes from Grade A, cleaned chopped, garlic scapes too, tossed with a bit of olive oil and savory salt, put on a tray with the bangers and baked for a bit. I did think of this while wondering at the market. I’m made several iterations of this before, but the scapes are a new thing in the mix. Pretty good.

Bourbon Chicken

Sou you have a 750ml bottle of Cedar Ridge Bourbon, which is just over half full, and what’s the best way to get a couple of tablespoons out? Why pour yourself a glass. This is how you get a bit tipsy on a Tuesday. Pretty easy to put together, and pretty good (that may be the second glass of bourbon speaking though).

Breakfast Burritos with Bacon and Crispy Potatoes

Since there are only two of us, I halved the recipe and I should’ve paid closer attention to that since it didn’t cool the pan as much as probably expected, so that things were a bit over done, at least the potatoes. Flipping them at 3 minutes instead of 4, was not soon enough, and there may have been a bit of an over cook on them. Even though, it was pretty good, though clearly not a good for you meal. Other then maybe the process of defrosting the tater tots, I suppose I could’ve done this without that much thought, but that’s not generally the point.

Pasta Frittata with Sausage and Hot Peppers

I am having trouble remembering if I followed step 3, specifically if I added salt to the angel hair pasta, because that is my only complaint about this recipe. It could be that I forgot, which is entirely possible, or there wasn’t enough to make the noodles taste…not under salted. Anyways the fried angel hair pasta made for a pretty and crispy crust, without to much effort. If I forgot to salt it, that would be why it was a bit under salted. I’ll have to make this again (also have 10oz of angel hair pasta left). Maybe more peppers? I also didn’t follow the directions on flipping the frittata, and spilled a bit of oil. I’ll do that next time.

Pork Hot Dogs

Good as always.

2021 - Week 25 Cooking Results

I did not feel that inspired to cook anything this week, at least planning wise, so a bunch of easy things on the docket, completed without much effort or thought. I have still be beating myself and dwelling on Freyja. I am not spiraling, like I sometimes do. But it it is not great. Today, Saturday, I still talked about her in the present tense, but I also talked about her in the past tense.

I started a new batch of elderflower syrup, though it’ll be much weaker in the floral notes as I’m using 30 grams of flowers, as opposed to last year where I used ~90 grams.

~30 grams of elderflowers

Ham, egg and English muffin

Fried ham (gift from work), eggs (I kind of messed these up, didn’t use enough oil in the regular pan), cheese and a toasted English muffin. Good things.

Salad with chicken

Baked off some chicken thighs, put them in the fridge to cool them down a bit then chopped them up for some local greens, topped with some not so local things.

Brats

Good to eat.

Tuna with soy sauce

Yellowfin tuna, marinated for about 5 minutes in some soy sauce, seared, and served with salad.

Veggie Pot Pies

These are from Domestic Bones, they were quite good. It looks like they have some other things, both at the coop and apparently for end of the month delivery at Peace Tree, with some other flavors of hand pies. I do still love me some hand pies form Tami’s tarts, though.

2021 - Week 24 Cooking Results

Brats

Lamb ones again, good things.

Charred Red Pepper and White Bean Salad

The only cooking, really, was in the pan. The rest of this came off with a certain amount of ease. The prosciutto and pecorino added quite a bit salty and savoriness to the whole dish. It was quite nice.

Turkey burgers with smoked Gouda

I added a bit of the Momofuku spicy salt to the turkey, though. I should’ve also added the smoked paprika like I had originally planned, but apparently forgot about. It did combine well with the smoked Gouda. A nice simple meal.

Scallion and Coconut Rice with Pork

This was an interesting way to get a creamy risotto like texture. I don’t think it was risotto-y enough that I my wife took it to work, but I enjoyed it the next day with some soy sauce, which I think really added to it.

Jalapeño Chicken Salad

I vaguely followed the recipe. I really do like pickled jalapeños, they add heat but also acid as well. Easy recipe for a hot day. I was running out of bread, but was able to scrap enough out of the freezer to make these.